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

Health Minister Mark Butler today announced Australia had secured 450,000 doses of a third-generation monkeypox vaccine, 22,000 of which will arrive later this week.

There are now 58 people with the virus in Australia.

The announcement comes after the Chief Medical Officer declared monkeypox a “communicable disease incident of national significance” last week. This means the federal government can assist states and territories — for example, making antivirals or vaccines available through the national medical stockpile. It also signals the seriousness of the epidemic and the need to bring it under control.

Most of Australia’s cases are in New South Wales and Victoria, with most through travel, but some through community spread.

Globally, we have gone from a few hundred to more than 23,000 cases in three months, with the United States overtaking European countries to have the largest number of cases.

The epidemic is still largely spreading in communities of men who have sex with men, with over 98% of cases in this group.

Overseas, the rate of a concurrent sexually transmitted infection is around 30%, and HIV around 40%. The rate of HIV coinfection is much lower in Australia, reflecting the success in controlling HIV.

Read more:
Monkeypox in Australia: should you be worried? And who can get the vaccine?

What’s the new vaccine?

The third-generation non-replicating vaccine is the preferred vaccine for monkeypox. It has fewer risks of serious side effects than second-generation vaccines and can be given safely to people with weakened immune systems.

Australia hadn’t stockpiled these ahead of the epidemic, but the new announcement is a welcome move.

The vaccine Australia has just purchased is made by Danish biotech Bavarian Nordic. The only other non-replicating vaccine is the LC16m8 from Japan, and scaling up production is difficult, so supplies are limited.

Monkeypox is closely related to smallpox, and the smallpox vaccines protect against it and other orthopoxviruses. Smallpox vaccines are made from the vaccinia virus. First- and second-generation vaccines replicate in the body, so if someone is immunosuppressed, the vaccinia virus can spread and cause serious illness. These vaccines can also cause myocarditis and pericarditis in one out of every 175 vaccinated people as well as rarer serious side effects.

The first-generation vaccines such as Dryvax were used for smallpox eradication until 1980 when smallpox was declared eradicated, but had impurities because it was manufactured on the skin of calves.

The second-generation vaccines, such as ACAM2000, are made using cell cultures and is purified. However, these also replicate in the body and have the same side effects.

First- and second-generation vaccines are given as a single dose with a two-pronged needle that scratches the skin, with a scar forming at the site, which indicates it has worked.

Third-generation vaccines need two doses and are given like other vaccines, and do not leave a scar.

Vaccine advisory body the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI) recommends the following people are prioritised for the vaccine:

• high-risk monkeypox contacts in the past 14 days, including men who have sex with men who have recently had a high number of sexual partners or group sex, and those living with HIV
• sex workers, particularly those with clients who are high-risk
• anyone in the high-risk groups who is planning to travel to any country with a significant monkeypox outbreak.

Antivirals against smallpox (and monkeypox) were similarly not stockpiled ahead of the epidemic, but are expected to be available. There’s also a vaccinia immunoglobulin (antibody treatment) available to treat people with severe infection.

This outbreak is different

We don’t know much more about the genetic changes in the virus, except that there are more than 50 mutations. The virus appears to have been continuously mutating — and rapidly.

It’s possible some of these changes may be responsible for the rapid spread of the virus, and some new symptoms. Developing the rash around the genitals and anus is much more common in this outbreak than in the classic monkeypox presentation where the rash usually appears on the face, hands and feet.

A study from Cameroon found a 6% rate of asymptomatic infection. That’s not a high proportion, but shows that asymptomatic infection is possible. A pre-print study (not yet reviewed by other scientists) found that of 224 men screened, three had asymptomatic monkeypox.

Asymptomatic infection can also occur in vaccinated people, but none of the three men were vaccinated against smallpox. Still, this doesn’t adequately explain the spread of monkeypox globally.

Read more:
Monkeypox: an expert explains what gay and bisexual men need to know

So far the epidemic hasn’t spread widely outside of gay and bisexual men, and the death rate has been very low. Most deaths have been in children in countries in Africa where monkeypox is endemic. This means it is in the animal populations in those countries and causes outbreaks when infection spreads from animals to humans, and sometimes between humans.

To date there have been a handful of deaths in non-endemic countries such as Brazil, India and Spain.

Cases in children have occurred in the US and Europe. The risk of severe outcomes and death is much higher for children, so good outbreak control is important.

Australia should be able to control it

It’s important to ensure the virus doesn’t get established in animal hosts, which is a risk if the epidemic becomes very large. Rodents are the main host of this virus, but a range of other animals including monkeys can be a reservoir.

If the virus becomes established in animals in Australia, we will have to live with it forever – like we now have to live with Japanese encephalitis, which had never been found on the mainland until 2022.

It’s not yet known whether Australian native animals are susceptible to monkeypox. The virus is excreted in faeces, so environmental contamination poses a risk that the virus may get into waterways and thereby infect animals.

Read more:
Why declaring monkeypox a global health emergency is a preventative step — not a reason for panic

Australia should be able to control monkeypox, drawing on our successful HIV response.

This requires community engagement, good diagnosis, contact tracing and use of vaccines as both pre-exposure vaccine prophylaxis for people attending high-risk events or otherwise at high risk; and “post-exposure vaccine prophylaxis”, which you can take after you’ve been exposed to an infected person.

C Raina MacIntyre currently receives funding from NHMRC. MRFF and Sanofi. She has been on advisory board for Bavarian Nordic and had funding and in-kind support for a smallpox tabletop exercise in 2019 from Bavarian Nordic, Emergent Biosolutions, Siga and Meridien Medical. Bavarian Nordic and Emergent make smallpox vaccines, and Siga makes the anti-viral TPOXX. She is on the WHO SAGE Smallpox and Monkeypox ad-hoc Working group.

– ref. Australia secures 450,000 new monkeypox vaccines. What are they and who can have them? – https://theconversation.com/australia-secures-450-000-new-monkeypox-vaccines-what-are-they-and-who-can-have-them-187691

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tony Wood, Program Director, Energy, Grattan Institute

The Albanese government has accepted the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s recommendation to “initiate the first step” to trigger the controversial Australian Domestic Gas Security Mechanism to avert a supply crisis in eastern Australia.

What the competition watchdog hasn’t recommended is what to do about the gas price, which has little to do with supply.

In its latest half-yearly report on gas supply, the ACCC predicts that, without action, eastern Australia will suffer a domestic gas shortage in 2023, and is concerned that already-high prices will go even higher.

The report identifies several causes. One is Russia’s war against Ukraine, which has European buyers seeking alternatives to Russian gas.

Australian liquefied natural gas (LNG) exporters have been keen to meet this demand and reap the high prices they are willing to pay.

But the report also makes clear there are significant problems with the Australian gas market itself, with ineffective competition between gas producers, poor compliance, and an apparent lack of real commitment by gas exporters to the agreement they made with the federal government to ensure affordable and sufficient gas for domestic users.

Frustratingly though, the report has little to say (beyond expressing concern) about the more immediate issue of escalating domestic prices.

Looming shortage

The report identifies an east coast gas supply of 1.98 billion gigajoules in 2023 – well in excess of domestic demand of 571 million gigajoules.

1.3 billion gigajoules of that supply is needed to meet long-term LNG export contracts. The ACCC has identified there will be a shortfall of 56 million gigajoules if the LNG producers export all of the 167 million gigajoules they will have in excess their contract obligations.

To avoid this shortfall, the ACCC has recommended the government take the first step in initiating the Australian Domestic Gas Security Mechanism. This involves determining if 2023 will be a “shortfall year”. Federal resources minister has said the government will take this step.

Read more:
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If the government finds it will be a shortfall year, it can require exporters to offer their uncontracted gas to the domestic market first.

Whether the government will need to do that will depend on negotiations with the exporters – in particular the three joint venture exporters and their associates the ACCC says have influence over close to 90% of proven and probable eastern Australian reserves.

The ACCC report expresses concern that some LNG exporters “not engaging with the
domestic market in the spirit” of an agreement they signed:

Even if the behaviour could be proven to be technically compliant, we consider that some suppliers are not engaging with the domestic market in ways that are likely to result in supply agreements being reached and market conditions noticeably improving

It is also concerned the joint venture operators might be breaching the Competition and Consumer Act by effectively engaging in joint marketing without ACCC approval.

Another concern is the cost of transmission, with pipeline owners enjoying local monopolies. The ACCC has stopped short of recommending regulating the prices they can charge.

Few clues on prices

Where the recommendations fall short is on what to do about rising prices. Even before the looming shortfall, wholesale and retail prices to businesses have been climbing steadily for a year. The report says some prices have been doubled.

The ACCC has been operating on the superficially reasonable basis that domestic gas prices should be no higher than international ones.

It has been using “export parity prices” to indicate what the price would be if the federal government’s agreement with LNG exporters was functioning well.

On that metric, the agreement is functioning well. Domestic prices have largely followed international prices. But those prices have soared from A$3-10 per gigajoule to well above A$40.

Read more:
Why did gas prices go from $10 a gigajoule to $800 a gigajoule? An expert on the energy crisis engulfing Australia

The result is windfall profits to producers and unaffordable prices for domestic users of the kind that cannot be accepted as a well-functioning market.

The report makes no recommendation to address this problem.

While there have been arguments for a domestic reservation policy, a better way to address the price problem is a “windfall profit” tax on gas producers.

Even the threat of such a tax should be a brake on unfair domestic prices. The ACCC could set a price threshold to trigger the tax. It could be tailored to the specific circumstances and made defensible against claims of sovereign risk.

A windfall profits tax would be a start

Most of the findings of the latest gas inquiry report are neither new nor surprising. Yet their impact on gas users is heavy, and will get worse if further action is not taken.

The government has most of the tools it needs. It should act on the ACCC’s recommendations to meet the possible 2023 shortfall and on joint marketing.

It should go further on pipeline regulation, and it should implement a windfall profit tax to avoid catastrophic consequences for Australian gas users.

Tony Wood owns shares in several energy and resource companies via his superannuation fund

– ref. Avoiding a gas shortage is one thing, but what’s needed is action on prices – https://theconversation.com/avoiding-a-gas-shortage-is-one-thing-but-whats-needed-is-action-on-prices-187980

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Timothy Schmidt, Professor of Chemistry, UNSW Sydney

Is there a “fourth phase of water”? From time to time you might see people talking up the health benefits of so-called hexagonal water, or structured water, or exclusion-zone (EZ) water.

A few weeks ago Kourtney Kardashian’s Poosh website was spruiking a US$2,500 “structured water filter”. Last weekend even Australia’s Sydney Morning Herald got in on the act, running a now-deleted story on the virtues of “structured water”.

So what’s going on?

As a professor of chemistry, I can tell you “EZ water” is nonsense. But let’s talk about what it’s supposed to be, and how it’s supposed to work.

What is EZ water?

EZ water has its origins in observations by Gerald Pollack, a professor of bioengineering at the University of Washington. He was studying the behaviour of water near “hydrophilic” surfaces, which are made of materials with a very strong attraction to water.

Pollack found that water pushes away objects such as plastic microspheres, salt and even dye molecules from the region close to a very hydrophilic surface.

Pollack’s explanation for this behaviour is that the structure of water changes in the “exclusion zone”.

Read more:
How snake oil got a bad name

While water molecules are made of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom (with the familiar formula H₂O), Pollack believes EZ water has an extra hydrogen atom and an extra oxygen atom (formula H₃O₂). This change supposedly results in a negative electric charge and a layered hexagonal network arrangement of atoms in the water.

Hydrophilic surfaces exists in the cells of the human bodies, so some have argued EZ water is “more natural” than ordinary water, and therefore must have manifold health benefits.

Tenuous health claims

The now-deleted Sydney Morning Herald article interviewed a supposed expert in water structure science called Rob Gourlay.

He makes many common claims for structured water: it is more natural, it has negative electric charge, it flows into our cells more quickly than ordinary water, and has many other supposed health benefits.

Though the article failed to mention it, a quick search reveals Robert Gourlay’s job title as “chief scientist” of a company called Phi’on, which sells water structuring devices.

From the plausible to the preposterous

Let’s have a look at these claims. Some of them are plausible, while some are preposterous.

We know that water behaves differently near an interface with another substance, because it is no longer only interacting with other water molecules. Surface tension is a familiar example of this phenomenon.

We also know that water behaves differently if it is confined in a very small space, on a scale of billionths of a metre.

Read more:
An untapped resource: how water became the ultimate consumer product

As such, there is no special reason to be immediately sceptical of Pollack’s experimental findings about the behaviour of water in the “exclusion zone”. They are indeed interesting, and many aspects have been reproduced.

But Pollack’s explanations for the behaviour have no basis.

Follow the atoms

If water somehow changed into a H₃O₂ form, simple arithmetic shows that turning two molecules of H₂O into one of H₃O₂ would leave an extra hydrogen atom floating around.

We would expect to see this hydrogen released as H₂ gas. Alternatively, the reaction would need to bring in extra oxygen from the air. A simple experiment would show that neither of these happen.

EZ water, for all its interesting properties, cannot be anything but H₂O. Pollack does not propose the H₃O₂ structure in a peer-reviewed publication, and other explanations have been put forth to explain his published experimental findings.

And the hexagonal structure for H₃O₂ which Pollack proposes, if stable and rigid, would not flow like a liquid.

Water has no memory

But suppose water in the exclusion zone did have some special structure. Could it be bottled and keep its properties?

All signs point to no.

In water with a neutral pH (neither acidic nor alkaline), about one molecule in every billion has an extra hydrogen atom that has jumped across from another molecule. This creates one positively charged H₃O⁺ ion and one negatively charged OH^– ion.

The extra protons (H⁺) that make H₃O⁺ ions are highly mobile – they rapidly leap from one molecule to another. This happens so fast that each of the hydrogen atoms in a given water molecule is replaced 1,000 times each second.

There are also short-lived attractions between the oxygen atoms in one molecule and the hydrogen atoms in a neighbouring molecule called “hydrogen bonds”. In liquid water at room temperature these bonds only last millionths of a millionth of a second.

The rapid movement of hydrogen atoms, and the flickering on and off of hydrogen bonds, mean that any structure in EZ water would dissipate very quickly. In bulk, water has forgotten its neighbours within picoseconds and has switched its hydrogen atoms in milliseconds. This is why it is liquid.

Experiments using intense laser pulses to disrupt the structure of water also show that it recovers within picoseconds. So any bulk water structure that is different from the usual kind that flows from our taps does not last much longer than a few millionths of a millionth of a second.

Water is water

So what does it all add up to? Put simply, it is not possible to buy any other type of water than regular water. You can change the pH, you can change the dissolved ions and gases, but not the water itself.

The snake-oil merchants selling structured water products use scientific-sounding words that are generally meaningless and are at best based on misinterpretations and abuses of Pollack’s experiments.

Pollack distances himself from most companies selling structured water products. He has his own structured water company, which among other products sells a “filterless water filter”.

Timothy Schmidt 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. Don’t fall for the snake oil claims of ‘structured water’. A chemist explains why it’s nonsense – https://theconversation.com/dont-fall-for-the-snake-oil-claims-of-structured-water-a-chemist-explains-why-its-nonsense-188159

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Daryle Rigney, Director, Indigenous Nations Collaborative Futures Jumbunna Institute for Indigenous Education and Research, University of Technology Sydney

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has announced the wording of the referendum question to enable a constitutionally enshrined Indigenous Voice to Parliament. It would seem Albanese has made a solid start on his election night promise to embrace the 2017 Uluru Statement from the Heart.

As Albanese put it at Garma Festival over the weekend:

The Uluru Statement is a hand outstretched, a moving show of faith in Australian decency and Australian fairness from people who have been given every reason to forsake their hope in both.

At its core, the Uluru Statement is an invitation to Australia to establish a new relationship with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. It is also an opportunity for First Nations to nation-build alongside the Australian people and its government.

An Indigenous Nation Building approach involves a shift in the mindset of First Nations peoples and non-Indigenous people. Rather than looking at what settler governments can do for First Nations peoples, the question becomes: how can we as First Nations people build our own capacity? If it aligns with our aspirations, how can we use their settler-colonial government policies for our own benefit?

Read more:
We keep hearing about a First Nations Voice to parliament, but what would it actually look like in practice?

What did the Uluru Statement ask for?

The statement acknowledges an intertwined relationship between “Australia’s nationhood” and the existence of First Nations:

With substantive constitutional change and structural reform, we believe (our) ancient sovereignty can shine through as a fuller expression of Australia’s nationhood.

However, the statement is also explicit about First Nations sovereignty, which “has never been extinguished”, and Indigenous nationhood:

Our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander tribes were the first sovereign Nations of the Australian continent and its adjacent lands, and possessed it under our own laws and customs.

The most effective way for governments to acknowledge and respect Indigenous nationhood would be to pursue structural reform that facilitates First Nations self-determination and self-government. An Indigenous Voice to Parliament may be one step towards this goal.

So far, First Nations peoples have largely been represented through issues-based initiatives such as the National Partnership Agreement on Closing the Gap. However, if Labor engages with the many Indigenous nations across this continent, a Voice to Parliament could better ensure cultural and political representation.

Minister for Indigenous Australians Linda Burney has encouraged Australians to see the Uluru Statement, and an Indigenous Voice to Parliament, as a “nation building project”.

She is right. However, both settler governments and Indigenous peoples should be encouraged to see this development not just as an opportunity for Australian “nation building”, but as a chance to rebuild Indigenous nations after the impacts of colonisation on their societies, law, culture and Country.

Read more:
The Albanese government has committed to enshrining a First Nations Voice in the Constitution. What do Australians think of the idea?

What is Indigenous Nation Building?

Indigenous Nation Building describes First Nations strengthening their capacity for effective self-government and self-determined community and economic development.

It requires First Nations peoples having long-term, decision-making control over their nation’s affairs. It is achieved through effective and culturally appropriate self-government institutions, whether these are newly established or revitalised.

Read more:
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How can governments and First Nations achieve this?

We are Indigenous Nation Building practitioners and researchers who have been exploring what works over many years.

Based on this experience, the evidence, and recent conversations with First Nations leaders and researchers, we have two key pieces of advice for Australian governments and First Nations as they seek to embark on this new journey:

1. If an Indigenous Voice to Parliament and other policies are to be successful and sustainable, governments need to engage with Indigenous nations as well as other Indigenous organisations

2. Indigenous peoples’ collective aspirations can align with the Australian government’s commitment to a Voice to Parliament. First Nations peoples have been let down by governments many times before. But some nations are using policy for their own purposes. One example is the Gunditjmara People’s decision to pursue a World Heritage Listing for the Budj Bim Cultural Landscape. This would gain protection of their Country alongside recognition of their authority for it.

First Nations need to use any developments, including a Voice to Parliament, as an opportunity for their own nation building.

If Indigenous Nation Building is embraced by Australian governments and First Nations, there is an opportunity for real change, as envisaged by Indigenous nations for generations and reaffirmed in the Uluru Statement from the Heart.

Daryle Rigney, a citizen of the Ngarrindjeri nation is Professor and Director of the Indigenous Nations Collaborative Futures research hub, Jumbunna Institute for Indigenous Education and Research, University of Technology Sydney. Daryle is a Chief Investigator on the ARC Discovery Grant “Prerequisite conditions for Indigenous nation self-government” and advisor to the Ngarrindjeri Regional Authority. He is Deputy Chair of the Australian Indigenous Governance Institute and Lifelong fellow, Atlantic Institute for Social Equity.

Anthea Compton is a Research Associate on the ARC Discovery Grant “Prerequisite conditions for Indigenous nation self-government”, led by the Indigenous Nations and Collaborative Futures Hub at Jumbunna Institute for Indigenous Education and Research, University of Technology Sydney in partnership with the Gugu Badhun and Nyungar Nations, the Native Nations Institute, University of Arizona and James Cook University.

Damein Bell is a Gunditjmara person with ongoing collaborations with Indigenous Nation Building.

Debra Evans has been involved in Indigenous Nation Building (INB) Research for the past decade including the ARC Linkages Project (in-kind).

She also co-teaches into the INB subject (IKC401) within Charles Sturt University’s Graduate Certificate in Wiradjuri Language, Heritage & Culture.

Donna Murray has been involved in Indigenous Nation Building research for the past decade and is a casual lecturer in Indigenous Nation Building within CSU’s graduate certificate in Wiradjuri Language Heritage and Culture.

