Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bhiamie Williamson, Research Associate & PhD Candidate, Australian National University

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this article contains names and images of deceased people. Archie Roach’s family have given permission for his name and image to be shared.

I am not sure of the first time I heard Archie Roach’s music.

Like most Aboriginal people born during or after the 1980s, we grew up listening to the person we affectionately called Uncle Archie. But there was one song that spoke to me from the first moment I heard it: From Paradise.

The song tells the story of a young girl who was taken away from her Country, the river lands, part of the stolen generations.

While his songs will play loud and long into the future, beneath his music Uncle Archie gave us something else, something deeply profound but mostly invisible.

He gave us – and all of Australia – an image of an Aboriginal man, tender and humble. An image long denied us.

Read more:
Creating a constitutional Voice – the words that could change Australia

Our greatest storyteller

The passing of Archie Roach has hit us – Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people – like the first crack of thunder after dark clouds descend.

You know it’s coming, but it shocks you still.

Uncle Archie gave voice, a story, to the experiences of so many of our people. His song Took the Children Away gave shape to a suffering so deep and profound. “This story’s right, this story’s true,” he sang.

These cathartic melodies continue to offer us healing.

His catalogue of music spans distances and experiences difficult to grasp.
Uncle Archie’s gift was to write and bring to life through the strum of his guitar, the stories so familiar to us all.

His success took our stories to the nation, and the world.

To describe him simply as a musician fails to recognise him as a messenger.
His music reaches through darkness like the beam of a lighthouse, offering guidance and safe harbour in times of despair.

Through his life and love of music, Uncle Archie became our greatest storyteller.

The father and mentor

The music of Uncle Archie came from a place of suffering. Taken away as a child, being homeless, a drunk, locked up, learning of the death of family through whispers and letters, grief was his constant companion.

Through this time, he found Ruby Hunter. They would have two sons, Amos and Eban. Uncle Archie and Aunty Ruby, with their kids, shared a life of love, laughter and song. My personal favourite song, Down City Streets, was written by Aunty Ruby.

Uncle Archie has supported hundreds of young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists and inspired countless more through his foundation.

For decades Uncle Archie worked in youth detention centres, talking with young people who found themselves in hardship. He offered guidance and mentorship to young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island people, illuminating a road through the difficulties of life, often the result of colonisation and racism.

He carefully navigated these spaces, acknowledging that while many young Aboriginal people, and especially boys, are born into a world that has been built to suppress them, they possess an inner strength stemming from culture and community.

Read more:
Tell Me Why review: Archie Roach’s pain is the pain of all of us

Emu Man

Through his life, his dedication to Aunty Ruby, his devotion to his sons, his work with disengaged youth and his profound love for his people, Uncle Archie gave the nation an image of an Aboriginal man seldom found in the national psyche.

Images of the violent abuser, the drunk, the criminal, the absent father, or a combination of these, saturate our print media and television news bulletins. Even positive representations of Aboriginal men – the warrior, the sports star – exudes a sense of toughness and candour.

Rare, almost unheard of, are the stories of Aboriginal men as sensitive, soft, loving and vulnerable people.

Yet it is these qualities my research has revealed are most valued by our people.

The notion of “Emu Men” has emerged throughout my PhD.

Male emus are the primary carer for their chicks. The male partner will sit on the nest and the father rears the babies.

This notion of manhood and fatherhood – someone dedicated to his family, who has a primary responsibility to ensure the safety of his children and their passage through the world – appears to be deeply entwined in many of our peoples’ customs and cultures.

In Uncle Archie, we find the most profound sense of this alternate masculinity.

His songs will live on forever. But he also gifted us this alternate image of an Aboriginal man: someone soft, tender, loving, vulnerable, generous, resilient. Someone profoundly strong and with an inner wisdom, who sat on his nest and looked after his family and young people experiencing hardship.

It will take time to come to terms with this loss.

To his family we offer our hearts and hold you in our spirit.

This great songman gave our people a voice and a way to understand what has happened to us. He gave so much to a nation that treated him so badly.

As for me, like many others, Uncle Archie’s music and concerts has offered companionship through major life events. My wife and I danced to Love in the Morning on our wedding day.

And as for From Paradise, from the first moment I heard this song I thought he wrote it about my grandmother who was taken away and sent to Palm Island.

It is difficult to put words to this loss – Uncle Archie was always the one with the words.

Thank you for everything Uncle. May you soar with the eagles.

Aunty Ruby be happy to see you.

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

Bhiamie Williamson 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. Archie Roach: the great songman, tender and humble, who gave our people a voice – https://theconversation.com/archie-roach-the-great-songman-tender-and-humble-who-gave-our-people-a-voice-187974

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anne Twomey, Professor of Constitutional Law, University of Sydney

Ideas are powerful, but when it comes to a constitutional amendment, they need to be put into words before they can be debated seriously.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has finally given us the first draft words for a constitutional amendment on an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice to Parliament. They are as follows:

1. There shall be a body, to be called the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice.
2. The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice may make representations to Parliament and the Executive Government on matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples.
3. The Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws with respect to the composition, functions, powers and procedures of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice.

It is a simple and elegant proposal, which demands little but offers much.

Read more:
Albanese releases draft wording for Indigenous ‘Voice to parliament’ referendum

What would the amendment do?

The only requirement of this amendment is that such a body exist. It leaves to parliament all the decisions about how it is comprised and operates. This balances stability and flexibility.

The constitutional demand that the body exists ensures it cannot be cancelled at the whim of a future government, or left to die of neglect. If the Australian people, in a referendum, have demanded the continuing existence of a Voice, this puts serious pressure on both the government and Indigenous Australians to make it work productively.

But if, over time, it ceases to work well, parliament has been given the flexibility to change the composition of the Voice and how it operates, so that it can properly fulfil the role voters intended for it. This avoids the problem of becoming stuck with a dysfunctional body and ensures the democratically elected body, parliament, has full power to make necessary changes.

The role of the Voice will be to make representations to parliament and the government about matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. The intention is to ensure parliament and the government are better informed when they make decisions.

There are two main aims of this proposed amendment.

1. Constitutional recognition

The first is constitutional recognition of Australia’s Indigenous peoples. They are not currently mentioned at all in the Commonwealth Constitution. Many politicians, including John Howard and Tony Abbott, have proposed that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples be recognised in the Constitution. But recognition can take different forms.