Janine Gertz’s PhD Doctoral research was funded by a JCU Australian Postgraduate Award and a JCU Prestige Indigenous Research Award. Janine is a Lecturer within the University of New South Wales’ Nura Gili Centre for Indigenous Programs and Researcher within its Indigenous Law Centre. As a Gugu Badhun citizen, Janine fulfils the role of Research Coordinator within the Gugu Badhun Aboriginal Corporation Registered Native Title Body Corporate. The Gugu Badhun Nation is participating in a Nation-Building research project “Prerequisite conditions for Indigenous nation self-government” which is funded by an ARC Discovery Grant, led by the Indigenous Nations and Collaborative Futures Research Hub at the Jumbunna Institute for Indigenous Education and Research, University of Technology Sydney in collaboration with Native Nations Institute, University of Arizona and James Cook University.

– ref. Establishing a Voice to Parliament could be an opportunity for Indigenous Nation Building. Here’s what that means – https://theconversation.com/establishing-a-voice-to-parliament-could-be-an-opportunity-for-indigenous-nation-building-heres-what-that-means-187534

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Philip Laird, Honorary Principal Fellow, University of Wollongong

It’s 14 years since former NSW rail chief Len Harper described the rail link between Australia’s two largest cities, Sydney and Melbourne, as “inadequate for current and future needs”. And it’s 31 years since former Prime Minister Gough Whitlam put the problem more bluntly during a TV interview:

there are no cities in the world as close to each other with such large population as Sydney and Melbourne which are linked by so bad a railway.

Despite remedial work by the Australian Rail Track Corporation since it leased the NSW section of track, the rail link’s most serious problem – its “steam age” alignment – remains.

Is a new, dedicated, high-speed rail link the answer? The Labor government thinks so: among the plans flagged last week when Governor-General David Hurley opened parliament was a pledge to begin work on “nation-building projects like high-speed rail”.

That vision isn’t new. A high-speed rail link between Sydney and Melbourne – with trains operating at speeds of 250 kilometres per hour or more on their own track – was first proposed in 1984 by CSIRO. Since then, it has been examined in depth no fewer than three times, most recently in a report released by the Gillard government in 2013.

After it lost government, Labor promoted the idea of a High Speed Rail Planning Authority. Infrastructure Australia added its voice in 2016 with a call for governments to start reserving land for a future high-speed rail link between Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.

The Coalition government preferred a less ambitious option. Its National Faster Rail Agency part-funded numerous studies assessing the viability of lifting speeds on the existing route to between 160 and 250 km per hour.

That approach could prove to be the best way forward, at least in the short to medium term. A high-speed link between Sydney and Melbourne might still be built, but it could take 20 years or more to begin operating. In the meantime, faster freight and passenger services are needed between Australia’s two largest cities if we are to meet our commitment to reducing carbon emissions from transport.

On average, according to Rail Futures calculations, rail freight is three times more energy efficient than road, and significantly more energy efficient than cars or planes in moving people.

Limitations of the existing line

Why has rail been losing ground to roads? The mainline track between Sydney and Melbourne – about 640 km of it in New South Wales and 320 km in Victoria – has many defects, some of which became more widely known after the fatal derailment of an XPT in Victoria in February 2020.

Much of the track within New South Wales has a “steam age” alignment to ease grades, adding an extra 60 km to the journey. Far too many tight-radius curves slow down freight and passenger trains.

On the same TV program as Whitlam made that earlier remark, another former state rail chief, Ross Sayers, argued that a tilt train – a train designed to negotiate curves more quickly – could travel at more than 200 km per hour between Sydney and Melbourne on an upgraded alignment. “We could set the passenger transit time at five, or perhaps five and a half hours,” he said. This is still a good, viable option.

Five and a half hours would be half the time the current XPT services take. And the gain isn’t purely speculative: when Queensland straightened much of its track between Brisbane and Rockhampton for faster and heavier freight trains – and then, in 1998, introduced a new tilt train – passenger transit time halved from 14 to seven hours.

One major improvement to the Sydney–Melbourne line in recent decades was the installation in 2008 of centralised traffic control signalling, which allows for the remote control of points and signals along the track. Why the track between Australia’s two largest cities had to wait so long even for that upgrade, which was essential for efficient train operations, is a good question. New Zealand’s two largest cities, Auckland and Wellington, were linked by such signalling 42 years earlier, in 1966.

The impact on freight and passengers…

Fifty years ago, rail and road held roughly equal shares of the land freight moving between Sydney and Melbourne. Trucks took about 15 hours to traverse a two-lane Hume Highway that was poorly aligned in many places.

Mainly with funds from the federal government, the entire Hume Highway was subsequently rebuilt to modern engineering standards at a cost of about $20 billion in today’s terms. Much larger trucks can now move freight between Sydney and Melbourne in ten hours.

The pro-road policies don’t end there. Low road-access road pricing for trucks – an estimated hidden subsidy of more than $8 per tonne – has combined with the substandard nature of the Sydney–Melbourne rail track to reduce rail’s share of palletised and containerised freight to about 1%, according to rail freight operator Pacific National.

The consequences include an increased risk of fatalroad crashes, higher highway maintenance costs, pressure for more road upgrades, and increased emissions.

Read more:
Transport is letting Australia down in the race to cut emissions

A detailed 2001 track audit identified how 197 kilometres of new track built to modern engineering standards – including three major deviations from the existing alignment – could bypass 257 km of substandard track. Freight train transit times would then be reduced by nearly two hours.

I estimate that if rail were to regain a 50% share of the freight between our two largest cities, emissions would fall by over 300,000 tonnes per annum. In Australia, this is the equivalent of taking about 100,000 cars off the road.

As for freight, so for passengers. By 2019, more than nine million passengers were flying each year between Sydney and Melbourne, making this the second-busiest air corridor in the world. Tilt trains on upgraded track would speed the passenger journey appreciably while providing long-overdue improvements to rail services between Sydney and regional New South Wales and from Melbourne and Sydney to Canberra.

… and on climate

Along with improving resilience of the track to the impacts of climate change, if Australia is serious about decarbonisation, the effort must extend to transport. A significant portion of road freight and passengers will need to shift to rail. As the International Energy Agency noted last year, “Rail transport is the most energy‐efficient and least carbon‐intensive way to move people and second only to shipping for carrying goods.”

Read more:
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The agency also stressed that “aviation growth will need to be constrained by comprehensive government policies that promote a shift towards rail” in order to achieve net-zero emissions.

If Australia fails to bring the Sydney–Melbourne track into the 21st century, we can expect not only excessive greenhouse gas emissions but also growing costs from many more trucks on the Hume Highway. Congestion at Melbourne and Sydney airports will worsen, and Australia will be left increasingly out of step with other countries in Europe, North America and Asia.

Philip Laird owns shares in some transport companies and has received funding from the two rail-related CRCs as well as the ARC. He is affiliated, inter alia, with the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport, the Railway Technical Society of Australasia and the Rail Futures Institute. The opinions expressed are those of the author.

– ref. More than ever, it’s time to upgrade the Sydney–Melbourne railway – https://theconversation.com/more-than-ever-its-time-to-upgrade-the-sydney-melbourne-railway-187169

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katinka van de Ven, Senior Lecturer, Centre for Rural Criminology, HASSE, University of New England & Visiting Fellow, Drug Policy Modelling Program, SPRC, University of New South Wales, University of New England

There’s a long history and growing evidence base that the use of performance enhancing drugs such as anabolic-androgenic steroids to build muscle mass and strength is common in the armed forces, including in Australia.

This isn’t surprising considering the pressures soldiers face to complete missions successfully, achieve elite levels of fitness, and deal with the physical and mental stresses of their profession.

The Australian Defence Force (ADF) is also constantly looking for ways to amplify the performance of soldiers, which includes the consideration of technologies both “in” (such as drugs) and “on” (for example exoskeletons) soldiers.

In 2016, the Department of Defence also created the Human Performance Research Network, which is focused on enhancing the physical and cognitive performance of military personnel.

At the same time, the ADF has adopted parts of the World Anti-Doping Code – a code developed to govern drug use in sport – to manage the governance of human enhancing drugs within the military. Under the code, using steroids isn’t allowed.

But considering the military is constantly looking for means to create “super soldiers”, should we consider allowing the use of steroids and other enhancement drugs?

The answer to this question isn’t clear cut. But there’s no reason to believe the use of enhancement drugs such as steroids by soldiers is, in and of itself, unethical.

Are the ethics of using steroids on the battlefield the same as those in sport?

In sport, critics of drug use are concerned with the integrity of the contest. Many consider a level playing field in sport to be an essential element of the fairness of a contest.

But there’s a fundamental difference of purpose between a drug policy designed to protect the integrity of sport and one to protect the integrity of armed forces.

The thought that one side in a battle shouldn’t employ technologies unavailable to their opponents is irrelevant to the conduct of war.

Read more:
Steroids in sport: zero tolerance to testosterone needs to change

Two things matter for the integrity of a military conflict, according to traditional “just war theory”. Firstly, that the cause is just, or fair. Within just war theory, self-defence is generally regarded as one such just cause.

And second, that the means employed to wage war discriminate between innocents and genuine combatants, and are proportionate.

The use of performance enhancing drugs therefore does not, as such, affect whether a war is fair, at least according to the just war theory.

Risks and benefits

The use of steroids is a serious issue when considering the health of soldiers. There’s evidence people who use steroids have a higher risk of various physical and psychological harms, including cardiovascular disease and steroid dependence.

However, there are several issues with using such a simple dichotomy. First of all, life is generally full of risks, and simply avoiding them would mean we would live very sheltered and restricted lives.

Second, it has been well-established that many people use illicit drugs (including steroids) for pleasurable and functional reasons without necessarily experiencing serious harms. For these people, the benefits of using illicit substances outweigh their potential harms.

The benefits of steroids are obvious. Their use is associated with an increase in muscle strength and mass, reduced risk of injuries, and quicker recovery from injuries.

The use of battlefield medicine and technological developments (such as armour) have long sought to protect the physical and mental health of soldiers. For example, the prescription drug Modafinil, a drug licensed for the treatment of narcolepsy, is approved for use by the Republic of Singapore Air Force, and has been tested for military application in both the US and the UK.

Individuals who are sleep deprived have decreased psychological and physical capabilities. Soldiers often operate over long hours and are deprived of sleep. So using stimulants like Modafinil can support maintaining alertness, cognitive function, judgement, and situation awareness in sleep-deprived soldiers.

In a similar manner, steroids could potentially prove useful in protecting the bodies of soldiers.

Read more:
Doping soldiers so they fight better – is it ethical?

Having said this, special consideration needs to be given to the link between steroid use and aggression.

A study published in 2021 provides evidence of an increase, although small, in self-reported aggression in healthy males following steroid use. However, the relationship between aggression and steroid use is complex, and there are generally other mediating factors (such as other substance use and personality traits).

Regardless, the fact that steroid use may increase aggression when split-second decisions are required on the battlefield can be morally significant given these are often matters of life and death.

Consent and coercion

On the one hand, steroid use is a matter of personal and individual choice.

But on the other, there are tremendous social and cultural pressures to perform and succeed.

Competitive environments particularly, such as the military, have the potential to become highly stressful. As such, soldiers might well feel coerced by their peers and their superiors to undertake bodily or performance enhancement.

If steroids were to be allowed in the military, this would require informed consent.

But considering these pressures, satisfying the requirements of voluntary and informed consent for the use of illicit enhancement drugs within the military might well be challenging.

Such consent will often be undermined due to the pressures on soldiers to perform and succeed within the military.

Not unethical, but studies needed

There’s no reason to believe the use of enhancement drugs such as steroids is, in and of itself, unethical.

But there are concerns, such as the long-term health of soldiers, and any possible effects these drugs might have upon the behaviour of soldiers when in combat situations and when they return to society.

What’s required are robust empirical studies to determine the extent of the dangers.

Our list of such concerns isn’t intended to be exhaustive, but rather represents a list of issues that need to be addressed when developing any regulatory frameworks for the use of enhancement drugs in a military context.

The authors 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. Is it ethical to allow soldiers to take performance enhancing drugs such as steroids? – https://theconversation.com/is-it-ethical-to-allow-soldiers-to-take-performance-enhancing-drugs-such-as-steroids-180947

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Benjamin Wilson, Associate Professor, University of Canberra

The authors are cultural men who have undertaken learning on and through Country with Elders in NSW, Queensland, and the Northern Territory. This piece is the product of their own experience and understanding and is not intended to represent the views of all Indigenous people.

As we acknowledge National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children’s Day, it’s important to recognise Indigenous Knowledge as vital to all children’s education.

When old Aboriginal people, like Kakadu Man Bill Neidjie and our cultural grandfather Damu Paul Gordon, say “I am Country, Country is me”, they are not speaking metaphorically. Our people have known for tens of thousands of years we come from the land, with our bodies composed of earth and water. The land is our big mother or Gunni Thakun, “Mother Earth” in the Ngemba language spoken by Damu Paul. If we damage her, we damage ourselves.

Environmentalist and academic David Suzuki reminds us modern science has also held evidence to support this narrative for more than 100 years. In The Sacred Balance: Rediscovering our Place in Nature, he points out 60-70% of our body weight is made up by water. Furthermore, every four to six weeks every one of these trillions of water molecules is replaced The remainder of our physical being is composed of molecules that come from the earth, through the food we consume. Essentially, we are all Country with a little stream running through us.

Read more:
Invisible language learners: what educators need to know about many First Nations children

‘Country as teacher’

For three years, we have been working through the Centre for Sustainable Communities (University of Canberra), to reinvigorate this Country-centric approach to education within ACT schools. Through the Affiliated Schools program, a partnership between the ACT Education Directorate and the Faculty of Education at the University of Canberra, we have been privileged to work with 24 teachers from four schools to pilot and explore this “Country as teacher” approach in their classes.

This approach involved the students spending time on Country and focusing on sensory experiences. Preliminary findings (due to be published in late 2022) indicate early childhood and primary teachers find young children are taking to a Country-centric education quickly. They are able to sit, look and listen for long periods of time, and talk meaningfully with each other and their teachers about their experiences. Focusing on sensory experiences invariably led to curiosity about insects, birds, trees, weather, and seasons. This also strengthened their connection to each other and culminated in further inquiry-based learning in the classroom.

Teachers report the children are highly motivated to get back outside each day to continue their in-Country practice. Largely, it is the students who lead this aspect of their learning, with teachers operating as facilitators or guides. First Nations people reminded us for generations that children are born into their bodies deeply connected and curious, hungering to develop a relationship with Country. The project concludes in December 2022, but there are plans to grow the research through more ACT schools with a broader and deeper Country as Teacher research project through 2023 and beyond.

First Nations ways of learning for our young ones

For tens of thousands of years, Aboriginal children were born into knowledge systems based on Country – a Country-centric knowledge system. This involved learning about their connections to their respective Countries and Earth-kin (animals, plants, and geographical features that shared their place) in processes facilitated by their old people. These educational processes focused on cultural practices of looking and listening to Country to come to know, understand, and care for the places they inhabited.

Palyku academic Jill Milroy and her mother, Palyku Elder Gladys Milroy refer to this knowledge system as the “right story” and believe it to be the birthright of all Aboriginal children. They propose this story must become the birthright of all children born in Australia, as these connections to Country lie within us all. This is not to say all children are immediately welcome to sacred Indigenous knowledge, but First Nations peoples’ ethic of caring for Country is one all children, indeed, all people, must adopt if we are to meet the looming and omnipresent ecological, social and environmental challenges of our future.

The Dreaming Path by Damu Paul Gordon and Uncle Paul Callaghan argues the more children come to know about the places they inhabit, the more they will come to love Gunni Thakun and want to care for her. As their knowledge of connections with their Earth-kin expands and deepens, these connections become obligations.

Read more:
Raising the age of criminal responsibility is only a first step. First Nations kids need cultural solutions

An Ongoing Learning Journey

Most teachers in the Country as Teacher project with upper primary, secondary and college classes have reported greater difficulty in incorporating “relating with Country” practices in an already “overcrowded” curriculum. Despite this, they have nevertheless reported significant shifts in students’ mood and engagement, especially with previously disengaged students.

There is still significant work to be undertaken to truly “Indigenise” school curricula. However this will require the full engagement of an entire school. The project shows what is possible when teachers question mainstream methods and understand the value of First Nations knowledges to help improve students’ lives.

We are beginning to see what happens when people take the lessons of Bill Neidjie and our old people to heart. What happens when we accept ourselves as Country – with a little stream running through us?

Benjamin Wilson receives funding from The ACT Affiliated Schools Network

David Spillman 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. ‘I am Country, and Country is me!’ Indigenous ways of teaching could be beneficial for all children – https://theconversation.com/i-am-country-and-country-is-me-indigenous-ways-of-teaching-could-be-beneficial-for-all-children-187424

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Aleryk Fricker, Lecturer, Indigenous Education, Deakin University

The recent decision to transport juvenile offenders into an adult maximum-security prison in Western Australia shows the youth justice system is in crisis. The findings of the Don Dale Royal Commission, and the landmark Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody were uncomfortably similar, even though being held almost three decades apart. Key similarities included a lack of training and accountability for prison staff, and an acknowledgement there was a need for policing reform and adequate community engagement.

Both of these commissions called for broad reforms across many different sectors, including policing and education in Australia. However many of these recommendations remain unimplemented.

As we observe Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children’s Day today, our thoughts will be focused on the First Nations youth prisoners and their families. However we must also think of the processes, systems and institutions that resulted in these crises, what could have been done to prevent them, and what can we do to ensure they never happen again.

We know when any youth offender, regardless of their ethnicity, is released from detention, the likelihood of ending up back in prison is extremely high. In some cases, up to 80% of young people return to prison.

On average, 50% of young people in detention in Australia are First Nations, despite only representing about 6% of the overall youth population of the country.

For a lot of children, their first experiences of trouble and marginalisation in response to authority can manifest in the classroom. We also know the longer children engage with their formal schooling, the less likely they are to come into contact with the judicial system as children and adults.

So what can schools and teachers do to improve First Nations student engagement and retention?

Read more:
Raising the age of criminal responsibility is only a first step. First Nations kids need cultural solutions

Decolonising the classroom

One way to address First Nations youth incarceration lies with schools and teachers acquiring the skills and confidence to begin the process of decolonising their classrooms. This requires teachers and schools to change their approaches to include First Nations contexts across all aspects of teaching and learning.

There have been recent improvements in First Nations student retention and completion of year 12 qualifications, which was a target in the Closing the Gap strategy.

However too much of the focus of student retention has been put on the students and their families, with absenteeism from school a constant measure built into Indigenous education targets. Very little attention has been placed on the colonised classroom spaces these children are forced to endure.

The focus in Australian schools on the contributions of European colonisers and not on members of our rich, diverse and long-lasting First Nations leaders and heroes can have a profound cultural impact on all children in this country.

A way forward to support the outcomes of First Nations students and their engagement with school, is to begin the process of decolonising the classroom. There are five ways this can be done:

1. Policy

State, territory, and federal jurisdictions all have Indigenous education policies which cover things like, attendance rates, community engagement, and content and teaching methods used in the classroom. However, few of these policies are implemented effectively in classrooms. Implementing these policies which already exist is a good place to start.

2. Content

For generations of teachers and students, the content in the curriculum has been dominated by a Euro-centric focus on Australia’s recent history and “western traditions” of liberal democracy and Judeo-Christian values. This has come at the cost of including knowledge about First Nations cultures, and this phenomenon is known as the “Great Australian Silence”. This refers to the active erasure of First Nations histories, and although there has been some improvement, it still dominates classrooms today.

3. Education

Our children are part of the oldest continuous cultures in the world, and they are also taught these cultures from infancy from their families, Communities, and Countries. It stands to reason then, that we have the oldest teaching methods in the world that are perfectly suited to our kids and that can support all learners as well. First Nations ways of teaching should be incorporated into all classrooms.

4. Place and space

Our children need to see themselves reflected in their schools. This includes flags, acknowledgement plaques, art works, library books and other ways of making First Nations contexts more visible. They also need to be in spaces that are fit for purpose, especially when engaging with First Nations teaching approaches including yarning and on-Country learning. This might mean having movable furniture in classrooms, and access to outdoor spaces to engage directly with Country.

5. Community engagement

As much as we wish every First Nations student was taught by a First Nations teacher, this isn’t always possible. Much of our learning and knowledge is held by our Elders. They need to be present and visible in our schools, and our students need to be able to access Country and Community as part of their learning. This is how it has always been.

When these aspects are reformed, the classroom no longer becomes a reason not to attend school, and as students remain at school longer, they are less likely to engage with the judicial system.