The type of recognition proposed in this current amendment goes beyond just words on a page. It is no mere formulaic opening recitation.

True recognition involves giving another person enough respect to stop and hear their voice. This proposed amendment provides real recognition in daily life by ensuring Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have a voice, and can be heard about laws and policies that are likely to affect them.

2. Practical change

The second aim is to achieve practical change. It is well known that Aboriginal policies and laws have been far from successful in the past. This is unsurprising, since those who make laws and policies in Canberra are largely removed from the impact they have on the ground.

With the best will in the world, it is impossible truly to understand the issues affecting a person’s life without walking in their shoes. Giving the people who have walked in those shoes a voice to inform governments about the likely effect of proposed laws and policies, and suggest how they might be altered to be more successful, will hopefully lead to better practical outcomes.

The question

The prime minister has also identified some proposed wording for the question to be asked in a referendum. Its wording is a little unusual.

Section 128 of the Constitution requires a referendum to change the Constitution, and says that it is passed when a majority of electors overall and a majority of electors in a majority of states “approve the proposed law”.

So the question needs to be formed in such a way that voters are approving the “proposed law” to change the Constitution – not approving an idea, a principle or the creation of a new body.

Under the current law, a referendum ballot paper sets out the long title of that proposed law to alter the Constitution, and then asks “Do you approve this proposed alteration?”. A box is then provided for the voter to write either “Yes” or “No”.

For example, the ballot could say:

A PROPOSED LAW: To alter the Constitution to establish an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice. Do you approve of this proposed alteration?

In his Garma speech, the prime minister stated the question would be:

Do you support an alteration to the Constitution that establishes an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice?

While that question is clearer, it does not comply with the current law, which presumably the government proposes to amend. But the government would need to make it clear on the ballot paper that the voter was approving the proposed law, because this is what is required by the Constitution.

There is also a lack of clarity about whether the constitutional change would actually “establish” the Voice, given that legislation would first need to be enacted to determine how it is comprised and to establish the mechanism for choosing its members.

However, these are small matters that will no doubt be worked through in the ensuing debate.

Read more:
Non-Indigenous Australians shouldn’t fear a First Nations Voice to Parliament

Consultation and education

Now that draft wording is available, the proposed amendment can be discussed with greater authority and clarity. Suggestions of a “third house of parliament” and other exaggerations can be readily dismissed.

Wisely, the government has shown itself open to adjusting the wording if necessary. The next stage in the process is one of consultation and education, so the Australian people can feel confident they are well-informed when they come to vote in any future referendum.

Anne Twomey has previously received funding from the Australian Research Council and occasionally does consultancy work for governments, parliaments and inter-governmental bodies. She has provided various draft amendments on Indigenous constitutional recognition for different bodies that have sought her assistance.

– ref. Creating a constitutional Voice – the words that could change Australia – https://theconversation.com/creating-a-constitutional-voice-the-words-that-could-change-australia-187972

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

Anthony Albanese will propose draft wording to insert into the constitution an Indigenous “Voice” to parliament when he addresses the Garma Festival in Arnhem Land on Saturday.

The Prime Minister is also releasing a draft of the question that would be put to the people at the referendum for the change.

The new provision in the constitution would have three sentences:

There shall be a body, to be called the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice

The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice may make representations to Parliament and the Executive government on matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples

The Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws with respect to the composition, functions, powers and procedures of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice.

In his speech, released ahead of delivery, Albanese says this might not be the final form of words but it is the next step in the discussion.

His draft referendum question would ask: “Do you support an alteration to the Constitution that establishes an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice?”

To pass, a referendum needs to win both an overall majority of votes as well as majorities in a majority of states. There have been 44 proposals for constitutional change put in 19 referendums with only eight changes passing.

Although Albanese has been anxious for the referendum to be held next year, he talks in his speech only of having it in the current parliamentary term.

“I believe the country is ready for this reform,” he says. “I believe there is room in Australian hearts for the [Uluru] Statement from the Heart.”

“We are seeking a momentous change – but it is also a very simple one.”

“It is not a matter of special treatment, or preferential power. It’s about consulting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples on the decisions that affect you. This is simple courtesy, it is common decency.”

Albanese says that putting a Voice into the constitution “means a willingness to listen won’t depend on who is in government or who is prime minister”. Such a Voice “cannot be silenced”.

“The Voice will exist and endure outside of the ups and downs of election cycles and the weakness of short-term politics.

“It will be an unflinching source of advice and accountability.”

It would not be a “third chamber” but “a body with the perspective and the power and the platform to tell the government and the parliament the truth about what is working and what is not”.

Albanese says the “best way to seize the momentum” is to settle on the proposed referendum question as soon as possible.

“I ask all Australians of goodwill to engage on this,” Albanese says.

“Respectfully, purposefully we are seeking to secure support for the question and the associated provisions in time for a successful referendum, in this term of parliament.

“This is a reform I believe every Australian can embrace, from all walks of life, in every part of the country, from every faith and background and tradition.

“Because it speaks to values we all share and honour – fairness, respect, decency.”

Albanese says while there may be fear campaigns to counter, perhaps the greatest threat to success is indifference – the notion this is symbolism without practical benefit, or that advocating for a Voice is at the expense of expanding economic opportunity or improving conditions.

“Let us all understand: Australia does not have to choose between improving peoples’ lives and amending the constitution. We can do both – and we have to.”

Issues of life expectancy, incarceration, disease and other problems would get worse if “governments simply continue to insist they know better”.

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. Albanese releases draft wording for Indigenous ‘Voice to parliament’ referendum – https://theconversation.com/albanese-releases-draft-wording-for-indigenous-voice-to-parliament-referendum-187933

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gina Louise Hawkes, Research associate, University of Wollongong

This week, seven NRL players boycotted a potentially crucial season game over their club’s introduction of a “pride” jersey celebrating inclusivity and the LGBTQIA+ community.

Six of these players are of Pacific Island heritage. There has been much discussion of the players’ culture and religion in the aftermath of the bungled jersey release. But as Fijian scholar Jioji Ravulo has argued, homophobia is not “part of” Pasifika cultures, but rather part of ongoing colonial legacies.