We know not one single solution will address this complex problem, and any actions in this space must be supported by reforming and preventing the over-policing and unjust targeting of our kids. But non-Indigenous teachers have a role to play to decolonise their classrooms, lest we condemn yet another generation of our young people to the brutality and revolving door of youth incarceration.

The authors 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. ‘Decolonising’ classrooms could help keep First Nations kids in school and away from police – https://theconversation.com/decolonising-classrooms-could-help-keep-first-nations-kids-in-school-and-away-from-police-188067

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

For many people with COVID, their recovery isn’t linear. United States President Joe Biden is one such person – he continues to test positive for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID, and has experienced the return of a “loose cough”.

He returned a positive “rebound” test on Saturday, only days after testing negative for COVID.

President Biden was treated with the antiviral Paxlovid, in the hope this would allow him to recover faster and reduce his risk of severe disease.

What is Paxlovid and how does it work?

Paxlovid is a combination treatment that uses two different antivirals: nirmatrelvir and ritonavir.

Nirmatrelvir works to prevent the virus replicating. It does this by stopping a viral enzyme called a protease.

SARS-CoV-2, like many viruses, rely on proteases to “activate” them. Without the protease, the virus replication cycle cannot be completed and the virus can not become active.

So rather than “killing” the virus, it stops new “active” virus particles from being made.

Read more:
What is Paxlovid and how will it help the fight against coronavirus? An infectious diseases physician answers questions on the COVID-19 pill

Ritonavir is a “boosting agent” which prevents the metabolism of nirmatrelvir, meaning it stays in your system for longer.

Ritonavir has been used in low doses to boost the effectiveness of other protease antivirals in infections such as HIV.

Paxlovid treatment involves taking two nirmatrelvir 150mg tablets and one ritonavir 100mg tablet, together, every 12 hours for five days.

Like all antivirals, it’s important to start the course of Paxlovid as soon as possible after a diagnosis of COVID. This needs to be within five days of the onset of symptoms, so it can reduce virus replication and therefore reduce the spread of the virus in the body.

How effective is it?

In a clinical trial, Paxlovid showed an 89% reduction in the risk of hospitalisation and death. There were no recorded deaths among those who received treatment.

Compared to people in the study who didn’t receive the drug, Paxlovid treatment also reduced the viral load when measured on day five of the study.

Read more:
I have mild COVID – should I take the antiviral Paxlovid?

So what is rebound?

Rebound is when a person appears to have recovered and “cleared” the virus, meaning they test negative on the very sensitive PCR test and have no symptoms. Then a few days later, they test positive again or symptoms return.

Rebound is not specific to people who have taken Paxlovid – it can also happen to others with COVID who didn’t receive any drug treatments.

A study that is yet to be peer reviewed (independently verified) has also found that patients’ symptoms and viral load can worsen after an initial period of improvement in some cases. While this is not true “rebound” it does suggest the course of infection may not be linear.

There have now been increasing reports of rebound effects in people who were treated with Paxlovid, including President Biden. Biden finished his five-day course of Paxlovid and tested negative to the virus. Three days later, he tested positive.

Why and how rebound happens is still not exactly known. What we do know is Paxlovid stops the virus in a person’s body from replicating. It doesn’t kill the virus already there. For that, we need the body’s immune system.

One theory is that a five-day course is not long enough to suppress the virus replication to allow the immune system to kick in and kill the virus.

Or perhaps the timing of when treatment starts affects how the immune system kicks in.

Another theory is the drug is not being taken as prescribed. Research into the cause of Paxlovid rebound is ongoing.

Read more:
COVID drugs in Australia: what’s available and how to get them

A recent study of rebound after Paxlovid in 11,000 people, which has not yet been peer-reviewed (independently verified), found that seven days after treatment, 3.53% of participants had rebound positive PCR tests and 2.31% had rebound symptoms. After 30 days, 5.40% tested positive and 5.87% had symptoms.

So just because you’ve received SARS-CoV-2 antiviral treatment, does not automatically mean you’re “cured”.

How sick do ‘rebounders’ get?

While scientists and doctors are in the early stages of investigating Paxlovid rebound, early reports indicate rebound tends to be mild. Symptoms that return are commonly sniffles, sore throat or a cough.

There are very few reports of severe rebound cases requiring hospitalisation and no reports on rebound resulting in death that I’m aware of.

It’s important to remember that if you still have symptoms you might still be infectious. Guidelines across Australia make it clear if you have ongoing symptoms after your isolation period, you need to take care not to spread the virus.

However, a person in rebound – even if they’re symptom-free – might also be able to spread the virus.

So is Paxlovid doing what we need?

If your goal is to prevent severe disease, hospitalisation and death in high-risk people, then Paxlovid is doing a great job.

However, if you want to shorten the duration of your symptoms, maybe Paxlovid isn’t the wonder drug we hoped for.

Read more:
6 steps to making a COVID plan, before you get sick

Lara Herrero receives funding from NHMRC.

– ref. Why do some people who take Paxlovid for COVID get ‘rebound’ symptoms? Or test positive again, like President Biden? – https://theconversation.com/why-do-some-people-who-take-paxlovid-for-covid-get-rebound-symptoms-or-test-positive-again-like-president-biden-188002

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

The Albanese government has released the draft wording for enshrining an Indigenous Voice to parliament in the constitution. Anthony Albanese is making a referendum a priority but history tells us how hard these are to pass.

Tom Calma, Chancellor of the University of Canberra, has been a leading participant in Indigenous affairs for many years. He and professor Marcia Langton prepared a report for the Morrison government on the Voice. They recommended a Voice structure involving local and regional levels as well as the national level.

The Albanese government has not spelled out a detailed model for the Voice it proposes, but the extensive consultations Calma and Langton undertook produced insights that will help shape the conversations ahead.

“We’ve got to understand that when we talk about the Voice through referendum changes to the Australian constitution, [it] is only about Commonwealth legislation and not about state and territory legislation,” Calma tells the podcast.

He says during the consultation process, people said “we support a national voice, but don’t forget us at the local and regional level, because that’s where all the action takes place”.

“When we look at education, employment, health service delivery, all of that takes place under a state or territory jurisdictional level, supplemented by funding from the Commonwealth. It’s administered through the states and territories by and large.”

Calma says regional groups could “do the canvassing of the membership and push that up to the national-level voice”.

“There needs to be these other regional level arrangements and all the [federal] government needs to do is to agree to that – and then the dialogue can start with the states and territory governments to build up what form it might take.

“But none of this is coming out cold because in every state and territory, they’ve already got some form of arrangement. And this is really about saying, how do we maximise the impact of the current arrangements, give them a secretariat, give them some guidance and support and make it an inclusive body?”.

The proposed Voice, Calma stresses, “is about giving an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander person’s perspective on that new legislation. But it has no other authority to veto or to direct politicians on how to think. This is only an advisory body and to make comment, so we have formal input by Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander people into legislation that most affects us.”

Calma says Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people “don’t always speak with the same voice and we all have different experiences, we represent different demographics and so forth.”

He rejects the argument that a Voice isn’t needed because there are 11 Indigenous members of the federal parliament. “We can’t expect that the elected politicians […] are going to be able to give a view for all Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people.”

“What we envisage is that the Voice […] will be able to work with the bureaucrats in providing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspective to bills, so that by the time [legislation] reaches parliament a lot of the issues might already be sorted out […] Once that relationship with Commonwealth agencies and departments starts to mature, hopefully those departments and agencies will work with the Voice group to look at their existing policies and programmes.”

“The Voice would not be usurping the role of any existing organisation. It would be about partnership, it’s about capacity development, it’s about inclusion.”

“I’m very confident that we could work cooperatively with the parliaments of the day – and that’s both the federal and the state and territory parliaments – for the betterment of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people”.

Michelle Grattan is a Professorial Fellow at the University of Canberra.

– ref. Politics with Michelle Grattan: Tom Calma on the Indigenous Voice to parliament – https://theconversation.com/politics-with-michelle-grattan-tom-calma-on-the-indigenous-voice-to-parliament-188164

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Agnew, Senior Lecturer of Economics, University of Canterbury

Low English literacy rates in Pasifika students are a key predictor of exclusion from school, an analysis of ten years of data has found.

Our study analysed a cohort of over 43,000 students from their first day of school in 2008 to the end of their compulsory schooling in 2018. We found 9% of Pākehā were excluded at some point during their compulsory schooling compared with 21% of Pasifika students.

Pasifika students who were identified as having English literacy difficulties, and who subsequently received English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) support, were 35% more likely to be excluded than Pasifika students who weren’t identified as having literacy issues.

This data highlighted the importance of literacy on educational outcomes and the possibility that greater investment in ESOL education may improve those outcomes for non-native English speakers.

Ending persistent disparities

In 2021, the Tertiary Education Commission (TEC) issued a ten year deadline for tertiary institutions to end persistent pass rate disparities between ethnic groupings.

Read more:
Why your ability to speak English could be judged on how you look

The TEC’s ultimatum came on the back of a significant gap in pass rates between Māori and Pasifika students and other students. According to the TEC, Pasifika university students had a qualification completion rate of 48% and course completion rate of 75%, while for non-Māori and non-Pacific students the figures were 66% and 90%.

In polytechnics, Pasifika students had a 46% qualification completion rate and 71% course completion rate, while for non-Māori and non-Pacific students the figures were 57% and 84%.

Pacific peoples not in education, employment or training (NEET) are also over-represented in the statistics, with the Ministry of Business, Innovation & Employment (MBIE) describing higher rates of NEET for Pacific youth as a persistent characteristic of the labour market in New Zealand.

Excluded students aren’t just naughty

To really address disparities in tertiary education, substantial investment in students needs to start earlier.

The stereotype of excluded students has long been that they are the “naughty kids”. However, there can be many reasons why a student may act out in school. Our research shows that poorer households, households containing less educated parents, households where a parent has been charged with a criminal offence, or a household that has had contact with Child and Youth and Family (now known as Oranga Tamariki) are likely to contain children that have been excluded.

Other contributing factors include gender, ethnicity and having special educational needs.

Previous research has identified a correlation between children with poorer language skills being less likely to achieve academically and to be more likely to experience exclusion from school.

Read more:
Pacific people have been ‘pummelled and demeaned’ for too long – now they’re fighting back

Children who have been excluded from school are more likely to experience worse outcomes later in life, such as unemployment, mental and physical ill health, substance misuse, antisocial behaviour and crime. These outcomes all carry a cost to society as a whole, not just the individuals directly affected.

Reaching students early

As discussed, the Ministry of Education provides funding to schools that have students with the highest English language learning needs.

The need for ESOL funding is assessed using testing that records the child’s achievement level in listening, speaking, reading and writing. Students whose scores are below certain benchmarks may qualify for funding.

Government spending to enhance educational outcomes is common. New Zealand has 20 hours a week of free early childhood education (ECE) for children aged between three and five, as well as the “fees free” policy for tertiary students in their first year of study. The difference between these two policies and the provision of ESOL support at school is the level of funding.

Read more:
Australia and New Zealand have a golden opportunity to build stronger ties in the Pacific – but will they take it?

Funding for 20 hours of ECE depends on the age of the child, and the percentage of qualified teachers at the ECE centre. At the cheapest possible hourly rate, 20 hours a week for 50 weeks costs the government $4,170 a year.

The “fees free” policy at tertiary level funds each student (excluding international students) up to $12,000 to cover fees in their first year of study.

The current ESOL funding model allows for just $780 a year per primary and intermediate student and $1,000 per year for high school students.

Migrant students are entitled to up to a total of five years during their time at school. New Zealand-born students of migrant parents for whom English is not the first language spoken in the home are eligible for up to three years.

This raises the question, why is ESOL funding in schools so limited?

Increased ESOL funding for schools with Pasifika students could be a targeted way for the government to support students that our data shows are most at risk of being excluded from school or featuring in NEET statistics.

This increased support may take the form of more intensive English language support, or for longer periods of time. Alternatively, it may take the form of additional pastoral care support for Pasifika ESOL students. If it is successful in lowering rates of school exclusion and NEET for Pacific peoples, it will be beneficial for society as a whole, both socially and financially.

Stephen Agnew 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. More investment in literacy skills is needed if NZ is serious about ending persistent disparities for Pasifika students – https://theconversation.com/more-investment-in-literacy-skills-is-needed-if-nz-is-serious-about-ending-persistent-disparities-for-pasifika-students-187854

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Simon KA Robson, Professor, CQUniversity Australia

The American biologist E.O. Wilson famously called invertebrates “the little things that run the world”. Despite their great importance, we still know very little about the worms, insects and other small creatures that make up the majority of animal species.

Working with researchers from around the world, we have made an important step to improve this knowledge: a high-resolution map of ant species across the globe.

Published today in Science Advances, this world-first map of ant diversity also acts as a “treasure map”, highlighting likely regions rich in undiscovered species.

A big part of our world

Invertebrates constitute the majority of animal species and are critical for ecosystem functioning and services. Nonetheless, global invertebrate biodiversity patterns and how they relate to vertebrate biodiversity remain largely unknown.

Like other invertebrates, ants are important for the functioning of ecosystems. They aerate soil, disperse seeds and nutrients, scavenge, and prey on other species.

Ants are hunters, farmers, harvesters, gliders, herders, weavers and carpenters. They are a big part of our world: there are more than 14,000 known species of ants, and they comprise a significant fraction of the animal biomass in most terrestrial ecosystems.

They are globally widespread and abundant, and their known species’ richness is comparable to birds and mammals combined. Yet we still lack a global view of their biodiversity.

World-first high-resolution global diversity map of ants

We used existing knowledge about biodiversity along with range modelling and machine learning to create a high-resolution (~20 km) map of the global diversity of ants and predict where undiscovered diversity is likely to exist.

Biodiversity among ants and other invertebrates is still poorly understood. We do not have good answers to basic questions such as which areas have the most species, which areas harbour concentrations of highly localised species, and even whether a major global decline in insect biomass is under way.

Read more:
Climate change is killing off Earth’s little creatures

Through our research we found that, while the richness and rarity patterns of ants and vertebrate groups can show congruence, each has distinct features. This finding underscores the need to consider a diversity of taxa in conservation.

The research

This project began a decade ago with Benoit Guénard (then at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, now at the University of Hong Kong) and Evan Economo (currently at Harvard). They set out to create a database of occurrence records for different ant species from online repositories, museum collections and around 10,000 scientific publications.

Researchers around the world contributed and helped identify errors. More than 14,000 species were considered.

However, the vast majority of these records, while containing a description of the sampled location, did not have the precise co-ordinates needed for mapping. To address this, Kenneth Dudley from the Environmental Informatics Section at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology created a way to estimate the co-ordinates from the available data and also check the data for errors.

Then Jamie Kass and research technician Fumika Azuma, also at at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, made different range estimates for each species of ant depending on how much data was available.

For species with less data, they constructed shapes surrounding the data points. For species with more data, the researchers predicted the distribution of each species using statistical models.

The researchers brought these estimates together to form a global map, divided into a grid of 20km by 20km squares. It shows an estimate of the number of ant species living in each square (called the species richness).

They also created a map showing the number of ant species with very small ranges in each square (called the species rarity). In general, species with small ranges are particularly vulnerable to environmental changes.

Unsampled territory

However, there was another problem to overcome: sampling bias.

Some parts of the world that we expected to have high levels of diversity were not showing up on our map, but ants in these regions were not well studied.

Other areas were extremely well sampled, for example, parts of the USA and Europe. This difference in sampling can impact our estimates of global diversity.

So, we used machine learning to predict how the diversity would change if we sampled all areas around the world equally. In this process, we identified areas where we think many unknown, unsampled species exist.

Read more:
Climate change triggering global collapse in insect numbers: stressed farmland shows 63% decline – new research

This gives us a kind of “treasure map”, which can guide us to where we should explore next and look for new species with restricted ranges. Within Australia, high levels of ant biodiversity are found along the east, north-western and south-western coasts.

Finally, we looked at how well-protected these areas of high ant diversity are.

We found it was a low percentage – only 15% of the top 10% of ant rarity centres had some sort of legal protection, such as a national park or reserve, which is less than existing protection for vertebrates.

Clearly, we have a lot of work to do to protect these critical areas.

Simon Robson receives funding from The Australian Research Council.

– ref. Where are all the ants? World-first ‘treasure map’ reveals hotspots for rare species – https://theconversation.com/where-are-all-the-ants-world-first-treasure-map-reveals-hotspots-for-rare-species-188092

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle H Lim, Senior Lecturer and Clinical Psychologist, Swinburne University of Technology

Loneliness has been a huge concern since the start of the COVID pandemic. One review published in May, which looked at loneliness studies across many countries, found loneliness was more common since the start of pandemic.

The pandemic is far from over and our social routines and decisions continue to modify and adapt based on the health crisis.

So what can we do to reconnect and recover?

National health and community leaders have identified four actions to combat loneliness. These are detailed in a white paper launched today at Parliament House.

Loneliness has increased since COVID

Loneliness was already a growing problem before COVID. One in four Australians reported problematic levels of loneliness before the pandemic began – an estimated 5 million Australians at any given time.

Since COVID began, this has only worsened. One study that covered 101 countries found at least 21% of people reported severe loneliness, compared with only 6% who reported the same levels before the public health crisis.

Even after social restrictions were eased in Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States, a study I led found people continued to experience high levels of social anxiety, which we know adds to loneliness.

The costs of loneliness

Loneliness isn’t unusual given it’s a natural human emotion. But when ignored or not effectively addressed, it can lead to poorer physical health.

Loneliness increases the risk of heart disease, stroke, diabetes, cognitive decline and poorer immunity.

It’s also associated with negative impacts on our mental health, including increasing depression, social anxiety and paranoia.

Read more:
Loneliness is a health issue, and needs targeted solutions

Persistent loneliness is associated with an 83% higher likelihood of an earlier death in adults aged over 50, compared with 56% for situational loneliness (loneliness that occurs because of a specific situation and is more brief).

Due to the adverse impacts on our health, loneliness also has a negative effect on our economy. A 2021 report from Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre estimated the cost of loneliness at A$2.7 billion each year to the Australian economy, an equivalent annual cost of $1,565 for each person who becomes lonely.

Improving our knowledge for effective action

As a community, we have to understand what loneliness actually is. If we can understand what it is (and what it’s not), then we can take the right action.

People often confuse social isolation with loneliness, but they are distinct. Many solutions thought to be a cure for loneliness can increase social contact, and therefore reduce social isolation, but that doesn’t mean this reduces loneliness. Loneliness is subjective, so we won’t clearly know the true impact of these solutions on loneliness unless we ask people or better measure it.

We have different social needs and also different levels of access to resources. This means what can work for one person may not work for another.

For some people, their loneliness cannot be resolved easily because there are many things contributing to it that aren’t within the person’s control. Examples include having a chronic health condition, or living in more socially deprived neigbourhoods.

A broad approach to addressing loneliness is therefore needed because once loneliness is triggered, it can be maintained through systemic barriers and policies that govern the way we live, work and play. This may require us, for example, to educate young people how to manage the dynamic nature of friendships as they transition from high school to further education and employment, or to ensure safe places and opportunities for co-workers to come together to form meaningful social connection.

This also builds the case for prevention and early intervention. Addressing loneliness earlier can mitigate the risk of developing more enduring forms of loneliness.

Australia is at risk of falling behind on addressing loneliness. There’s growing recognition around the world that addressing loneliness needs government support and policy changes. For example, the UK and Japan have appointed government ministers to address loneliness.

4 actions to address loneliness

Earlier this year, national health and community leaders gathered to develop Australia’s National Strategy to Address Loneliness and Social Isolation. This puts forward four key actions as a start, which are detailed in the white paper launched today.

These four actions were developed to ensure all sectors of society are united in their understanding of loneliness. This will ensure evidence-based and cost-effective plans can be implemented to help people who feel lonely, and enable those around them to assist.

Action 1: develop a strategic framework for social connection

This involves all sectors from health, workplaces and communities coming together to develop a comprehensive evidence-based framework that can promote social connection, and address loneliness and social isolation.

Action 2: strengthen our workforce capacity across all sectors

This involves our workforce being supported to deliver evidence-based education, training, resources and practical solutions to people at risk of distressing or persistent loneliness. It involves up-skilling front-line practitioners from the health and community sectors, and people who work in our schools and workplaces, to identify and help people who are lonely.

Action 3: empower our communities to help each other

This involves increasing community awareness of the issue to ensure Australians of all ages, cultural backgrounds and many socially vulnerable groups feel able to ask for the help they need and to empower them to help others.