I have previously conducted research on how “masculine” sports such as rugby league were used in the Pacific to promote the British ideology of “muscular Christianity”. This in turn helped create the contemporary relationship between family, faith and football for the Australian Pasifika diaspora.

In times like this, when high-profile sporting entities are thrown into the identity politics spotlight, it is important to try to understand some of the historical connections between the sport and gender and sexual diversity in the Pacific Islands.

What is ‘muscular Christianity’?

“Muscular Christianity” is the belief that by participating in sports, young men would become imbued with positive character traits enabling them to be as capable in the classroom or workforce as they were on the field. The concept migrated to the Pacific through British colonialists, particularly the British school boy system and its use of sports to create the “good” Christian.

While the field became a place men could let off steam, Indigenous men were often limited to this physical realm only and pushed away from intellectual pursuits, creating the manual workforce needed for Empire building. Māori scholar Brendan Hokowhitu’s work shows how British colonialists in Aotearoa symbolically and physically moved Māori out of the classroom and into manual labour. This construction of Māori men as purely athletic was being similarly fostered across the Pacific, where the illusion of the “noble savage” was taking hold.

Read more:
Explainer: the myth of the Noble Savage

The impact of colonial masculinity

This colonial reframing of Pasifika masculinity also sought to classify “right” and “wrong”, particularly when it came to gender and sex. An important aspect of colonial masculinity was the suppression of sexual complexity and qualities that were deemed “feminine”.

In the Pacific Islands, this included introducing distinct boundaries between men and women, and the delegitimising of anything in between. Before colonialism, gender was understood in what we may think is a very modern, Western way, but what has actually been understood amongst many Indigenous cultures for centuries: that is, a “gender spectrum” or the idea that there are many gender identities.

In Samoa and Tonga, for example, the gender fluid fa‘afafine and fakaleiti were merged with European understandings of homosexuality with such success that we now know very little about their roles pre-contact. At the same time, homosexuality was condemned as un-Christian, perverted and wrong – both symbolically, and in many cases, legally.

This combination of muscular Christianity, sports, and the moralisation of gender meant that to be a “good” man was to be not only strong and disciplined, but heterosexual and God-fearing.

Individual freedoms vs family and faith

In my interviews with second-generation Pasifika people in Australia, the phrase “faith before footy” was common. However, the nature of faith was changing, with family becoming more central than the institution.

Pasifika scholars have explained that rather than the individualistic philosophy of “I think therefore I am” governing how they see themselves, Pasifika and Māori people work more within a framework of “I belong therefore I am”.

Relationships are where strength and identity are created, which is what makes it so difficult to go against family beliefs. It might be hard for people who have a strong sense of individual freedom to comprehend the complex pull of family and faith to one’s very existence, but for many Pasifika people, not belonging could feel utterly catastrophic.

Sport has always been a political space, and in Australia it has a symbolic potency that makes it a powerful arena for spreading positive messages.

Hopefully the conversations this latest controversy has started outweigh the negative effects, particularly on young, vulnerable queer people. It is hoped we might soon reach a space where gender and sexual diversity in rugby league can be as celebrated as racial and ethnic diversity has been for some time.

With their large and conspicuous presence on the field, Pasifika people play a role in this, but it’s not solely their responsibility. It is up to the decision makers at all levels of the game to learn how to foster inclusion for all.

This research was made possible by an RMIT University PhD scholarship

– ref. The Manly pride jersey furore is not as simple as a choice between inclusivity and homophobia – https://theconversation.com/the-manly-pride-jersey-furore-is-not-as-simple-as-a-choice-between-inclusivity-and-homophobia-187859

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Luc Doucet, Research Fellow at the Earth Dynamics Research Group, member of TIGeR, Curtin University

Usually when goods are flawed, we expect their value to drop, but it’s the exact opposite for diamonds. Ironically, it is imperfections that impart colour to diamonds – and these “fancy” diamonds are some of the most sought after in the world.

Diamonds are made of carbon atoms organised in compact structures. Clear, perfect diamonds sparkle because light reflects off their internal surfaces. Of course, these diamonds are valuable.

However, when diamonds host impurities, or are subjected to intense pressure, they can develop distinctive colours. Coloured diamonds are extremely prized for their beauty and rarity, and can be several orders of magnitude more expensive than clear diamonds.

So it’s no surprise the world was astonished when the Western Australia-owned Lucapa Diamond Company announced the discovery of the Lulo Rose this week. The 170-carat rough pink diamond, found in Angola, is the second-largest pink diamond ever discovered.

Few and far between

Coloured diamonds represents only 0.01% (one in 10,000) of diamonds mined in the world. Natural yellow and brown are the most common and, as you might expect, are therefore not overly expensive.

However, blue, green, violet, orange, pink and red diamonds are extremely rare and exist in minute quantities. These are truly coveted.

Ultra-rare coloured diamonds have been sold for record-breaking prices. The Pink Star, weighing 59.6 carats (about the size of a strawberry), is the most expensive diamond ever sold, for a staggering A$94.2 million.

It’s worth mentioning the Pink Star originally came from a diamond weighing in at 132.5 carats. More than half of its weight was lost in the process of cutting and polishing the stone – a process that took 20 months.

At 170 carats, it’s quite possible the Lulo Rose, if auctioned, could become the most expensive diamond in history.

The only pink diamond larger than it is the Daria-i-Noor (185 carats), which is the centrepiece of the Iranian crown jewels, and has never been for sale.

So why are coloured diamonds so scarce?

Physical and chemical purity yields clear diamonds. So coloured diamonds form as a result of imperfections. But it’s very rare for imperfections to arise in a material that is not only extremely hard, but also chemically simple.

There are three main imperfections that produce coloured diamonds: impurity, damage and distortion. These are imperfections in the structure of the diamond that affect how light passes through the gem – specifically the diffraction and absorption of different wavelengths of light. And this is what leads to the different colours we see.

The main impurities in diamonds comes in the form of very light elements, such nitrogen, boron and hydrogen, which we generally find in abundance in the oceans and atmosphere. These elements can result in specific colours. For example, boron-rich diamonds will be blue, while nitrogen-rich diamonds will be yellow.

Then there are damaged diamonds, wherein the damage happens when a diamond has been sitting adjacent to radioactive elements, such as uranium, thorium or potassium.