Action 4: invest in Australian-based scientific research

This involves significant government and industry investment in Australian-based scientific research to specifically target loneliness and to rapidly translate the evidence into practice and policy.

Read more:
‘I tell everyone I love being on my own, but I hate it’: what older Australians want you to know about loneliness

These actions are only the tip of the iceberg in terms of what we can do. But taking them is the first step towards addressing the rising rates of loneliness in this country.

Inaction will be costly, especially as we attempt to recover from the COVID pandemic.

Michelle H Lim is the Chair and Scientific Chair of Ending Loneliness Together, a not-for-profit focused on combatting chronic loneliness in Australia. Dr Lim has been the recipient of the Barbara Dicker Brain Sciences Foundation grant, NHMRC Special Initiative in Mental Health. Dr Lim is also the co-director of the Global Initiative on Loneliness and Connection.

– ref. 4 ways we can recover from the loneliness of the COVID pandemic – https://theconversation.com/4-ways-we-can-recover-from-the-loneliness-of-the-covid-pandemic-187856

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Crowley, Adjunct Associate Professor, Public and Environmental Policy, University of Tasmania

After a decade of climate policy failure, Wednesday brought good news and slightly less good news for Australian action on climate change.

The good news: the nation will soon have a substantive target for emissions reduction, after the Greens agreed to back the Labor government’s reduction of 43% by 2030.

The slightly less good news: the Coalition isn’t playing ball on climate. And as far as the Greens are concerned, the climate wars aren’t over at all.

That’s because the Greens – who now hold the balance of power in the Senate – see Labor as the largest remaining obstacle to climate action that aligns with the goals of the Paris Agreement. That goal: keep global warming under 1.5℃.

As Bandt told the National Press Club on Wednesday, Labor’s refusal to stop new coal and gas projects was “untenable” and the Greens will “pull every lever at our disposal” to force a ban. Expect to see the Greens causing headaches for Labor by making good on this promise. Bandt’s rhetoric yesterday made that clear:

“We will continue to fight individual projects around the country … I call on all Australians to join this battle. This battle to save our country, our communities and indeed our whole civilisation from the climate and environment crisis.”

The climate wars are not over – they’ve just changed form

So why did the Greens agree to back Labor’s climate change bill when the party wanted more? The reasons lie in recent political history.

The Greens copped huge criticism for blocking Labor’s last lukewarm climate policy, the Rudd government’s carbon pollution reduction scheme.

The Greens argued the scheme was full of holes. The Coalition also blocked the measure as part of its entrenched opposition to climate action. But rightly or wrongly, many see the Greens’ move as a strategic error that set climate action back by a decade.

For the record, the Greens – like the teal independents – are hardly being radical in pushing for stronger emissions targets. What the Greens want is a 75% emission reduction target by 2030, and no more new coal and gas projects.

The party believes it has a mandate, given 16 Greens were elected to parliament in May, up from 10 at the 2019 election. That’s not to mention the sudden appearance of the teals, who cut a swathe through the ranks of the climate-recalcitrant Coalition.

Whilst the Greens have publicly taken the fight to Labor over the emissions target, both Greens and teals have been negotiating with the government to ramp up the climate bill’s ambition.

Indeed it was independent Senator David Pocock who first suggested Labor’s target should be a “floor, not a ceiling and then ramping up ambition over time”.

Like the Greens, the teals have never seen this climate bill as job done. They, too, see it as just the beginning of the great decarbonising effort ahead. The Greens can ill-afford to cede them any credit for amending the bill.

That’s what lies behind the pragmatic declaration of support for the bill by Greens leader Adam Bandt in his National Press Club address on Wednesday.

Read more:
Climate wars, carbon taxes and toppled leaders: the 30-year history of Australia’s climate response, in brief

This bill is only the start

The Dutton-led opposition will not support the bill and, rather unhelpfully, has indicated it will push to expand Australia’s nuclear industry instead. But the Greens backing of the bill means the Coalition’s position is irrelevant for now.

Bandt’s address made clear the Greens see themselves taking electoral ground from Labor at the next election by pursuing climate change and social welfare policy gains.

Indeed, Bandt poured scorn on the economic liberalism embraced by Labor since the days of Hawke and Keating, saying it damaged the environment and delivered massive social inequality.

As Bandt said yesterday, supporting the climate bill is only stage one. The Greens are bullish about what’s next, claiming a mandate from the planet and the laws of physics.

To give Labor credit where it’s due, stage one is still significant. This bill legitimates climate action and gives renewable investors confidence that the government actually wants change.

For their part, the teals believe the devil will be in the policy details. The Greens, too, will be keenly awaiting that.

So how will Labor respond? We can sense that already. Even before Bandt had finished speaking, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was batting away any Greens tinkering with the government’s soon to be revamped safeguard mechanism.

The government has also poured cold water on the Greens’ proposed climate trigger, which would more rigorously assess major projects for climate and environment impacts.

A new battleground

The Greens are treading a fine line. They want to push climate ambition upwards. But they must avoid repeating recent history.

This time around, it would be unthinkable for the Greens to sit with the Coalition in opposing climate action. It would cost them dearly in upcoming state elections, and probably cost them seats at the next election.

But the Greens still want to end Australia’s fossil fuel expansionism, and are prepared to take on the might of the fossil fuel industry. We’ve had the climate bill skirmish. But the battle is only just beginning.

Read more:
The Greens’ climate trigger policy could become law. Experts explain how it could help cut emissions – and why we should be cautious

Kate Crowley 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. The Greens have backed Labor’s 43% target – but don’t think Australia’s climate wars are over  – https://theconversation.com/the-greens-have-backed-labors-43-target-but-dont-think-australias-climate-wars-are-over-188156

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rebecca Clements, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning, University of Sydney

In the popular Japanese TV series Old Enough, very young children are sent out into their neighbourhood on their first solo errand. The release of this long-running series on Netflix this year created a buzz among Western viewers about children travelling around their neighbourhoods on their own when only two to four years old.

Some viewers felt it would be challenging, if not impossible, in their own neighbourhoods to give children such liberty. Many expressed longing for a time when children in their countries had similar freedoms.

Another popular TV show, Bluey, depicts the realities of children’s transport in Australia today. The family’s young children are mostly seen travelling in the back seats of their parents’ 4x4s, roaming only houses or childcare centres.

In one episode, the father recalls a time when at age 10 he and his peers roamed freely on BMX bikes around a holiday town. His children are shocked that he walked alone to a campsite shower block (“hey, it was the 80s!”).

The contrasts with Japan raise the question: how can we rethink our cities so children can once again get around safely on their own and benefit from diverse neighbourhood experiences?

Read more:
Everyone loves Bandit from Bluey – but is he a lovable larrikin, or just a bad dad?

The cultures and policies are different

For decades in Japan, roughly 98% of children have walked or cycled to and from school. Even kindergarten kids manage the trip on their own. Children’s levels of independent mobility are among the highest in the world.

The social practice of “first errands” gently initiates children into community participation. In Old Enough, community members keep an eye on the children and help them along the way as they complete their errands. The youngsters develop confidence to navigate their local neighbourhoods.

Beyond personal and community values, what changes might make this possible for our own children? Our research on Japanese and Australian cities explores multiple factors that make cities child-friendly.

In many Japanese cities – though not all – urban policies support low-traffic neighbourhoods with people-centred streets. People can walk to nearby shops and services because mixed-use zoning creates a neighbourhood blend of housing, retail and public services, while transit-oriented design means communities are built around public transport hubs.

Read more:
Five lessons from Tokyo, a city of 38m people, for Australia, a nation of 24m

Japan’s parking policies also reduce neighbourhood car traffic. A nationwide ban on overnight street parking is strictly enforced. Street parking is especially risky for young children.

Most buildings are exempt from minimum parking regulations and many homes and businesses have no parking. They lease nearby off-street spaces if needed. Parking lots in cities like Tokyo are typically small (the size of one housing plot or less) and some use space-efficient car-stacking technology.

Read more:
Empty car parks everywhere, but nowhere to park. How cities can do better

Because of these policies, many Japanese urban neighbourhoods function like “superblocks”. Most car traffic and parking is around main roads. Inner-neighbourhood streets have very low speed limits (often around 20km/h) and are relatively car-free.

Cars are “guests” passing through neighbourhoods that belong to walkers and cyclists. Drivers give way to pedestrians, including the little ones in Old Enough, when they raise a hand (or flag made by their parents) to cross the road.

Read more:
Superblocks are transforming Barcelona. They might work in Australian cities too

Our streets were once the domain of children

Australian children had similar freedoms before we became a car-based society. In the early 20th century, children as young as four were able to venture out on their own.

While children’s ability to get about on their own in their local neighbourhood varies widely by country, in Australia independent mobility has plummeted in only a generation or two. What parents once did unthinkingly, their children now cannot contemplate.

Only about 20% of children were driven to school in the 1970s. By 2003, it was nearly 70%. Australia’s overall rates of walking and cycling to and from school haven’t improved since then.

School drop-off chaos is a recent phenomenon. Common reasons given by parents include increased distances to school and other destinations, and fears of abduction or even others’ judgments. Escorting children on their travels is often seen as solely the responsibility of parents, and not the community as in Japan.

While risks to children are real, perceptions of risks and of who is responsible for children’s safety reshape places and lives. The priority given to car traffic and street parking has led to cities being redesigned to accommodate cars rather than children and their needs.

When cars first appeared in American (and Australian) cities, the street was seen as the domain of children. Planning decisions of that time made now-surprising references to children having a right to public space, protected from:

“[…] the occupation, by moving and parked automobiles, of larger portions of the streets, thus detracting from their safety and depriving children of the privilege of quiet and open spaces for play”.

Since then, zoning, road rules and even responses to unsafe roads such as playgrounds have deprived children of the freedom to experience their neighbourhood on their own.

Read more:
The elephant in the planning scheme: how cities still work around the dominance of parking space

Many good reasons to reverse the trend

Allowing children freedom to move safely around their neighbourhoods has well-established benefits. These include physical and mental health, sense of belonging and place, socialisation and participation in public life, and even meaningful climate action.

People-oriented streets also have community-wide benefits: improved public health and safety, better air quality, less noise, more green space, reduced heat and flooding, and more equitable communities because of non-car transport options.

The contrast between Australian cities and Japan, and our suburbs of the not-so-distant past, raises challenging questions. Perhaps the remarkably child-friendly outcomes we’re seeing in Japan can inspire us to rethink what kinds of neighbourhoods are possible – and what kinds of lives our children can have.

Rebecca Clements receives funding from the Henry Halloran Trust at the University of Sydney.

Elizabeth Taylor receives funding from the Australian Research Council (ARC) and the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI). She has previously received funding from the Henry Halloran Trust, the City of Melbourne, Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS), and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD).

Hulya Gilbert 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. Japan’s Old Enough and Australia’s Bluey remind us our kids are no longer ‘free range’ – but we can remake our neighbourhoods – https://theconversation.com/japans-old-enough-and-australias-bluey-remind-us-our-kids-are-no-longer-free-range-but-we-can-remake-our-neighbourhoods-187698

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sarah Pollard Williams, Adjunct lecturer, Charles Sturt University

Greyhounds in Australia will continue to be impregnated via a procedure that’s illegal in other countries, after a provision to ban it was recently overturned in a New South Wales government bill.

This procedure, known as “surgical artificial insemination”, is unnecessary and unethical, as it is highly invasive and often painful for dogs.

An estimated 80% of greyhound breeding in the state involves surgical artificial insemination. The practice is legal throughout Australia.

The procedure is not only used in racing greyhounds, but also flat-faced breeds, such as the French bulldog. These dogs are physically challenged, with airway issues that place them at a higher risk for undergoing anaesthesia.

I am a veterinarian with over 30 years experience, with particular interest in welfare and ethics in animal ownership and veterinary practice. I believe this procedure is an animal welfare issue and must not continue, especially when safer alternatives are available.

What is surgical artificial insemination?

Surgical artificial insemination involves anaesthetising a female dog at the time of ovulation and incising her abdomen. The surgeon locates her uterus in order to inject semen, before returning the uterus to the abdomen.

It is not to be confused with “artificial insemination”, a safer procedure used around the world, including in humans. In most cases, it involves the relatively benign deposition of sperm into the uterus through the vagina and cervix (called “transcervical insemination”).

The proposal to prohibit surgical artificial insemination was contained in an early draft of the Animal Welfare Bill 2022, after two rounds of public consultation.

Steep opposition to the ban followed, such as from the NSW greyhound racing industry. The NSW government confirmed to The Conversation that after receiving further feedback, the provision will not be included in the final version of the Animal Welfare Bill.

It pointed to a different law that already regulates artificial insemination of racing greyhounds. This requires that surgical artificial insemination can only be performed by a veterinarian using general anaesthetic, with appropriate pain relief during and post-surgery.

But this is only a minimal concession, given major procedures on animals are performed by veterinary surgeons as regulated by state veterinary boards.

Read more:
Greyhound racing: despite waning public support, governments are spending big to keep the industry running

Many veterinary surgeons oppose it

Surgical artificial insemination has been under scrutiny in Europe for over a decade. The ethical issues stem from the fact the dogs undergo a highly invasive surgery to ensure pregnancy, presenting an unacceptable level of risk for dogs.

A British paper from 2008 suggested using an ethical matrix to assess reproductive intervention in dogs. An ethical matrix is a tool that integrates values from those with different opinions in order to make a major decision.

More recently, a European survey of 83 veterinary surgeons in 2022 found 80% working in assisted reproduction in dogs felt significant ethical conflict related to the practices some breeders requested. Over 62% stated that surgical insemination is not ethical.

Read more:
New South Wales overturns greyhound ban: a win for the industry, but a massive loss for the dogs

The United Kingdom banned the procedure in 2019, as have Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands.

There are additional risks from the surgery for greyhounds, in particular. Greyhounds are often at slightly more risk for general anaesthetic than most other dog breeds, as the anaesthetic effects last longer.

They are also at a greater risk of blood clotting failure if there’s a minor surgical bleed related to the procedure. This is due to a breed-related tendency to break down clots quickly in the body.

A safer, effective alternative

One reason surgical artificial insemination is so widely used is because it supposedly leads to multiple large litters. But there are alternative methods that are far safer for greyhounds and give good, if not better, results.

In particular, many specialists in veterinary reproduction advocate for transcervical insemination as the most effective way of inseminating a greyhound. This method of insemination is widely used worldwide, and occurs via a vaginal and cervical catheter.

It can be done in a matter of minutes with the dog fully conscious, avoiding the risks associated with general anaesthesia and open abdominal surgery.

A letter from veterinary reproductive specialists to the Australian Veterinary Journal last year argued that surgical artificial insemination should cease in Australia, with transcervical insemination used instead.

As they write, it’s important for veterinary surgeons to “protect the deservedly attained privilege to be the guardians of animal health and welfare”.

Read more:
To pat or not to pat? How to keep interactions between kids and dogs safe

Numerous reports have shown transcervical insemination is as productive as surgical artificial insemination, especially when using frozen-thawed semen.

In particular, a nine-year study from New Zealand on 1,146 dogs objectively concluded that there is “no difference in whelping rate” after either transcervical insemination or surgical artificial insemination. Another scientific paper from 2018 also confirmed that the risk to the dog is far lower.

If surgical artificial insemination continues to be used despite the evidence, welfare and ethical viewpoints that render it redundant, Australia’s standard of animal welfare will stay disastrously and embarrassingly low.

Sarah Pollard Williams was a Greens candidate for the Wagga City Council.

– ref. This surgical procedure to impregnate greyhounds in Australia is a major animal welfare issue – https://theconversation.com/this-surgical-procedure-to-impregnate-greyhounds-in-australia-is-a-major-animal-welfare-issue-187930

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anna Sullivan, Professor and Director, Centre for Research in Educational and Social Inclusion, University of South Australia

NSW is in the middle of overhauling its approach to suspensions and expulsions.

Under a proposed plan due to start in term 4, students can only be sent home a maximum of three times a year. This is designed to reduce the high number of sanctions against vulnerable children in public schools. But it has been met with opposition from teachers, who say it will increase safety risks when managing disruptive students.

This comes amid a wider debate about how to approach student discipline, which continues to be one of the most difficult issues in Australian schools. The views about student behaviour are diverse and often passionate, with some arguing students should be “punished”.

Unfortunately these views do not always reflect the research, which shows tough approaches make student disengagement worse.

Read more:
Why suspending or expelling students often does more harm than good

What is school exclusion?

Suspensions and expulsions are traditionally used by schools to manage problematic student behaviour.

They are given to students who disrupt the “good order” of schools or threaten others’ safety. Schools use suspensions to help change unproductive student behaviours or allow time for other strategies to be implemented to help avoid repeat situations.

Exclusions vary across Australia. They can either be for a short time, a long time, or they can even be permanent.

State and territory legislation and departmental discipline policies provide guidance on how schools should prevent and respond to problematic student behaviours around Australia.

Recent data from states indicates school exclusions are on the rise. For example, in Western Australia there was a new high of 18,068 suspensions in 2021, an increase of 13% from 2020.

5 issues that need more attention

We are researching how and why Australian schools use exclusionary practices – like suspensions – to manage disorderly students.

Policymakers and schools need to give more attention to the following issues when it comes to discipline and behaviour.

1. Some groups of students are suspended more often

Research over the past three decades has consistently shown suspensions and expulsions disproportionately target students from diverse or minority backgrounds. This is particularly the case for those with a disability or those from specific racial, ethnic and class backgrounds.

For example, in NSW in 2021, while 3.3% of all students were suspended, 10% of Aboriginal students and 8.4% of all students with disability were suspended.

This is not just the case in Australia, but also in the United States, United Kingdom and New Zealand.

Read more:
NSW wants to change rules on suspending and expelling students. How does it compare to other states?

2. We don’t have the full picture

Official statistics provided by education departments offer a publicly available account as to the number of students schools have suspended and expelled from schools.

However, these figures do not always present an accurate picture. Students can be excluded from the classroom in other ways, that are not captured in official data.

For example, schools might let students remain on the school grounds for partial or full days, but not let them join their peers for lessons. This allows schools to “maintain statistical respectability”.

3. What else is going on in students’ lives?

Often discussions on how to manage students’ behaviour focus on responding to the individual’s academic failure, behaviour or disinterest in school. They don’t look at the broader complexities of their lives.

When looking at whether suspension or exclusion is an appropriate discipline technique, schools should consider the likely impact on a child’s life chances, especially for marginalised children. Will a suspension put at risk the chances of the student completing school? Will the student be supervised while they are not allowed to attend school?

Understanding how poverty and other forms of social inequality contribute to behaviour in schools is important.

There are many other ways to manage students’ behaviour that are more supportive and can lead to more positive outcomes for the school, students and families. For example, teaching students how to manage conflict or how to manage their anger.

4. Make students feel valued

Research tells us students value schools which make trust, respect and care central to everything that happens there.

If we are going to help students connect to schooling, we need to look at the deeper causes of student disengagement. This means understanding and attending to students who feel like they do not matter or do not fit in or feel like their interests are not recognised.

This requires a commitment from schools to connect to student’s lives and communities as the foundation for curriculum design and learning.

Treating teachers like professionals and giving them the time and resources to plan engaging and differentiated lessons is critical. This also involves talking and listening to what young people have to say.

5. The broader political context

Schools of course exist in a broader social and political climate. In Australia, the trend in education has been to prioritise individuals and individualism over the public good.

At the broader level, this has seen an emphasis on standards, performance and national testing.

At the micro level, this encourages schools to view problem student behaviours as the responsibility of individuals. So this means there is a focus on blaming “disruptive” students, “dud” teachers or “negligent” parents, rather than look at the influence of broader public policy settings.

So, while the NSW government is making positive steps, there is still so much more to be done to improve our approach to student discipline.

University of South Australia researcher Olivia Yearsley contributed to the research on which this piece is based.

Anna Sullivan receives funding from the Australian Research Council. She is Board Chair and Director of the Media Centre for Education Research Australia.

barry.down@unisa.edu.au receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Bruce Johnson receives funding from the Australian Research Council. He is also a serving member of the ARC’s College of Experts.

Jamie Manolev is a member of the Australian Association for Research in Education.

Neil Tippett receives funding from the Australian Research Council

Janean Robinson 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. If Australian schools want to improve student discipline, they need to address these 5 issues – https://theconversation.com/if-australian-schools-want-to-improve-student-discipline-they-need-to-address-these-5-issues-187993

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ben Phillips, Associate Professor, Centre for Social Research and Methods, Director, Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), Australian National University

We learnt last week inflation is officially 6.1% – way above the average over the past 20 years of 2.5%. This is right in the middle of the Reserve Bank’s 2-3% target band.