Finally, distortion refers to the twisting and bending of a diamond’s crystal lattice under immense pressure. This causes defects a hundred times smaller than the width of a human hair, yet it’s enough to diffract light and bring colour to the gem.

Every coloured diamond has a cocktail of imperfections, which is why no two diamonds are the same. However, they do all have one thing in common: each diamond is rooted in geological history. Diamonds can be billions of years old. In that time, some have travelled from the depths of the planet to its surface, only for us to claim them.

Take yellow and blue diamonds. Light elements such as nitrogen and boron are concentrated in our oceans and atmosphere, but we know diamonds must form within the heart of the planet. So the key here is plate tectonics, and specifically a process called subduction.

Subduction is a geological process by which the oceanic lithosphere (a part of the outer crust) is recycled into Earth’s mantle. This is how light elements manage to get deep into Earth’s interior – eventually becoming part of coloured diamonds.

A unique window into Earth’s interior

Pink diamonds have their own geological story. Most scientists think carbon on our seabed, when thrust back into Earth’s interior, can not only form diamonds but also be deformed.

When it’s under enormous pressure and considerable temperatures, the way carbon is supposed to be assembled is distorted, and this is what leads to pink diamond formation.

However, if Earth pushes a little too hard, the pink hue quickly turns brown or, as some would call it, “champagne” or “cognac”. Yet there’s still much we don’t know about pink diamonds. For one, why have about 80% of pink diamonds come from a single recently closed mine in Western Australia?

The Argyle mine was once the world’s largest diamond mine, but was shut down in 2020 after becoming economically unviable. Still, this mine is truly unique – not only because of how many pink diamonds it has produced, but because it sits in a geologically intriguing area.

For years, scientists and diamond companies believed diamonds large enough to be mined could be found only in the heart of ancient continents. But the Argyle mine sits at what was once the edge of two continents that collided and stitched together only 1.8 billion years ago.

This might sound like a long time, but in geological terms it’s not. Argyle and its pink diamonds probably hold the answer for pink diamond formation, but finding it will require further examination.

With the mine having closed, and pink diamonds becoming rarer as we speak, one can only hope scientists will soon unravel the mystery of how pink diamonds form. Perhaps, with that knowledge, we may yet find another trove.

Read more:
We created diamonds in mere minutes, without heat — by mimicking the force of an asteroid collision

Denis Fougerouse receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the Mineral Research Institute of Western Australia.

Hugo Olierook and Luc Doucet 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. Perfectly imperfect: the discovery of the second-largest pink diamond has left the world in awe. What gives diamonds their colour? – https://theconversation.com/perfectly-imperfect-the-discovery-of-the-second-largest-pink-diamond-has-left-the-world-in-awe-what-gives-diamonds-their-colour-187852

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adam Simpson, Senior Lecturer, International Studies, University of South Australia

The military junta’s execution of four pro-democracy activists earlier this week has again shone a spotlight on the appalling judgement and brutality of the junta leader, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, and his top generals.

Since the February 2021 coup in Myanmar, conditions have deteriorated starkly – with deplorable violence, impoverishment, and the destruction both locally and abroad of any residual respect for Myanmar’s military.

Millions of Myanmar people actively oppose them, through civil disobedience or militancy. But in a misguided effort to project strength and determination, the military has shown its hollowness and desperation.

By killing pro-democracy activists Phyo Zeya Thaw, Kyaw Min Yu, Hla Myo Aung and Aung Thura Zaw, the military regime has demonstrated its disdain for the post-coup diplomatic efforts within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and further afield.

Terrible toll

Phyo Zeya Thaw was probably the best known of this group outside the country. He was elected to serve in parliament in April 2012 in a crucial wave of National League for Democracy byelection successes.

Shortly after that election, Phyo Zeya Thaw came to Australia, where he met with senior political and civil society figures, including Prime Minister Julia Gillard. He also spoke at the Australian National University, where he, and other freshly elected National League for Democracy (NLD) representatives, were given a rousing welcome.

Notably, Phyo Zeya Thaw was supported at the ballot box on three occasions by the people of Myanmar’s capital Naypyidaw, the generals’ own heavily curated symbolic centre. With his activism, rap music, policy-making, and post-coup resistance, Phyo Zeya Thaw was a giant figure in his generation’s efforts to re-shape Myanmar society.

Kyaw Min Yu, often known simply as Ko Jimmy, was also a significant player in Myanmar’s history of democratic activism and was a member of pro-democracy movement the 88 Generation Students Group. In total, he spent over 20 years in jail.

These killings are a further tragic reminder of the costs of last year’s coup and the terrible toll on Myanmar’s most courageous and capable people. They’re also exacerbating the pressures being felt by the regime at home and abroad.

Problems at home

The regime is still under immense pressure from the ongoing armed resistance. It doesn’t help that the Myanmar economy is still collapsing.

In April this year, the generals required all banks to convert most of the US dollars held in their accounts to Myanmar Kyat, the local currency, at the official rate of K$1,850 to USD$1.

Companies with at least 10% foreign ownership were exempt. But throughout July this exclusion was revoked leaving very few companies in Myanmar able to hold US dollars, such as those in Special Economic Zones.

The government’s failing economic management has caused further panic throughout the economy, with the black-market rate of Kyat to US dollars falling to around K$2,500 to the dollar. So, anyone or any company with USD in banks is losing at least 30% of its value on any exchange.

Along with other restrictions on trade and currency, there’s now almost no incentive to export goods since making a profit is virtually impossible.

With the civil disobedience movement still opposing the military, these efforts are strangling the last lifeline of the economy.

The regime is increasingly isolated

A few days before the executions, the International Court of Justice in The Hague rejected Myanmar’s four objections regarding the genocide case over the Rohingya, which means the case will be allowed to continue.

Although the court only deals with states, in reality, the military in Myanmar is primarily the target of this prosecution.

And earlier this month, Min Aung Hlaing travelled to Russia, hoping to bolster his image as an international figure. In the Myanmar state media, it was hailed as a success. However, in Russia, a country desperate for friends too, the media barely recognised the trip, embarrassingly alleging he was there on a “private visit”.

Even the ASEAN members who are usually reluctant to directly criticise Myanmar’s leaders have found the executions impossible to stomach.

What the killings tell us

This week’s executions are a failed attempt by the military leadership to exert pressure on its opponents.