But although the rate is now 6.1%, not everybody faces it. It depends on what you buy.

And there’s one big anomaly right now.

The “basket” of goods and services whose prices the Bureau of Statistics uses to work out the consumer price index is dominated by one item, one most Australians rarely buy.

It is what the bureau calls “new dwelling purchase by owner-occupiers”.

This is mostly the cost of building a new home (excluding the cost of the land) and also the cost of major renovations, but not repairs.

We rarely build a house, and rarely pay up front

Even though very few Australians pay this cost in any given year, and some never pay it, it makes up almost 9% of the total basket, a heavier weight than any other single item in the Consumer Price Index.

By way of comparison, bread – a product most households buy every day – makes up only 0.53% of the index. “New dwelling purchase” makes up 8.67%.

New dwelling purchase gets such a big weight because it is so expensive, sometimes as much as half a million dollars or more. Like most other items in the consumer price index, bread is cheaper.

We buy bread more often, but it scarcely counts

Normally when the price of “new dwelling purchase” isn’t moving by much (or by much more than other prices) it doesn’t much move the index.

But material and labour shortages mean that over the past year alone, the cost of new dwelling purchase has jumped by more than 20%. In the June quarter it was responsible for almost a third – 0.5 points – of the 1.8% increase in the entire consumer price index.

If your interest is the change in household cost of living, the inclusion of the cost of buying a new house is a problem as the very few people who pay it mostly don’t pay it upfront. They take out a loan which they pay off slowly.

Measured differently, costs didn’t rise 6.1%

Before 1998 the bureau used a different so-called “outlays” approach to measuring inflation that measured payments made to gain access to goods and services.

The resulting weight of housing in the index was much lower.

The bureau still uses the outlays method to calculate separately-published living cost indexes published on Wednesday.

Using these indexes, ANU modelling suggests about 80% of households had a living cost increase below the consumer price index of 6.1%.

The median (typical) increase over the past year is 4.7%, meaning half of households had increases in living costs below 4.7%.

Half of us faced less than 4.7%

Among the households whose living costs have climbed by less than 6.1% would be almost all of those headed by people on the JobSeeker unemployment benefit.

The cost of living for these households climbed by 5%.

Yet in September this year the benefit will increase in total by the increase in the consumer price index, meaning that for once the living standards of households receiving those benefits will move ahead.

Wage earner living costs have increased by just 4.6%, suggesting wage increases in line with the consumer price index would also leave them ahead.

Read more:
Inflation hasn’t been higher for 32 years. What now?

Our modelling suggests high income families suffered a cost of living increase of only 4.5%, compared to 4.9% for lower income families.

For the moment, the lower living cost indexes are a better guide to changes in the cost of living than the consumer price index.

In time, as the increases in the cost of new dwellings subside, the difference will become less stark. Indeed, as mortgage rates increase over the year growth in the living cost indexes might exceed the consumer price index.

Read more:
What’s in the CPI and what does it actually measure?

Ben Phillips 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. Inflation isn’t the 6.1% they say it is – for many of us, it is much lower – https://theconversation.com/inflation-isnt-the-6-1-they-say-it-is-for-many-of-us-it-is-much-lower-187973

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katie Pickles, Professor of History, University of Canterbury

In news many probably never expected to see, no-frills, outdoorsy, animal behaviour expert and conservation activist Jane Goodall has become a Barbie doll (accompanied by her famous chimpanzee, David Greybeard).

As the latest member of toymaker Mattel’s “Barbie Inspiring Women Series” honouring historical and contemporary heroines, she joins aviator Amelia Earhart, NASA mathematician and physicist Katherine Johnson and artist and political activist Frida Kahlo.

The range was launched on International Women’s Day in 2018, part of Mattel’s response to mothers’ concerns about their daughters’ role models. Others in the series include civil rights activist Rosa Parks, disability advocate Helen Keller, author Maya Angelou, medical reformer Florence Nightingale and suffragist Susan B. Anthony.

Each doll comes with information about their namesake’s achievements and influence. Instead of being generic plastic bodies to be clothed and posed, the dolls were now pitched as “real” women, with Mattel engaged in “shining a light on empowering role models past and present in an effort to inspire more girls”.

What makes a heroine?

Barbie has certainly come a long way since she was first manufactured in 1959 and became synonymous with what feminists saw as the objectification and commodification of women.

But the fact some of the world’s most famous and groundbreaking women – who sought careers outside their physical appearance – were now being re-imagined as plastic dolls also interested me professionally.

My new book, Heroines in History: A Thousand Faces, examines the patterns that underpin the construction of heroines over the past 200 years. In it I argue that representations of women who have rebelled, rocked, shaken and changed the world are constrained through casting them as either “super-womanly” or “honorary men”.

Taking the individual stories of women, including those now appearing as Barbies, I explore a series of archetypal themes, revealing how heroines are produced by the hetero-sexist societies that surround them.

Read more:
Barbie at 60: instrument of female oppression or positive influence?

Despite many advances for women, the persistence and reinvention of heroic iconography for women continues to value image over substance. And because of their iconic appeal, throughout history it has been common for heroines to be used for commercial purposes.

In the 19th century, for example, British sea heroine Grace Darling’s image appeared on chocolate boxes and was used to advertise soap. Since her death in 1954, Frida Kahlo’s face has promoted everything from tequila to lip gloss. And Marilyn Monroe’s image has endured to sell any number of products.

Antithesis of feminism?

So the appropriation of heroic women of substance as plastic Barbies should not surprise us.

Dolls have a long and rich history, after all. They’ve appeared as representational figures, including gods and royalty, or dressed in distinct costumes representing national identities. They’ve served as lucky charms and voodoo talismans.

Read more:
Barbie doll that honors Ida B. Wells faces an uphill battle against anti-Blackness

As they evolved from eclectic homemade rag, woollen and wooden figures to mass-produced commercial objects, they became important in children’s gender role play. Rehearsing for their adult years, boys played with toy soldiers, action figures and superheroes, while girls had baby dolls to tend to and model figures to dress and groom alluringly.

In a sense, then, the Inspiring Women series can be seen as a positive development, encouraging empowerment by including a diverse range of ethnicities to appeal to girls whose communities were previously not represented as Barbies.

Overall, however, Barbie has a lot of work to do to overcome her image as the antithesis of the feminist goal of freeing girls and women from lives that cast them, in the words of writer Simone de Beauvoir, as “living dolls”.

In 1991, the author Susan Faludi even defined feminism by referencing Mattel’s famous product:

It is the simply worded sign hoisted by a little girl in the 1970 Women’s Strike for Equality: I AM NOT A BARBIE DOLL.

Barbie dolls have also been criticised by social scientists for promoting a white, idealised body type that advanced a kind of compulsory heterosexuality and subservience. The call was for women to escape inferior lives as “sex objects” and instead to pursue “real” lives and be recognised for their achievements.

And yet some women even underwent plastic surgery to mimic the Barbie body. As the feminist writer Martine Delvaux saw it, “Barbie is the image of what happens to women, their invisible and silent murder.”

Read more:
Why the curvy new Barbie is good news for your little girl

Can dolls freighted with this much cultural baggage really honour inspiring women or serve as feminist role models? Or might it be better to view them as examples of what I term “designer feminism” – somewhere image and substance collide, but where valuing appearance ultimately underpins and contains achievement?

The clothing of these dolls may symbolise real lives, but underneath there is still a plastic body.

Katie Pickles receives funding from Royal Society Te Apārangi James Cook Fellowship.

– ref. Jane Goodall joins Barbie’s ‘inspiring women’ series: the strange evolution of an iconic doll – https://theconversation.com/jane-goodall-joins-barbies-inspiring-women-series-the-strange-evolution-of-an-iconic-doll-187839

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joanna McIntyre, Senior Lecturer in Media Studies, Swinburne University of Technology

After the first season last year wobbled on its heels, the second season of RuPaul’s Drag Race Down Under began last weekend.

In becoming the global beacon of drag, Drag Race has set new ideals for what it means to do drag. But while Drag Race may have brought drag into the global media centre, in Australia drag has long been celebrated in the mainstream.

Australia’s most enduring and adored drag celebrity has been a stalwart of Australian show business for almost 60 years: Carlotta.

Long before Drag Race, Carlotta (the stage name of Carol Byron) was foundational in establishing a specifically Aussie mode of drag that both queer and straight Australians embrace – one that is outlandish, flamboyant, irreverent and “ocker”.

Read more:
RuPaul’s Drag Race is still figuring out how to handle gender and race

Disappointment down under

Earlier this year, RuPaul made headlines describing Australian drag queens as “more ratchet” – meaning Australian drag is cruder and bawdier than US or UK drag.

Perhaps accidentally, RuPaul astutely identified a point of tension between Drag Race expectations and the localised relationship Australia has with drag culture.

Australia has its own drag aesthetics, histories and celebrities, often associated with a certain Aussie sense of humour.

In many ways, Carlotta epitomises typical characteristics of Aussie drag. She is glamorous, extravagant and charming – but also forthright and down to earth.

As Carlotta has told us of Australian drag’s mainstream popularity:

I think if [Australian] drag queens weren’t so ‘ocker-ish’ then it never would have worked, actually, in this country […] It’s a kind of sense of humour. They understand that sense of humour, straight Australians do. And if they don’t then they have a plum in their mouth!

An Australian drag icon, over many decades Carlotta helped foster middle Australia’s longstanding affection for drag, while always maintaining her connection to queer communities.

The queen of Kings Cross

Queer drag began its sashay into mainstream Australian culture in the 1960s via the widespread fame of the queer cabaret troupe Les Girls.

Based in Sydney’s then-notorious red light district, Kings Cross, Les Girls was a glamorous cabaret with sequins and feather boas abounding. The alluring “twist” was that all the beautiful, bedazzled showgirls onstage were “actually” queer men.

Les Girls garnered an international following and became a trendy Sydney attraction popular with straight Australians. This queer spectacle gave Carlotta the platform that would see her become one of Australia’s most treasured national celebrities.

Carlotta also became Australia’s first transgender celebrity. In the early 1970s, her gender confirmation surgery became fodder for the Australian press.

With her striking looks and engaging manner, she soon found her way onscreen.

Carlotta featured in a selection of documentaries about Sydney’s drag scene, notably The Glittering Mile and The Naked Bunyip.

She made history in 1973 as the first “out” trans person in the world to play a trans character on television, causing a stir when she appeared in six episodes of the risqué Australian serial Number 96.

By the 1990s, Carlotta was a household name in Australia.

Although initial media interest may have treated her as a curiosity because of her gender, Carlotta as a cultural presence became something much more than that.

Priscilla, queen of Aussie drag

When the three drag queens of The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert flounced onto screens and into the hearts of Australians in 1994, Carlotta’s place in Australian drag history was solidified. She was the direct inspiration for the beloved character Bernadette, a showgirl drag performer and trans woman.

Coming full circle, Carlotta has paid homage to Priscilla with her own outback touring cabaret shows.

As her drag legacy matured, Carlotta became a mainstream media darling.

In the 1990s and 2000s, she was a panellist on the daytime chat show Beauty and the Beast. From 2013, she was a regular guest panellist on Studio 10. She has been a special guest on A Current Affair, This is Your Life, Come Dine with Me and One Plus One.

The biopic Carlotta was released by the ABC in 2014, tracing her life from childhood in Balmain and mapping how Carlotta the showgirl rose to fame. The project extended Carlotta’s cultural impact, supported by extensive marketing and airing in a family-friendly timeslot on a Sunday night.

Carlotta’s acceptance as a mainstream celebrity in line with her unwavering alliance with queer culture was exemplified in 2020 when she was named a Member of the Order of Australia in the Australia Day Honours List for significant service to the performing arts and the LGBTIQ+ community.

Diversifying the future of Australian drag

Carlotta’s influence on queer drag representations in the Australian mainstream is clear – from the sequined showgirls who are a mainstay of the Sydney Mardi Gras, to the warm reception genderqueer reality star Courtney Act has received.

It is impossible to say how Carlotta would have fared on Drag Race, as she was such a singular sensation in her youth.

Despite the powerful impacts Carlotta’s influence has had on promoting inclusivity, this now default mode of Aussie drag remains limited. Australian drag is more dynamic and diverse than we see in mainstream representations. Absent from much mainstream drag imagery are the many drag kings and gender diverse drag performers.

Drag Race Down Under faces a challenge of marrying the ideals of the governing reality television franchise with those of Australia’s own drag culture.

Perhaps in the same way Carlotta has influenced Australian culture, it is time for Drag Race to think about its role in expanding how Australians understand drag beyond our mainstream exposure.

Read more:
Thanking Carlotta – a pioneer for sex and gender diversity

Joanna McIntyre receives funding from the Australian Children’s Television Foundation (ACTF).

Damien O’Meara 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. Would Carlotta, Australia’s most celebrated drag queen, have made it on RuPaul’s Drag Race? – https://theconversation.com/would-carlotta-australias-most-celebrated-drag-queen-have-made-it-on-rupauls-drag-race-187260

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard Kingsford, Professor, School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences, UNSW Sydney

A long-awaited report released on Tuesday found the amount of water promised to river environments under the Murray-Darling Basin Plan “cannot be achieved” under current settings. In short, the plan is failing on a key target.

The water is essential to protecting plants, animals and ecosystems along Australia’s most important river system.

One part of the plan stipulates that by 2024, 450 billion litres of water – a small proportion of the overall target – should be recovered and returned to rivers, wetlands and groundwater systems. This should be achieved through water efficiency programs funded by the Commonwealth.

But just two years out from the deadline, only 2.6 billion litres, or about 0.5% of this water, has actually been delivered. The findings have reignited debate about the Murray-Darling Basin – a running sore for which treatments abound, but seemingly no cure exists.

Before the May election, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese pledged to deliver the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. But yesterday’s report, prepared by independent experts, casts serious doubt on whether that promise can be kept. The basin’s focus on a sustainable future is still a way off, and only political will can fix it.

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

What’s this all about?

You could be forgiven for not having read Tuesday’s report, which bore the repellent title “Second review of the Water for the Environment Special Account”. It reflects the arcane and impenetrable jargon surrounding water management in the basin which hinders public understanding of this crucial policy area.

The plan involves “water recovery targets” to be met by “efficiency and constraints measures”. But what does that all mean?

Irrigators and other water users extract water from the rivers, streams and aquifers of the Murray-Darling Basin. Over the years, too much water has been extracted, which has left the basin in poor condition.

The A$13 billion Murray-Darling Basin Plan was meant to address this problem. Passed into law in 2012 under the Gillard Labor government, it promised to deliver 3,200 billion litres of water to the environment each year, by buying back water allocated to extractors and retaining it in the river system.

The goal comprised two targets for water to be delivered to the environment each year: 2,750 billion litres as soon as possible, and an additional 450 billion litres later, if it did not cause significant socio-economic impact. To do the latter, the federal government established a $1.8 billion Commonwealth fund to invest in water efficiency projects that would deliver water back to the environment.

Complicating matters, irrigators and others were opposed to water buybacks. In 2015, the Coalition government put a stop to the practice, despite its proven cost-effectiveness compared to alternatives such as subsidising dams and channels under efficiency programs.

Water savings were to come from measures such as improving water efficiency on farms, and funding irrigators to reduce evaporation from dams by building them deeper.

But engineering does not easily replace ecological complexity shaped over millennia. Making water move more quickly down a river produces casualties: the creeks and wetlands and groundwater systems that rely on it.

Major efficiency projects have been exposed as inadequte. They predominantly just move environmental water from one part of the basin to the other, at significant public cost.

So what’s the upshot of all this? According to Tuesday’s report, under current efficiency measures only 60 billion litres of water can be returned to the basin environment by 2024. What’s more, the original target of 2,750 billion litres has not yet been achieved.

Read more:
We looked at 35 years of rainfall and learnt how droughts start in the Murray-Darling Basin

Our rivers remain in trouble

After all this effort and debate, the health of the Murray-Darling Basin continues to degrade.

The State of the Environment report released this month found water extraction and drought left water levels at record lows in 2019. Rivers and catchments are mostly in poor condition, and native fish populations fell by more than 90% in the past 150 years.

Who could forget the disaster of late 2018 and early 2019, when millions of fish died at Menindee Lakes? That disaster was associated with low river flows, from the drought exacerbated by over-extraction.

First Nations peoples, river communities and others that rely on healthy rivers have also borne the costs of this policy failure.

Recent rainfall and flooding has bought breathing space, but drought will return, and climate change is projected to make the basin drier.

Other factors are denying rivers the water they need. They include water theft and poor policy – such as the NSW government’s commitment to let water be harvested from floodplains, against warnings by its own advisers.

Read more:
Robber barons and high-speed traders dominate Australia’s water market

Finding political will

A crucial aspect not covered in the report is the lack of credible information on how much water is actually recovered by water efficiency programs. An independent audit on this is urgently needed.

And there remain opportunities to implement more efficient and cost-effective ways of recovering water for the environment. This could include buying back water from willing irrigators, while recognising the potential local economic effects.

It’s a politically difficult move – sure to attract opposition from the Nationals, as well as the NSW and Victorian governments.

But the health of the Murray-Darling Basin is essential for all Australians. As this latest report shows, our politicians must finally find the will to secure the basin’s future.

Richard Kingsford receives funding from State and Commonwealth Governments, including the Murray-Darling Basin Authority, as well as philanthropic funding. He is also a member of the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists. He is a member of the Society for Conservation Biology, Birdlife Australia and Ecological Society of Australia.

– ref. It’s official: the Murray-Darling Basin Plan hasn’t met its promise to our precious rivers. So where to now? – https://theconversation.com/its-official-the-murray-darling-basin-plan-hasnt-met-its-promise-to-our-precious-rivers-so-where-to-now-188074

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tony Walker, Vice-chancellor’s fellow, La Trobe University

US Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s provocative visit to Taiwan has been ill-timed from the perspective of China’s leader Xi Jinping.

In seeking to further consolidate his hold on power ahead of a National Party Congress in November, Xi needs to demonstrate that he is in command.

The Pelosi visit challenges Xi’s strongman narrative domestically at a time when he will be seeking the support of his colleagues in the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party for a third term as party secretary.

Read more:
Trump took a sledgehammer to US-China relations. This won’t be an easy fix, even if Biden wins

If nothing else, the Pelosi mission illustrates the limitations on Xi’s pledge to return Taiwan peacefully to mainland control as part of his declared policy of “national rejuvenation” into a modern superpower. This goes some way towards explaining Beijing’s reaction to a visit to Taiwan by a member of the US Congress, albeit one who ranks third in the hierarchy behind President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.

There are two other factors at play. The first is suspicion in Beijing that the Biden administration is steering away from the US’s longstanding policy of “strategic ambiguity”, or avoiding confronting the “what if” issue if China threatened Taiwan militarily.

Biden has appeared on occasions to suggest that the US would come to Taiwan’s defence in the event of overt Chinese aggression. This exchange between a reporter and Biden in May will have concerned Beijing:

Reporter: You didn’t want to get involved in the Ukraine conflict militarily for obvious reasons. Are you willing to get involved militarily to defend Taiwan, if it comes to that?

Biden: Yes.

Reporter: You are?

Biden: That’s the commitment we made.

The White House subsequently sought to walk back Biden’s statement, as it has done on other occasions when he has appeared to step away from a policy fudge on Taiwan.

The episode will have gnawed away at China’s confidence in the US commitment to a “one China policy” negotiated in various communiques and enshrined in the normalisation agreement of 1979. That agreement, under the Carter administration, extended full diplomatic recognition to China and severed normal ties with Taiwan.

Congress then enacted the Taiwan Relations Act, which allowed commercial and cultural relations and authorised the supply of weapons to bolster Taiwan’s defences. This has been a sore point with Beijing.

Read more:
The risks of a new Cold War between the US and China are real: here’s why

A second important element in China’s reaction almost certainly rests with Xi’s own exposure to the Taiwan issue as deputy party secretary in Fuzhou Province and political commissar in the People’s Liberation Army reserve during the rolling crises with the US in 1995-96. Fuzhou is the province nearest to Taiwan.

In 1995, China was infuriated when President Bill Clinton authorised a visit to the US by Lee Teng-hui, leader of Taiwan’s Nationalist Party. This reversed a 15-year ban on visits by Taiwanese leaders.

Lee’s election the following year in Taiwan’s first free presidential election further displeased Beijing. This contributed to tensions throughout 1995-96 during which China conducted military exercises off Taiwan and the US sent warships to deter Chinese aggression.