After 18 months of constant fighting, they’re yet to consolidate their rule over the country, even in the cities and usually peaceful central areas of the country.

While the generals talk of holding elections next year, there’s little international appetite for engaging with the regime.

In July, the head of the UK embassy in Myanmar was forced to leave the country for refusing to present credentials to Min Aung Hlaing.

Read more:
Top democracy activists were executed in Myanmar – 4 key things to know

Military leaders unwilling to compromise

The executions will revitalise the resistance in some areas, where people feel they have no choice but to maintain their rage against the military and its civilian proxies. There will be more tit-for-tat violence and greater desperation amongst the security forces seeking to defend a failing regime.

The economic pressures built up over the past year are another wildcard. Myanmar people have historically taken to the streets in the biggest numbers when an economic shock makes their livelihoods untenable. We don’t know if we are approaching such a moment, but the signs for the local economy aren’t good.

With a government felled in Sri Lanka due to economic upheaval, and with repercussions from the war in Ukraine felt across Myanmar’s trading sectors, the potential for further violence is there. And we can’t ignore the prospect of even greater suffering amongst the Myanmar people.

Despite words of condemnation from the international community, there’s relatively little international support for Myanmar’s opposition forces. Compare this with the vast array of weapons, training and intelligence provided to Ukraine.

That pro-democracy activists can be executed so callously demonstrates there’s no limit to the cruel retribution the generals will inflict on those who oppose them.

However, rather than demonstrating potency and dominance to a domestic and international audience, these executions demonstrate the junta is weak, isolated and rapidly running out of options.

Nicholas Farrelly has previously received funding from the Australian Research Council for Myanmar-focussed work. He is on the board of the Australia-ASEAN Council, which is an Australian government body. These are his personal views.

Adam Simpson 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. As Myanmar suffers, the military junta is desperate, isolated and running out of options – https://theconversation.com/as-myanmar-suffers-the-military-junta-is-desperate-isolated-and-running-out-of-options-187697

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

University of Canberra Professorial Fellow Michelle Grattan discusses the week in politics with University of Canberra Associate Professor Caroline Fisher.

This week saw parliament meet for the first time since the election. Michelle and Caroline talk about Treasurer Jim Chalmer’s sombre report on the economy, and the early flurry of legislation. They also examine whether we saw the much hoped for better standards in the house. Finally, they canvass the Indigenous “Voice” to parliament, which Anthony Albanese will speak about this weekend at the Garma festival.

Michelle Grattan 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. VIDEO: the state of the economy, the Indigenous ‘Voice’ and whether the first parliamentary week saw better standards – https://theconversation.com/video-the-state-of-the-economy-the-indigenous-voice-and-whether-the-first-parliamentary-week-saw-better-standards-187916

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sarah Casey, Program Coordinator: Bachelor of Communication, University of the Sunshine Coast

As Neighbours ended after 37 years, viewers were treated to a smorgasbord of familiar favourites from Erinsborough’s back catalogue. For decades there were always two characters, though, who remained just a little more embedded in our collective cultural heart.

They were symbolic of the ghosts of Neighbours’ glory days past. Their reappearance was the moment viewers had been waiting for: the return of Scott (Jason Donovan) and Charlene (Kylie Minogue).

But first, other business needed attention.

As we bid adieu, several Ramsay Street homes were for sale. People were moving on. Queensland was once good enough for past residents – now, New York was in the air.

Viewers contemplated all week if Paul (Stefan Dennis), Neighbours longest-serving resident and villain, would leave it all behind to make his mark in the Big Apple.

The suspense built. Viewers risked whiplash as the show brought us back to The Full Monty fundraiser; Chris (James Mason) coming out; Madge (Anne Charleston) being wooed by Lou (Tom Oliver) and Harold (Ian Smith).

Read more:
I easily clocked 10,000 hours working on Neighbours. Its loss will leave a huge hole in Australian TV – and UK hearts

Everybody needs good neighbours

Returning from the dead is a familiar soap opera trope. This didn’t happen, but there were spectral visits from Madge, Hendrix (Ben Turland) and Sonya (Eve Morey).

The still alive returned in Des (Paul Keane), Roxy (Zima Anderson), and Kyle (Chris Milligan). In keeping with the zeitgeist, we had Zoom visits from Nina (Delta Goodrem), Billy (Jesse Spencer), Flick (Holly Valance), Beth (Natalie Imbruglia), Steph (Carla Bonner), Joe (Mark Little) and Libby (Kym Valentine).

Joel (Daniel MacPherson) was back for Toadie and Melanie’s wedding, and to remind Toadie about his mullet. He wasn’t the only one, as Callum (Morgan Baker) mused, “Ramsay Street without the Toad, it’s like the mullet without the hair”.

Paige (Olympia Valance) returned to wave around her real estate licence to sell off Ramsay Street homes to the likes of vixen Izzy (Natalie Bassingthwaighte), who was back, but this time having sexy times at Lassiters Hotel with Malcolm (Benjamin McNair), the son of her former lover Dr Karl (Alan Fletcher).

Susan (Jacqui Woodburne) was displeased at sharing another man in her life.

In the end Izzy cheated with now cryptocurrency millionaire, Shane (Peter O’Brien). In tears, reflecting on her past, she realised all along she’d just wanted acceptance from the Kennedys, and all was well in the world again. Her vixen status remained intact, but a redemption arc was underway.

Perhaps.

You can find the perfect blend

Terese (Rebekah Elmaloglou) had been contemplating a business opportunity requiring her to move away. Would this spell the end of any possible reconciliation with Paul? Unlikely, as Terese was reading Paul’s love letters.

She wasn’t fooling anyone, least of all her boyfriend Glen (Richard Huggett) who fell on his sword in yet another soap trope: the love triangle.

Meanwhile Jane (Annie Jones) struggled to forgive Dr Clive’s (Geoff Paine) infatuation with another woman. Not even his Gorillagram suit stunt could woo her back. Did someone just mention that Jane met her first love on Ramsay Street? Mike Young (Guy Pearce): enter stage left.

What would Neighbours be without a final wedding? Would this wedding buck the soap opera trend and go ahead without a hitch? Of course not. The past was on Melanie (Lucinda Cowden) and Toadie’s (Ryan Moloney) minds – how would they escape their histories and create new memories? Doing so might mean moving away, but does Toadie even exist outside of Erinsborough?