Tensions between the US and China over Taiwan have surfaced sporadically since, but this latest eruption is probably the most serious given the high political stakes involved for Xi. However, it is in neither China’s nor the US’s interests to allow a military confrontation, although the possibility of an accident leading to a wider conflagration cannot be excluded.

It is notable that in its military exercises in and around Taiwan, China has been careful to avoid crossing a median line in the strait itself. The Chinese military has conducted air and sea drills. These have included live fire exercises.

Pelosi has been unrepentant about the diplomatic fallout her visit has caused. In a Washington Post opinion piece released after she landed in Taiwan, she criticised Beijing for increasing tensions with Taiwan. She also took Beijing to task for its “brutal crackdown” on political dissent in Hong Kong, and its mistreatments of its Muslim Uighur minority.

White House spokesman John Kirby noted the administration’s misgivings about Pelosi’s visit. “What we don’t want to see is this spiral into any kind of a crisis or conflict,” Kirby said Tuesday. “There is no reason to amp this up.” This is particularly so at a moment when the US has been urging Beijing to use its influence with Moscow to end the war in Ukraine.

Read more:
US-China relations were already heated. Then coronavirus threw fuel on the flames

So far, threats of Chinese retaliation have involved restrictions on some Taiwanese exports to China, and a melodramatic summoning in the middle of the night of US Ambassador to Beijing Nicholas Burns to the Foreign Ministry to receive a dressing down. The Pelosi visit may herald greater tensions in the US-China relationship, but a possible face-to-face meeting between Biden and Xi will be aimed at lowering temperatures.

From Australia’s perspective, there’s no benefit to be gained from tensions between its security guarantor and the destination for one-third of its exports. This was reflected in remarks by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in an interview with CNN when asked whether Australia would defend Taiwan militarily:

Australia supports a one-China policy, but we also support the status quo when it comes to the issue of Taiwan. It is not in the interests of peace and security to talk up those issues of potential conflict.

Albanese’s remarks mirror those of the White House spokesman regarding Taiwan, a reflection that it is not in anyone’s interests for this dispute to escalate.

Tony Walker is a board member of The Conversation.

– ref. Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan raises temperatures, but it’s in everyone’s interest to cool them down again – https://theconversation.com/pelosis-visit-to-taiwan-raises-temperatures-but-its-in-everyones-interest-to-cool-them-down-again-188144

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard Kingsford, Professor, School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences, UNSW Sydney

A long-awaited report released on Tuesday found the amount of water promised to river environments under the Murray-Darling Basin Plan “cannot be achieved” under current settings. In short, the plan is failing on a key target.

The water is essential to protecting plants, animals and ecosystems along Australia’s most important river system.

One part of the plan stipulates that by 2024, 450 billion litres of water – a small proportion of the overall target – should be recovered and returned to rivers, wetlands and groundwater systems. This should be achieved through water efficiency programs funded by the Commonwealth.

But just two years out from the deadline, only 2.6 billion litres, or about 0.5% of this water, has actually been delivered. The findings have reignited debate about the Murray-Darling Basin – a running sore for which treatments abound, but seemingly no cure exists.

Before the May election, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese pledged to deliver the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. But yesterday’s report, prepared by independent experts, casts serious doubt on whether that promise can be kept. The basin’s focus on a sustainable future is still a way off, and only political will can fix it.

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

What’s this all about?

You could be forgiven for not having read Tuesday’s report, which bore the repellent title “Second review of the Water for the Environment Special Account”. It reflects the arcane and impenetrable jargon surrounding water management in the basin which hinders public understanding of this crucial policy area.

The plan involves “water recovery targets” to be met by “efficiency and constraints measures”. But what does that all mean?

Irrigators and other water users extract water from the rivers, streams and aquifers of the Murray-Darling Basin. Over the years, too much water has been extracted, which has left the basin in poor condition.

The A$13 billion Murray-Darling Basin Plan was meant to address this problem. Passed into law in 2012 under the Gillard Labor government, it promised to deliver 3,200 billion litres of water to the environment each year, by buying back water allocated to extractors and retaining it in the river system.

The goal comprised two targets for water to be delivered to the environment each year: 2,750 billion litres as soon as possible, and an additional 450 billion litres later, if it did not cause significant socio-economic impact. To do the latter, the federal government established a $1.8 billion Commonwealth fund to invest in water efficiency projects that would deliver water back to the environment.

Complicating matters, irrigators and others were opposed to water buybacks. In 2015, the Coalition government put a stop to the practice, despite its proven cost-effectiveness compared to alternatives such as subsidising dams and channels under efficiency programs.

Water savings were to come from measures such as improving water efficiency on farms, and funding irrigators to reduce evaporation from dams by building them deeper.

But engineering does not easily replace ecological complexity shaped over millennia. Making water move more quickly down a river produces casualties: the creeks and wetlands and groundwater systems that rely on it.

Major efficiency projects have been exposed as inadequte. They predominantly just move environmental water from one part of the basin to the other, at significant public cost.

So what’s the upshot of all this? According to Tuesday’s report, under current efficiency measures only 60 billion litres of water can be returned to the basin environment by 2024. What’s more, the original target of 2,750 billion litres has not yet been achieved.

Read more:
We looked at 35 years of rainfall and learnt how droughts start in the Murray-Darling Basin

Our rivers remain in trouble

After all this effort and debate, the health of the Murray-Darling Basin continues to degrade.

The State of the Environment report released this month found water extraction and drought left water levels at record lows in 2019. Rivers and catchments are mostly in poor condition, and native fish populations fell by more than 90% in the past 150 years.

Who could forget the disaster of late 2018 and early 2019, when millions of fish died at Menindee Lakes? That disaster was associated with low river flows, from the drought exacerbated by over-extraction.

First Nations peoples, river communities and others that rely on healthy rivers have also borne the costs of this policy failure.

Recent rainfall and flooding has bought breathing space, but drought will return, and climate change is projected to make the basin drier.

Other factors are denying rivers the water they need. They include water theft and poor policy – such as the NSW government’s commitment to let water be harvested from floodplains, against warnings by its own advisers.

Read more:
Robber barons and high-speed traders dominate Australia’s water market

Finding political will

A crucial aspect not covered in the report is the lack of credible information on how much water is actually recovered by water efficiency programs. An independent audit on this is urgently needed.

And there remain opportunities to implement more efficient and cost-effective ways of recovering water for the environment. This could include buying back water from willing irrigators, while recognising the potential local economic effects.

It’s a politically difficult move – sure to attract opposition from the Nationals, as well as the NSW and Victorian governments.

But the health of the Murray-Darling Basin is essential for all Australians. As this latest report shows, our politicians must finally find the will to secure the basin’s future.

Richard Kingsford receives funding from State and Commonwealth Governments, including the Murray-Darling Basin Authority, as well as philanthropic funding. He is also a member of the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists. He is a member of the Society for Conservation Biology, Birdlife Australia and Ecological Society of Australia.

– ref. It’s official: the Murray-Darling Basin Plan has delivered little to our precious rivers. So where to now? – https://theconversation.com/its-official-the-murray-darling-basin-plan-has-delivered-little-to-our-precious-rivers-so-where-to-now-188074

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alicia Dennis, Professor MBBS, PhD, MPH, PGDipEcho, FANZCA, GAICD, The University of Melbourne

More than 40% of people who give birth in Australia use epidurals for pain relief during labour. That amounts to around 92,000 epidurals a year. They’re also used for pain relief outside obstetrics.

However, Australia is feeling the effects of a global supply shortage of particular brands of epidural kits. While this shortage was expected to be resolved at the end of last month, a spokesperson for the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) told The Conversation it would continue beyond July.

Health authorities are reportedly distributing stock to affected hospitals and working to secure additional kits, while the TGA is investigating how it can “allow [the] supply of alternative products to meet market demand”.

In the meantime, Victorian and NSW health authorities recommend conserving epidural kits for obstetric patients.

Remind me, what’s an epidural?

An epidural for people in labour is an anaesthetic procedure used to deliver nerve-blocking drugs, via a tiny plastic tube, into the “epidural space” in the back, through which spinal nerves travel. They’re performed by anaesthetists, who are specialist doctors.

The doctor first identifies the epidural space using a needle and a specially designed syringe, then passes a small tube into the space.

Medications – usually local anaesthetics and morphine-like drugs – are administered down the tube. Pain relief is usually achieved within about 20 minutes.

Why is there a shortage of epidurals?

In April, one of the leading international manufacturers of epidurals announced a temporary disruption to its supply.

This specific supply chain issue relates to the lack of supply of blue dye some manufacturers use to colour the special low-friction plunger-style epidural syringe. This syringe is important because anaesthetists use it to identify the epidural space in the patient’s back.

The syringe is usually filled with saline and connected to the hollow epidural needle, which is then slowly advanced into the back.

The anaesthetist places constant pressure on the syringe and when the epidural space is located, there is a “loss of resistance”. The saline passes easily into it, opening up this space so the epidural catheter can smoothly be passed into it.

The familiar blue colour of the low-friction syringe distinguishes it from other syringes, which are clear and used for injecting medications. The colouring of the syringe ensures ease of identification and safety so the correct syringe is used for the procedure.

This unpredictable and sudden loss of a brand of epidural kits has put global pressure on other manufacturers of epidural kits, and their component parts, resulting in a worldwide shortage.

How epidurals have changed

Epidurals have been commonly used for pain relief in childbirth for more than 40 years although the history of epidurals dates back over 100 years.

When first introduced, epidurals were known as “heavy epidurals”, where high-dose anaesthetic drugs blocked the large muscle nerves as well as the smaller pain, temperature and balance nerves. Blocking the nerves to the muscles meant patients were unable to move about their birthing bed, making it difficult to push, and making them feel heavy.

Read more:
Explainer: what is an epidural for labour?

Contemporary epidurals now use low doses of anaesthetic that only block pain, temperature and balance nerves. This type of epidural provides excellent pain relief while also enabling movement in bed because the muscles in the legs are not effected.

Modern epidurals can be “topped up” with high-dose anaesthetics to make an epidural suitable to provide anaesthesia for caesarean birth.

However, most caesarean births (69%) use spinal anaesthesia. These use different equipment to epidurals, so caesareans would not be impacted by epidural supply issues.

Epidurals were once used for pain relief for patients undergoing a wide range of surgeries outside obstetrics. While they’re still used to help very unwell patients – for example, after major high-risk cancer surgeries and trauma surgeries – they’re less commonly used and provide fewer benefits for less ill patients.

To manage pain, many of these patients can have a spinal morphine injection, or opioid drugs such as morphine administered via a drip.

Preparing for global supply shortages

In addition to nitrous oxide, and morphine injections, there are some other drug alternatives to epidurals for pain relief in labour. These include the morphine-like drugs, administered via a drip, providing person-controlled analgesia (PCA) or a very low-dose spinal anaesthetic.

However, global supply chain problems will remain with us for many years because of pandemics, wars and natural disasters, and we need to be prepared for them. This means having alert systems to identify sooner potential supply chain issues. Part of this process is to observe what is happening in other countries.

The sooner we know of problems, such as epidural kit supply issues, the sooner we can start to rationalise their distribution. In doing so, such shortages can be anticipated and mitigated. We need to lessen the impact of the supply reduction on those who need it most and ensure people don’t face the potential trauma of uncontrolled labour pain.

Read more:
Three simple things Australia should do to secure access to treatments, vaccines, tests and devices during the coronavirus crisis

Alicia Dennis receives research funding from the Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists (ANZCA) and the University of Melbourne. She is a member of Scientific Affairs Committee World Federation of Societies of Anaesthesiologists, the Australian Society of Anaesthetists, the Australian Institute of Company Directors, the Australian Medical Association, Women on Boards, and Society of Anesthesiology and Perinatology. Alicia Dennis previously received funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Australia
Alicia Dennis is a full time staff specialist and Director of Anaesthesia Research at the Royal Women’s Hospital, Parkville,
Australia. In July 2022 she participated in a Department of Health (Victoria) Epidural Catheter Supply Chain Issue meeting as a clinical subject matter expert.

– ref. How do epidurals work? And why is there a global shortage of them? – https://theconversation.com/how-do-epidurals-work-and-why-is-there-a-global-shortage-of-them-187640

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Fabian Zander, Senior Research Fellow in Aerospace Engineering, University of Southern Queensland

In the past week alone, we’ve seen two separate incidents of space debris hurtling back to Earth in unexpected places.

On Saturday there was the uncontrolled re-entry of a Chinese Long March 5B rocket over Malaysia. Yesterday outlets reported on some spacecraft parts that turned up in regional New South Wales – now confirmed to be from a SpaceX Crew-1 mission.

As the space industry grows, it’s safe to say such incidents will only become more frequent – and they could pose a risk. But how much of a risk, exactly?

Chunks of metal hurtling towards us

Space debris refers to the leftover components of a space system that are no longer required. It might be a satellite that has reached the end of its life (such as the International Space Station), or parts of a rocket system that have fulfilled their purpose and are discarded.

Read more:
The International Space Station is set to come home in a fiery blaze – and Australia will likely have a front row seat

To date, China has launched three Long March 5B rockets, and each has been deliberately left in an uncontrolled orbit. This means there was no way of knowing where they would land.

As for the SpaceX debris found in the Snowy Mountains, SpaceX de-orbits its rocket parts in a controlled fashion, and designs other components to burn up upon re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere. But as you can see from the latest news, these things don’t always go to plan.

So how dangerous is space debris, really?

Well, as far as we know only one person has ever been hit by it. Lottie Williams, a resident of Tulsa, Oklahoma, was struck by a piece in 1997. It was about the size of her hand and thought to have come from a Delta II rocket. She picked it up, took it home and reported it to authorities the next day.

However, with more and more objects going into space, and coming back down, the chances of someone or something being struck are increasing. This is especially true of large, uncontrolled objects such as the Long March 5B.

Of the three times this model of rocket has been launched:

• the first re-entered on May 11 2020, with components landing on an African village
• the second re-entered on May 9 2021, near the Maldives
• the third re-entered on Saturday over Indonesia and Malaysia, with debris landing around these islands.

So should I be worried?

There are many different estimates of the chances of space debris hitting someone, but most are in the one-in-10,000 range. This is the chance of any person being hit, anywhere in the world. However, the chances of a particular person being hit (such as you or me) is in the order of one in a trillion.

There are several factors behind these estimates, but let’s just focus on one key one for now. The image below shows the orbital path the recent Long March 5B-Y3 rocket followed for its final 24 hours (different objects take different orbital paths), as well as its re-entry location marked in red.

As you can see, the rocket orbits above land for a substantial amount of time.

Specifically, in these orbits the vehicle spends about 20% of its time over land. A broad estimate tells us 20% of land is inhabited, which means there is a 4% chance of the Long March 5B re-entry occurring over an inhabited area.

This may seem pretty high. But when you consider how much “inhabited land” is actually covered by people, the likelihood of injury or death becomes significantly less.

The chance of damage to property, on the other hand, is higher. It could be as high as 1% for any given re-entry of the Long March 5B.

Also, the overall risk posed by space debris will increase with the sheer number of objects being launched and re-entering the atmosphere. Current plans of companies and space agencies around the world involve many, many more launches.

China’s Tiangong Space Station is due to be finished by the end of the year. And South Korea recently became the seventh country to launch a satellite payload heavier than one tonne – with plans to expand its space sector (along with Japan, Russia, India and United Arab Emirates).

It’s highly likely the chances of being hit are only going to go up (but will hopefully remain very small).

How can we be prepared?

Two questions come to mind:

1. can we predict debris re-entries?
2. what can we do to reduce risk?

Let’s start with predictions. It can be extremely challenging to predict where an object in an uncontrolled orbit will re-enter Earth’s atmosphere. The general rule of thumb says uncertainty of the estimated re-entry time will be between 10% and 20% of the remaining orbital time.

This means an object with a predicted re-entry time in ten hours will have an uncertainty margin of about one hour. So if an object is orbiting Earth every 60-90 minutes, it could enter pretty much anywhere.

Improving on this uncertainty margin is a big challenge and will require significant amounts of research. Even then, it’s unlikely we’ll be able to predict an object’s re-entry location more accurately than within a 1,000km range.

Ways to reduce risk

Reducing risk is a challenge, but there are a couple of options.

First, all objects launched into an Earth orbit should have a plan for safe de-orbiting into an unpopulated area. This is usually the SPOUA (South Pacific Ocean Uninhabited Area) – also known as the “spacecraft cemetery”.

There’s also the option to carefully design components so they completely disintegrate upon re-entry. If everything burns up when it hits the upper atmosphere, there will no longer be a significant risk.

There are already some guidelines requiring space debris risk minimisation, such as the United Nations guidelines for the Long-term Sustainability of Outer Space Activities – but the mechanisms for these aren’t specified.

Moreover, how do these guidelines apply internationally, and who can enforce them? Such questions remain unanswered.

In summary, should you be concerned about being hit by space debris? For now, no. Is further research on space debris important for the future? Absolutely.

Read more:
It’s not how big your laser is, it’s how you use it: space law is an important part of the fight against space debris

Fabian Zander receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. Space debris is coming down more frequently. What are the chances it could hit someone or damage property? – https://theconversation.com/space-debris-is-coming-down-more-frequently-what-are-the-chances-it-could-hit-someone-or-damage-property-188062

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nick Bainton, Associate Professor, The University of Queensland

Plundering the Pacific for its rich natural resources has a long pedigree. Think of the European companies strip-mining Nauru for its phosphate and leaving behind a moonscape.

There are worrying signs history may be about to repeat, as global demand soars for minerals critical to the clean energy transition. This demand is creating pressure to extract more minerals from the sensitive lands and seabeds across the Pacific. Pacific leaders may be attracted by the prospect of royalties and economic development – but there will be a price to pay in environmental damage.

As our new research shows, this dilemma has often been ignored due to the urgency of the green transition. But if we fail to address the social and environmental costs of extraction, the transition will not be fair.

Trouble in paradise: climate change and globalisation

Nations across the Pacific now face a double threat: climate change and the consequences of extractive industries. Rising sea levels, more powerful cyclones and droughts threaten low-lying nations, while the legacy of the worst effects of global resource extraction industries lives on.

Read more:
Pacific Islands are back on the map, and climate action is not negotiable for would-be allies

Now they face a resurgence. You might not associate the small islands of the Pacific with mining, but the region contains enormous deposits of minerals and metals needed for the global energy transition.

Under the soils of New Caledonia lie between 10 and 30 per cent of the world’s known reserves of nickel, a critical component of the lithium-ion batteries which will power electric cars and stabilise renewable-heavy grids. In Papua New Guinea and Fiji there are vast undeveloped copper reserves. It’s estimated cobalt – another key battery component – is found in the deep sea around the Pacific in quantities several times larger than land resources.

Sensing this opportunity, miners from Australia, China and elsewhere are lining up to take advantage of global demand while positioning themselves as vital contributors to climate action.

You might think this is a win-win – the world gets critical minerals, and the Pacific gets royalties. While some Pacific nations like Papua New Guinea and New Caledonia see an opportunity for economic development, the problem is that historically, many Pacific states have struggled to control the excesses of the extractive industries and convert their natural mineral wealth into broad based human development.

Yes, building low-carbon energy systems to power a low-carbon economy will require vast amounts of minerals and metals for new technologies and energy infrastructure.

But supplying these resources shouldn’t come at the expense of communities and environments.

Read more:
Deep-sea mining may wipe out species we have only just discovered

Our research reveals that extractive projects planned or underway in the Pacific are located in some of the world’s most complex and volatile environmental, social and governance conditions in the world.

Think of the historic and current tensions in Solomon Islands or the separatist movement radicalised by mining in Papua New Guinea’s Bougainville region. Increased pressure to mine in combustible regions is risky.

Will this place pressure on Pacific unity?

Pacific leaders understand these risks. At last month’s forum, they endorsed a new 30 year strategy for the Pacific, which speaks to this double bind. The strategy declares the urgent need to act on climate while also calling for careful stewardship of the region’s natural resources to boost socio-economic growth and improve the lives of their citizens.

Tourism campaigns by Pacific nations often show pictures of happy people in lush environments. But the reality is much of the region is chronically unequal.

Many Pacific leaders want development opportunities and resent being told what to do with their natural resources by the leaders of developed nations. Others, however, are concerned about the damage mining may do to their environment.

This emerging divide is why dreams of regional unity remain elusive. Despite calls for a unified Pacific voice, different leaders have very different views about mining.