Happily, we will now never know.

Neighbours should be there for one another

How far Neighbours had grown the last four decades – including in terms of LGBTQ+ representation – was evident in the final chapter as queer characters reflected on love, loss, and the changing norms around coming out.

The big drama centred on whether Elly (Jodi Gordon) and Chloe (April Rose Pengilly) would get their happy ending.

Of course they did.

Read more:
From Charlene the mechanic to Australian TV’s first gay marriage: was Neighbours feminist?

The moment arrived as Scott and Charlene drove into the street with Especially for you playing. Memories of their wedding – which holds an iconic place in Australian TV history – suddenly returned.

What had they been up to since they departed Ramsay Street for Queensland? There were teasers, like their hair, but the big questions such as why was Charlene still in the mechanic’s boiler suit like it’s 1987 will remain forever unanswered.

This fleeting moment of nostalgia was never going to be enough, with the golden couple engaging in minimal dialogue or interaction with the cast, but their presence acted as a sentimental conduit between early days and the end.

Good neighbours become good friends

As audiences came together to watch in ways they rarely do since the advent of streaming, the omniscient narrator Susan took a final nostalgic stroll through the cul-de-sac.

The Ramsay Street memory book lives on with enough future custodians in place to honour this popular culture phenomenon. All the main characters remained, and viewers were left wondering if Scott and Charlene would stay alongside the reunited-in-a-nanosecond Mike and Jane.

It’s unlikely Australia will ever see another Neighbours. For the viewers, it was, in the words of Scott Robinson last night, “home sweet home”.

Read more:
The loss of Neighbours is a loss of career pathways for Australia’s emerging screen professionals

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. All roads led back to Ramsay Street for a cul-de-sac of memory and nostalgia: a fitting Neighbours finale – https://theconversation.com/all-roads-led-back-to-ramsay-street-for-a-cul-de-sac-of-memory-and-nostalgia-a-fitting-neighbours-finale-187774

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Miriama Young, Associate Director of Research, Senior Lecturer in Music, The University of Melbourne

Review: My Self in That Moment, directed by Tamara Saulwick for Chamber Made

In his visionary essay published almost a century ago, Walter Benjamin argued that something of the aura is lost in mechanical reproduction.

Now, Chamber Made’s My Self in That Moment takes a dystopian view of the lost soul of the self in the digital age.

Tensions between machine and human have prevailed since Descartes, and are becoming increasingly problematic in our current techno-age.

Under artistic director Tamara Saulwick, Chamber Made produces multimodal projects that investigate the intersection of technology, sound and music in live performance.

Composer and sound artist Peter Knight’s distinctive, extended sounds are drawn from the palette of the three vocalists who perform on different nights.

On the night I attended it was Jessica Aszoldi, a local export who now divides her time between the new music scenes of Berlin and Chicago. Aszoldi delivers her warm and virtuosic voice with a characteristically compelling presence.

Hearing without seeing

When the production opens, the singer – the “self” of the title – is hidden from view, behind the mythologised Pythagorean veil.

The Greek philosopher Pythagoras would purportedly deliver lectures from behind a screen so that his disciples could focus on content.

This experience of hearing the voice without seeing the human who speaks forms the basis of the work.

Sound, image and physical body are decoupled, and gradually splintered like the many facets of our online presence.

With monastic purpose, Aszoldi interacts and intervenes with the image and sound of her body, distributed over 49 networked mobile devices, with the aid of Steve Berrick’s technical wizardry.

Voice and image become increasingly distorted through replication, imitation, pixelation, multiplication, looping and fragmentation. The voice is layered and transformed in impossible ways. Images of her physical body are eventually eroded, until all that remains are fragments of a former self.

It is as if the body is dismembered and the soul carved out of the person, screen by screen, limb by limb.

Revealed centre stage at the work’s apex is a disturbingly disfigured, unrecognisable, primal beast who writhes and grunts like a primitive animal.

Finally in the flesh

Eventually this beast removes its second skin. From the chrysalis emerges a vulnerable, semi-naked human, finally in the flesh.

This human must learn to speak again.

The embryonic creature on stage must learn the fundamentals of how to be human. How to communicate from the almost-warm AI voice of the “mother”. But we still hear the uncanny valley of the voice. Androids imitate humans, but flaws betray its conviction.

My Self at That Moment opens up crucial areas for reflection, especially at a time when the digital self has become a proxy for the real.

Our image is curated and expressed as an impossible desire. The division between public and private life is increasingly blurred.

Then there is a reliance on social media for likes, friends or followers. Apps like So Young and GengMei, particularly popular in China, suggest virtual cosmetic surgery improvements for the face which can be immortalised in the real. The AI voice of LaMDA expresses the depths of the human condition with such conviction it fools its Google developer that it has become sentient.

Read more:
Is Google’s LaMDA conscious? A philosopher’s view

Eventually the learning is abandoned, the human voice starts to break down. Finally the chaotic, fractured body replicated over the many mobile devices is placed upon a funeral pyre – a memorial to the human body now deconstructed, and thus destroyed. The post-human vocal drone becomes unbearable. The self walks away from the techno-dystopia they have created.

All that remains is a hunk of technology no longer functional. The soul, gone.

At this point, the work could have featured more of Aszoldi’s extraordinary live voice, so the emotional intensity of a reclaiming of “self” is revealed. How wonderful it would have been to hear her voice in all its glory, singing in the flesh, as a celebration of culture and humanity.

Instead, the project presents a somewhat dystopian vision of our mediated society, where we look for ways to negotiate our unsettling over-reliance on technology.

Can we, too, emerge from the chrysalis, rebirthed, to become the unmediated human, once again?

My Self in That Moment is at The Substation, Melbourne, until July 30.

Miriama Young 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. With My Self in That Moment, Chamber Made gives us a dystopian view of our lost soul in the digital age – https://theconversation.com/with-my-self-in-that-moment-chamber-made-gives-us-a-dystopian-view-of-our-lost-soul-in-the-digital-age-187180

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joo-Cheong Tham, Professor, Melbourne Law School, The University of Melbourne

Before the pandemic, working from home was a luxury. Then it became a necessity. Since lockdowns have eased it has become a contested space between what employers and workers want.

Now unions – including the Financial Services Union, National Tertiary Education Union (of which I am a national councillor) and the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance – are pushing to enshrine working from home as a right.

What does it mean to have a right to work from home, and why should there be one? And what conditions are needed to make such a right effective?

What is the current situation?

One way to make working from home a legal entitlement for all would be to change the National Employment Standards, which provide a safety net for all workers, whether they are on an award, enterprise agreement or individual contract.

The standards give workers the right to request flexible working arrangements but only in certain circumstances – if they have caring responsibilities, a disability, are older than 55, or are experiencing domestic violence.

Employers can only refuse these requests on “reasonable business grounds” such as costliness, impracticability and negative impact on productivity and customer service. This leaves a lot of room to reasonably reject a request.

A right through collective agreements

The unions are taking the easier step of securing these rights for their members through collective bargaining – inserting clauses into the enterprise agreements that set pay and conditions above the safety net.

What those clauses would say is indicated by the Australian Council of Trade Unions’ Working from Home Charter, which states:

Working from home should be offered to all suitable workers to accept on a voluntary basis.

The Financial Sector Union’s “best-practice” guide similarly advocates that:

Employees should be able to enter into and out of work from home arrangements based on their personal circumstances, responsibilities and preferences.

Employers will still be able to refuse requests, but only with good reason. The clauses being sought by the National Tertiary Education Union, for example, will limit refusals to situations when requests cannot be accommodated.

In short, a right to work from home will place the onus on employers to justify why they are seeking to deny working from home arrangements.

Why should there be such a right?

The case for a right to work from home has been made by the seismic shift resulting from the pandemic.

It has shown that, in many instances, work can be performed effectively while working from home. Contrary to managerial concerns that productivity would suffer, research suggests those working from home have higher productivity.

Most workers and many businesses have embraced the change. There is a clear benefit to workers in reduced commuting time and costs (especially for those with long commutes).

Read more:
Even Google agrees there’s no going back to the old office life

There are also social benefits

Working from home may be “the biggest productivity increase of the century”. It helps reduce greenhouse gas emissions – which is why it is part of “green bargaining” for European trade unions. It can also promote a more gender-balanced workforce, as the Productivity Commission’s research suggests:

More women than men are in jobs that can be done remotely. Additionally, since women in Australia still carry most of the responsibility for raising children, and are also more likely than men to care for others, the option to work from home may allow them to access employment.

More generally, the Productivity Commission expects that reducing “cost” of working will increase the labour supply.

Health is still an imperative

With the COVID-19 pandemic not yet over, there are also powerful safety rationales.

Paul Kelly, the federal chief medical officer, has called working from home “an important health and safety measure”.

As an essential control measure for workplace safety – required in certain situations under work, health and safety legislation – it can even be an act of social solidarity.

5 crucial safeguards to manage risks

Working from home is not without risks.

It may undermine workplace community, and the collaboration and innovation generated from “serendipitous interaction”. But this is less an argument against a right to work from home and more one to wisely manage.

Equally the risks to individual workers need to be managed.

To be effective, a right to work from home should be underpinned by provisions to safeguard five things:

• Genuine choice. This including the ability to exercise the right to work from home as a group and through trade unions.

• Working hours. There is a serious risk of “time theft” as the line between work and home life is blurred. (The “reasonable limitation of working hours” is a human right.)

• Workplace safety. Employers still have work, health and safety obligations to employees working from home.

• Digital safety. This includes data privacy protection and a right to disconnect outside set working hours.

• Equity. This includes ensuring working from home does not exacerbate the double burden of paid work and care and distributing costs fairly. The general rule should be that employers provide work equipment and cover necessary costs such as electricity.

Working from home is fundamentally changing where and how we work. A right to work from home with robust support will steer this transformation in a positive direction.

Read more:
Working from home: what are your employer’s responsibilities, and what are yours?

Joo-Cheong Tham has received funding from the Australian Research Council, the Australian Council of Trade Unions, European Trade Union Institute and International IDEA. He is a director of the Centre for Public Integrity; a national councillor and Victorian division assistant secretary (academic staff)-elect of the National Tertiary Education Union.

– ref. Few Australians have the right to work from home, even after COVID. Here’s how that could change – https://theconversation.com/few-australians-have-the-right-to-work-from-home-even-after-covid-heres-how-that-could-change-187696

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Newman, Professor of Sustainability, Curtin University

Our ageing cities are badly in need of regeneration. Many established residential areas, the “greyfields”, are becoming physically, technologically and environmentally obsolete. They are typically located in low-density, car-dependent middle suburbs developed in the mid to late 20th century.

Compared to the outer suburbs, these middle suburbs are rich in services, amenities and jobs. But the greyfields also represent economically outdated, failing or undercapitalised real-estate assets. Their location has made them the focus of suburban backyard infill development.

Unfortunately, the current approach typically cuts down all the trees and creates more car traffic as resident numbers grow. A new kind of urban regeneration is needed at the scale of precincts, rather than lot by lot, to transform the greyfields into more liveable and sustainable suburbs. It calls for a collaborative approach by federal, state and local governments.

How do we do this?

Our free new e-book, Greening the Greyfields, sets out how to do this. It draws on ten years of research that led to a new model of urban development.

This approach integrates two goals of urban research:

1. ending the dependence on cars caused by a disconnect between land use and transport

2. accelerating the supply of more sustainable, medium-density, infill housing to replace the current dysfunctional model of urban regeneration.

Greening greyfields will help our cities make the transition to net zero emissions.

Read more:
Australia’s cities policies are seriously inadequate for tackling the climate crisis

Why do we need to regenerate these areas?

We need to shrink the unsustainable urban and ecological footprints of “suburban” cities. Neighbourhoods need to become more resilient, sustainable, liveable and equitable for their residents.

Urban regeneration must also allow for the COVID-driven restructuring of the work–residence relationship for city residents. This involves relocalising urban places so they become more self-sufficient as “20-minute neighbourhoods”. Their residents will have access to most of the services they need via low-emission cycling and walking, as well as public transport.

Read more:
People love the idea of 20-minute neighbourhoods. So why isn’t it top of the agenda?

Current attempts to increase residential density and limit sprawl in most Australian cities tend to focus on blanket upzoning in selected growth zones. The resulting backyard infill involves a few small homes, which is all that is allowed on each block. Density increases only marginally, so there are still too few housing options for residents who want to be close to city services and opportunities.