In recent months, we’ve seen the Federated States of Micronesia join Samoa, Fiji and Palau in calling for a moratorium on deep sea mining, while Nauru, Tonga, Kiribati and Cook Islands have already backed seabed projects.

In February this year, Cook Islands granted three licences to explore for polymetallic nodules – lucrative lumps of multiple metals – in the seas to which they have exclusive economic rights.

You can see the appeal – an estimated 8.9 billion tons of nodules lie strewn around the ocean floor. These deposits are worth an estimated $A14.4 trillion. Trillion, not billion. This is the world’s largest and richest known resource of polymetallic nodules within a sovereign territory, and a massive share of the world’s currently known cobalt resources.

These nodules are so rich in four essential metals needed for batteries (cobalt, nickel, copper and manganese) that they are often called “a battery in a rock”.

Meanwhile the Papua New Guinean government is considering enormous new gold and copper mines which lie in ecologically and socially vulnerable areas. Locals, environmentalists and experts have already sounded warnings over a project planned at the headwaters of the untouched Sepik River. No one wants to see a repeat of the Ok Tedi mining disaster.

Similar debates are raging over whether to reopen the lucrative but disastrous Panguna copper mine on Bougainville Island, as local leaders look for ways to fund their forthcoming independence from Papua New Guinea.

Policymakers must pay attention

To date, Australian policymakers have not considered the risks of huge new mining operations across the Pacific. In part, this is because some of these mines are framed as a key way to tackle climate change, the largest threat to the region.

This has to change. Action on climate change is vital – but the Pacific’s peoples must actually benefit from the mining of their resources. If this mineral rush isn’t done carefully, we could see the profits disappear overseas – and the environmental mess left behind for Pacific nations to deal with.

This challenge comes at a time of heightened geostrategic competition, as China moves into the region seeking influence and raw materials ranging from wood to fish to minerals.

If Australia’s new government is serious about using its sizeable regional influence to tackle climate change in the Pacific, it must ensure it is done justly and fairly. We must focus our policy attentions on the complicated knot of clean energy and intensified mining.

Read more:
More clean energy means more mines – we shouldn’t sacrifice communities in the name of climate action

Nick Bainton received funding for this reseach from the British Academy.

Emilka Skrzypek received funding for this research from the British Academy.

– ref. Pacific nations are extraordinarily rich in critical minerals. But mining them may take a terrible toll – https://theconversation.com/pacific-nations-are-extraordinarily-rich-in-critical-minerals-but-mining-them-may-take-a-terrible-toll-187172

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

The government is now assured it will secure its legislation to enshrine its 43% 2030 emissions reduction target, after Greens leader Adam Bandt pledged his party would support it in both houses.

The government has the numbers on its own in the House of Representatives. In the Senate, it only needs one more vote, apart from the Greens. It expects the vote of ACT crossbencher David Pocock. The bill will be voted on in the lower house this week and will go to the Senate next month.

Bandt’s announcement follows long negotiations with the government. Despite the eventual agreement, the government refused to budge on the minor party’s demand for a ban on new coal and gas mines.

The Greens’ decision came after it took two party room meetings to reach their position. Bandt said it was a “consensus” decision.

The government doesn’t require legislation to implement its policy, but has been anxious to put the target into law to send a strong signal including to prospective investors.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said after Bandt’s announcement that while the legislation wasn’t necessary, it “locks in” progress.

The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry said the announcement “is in Australia’s national interest and will provide certainty for business”.

The opposition formally decided this week to vote against the legislation.

Bandt told the National Press Club that Labor’s refusal to stop new mines was “ultimately untenable”.

He said Labor might not get a United Nations climate summit, which it will be seeking, if it was willing to allow new projects.

“We will pull every lever at our disposal,” to make a ban happen, he said.

“Labor is set to undo parliament’s work by opening new coal and gas projects, unless we stop them,” Bandt said.

“Over the next six to 12 months the battle will be fought on a number of fronts. We will comb the entire budget for any public money, any subsidies, hand outs or concessions going to coal and gas corporations and amend the budget to remove them.

“We will push to ensure the safeguard mechanism safeguards our future by stopping new coal and gas projects. We will push for a climate trigger in our environment laws.

“We will continue to fight individual projects around the country, like Beetaloo, Scarborough and Barossa. I call on all Australians to join this battle. This battle to save our country, our communities and indeed our whole civilisation from the climate and environment crisis.”

Meanwhile, one of the Liberal moderates, Warren Entsch, has given strong support to the Coalition decision to inquire into nuclear power as a potential policy. Entsch told Sky that as coal went out of the system, we had to have “something to back up” renewable alternatives.

Territories legislation sails through lower house

Legislation to allow the ACT and the Northern Territory to make laws on voluntary assisted dying has passed the House of Representatives by 99 to 37.

MPs on both sides had a conscience vote. Leader of the House Tony Burke was among several Labor members to vote against the bill, which overturns a 1997 ban on the territories legislating for euthanasia. Liberal leader Peter Dutton and Nationals leader David Littleproud were both yes votes.

The bill will go to the Senate next month, where it is expected to pass.

Michelle Grattan 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. Government set to legislate its 43% emissions reduction target after Greens announce support – https://theconversation.com/government-set-to-legislate-its-43-emissions-reduction-target-after-greens-announce-support-188153

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

Legislation passed through the House of Representatives last night to wind down the cashless debit card (CDC), which was introduced into the East Kimberley and Ceduna in 2016 and since applied at other trial sites around Australia. The card compulsorily quarantines 80% of social security payments received by working-aged people.

Implementing the CDC has cost more than $170 million.

Yet research shows it does more harm than good to people forced to use it. First Nations organisations, social service organisations, and others have consistently argued against its expansion.

The Albanese government says winding back the CDC will “leave no one behind”. But its legislation leaves more than 23,000 mainly First Nations people in the Northern Territory – as well as people in other parts of the country – on the BasicsCard, a longer-standing compulsory income management scheme run by the Department of Social Services.

Read more:
‘I don’t want anybody to see me using it’: cashless welfare cards do more harm than good

We have known since 2014 that the BasicsCard fails to meet its stated objectives. Research published by the ARC Centre of Excellence for Children and Families over the Life Course found its use correlated with reductions in birth weight, falls in school attendance and other negative impacts on children.

These are significant findings. The research suggests several possible explanations for reduced birth weight, including income management’s potential role in increasing stress on mothers, disrupting financial arrangements within the household and creating confusion about how to access funds.

Strong opposition

Given the government’s talk of respect and reconciliation, it’s hard to know why it would continue a program introduced as part of the Howard government’s racially discriminatory and widely criticised Northern Territory Emergency Response.

When the Morrison government attempted to move people in the Northern Territory from the BasicsCard onto the CDC, First Nations leaders were clear about how damaging the BasicsCard has been, and recommended genuinely voluntary schemes instead.

As shadow minister, Linda Burney supported that position. “Our fundamental principle on the basics card and the cashless debit card [is that] it should be on a voluntary basis,” she said earlier this year, adding:

If people want to be on those sorts of income management, then that’s their decision. It’s not up to Labor or anyone else to tell them what to do. At the moment it’s compulsion and that’s not Labor’s position.

Yet the legislation introduced into the house last week maintains compulsory income management via the BasicsCard, promising only consultation. It leaves the door wide open for continued compulsory income management. As social security minister Amanda Rishworth said in her second reading speech, the bill allows her:

to determine, following further consultation with First Nations people and my colleagues, how the Northern Territory participants on the CDC will transition, and the income management arrangements that will exist.

Policy from above

We have learnt a lot from the CDC, including how government claims that communities can decide about who goes on and off income management are often used to legitimise the continuation of compulsory income management.

Both the CDC and BasicsCard are ideas that were developed and lobbied for by the Australian political and business elite. They never came from the “community”.

The BasicsCard was one of many measures implemented under the Northern Territory Emergency Response, which included the suspension of the Racial Discrimination Act and the use of the Australian Defence Force.

Read more:
What happens when you free unemployed Australians from ‘mutual obligations’ and boost their benefits? We just found out

The CDC, on the other hand, was a key recommendation of mining billionaire Andrew Forrest’s 2014 National Indigenous Jobs and Training Review. Since it was introduced, Forrest and his Minderoo Foundation have advocated for its extension.

The government used much-needed funding for local services as a sweeetener to gain communities’ agreement for the CDC to proceed. In some cases, the threat of funding cuts was used in negotiations. In contrast, proposals from communities themselves for appropriate community- and Aboriginal-controlled services had long been overlooked.

Real consultation?

Governments routinely use “consultation” as a label for what are essentially information sessions, with no alternatives on the table, in an effort to signal broad-based support. In the case of the CDC, calls for the program to be aborted or changed dramatically were long ignored.

Those who were forced onto the BasicsCard as part of the intervention were not offered a consultation process by the Howard government. And now, the Labor government has also failed to embrace their views and opted for a path of more consultation.

If Labor forces people to stay on the BasicsCard, what has it learnt from the CDC? Governments have spent more than $1 billion implementing the two failed compulsory income management schemes, and the new government has implicitly committed to spending more. Imagine what else this money could be going towards.

Elise Klein does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article. She is a member of the Accountable Income Management Network.

– ref. Has Labor learnt from the failure of the cashless debit card? – https://theconversation.com/has-labor-learnt-from-the-failure-of-the-cashless-debit-card-188065

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tony Blakely, Professor of Epidemiology, Population Interventions Unit, Centre for Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, The University of Melbourne

Most health research in Australia is funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), which distributes around $800 million each year through competitive grant schemes. An additional $650 million a year is funded via the Medical Research Future Fund, but this focuses more on big-picture “missions” than researcher-initiated projects.

Ten years ago, around 20% of applications for NHMRC funding were successful. Now, only about 10–15% are approved.

Over the same ten-year period, NHMRC funding has stayed flat while prices and population have increased. In inflation-adjusted and per capita terms, the NHMRC funding available has fallen by 30%.

As growing numbers of researchers compete for dwindling real NHMRC funding, research risks becoming “a high-status gig economy”. To fix it, we need to spend more on research – and we need to spend it smarter.

More funding

To keep pace with other countries, and to keep health research a viable career, Australia first of all needs to increase the total amount of research funding.

Between 2008 and 2010, Australia matched the average among OECD countries of investing 2.2% of GDP in research and development. More recently, Australia’s spending has fallen to 1.8%, while the OECD average has risen to 2.7%.

Read more:
COVID has left Australia’s biomedical research sector gasping for air

When as few as one in ten applications is funded, there is a big element of chance in who succeeds.

Think of it like this: applications are ranked in order from best to worst, and then funded in order from the top down. If a successful application’s ranking is within say five percentage points of the funding cut-off, it might well have missed out if the assessment process were run again – because the process is always somewhat subjective and will never produce exactly the same results twice.

So 5% of the applications are “lucky” to get funding. When only 10% of applications get funding, that means half of the successful ones were lucky. But if there is more money to go around and 20% of applicants are funded, the lucky 5% are only a quarter of the successful applicants.

This is a simplistic explanation, but you can see that the lower the percentage of grants funded, the more of a lottery it becomes.

This increasing element of “luck” is demoralising for the research workforce of Australia, leading to depletion of academics and brain drain.

The ‘application-centric’ model

As well as increasing total funding, we need to look at how the NHMRC allocates these precious funds.

In the past five years, the NHMRC has moved to a system called “application-centric” funding. Five (or so) reviewers are selected for each grant and asked to independently score applications.

There are usually no panels for discussion and scoring of applications – which is what used to happen.

The advantages of application-centric assessment include (hopefully) getting the best experts on a particular grant to assess it, and a less logistically challenging task for the NHMRC (convening panels is hard work and time-consuming).

However, application-centric assessment has disadvantages.

First, assessor reviews are not subject to any scrutiny. In a panel system, differences of opinion and errors can be managed through discussion.

Second, many assessors will be working in a “grey zone”. If you are expert in the area of a proposal, and not already working with the applicants, you are likely to be competing with them for funding. This may result in unconscious bias or even deliberate manipulation of scores.

And third, there is simple “noise”. Imagine each score an assessor gives is made up of two components: the “true score” an application would receive on some unobservable gold standard assessment, plus or minus some “noise” or random error. That noise is probably half or more of the current variation between assessor scores.

Smarter scoring

So how do we reduce the influence of both assessor bias and simple “noise”?

First, assessor scores need to be “standardised” or “normalised”. This means rescaling all assessors’ scores to have the same mean (standardisation) or same mean and standard deviation (normalisation).

Read more:
The NHMRC program grant overhaul: will it change the medical research landscape in Australia?

This is a no-brainer. You can use a pretty simple Excel model (I have done it) to show this would substantially reduce the noise.

Second, the NHMRC could use other statistical tools to reduce both bias and noise.

One method would be to take the average ranking of applications across five methods:

• with the raw scores (i.e. as done now)
• with standardised scores
• with normalised scores
• dropping the lowest score for each application
• dropping the highest score for each application.

The last two “drop one score” methods aim to remove the influence of potentially biased assessors.

The applications that make the cutoff rank on all the methods are funded. Those that are always beneath the threshold are not funded.

Applications that make the cut on some tests but fail on others could be sent out for further scrutiny – or the NHMRC could judge them by their average rank across the five methods.

This proposal won’t fix the problem with the total amount of funding available, but it would make the system fairer and less open to game-playing.

A less noisy and fairer system

Researchers know any funding system contains an element of chance. One study of Australian researchers found they would be happy with a funding system that, if run twice in parallel, would see at least 75% of the funded grants funded in both runs.

I strongly suspect (and have modelled) that the current NHMRC system is achieving well below this 75% repeatability target.

Further improvements to the NHMRC system are possible and needed. Assessors could provide comments, as well as scores, to applicants. Better training for assessors would also help. And the biggest interdisciplinary grants should really be assessed by panels.

No funding system will be perfect. And when funding rates are low, those imperfections stand out more. But, at the moment, we are neither making the system as robust as we can nor sufficiently guarding against wayward scoring that goes under the radar.

Read more:
7 things the Australian Research Council review should tackle, from a researcher’s point of view

Tony Blakely was a member of the Peer Review Advisory Committee of the NHMRC, convened in 2021–22 to advise the NHMRC on improving the peer review process. However, this analysis and recommendations are Tony Blakely’s, not a reflection of the final report of the committee.

– ref. More money and smarter choices: how to fix Australia’s broken NHMRC medical research funding system – https://theconversation.com/more-money-and-smarter-choices-how-to-fix-australias-broken-nhmrc-medical-research-funding-system-188003

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Scott McAlister, Research Fellow, The University of Melbourne

While we think of carbon emissions coming from manufacturing and agriculture, we don’t often think of those arising from health care. In Australia, health care is responsible for 7% of national carbon emissions, while globally, health care is responsible for 4.4% of emissions.

If global health care was a country, it would be the world’s fifth largest emitter. The warming resulting from health-care’s emissions in turn cause harm to human health through heatwaves, wildfires, increased mosquito-borne infectious diseases, and undernutrition due to drought and lower fish stock.

In short, treating patients indirectly causes human harm, at odds with the mission of health-care professionals to increase the duration and quality of patients’ lives.

Read more:
Five ways hospitals can reduce their environmental footprint

What can health care do about its emissions?

Analysis of the UK’s National Health Service’s (NHS) emissions shows nearly 45% of its carbon emissions come from purchasing equipment and medicines, with only 10% coming from the electricity and gas needed to run hospitals and other health services.

We don’t currently have detailed data on Australia’s health sector emissions, but assuming we are similar to the UK, reducing emissions will require changes in how health-care professionals provide care.

There are things health care can start doing today to reduce its emissions, while not harming patients.

Scans

Our latest research has shown one MRI scan has a carbon footprint of 17.5kg CO₂ equivalent, which is the same as driving a car 145km, while one CT scan has a footprint of 9.2kg CO₂ equivalent, or driving 76km.

These are significantly higher than X-rays (0.76kg CO₂ equivalent, 6km) and ultrasound (0.53kg CO₂ equivalent, 4km).

While imaging is important in providing information to doctors in many circumstances, it is often unnecessary. For example, studies have shown 36-40% of imaging for lower back pain, and 34-62% of CT scans for lung blood clots are unnecessary. These scans were assessed as unnecessary because they were given to patients who didn’t need them according to evidence-based guidelines or decision rules. Such scans offer little or no benefit to patients, may result in harm, and waste resources.

There are also opportunities to use low-carbon scans instead of high-carbon, such as using ultrasound rather than MRI for shoulder scans.

Other research we have performed has shown the impact of blood tests is between 49-116g CO₂ equivalent per test. While individually small, more than 70 million blood tests are performed annually in Australia. Like imaging, studies have shown 12-44% of blood tests are unnecessary.

Some specific tests are ordered unnecessarily at even higher rates. For example, it’s estimated over 75% of Vitamin D blood tests in Australia are unnecessary, with this costing Medicare more than $80 million annually.

Read more:
Health care has a huge environmental footprint, which then harms health. This is a matter of ethics

Gases

Around 5% of the UK’s healthcare emissions come from anaesthetic gases and metered dose inhalers, commonly called puffers, used for the treatment of asthma.

Anaesthetists can use the clinically equivalent anaesthetic gas sevoflurane (144kg CO₂ equivalent per kilogram) instead of desflurane (2,540kg CO₂ equivalent per kilogram).

Nitrous oxide or laughing gas (265kg CO₂ equivalent) can be excluded from general anaesthesia without harm, and there are calls for a reduction in its use as acute pain relief for childbirth due to its high levels of emissions.

Midwives, however, have cautioned mothers should not be be made to feel guilty about their pain relief choices, and suggested hospitals could introduce nitrous destruction systems to allow its ongoing use.

Metered dose inhalers contain hydrofluorocarbons, which are potent greenhouse gases. A patient using a preventer and a bronchodilator to stop wheezing can be safely moved from using metered dose inhaler delivery to the same drugs, delivered using a dry-powder inhaler in most cases.

This shift reduces their annual carbon footprint from 439kg to 17kg CO₂ equivalent. Importantly, it can be achieved without changing health outcomes for patients, as can be seen with 90% of inhalers in Scandinavian countries now being dry-powder, with no change in respiratory outcomes.

Read more:
Climate mitigation – the greatest public health opportunity of our time

Getting health care to net-zero

These are only a few examples of how health care can reduce its emissions while not compromising patient safety or quality of care – either by moving from high carbon to low carbon alternatives, or by reducing unnecessary testing or treatments.

The Australian Medical Association and Doctors for the Environment have called for Australian healthcare to be net-zero by 2040, with an interim emission target of an 80% reduction by 2030.

This can be achieved, but will require both ongoing education of current and future health-care professionals about low-carbon care, and targeted commitments by individual health-care organisations, and federal and state health departments.

Scott McAlister receives funding from the NHMRC.

Alexandra Barratt receives funding from NHMRC and is a member of the NSW Greens.

– ref. Health care is responsible for 7% of our carbon emissions, and there are safe and easy ways this can be reduced – https://theconversation.com/health-care-is-responsible-for-7-of-our-carbon-emissions-and-there-are-safe-and-easy-ways-this-can-be-reduced-184170

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Neil Brewer, Matthew Flinders Distinguished Emeritus Professor of Psychology, Flinders University

Difficulties with social communication and interaction are considered core features of autism. There is a common perception autistic individuals are poor at recognising others’ emotions and have little insight into how effectively they do so.

We are used to seeing these challenges portrayed in popular culture, such as television shows The Good Doctor, Atypical or Love on the Spectrum. And there are exercises and therapies autistic people might do with a psychologist or speech pathologist to try to help them improve at this important social skill.

Yet, the research findings are messy. Some studies have very small sample sizes, others do not control for cognitive ability. Some studies only show participants a limited range of emotions to respond to. Some rely heavily on static images of face expressions or only require multiple-choice responses. Studies designed this way don’t capture the dynamic demands of everyday social interactions.

Our new research sought to overcome these challenges and found little difference between the ability of adults with autism and those without to recognise emotions in others.

Read more:
150 years ago, Charles Darwin wrote about how expressions evolved – pre-empting modern psychology by a century

Two matched groups

For our research, conducted by then doctoral student Dr Marie Georgopoulos, myself, Professor Robyn Young and post-doctoral researcher Dr Carmen Lucas, we studied a relatively large sample of 67 IQ-matched autistic and 67 non-autistic adult participants. We presented them with multiple examples of 12 different face emotion types captured not only in still photographs but also videoed in the context of social interactions. Participants were then able to give open-ended reports of the emotions they saw.

Several key findings emerged. First, emotion type, the way in which the stimuli were presented and the format for providing responses all affected accuracy and speed of emotion recognition. But those variations didn’t affect the differences between autistic and non-autistic groups’ responses.

Second, although emotion recognition accuracy was a little lower for the autistic group, there was substantial overlap in ability between the two groups. Just a small subgroup of the autistic participants performed below the level of the non-autistic group.

Third, the autistic participants responded more slowly, but again there was considerable overlap between the two groups. Although slower responses to others’ emotions might impede social interactions, our study suggests autistic individuals were probably just acting more cautiously in the laboratory setting.

We found there was no evidence that, as a group, autistic individuals were less aware of strengths and weaknesses in their emotion recognition skills than their non-autistic peers. But again, the awareness of individuals within in each group varied substantially.

Read more:
Autism is still underdiagnosed in girls and women. That can compound the challenges they face

Challenging beliefs

These findings challenge some common perceptions about autistic adults’ ability to recognise others’ emotions and their insight into their processing of emotions. The findings also demonstrate previously unacknowledged capabilities of many autistic individuals and remind us that autistic adults are not all the same.

That said, there are many unanswered questions. A full understanding of emotion processing by autistic individuals will require the incorporation of many more elements in future research.

For example, it is possible our findings underestimate autistic individuals’ difficulties with processing emotions. These difficulties might only emerge in the hurly-burly of real-life interactions with others.

So, we will need to develop more sophisticated research methods that still allow us to conduct carefully controlled studies. These studies would seek to accommodate the complexities of everyday interpersonal interactions that not only require processing of faces, but also gestures and voice tone or emphasis at the same time.

Read more:
Kids on the autism spectrum experience more bullying. Schools can do something about it

The impact of autism

Future research will also need a greater focus on how autistic individuals respond to others’ emotions. Perhaps they can recognise emotions but respond in ways that might compromise the effectiveness of their social exchanges?

We have conducted further research to explore autistic and non-autistic adults’ perceptions of the appropriate ways to respond to different emotions displayed by others. This is but one dimension of what is often referred to as “empathic responding” – knowing what might be considered an appropriate reaction when confronted with another individual who is, for example, sad, angry, or frustrated. However, sensing what an appropriate response is then carrying out that action, or even being motivated to do so, don’t necessarily go hand-in-hand.

Answers to questions like these will be critical for refining interventions and therapies designed to improve social interaction skills in autistic people. Identifying the most important focus for intervention, the most effective procedures and the developmental stages at which such interventions should be implemented, are all important areas for ongoing research.

Neil Brewer receives funding from Australian Research Council

– ref. Most adults with autism can recognise facial emotions, almost as well as those without the condition – https://theconversation.com/most-adults-with-autism-can-recognise-facial-emotions-almost-as-well-as-those-without-the-condition-187995

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Justine Nolan, Professor of Law and Justice and Director of the Australian Human Rights Institute, UNSW Sydney

The question of how to restore integrity to public institutions is on the minds of many government officials right now, both on the local and international stage.

Handpicked political appointments to public institutions in Australia, such as the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT), the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC), and most recently the selection of John Barilaro for the NSW government’s New York-based trade commissioner, have come under fire. Critics say theses appointments compromise the perception of the bodies’ independence and reduce public confidence in the ability of the appointees to perform their roles.

Read more:
View from The Hill: The challenge of ‘grey’ corruption and creating a culture of integrity

‘Jobs to mates’

Giving “jobs to mates” is an age-old political concept, if one that rarely benefits an institution or those under its protection. A recent report from the Grattan Institute highlighted the often poor performance of political appointees, noting that almost a quarter of the political appointees at the AAT failed to meet their performance targets.

This might sound like a procedural issue, but the AAT is a public institution that conducts reviews of Commonwealth law and makes decisions that affect our daily lives. Don’t we want experts making these decisions rather than someone who has made a huge donation or is politically connected to the government that appointed them?

Read more:
Here’s a simple way to stop governments giving jobs to mates

Politicising public appointments promotes distrust, can compromise performance, and encourages a corrupt culture that prioritises mateship over merit.

Global relevance

On the global stage, the same concerns arise. Respected institutions such as the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) are coming under pressure from NGOs and human rights practitioners to appoint experts, not political mates, to restore credibility to the world’s most prominent human rights organisation.

At the UN, the process has recently begun to appoint the next United Nations Human Rights Commissioner – the world’s most senior human rights figure. The vacancy was caused by the unexpected resignation of current commissioner, Michelle Bachelet following her controversial May 2022 visit to China.

On that trip, she was accused of being a pawn in the Chinese government’s efforts to downplay the human rights crisis in Xinjiang and their persecution of the Uyghur population. Her visit was widely critiqued as severely damaging to the credibility of the UN human rights office.

Too often the human rights commissioner role is filled by political appointees, rewarding diplomats or government staff. The recent pressure by human rights organisations calls for the post to be filled by “someone of high moral standing and personal integrity, and who is independent and impartial and possesses competency and expertise in the field of human rights”. where is this quote from? Please linklink text

In other words, these groups want a commissioner who is able to improve the UN’s human rights arm’s credibility.

The way forward

Last week, Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus introduced a bill in parliament that would require senior leadership appointments at the AHRC to be publicly advertised, merit-based, and limited to a maximum of seven years. One may have assumed such efforts at transparency were already in place, but no.

Many recent appointments have been made without an open, merit-based process. These include the 2021 selection of Lorraine Finlay by the Morrison government as Human Rights Commissioner, the 2019 selection of Ben Gauntlett as the Disability Discrimination Commissioner, and the 2013 appointment of Tim Wilson as Human Rights Commissioner.

Read more:
Australia’s ‘A’ rating on human rights is under threat with a handpicked, politically engineered commissioner

This bill is a welcome and essential step towards restoring the AHRC’s credibility and that of other public institutions. However, an open process that promotes transparent, merit-based selection across all political institutions is also necessary to improve public faith.

As the Albanese government considers creating a national integrity commission, it should also establish a transparent, standardised process for overseeing public appointments, including establishing a national public appointments commissioner.

One of the greatest challenges for governments and the public institutions they create is often not the process of lawmaking but implementation of those laws. This makes integrity and transparency in public appointments vital. Without them, these bodies operate much less independently and are less likely to put the interests of the public first.

Justine Nolan 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. The fix is in: how to restore public faith in government appointments – https://theconversation.com/the-fix-is-in-how-to-restore-public-faith-in-government-appointments-187991

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andy Marks, Pro Vice-Chancellor, Strategy, Government and Alliances, Western Sydney University

Clear air is essential ahead of an election. Space to make the case to voters. Room to build positive momentum. And yet, hurtling towards a poll in March 2023, the NSW Liberal-National government is gasping for breath.

Questions over the relinquished New York trade office appointment of former NSW Nationals leader John Barilaro have sucked substantial oxygen from premier Dominic Perrottet’s efforts to renew a 12-year-old administration.

With further revelations likely in upcoming parliamentary hearings and the findings of an independent internal inquiry pending, these issue are far from resolved. The frustration within senior Coalition ranks is palpable. It wasn’t meant to be this way.

Determined to avoid the fate of their federal colleagues, Perrottet and Treasurer Matt Kean set out a comparatively progressive reform agenda in the June state budget.

A big focus on the environment, clean energy, targeted cost-of-living relief and $16.5 billion in programs for women saw the economic blueprint labelled “Australia’s first teal budget”. Clear air abounded.

A shift in the vibe

For a moment, a government wounded less than a year earlier by the loss of a relatively popular leader amid a corruption inquiry looked to have achieved a remarkable turnaround. Even the “it’s not illegal” attitude to pork-barrelling seemed to have been eschewed in favour of participatory funding programs like WestInvest.

A spirit of cooperation was emerging. The premier’s push for federal–state health reform with his Victorian counterpart, Daniel Andrews, added to the perception this was a government capable of embracing a political “vibe shift” and rising above party lines for the greater good.

Other signs of maturity were evident in a shift away from the infrastructure boasts in the run-up to past campaigns. On budget night, the treasurer declared:

We must invest in more than just bricks and steel. We must choose to invest in our greatest asset – our people.

With a fresh and notably “constructive” Labor opposition leader in Chris Minns, NSW voters looked set for a contest-of-ideas election rather than the usual partisan arms race. Both parties, it seemed, had understood and adopted the new politics championed federally by the teals. Yet the Coalition is still struggling to convince onlookers it can meet one of the most critical expectations: integrity.

Across the aisle

NSW Labor is not immune. As news broke of the New York appointment, three former Labor parliamentarians were charged with “misconduct in public office”. More than a decade on the opposition benches has proved a steep learning curve for Labor. The Coalition, on the other hand, appears set for some hard learnings of its own.

The federal election result showed how closely voters watch matters of political integrity. It illustrated too that the harshest judgements are being exercised in the safest of Coalition seats. The teal wave crashed in the areas where incumbency was viewed by some commentators as a right rather than a privilege.

Whether the premier can again find the clear air he so sorely needs remains to be seen. Factional loyalties – in the party former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull once declared to be factionless – will be tested. Perrottet may have won the top job with overwhelming party endorsement, but it will only take the drift of one or two key allegiances to undermine his position.

The risk is twofold for the premier. Federal-style disaffection among rusted-on Coalition voters is one thing. Percentage drift in key marginal electorates is another.

The sharp end

In Western Sydney alone, three Liberal-held seats are in play. East Hills and Holsworthy in the southwest intersect with large areas that endured hard lockdown during the worst of the pandemic. There is disquiet. Wendy Lindsay, who holds East hills by a two-party-preferred margin of just 0.5 percentage points, was among a clutch of Coalition MPs reportedly opposing the mandatory vaccination of construction workers from hotspot areas.

In neighbouring Holsworthy, Liberal MP Melanie Gibbons, who made a thwarted bid for preselection in the nearby federal seat of Hughes, announced she would resign at the next election. Labor will undoubtedly marshal significant resources to win back a former heartland area on a 3.3 point margin.

The sharpest challenge for the Coalition might just prove to be the third of those marginal electorates, Penrith. Held by Deputy Premier Stuart Ayres, this outer-western Sydney seat on a margin of 1.5 points is an anchor for the Liberals in Australia’s fastest-growing region, for which Ayres also has ministerial responsibility.

Read more:
NSW has joined China, South Korea and Japan as climate leaders. Now it’s time for the rest of Australia to follow

In his additional role as the trade minister, Ayres has been drawn into scrutiny over the New York appointment. He insists he maintained “arm’s length” distance throughout the process, a position he believes the inquiry will confirm.

However, in the scramble for political clear air, perception often trumps reality. Regardless of the findings of the upper house and internal inquiries, and irrespective of the reset the premier is seeking, the question of integrity is ultimately one that will be answered by voters.

Andy Marks 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. NSW government slides further into trouble as Perrottet struggles for clear air – https://theconversation.com/nsw-government-slides-further-into-trouble-as-perrottet-struggles-for-clear-air-188018

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Laura Herraiz Borreguero, Physical oceanographer, CSIRO

Warmer waters are flowing towards the East Antarctic ice sheet, according to our alarming new research which reveals a potential new driver of global sea-level rise.

The research, published today in Nature Climate Change, shows changing water circulation in the Southern Ocean may be compromising the stability of the East Antarctic ice sheet. The ice sheet, about the size of the United States, is the largest in the world.

The changes in water circulation are caused by shifts in wind patterns, and linked to factors including climate change. The resulting warmer waters and sea-level rise may damage marine life and threaten human coastal settlements.

Our findings underscore the urgency of limiting global warming to below 1.5℃, to avert the most catastrophic climate harms.

Ice sheets and climate change

Ice sheets comprise glacial ice that has accumulated from precipitation over land. Where the sheets extend from the land and float on the ocean, they are known as ice shelves.

It’s well known that the West Antarctic ice sheet is melting and contributing to sea-level rise. But until now, far less was known about its counterpart in the east.

Our research focused offshore a region known as the Aurora Subglacial Basin in the Indian Ocean. This area of frozen sea ice forms part of the East Antarctic ice sheet.

How this basin will respond to climate change is one of the largest uncertainties in projections of sea-level rise this century. If the basin melted fully, global sea levels would rise by 5.1 metres.

Much of the basin is below sea level, making it particularly sensitive to ocean melting. That’s because deep seawater requires lower temperatures to freeze than shallower seawater.

What we found

We examined 90 years of oceanographic observations off the Aurora Subglacial Basin. We found unequivocal ocean warming at a rate of up to 2℃ to 3℃ since the earlier half of the 20th century. This equates to 0.1℃ to 0.4℃ per decade.

The warming trend has tripled since the 1990s, reaching a rate of 0.3℃ to 0.9℃ each decade.

So how is this warming linked to climate change? The answer relates to a belt of strong westerly winds over the Southern Ocean. Since the 1960s, these winds have been moving south towards Antarctica during years when the Southern Annular Mode, a climate driver, is in a positive phase.

The phenomenon has been partly attributed to increasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. As a result, westerly winds are moving closer to Antarctica in summer, bringing warm water with them.

The East Antarctic ice sheet was once thought to be relatively stable and sheltered from warming oceans. That’s in part because it’s surrounded by very cold water known as “dense shelf water”.

Part of our research focused on the Vanderford Glacier in East Antarctica. There, we observed the warm water replacing the colder dense shelf water.

The movement of warm waters towards East Antarctica is expected to worsen throughout the 21st century, further threatening the ice sheet’s stability.

Read more:
Melting moments: a look under East Antarctica’s biggest glacier

Why this matters to marine life

Previous work on the effects of climate change in the East Antarctic has generally assumed that warming first occurs in the ocean’s surface layers. Our findings – that deeper water is warming first – suggests a need to re-think potential impacts on marine life.

Robust assessment work is required, including investment in monitoring and modelling that can link physical change to complex ecosystem responses. This should include the possible effects of very rapid change, known as tipping points, that may mean the ocean changes far more rapidly than marine life can adapt.

East Antarctic marine ecosystems are likely to be highly vulnerable to warming waters. Antarctic krill, for example, breed by sinking eggs to deep ocean depths. Warming of deeper waters may affect the development of eggs and larvae. This in turn would affect krill populations and dependent predators such as penguins, seals and whales.

Limiting global warming below 1.5℃

We hope our results will inspire global efforts to limit global warming below 1.5℃. To achieve this, global greenhouse gas emissions need to fall by around 43% by 2030 and to near zero by 2050.

Warming above 1.5℃. greatly increases the risk of destabilising the Antarctic ice sheet, leading to substantial sea-level rise.

But staying below 1.5℃ would keep sea-level rise to no more than an additional 0.5 metres by 2100. This would enable greater opportunities for people and ecosystems to adapt.

Read more:
Ice world: Antarctica’s riskiest glacier is under assault from below and losing its grip

Laura Herraiz Borreguero received funding from the European Research Council Horizon 2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship, through grant number 661015, and the Centre for Southern Hemisphere Oceans Research (CSHOR, Hobart, Australia); She receives funding from the Australian government through CSIRO and the Australian Antarctic Partnership Program (AAPP). She is affiliated with CSIRO, the AAPP.

Alberto Naveira Garabato received funding from the Royal Society through a Wolfson Research Merit Award.

Jess Melbourne-Thomas receives funding from the Climate Systems Hub of the Australian Government’s National Environmental Science Program, the Fisheries Research and Development Corporation and The Pew Charitable Trusts.

– ref. Troubling new research shows warm waters rushing towards the world’s biggest ice sheet in Antarctica – https://theconversation.com/troubling-new-research-shows-warm-waters-rushing-towards-the-worlds-biggest-ice-sheet-in-antarctica-187483

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brendon Hyndman, Associate Dean (Research) & Associate Professor of Education (Personal Development, Health & Physical Education), Charles Sturt University

As enrolments climb and urban spaces become more crowded, some Australian schools have been left with less play space per student than a prison cell.

Standard prison cell guidelines recommend at least 7.5 square metres per prisoner. One Sydney school reportedly has just 1.14 square metres of play space per student.

As experts in health and physical education, we are deeply concerned by reports students are running out of play space.

Why is this a problem? And what options do parents and teachers have to keep young people happy and healthy?

Space at a premium

Australian student numbers are predicated to increase by 17% over the decade to 2026, creating a need for hundreds of new, mostly metropolitan schools and new classrooms in areas previously set aside for play.

With only small blocks available for some inner-city school sites, “vertical” schools have been established in most Australian states. More vertical schools are planned, even at the primary level.

Vertical schools can provide some space for climbing, indoor running and ball sports, as well as outdoor areas such as rooftops.

But a lack of space and a reliance on lifts rather than stairs does not help keep kids active or provide much opportunity to engage with nature.

Australian kids have alarmingly low physical activity levels. Making sure students get the activity they need is vital for them to grow up fit and healthy.

How much space do kids need?

Australian guidelines on free play space – school areas other than buildings, footpaths and car parks – suggest a minimum of ten square metres per student.

However, Australian researchers have recommended school spaces should ideally be increased to 25 square metres per student, combined with access to portable play equipment such as balls, bats and blocks.

Read more:
How to get your kid to eat breakfast before school – and yes, it’s OK to have dinner leftovers or a sandwich

Even more space can have extra benefits. Two studies in Europe showed when more than 15 square metres per student was available, primary school children were much more physically active than those with less than eight square metres.

A study in the United Kingdom found that as play spaces per child increased, so did more vigorous physical activity. Smaller play spaces can result in crowded play, clashes and reduced movement.

8 ways to keep kids active in small spaces

Children need space to discover, take calculated movement risks and extend themselves physically. Here are eight ideas to keep young people active in confined spaces.

These can be adapted to the home, classrooms, gymnasiums and outdoor areas, whatever the weather.

1. Move to a theme

Give kids a body movement theme, such as “stand as tall or as wide was possible”.

Students then move in a variety of ways to match the theme – widening or narrowing their body, twisting, turning, bending, stretching, balancing, rolling and transferring body weight.

2. Use activity ‘zones’

Use task cards to create zones and stations in small spaces where small groups of students can do different activities such as push-ups or skipping. Cards can illustrate ways to undertake the activities at different levels – from easy to medium and difficult.

Sport Australia’s Playing for Life cards allow teachers and parents to match activities to children’s ages.

3. Move to music

Dance offers a wide variety of activities and sequences of movements that can be done in a small space.

Along with making up their own dances, students can perform movements that suggest words for others to guess. Another option is regular one-minute bursts of movement with music throughout the day.

4. Set up obstacle courses

Get students to make up obstacle courses. Not only is this an exercise in problem-solving, it can also increase their motivation around physical education.

5. Use nearby parks and facilities

Many young people do not use their closest park. But public spaces can be a valuable resource for physical education and engagement with the community.

6. Play co-operative games

Develop co-operative movement challenges. These ask groups to work together in a small space, developing not just gross motor skills, but team work and problem-solving. An example is throwing a scarf in the air that both partners need to catch, gradually increasing the distance apart.

7. Adapt the space

Use colours, lines and patterns within spaces as guides for students to follow, aim towards and jump on during movement activities.

It’s also a useful way to break up the space into zones for different activities, and even target games such as bowling and beanbag bocce.

8. Look beyond PE

Beyond physical education school subjects there are other opportunities to be active. This even includes traditional subjects like maths and English, which can be adapted to use movement-based activities.

Read more:
Richer schools’ students run faster: how the inequality in sport flows through to health

The authors 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. School playgrounds are getting squeezed: here are 8 ways to keep students active in small spaces – https://theconversation.com/school-playgrounds-are-getting-squeezed-here-are-8-ways-to-keep-students-active-in-small-spaces-185760

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

As well as her interviews with politicians and experts, Politics with Michelle Grattan includes “Word from The Hill”, where she discusses the news with members of The Conversation politics team.

In this podcast, politics editor Amanda Dunn and Michelle canvass Tuesday’s decision by the Reserve Bank to raise the cash rate again, by 50 basis points to 1.85%.

They also talk about Peter Dutton’s announcement that the opposition will inquire into nuclear power, in a contentious decision as it looks to crafting an energy policy for the next election. Most immediately, the Coalition will vote against the government’s legislation for its 43% 2030 emissions reduction target. The vote in the House of Representatives will be this week.

Meanwhile, after Anthony Albanese’s weekend Garma speech, attention this week also turned to the proposed referendum to put into the constitution an Indigenous “Voice” to parliament.

Michelle Grattan 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. Word from The Hill: Peter Dutton puts nuclear power on opposition’s agenda – https://theconversation.com/word-from-the-hill-peter-dutton-puts-nuclear-power-on-oppositions-agenda-188076