Piecemeal infill redevelopment often degrades the quality of our suburbs. The loss of trees and increase in hard surfaces worsen urban heat island effects and flood risk. And a lack of convenient transport options for the extra residents reinforces car dependence.

We need more strategic models of suburban regeneration.

Greyfield regeneration compared to conventional approaches

Read more:
We’re at a fork in the road: do we choose neighbourhoods to live, work and play in?

Why do this at the precinct scale?

Urban regeneration is best tackled at the scale of precincts. They are the building blocks of cities: greenfield sites continue to be developed, and old brownfield industrial sites are redeveloped, at this scale.

Design-led precinct-scale regeneration can maximise co-ordination of aspects of urban living neglected by piecemeal lot-by-lot redevelopment. Think local health and education services, small shops, social housing, walkable open space, public transport and even regenerated biodiversity.

Model precincts like WGV, in a greyfields suburb of Fremantle, have very successfully demonstrated how regeneration can produce high-quality, medium-density housing and net-zero outcomes. However, this development was on an old school site, so there was no need to combine individual blocks into a precinct-scale site. There were also no residents that needed to be engaged – though WGV became very popular because of its attractive architecture and treed green spaces.

What are the key elements of this model?

Greyfield precinct regeneration has two sub-models: place-activated and transit-activated. A place-activated precinct may shorten travel distances for residents by providing services and amenities, but does not in itself increase public transport. For transit-activated precincts, good public transport increases land values, which makes these regenerated greyfields even more attractive.

Mid-tier transit like trackless trams is an ideal way to enable precinct developments along main road corridors. Local governments are recognising this around Australia.

Greyfield regeneration can begin with a strategy of district greenlining. Redlining was an American planning tool to exclude people of colour from a neighbourhood. Greenlining is the opposite: it includes the whole community in greening their neighbourhood.

This strategic process would identify neighbourhoods in need of next-generation infrastructure. Projects of this sort require a precinct-scale vision and plan.

State and municipal agencies can do this work. It would include:

• physical infrastructure – energy, water, waste and transport

• social infrastructure – health and education

• green infrastructure – the nature-based services we get from planting and retaining trees and enabling open space and landscaped streets.

The City of Maroondah in Victoria provided an early demonstration of how this can happen. It produced a set of playbooks to show how other municipalities, developers and land owners can replicate the process.

Greening the greyfields will deliver the many benefits associated with more sustainable and liveable communities. However, these outcomes depend on more comprehensive, design-led, integrated land use and transport planning.

Property owners, councils, developers and financiers will have to work together much more closely and effectively than happens with the business-as-usual approach of fragmented, small-lot infill, which is failing dismally. New laws and regulations will be needed to change this approach.

Read more:
Why city policy to ‘protect the Brisbane backyard’ is failing

Better Cities 2.0?

Precinct-based projects offer a model for net zero development of our cities.

Greyfield regeneration is an increasingly pervasive and pressing challenge for our cities. It calls for all levels of government to work on a strategic response.

We suggest a Better Cities 2.0 program, led by the federal government, to establish greyfield precinct regeneration authorities in major cities and build partnerships with all major urban stakeholders. It would set us on the path to greening the greyfields.

Peter Newman receives funding from the Sustainable Built Environment National Research Centre. Peter is a Co-ordinating Lead Author for Transport in the IPCC.

Giles Thomson receives funding from KK-stiftesen, Sweden; and has received funding from the CRC for Low Carbon Living, and the Sustainable Built Environment national research centre (SBEnrc).

Peter Newton has received funding from AHURI, CRC for Spatial Information, CRC for Low Carbon Living and the federal Smart Cities and Suburbs Program for Greening the Greyfields research project

Stephen Glackin received funding from Cooperative Research Centers for Spatial Information and Low Carbon Living (CRCSI, CRCLCL).

– ref. Greening the greyfields: how to renew our suburbs for more liveable, net-zero cities – https://theconversation.com/greening-the-greyfields-how-to-renew-our-suburbs-for-more-liveable-net-zero-cities-187261

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Cherie Russell, PhD Candidate, Deakin University

Humans have an evolutionary preference for sweetness. Sweet foods, like fruit and honey, were an important energy source for our ancestors.

However, in the modern world, sweetened foods are readily available, very cheap and advertised extensively. Now, we are consuming too much sugar in foods and drinks – the kind that is added rather than sugar that is naturally occurring. Consuming too much added sugar is bad news for health. It is linked to obesity, type 2 diabetes and tooth decay.

Because of these health concerns, manufacturers started using non-nutritive sweeteners to sweeten food as well. These sweeteners contain little to no kilojoules and include both artificial sweeteners, such as aspartame, and those that come from natural sources, such as stevia.

Our research, published today, shows the amount of added sugars and non-nutritive sweeteners in packaged foods and drinks has grown a lot over the last decade. This is especially true in middle-income countries, such as China and India, as well as in the Asia Pacific, including Australia.

From lollies to biscuits to drinks

Using market sales data from around the globe, we looked at the quantity of added sugar and non-nutritive sweeteners sold in packaged foods and drinks from 2007 to 2019.

We found per person volumes of non-nutritive sweeteners in drinks is now 36% higher globally. Added sugars in packaged food is 9% higher.

Non-nutritive sweeteners are most commonly added to confectionery. Ice creams and sweet biscuits are the fastest-growing food categories in terms of these sweeteners. The expanding use of added sugars and other sweeteners over the last decade means, overall, our packaged food supply is getting sweeter.

Our analysis shows the amount of added sugar used to sweeten drinks has increased globally. However, this is largely explained by a 50% increase in middle-income countries, such as China and India. Use has decreased in high-income countries, such as Australia and the United States.

It is recommended men consume less than nine teaspoons of sugar a day, while women should have less than six. However, because sugar is added to so many foods and drinks, over half of Australians exceed recommendations, eating an average of 14 teaspoons a day.

The shift from using added sugar to sweeteners to sweeten drinks is most common in carbonated soft drinks and bottled water. The World Health Organization is developing guidelines on the use of non-sugar sweeteners.

Read more:
Sugar detox? Cutting carbs? A doctor explains why you should keep fruit on the menu

Rich and poor countries

There is a difference in added sugar and sweetener use between richer and poorer countries. The market for packaged food and beverages in high-income countries has become saturated. To continue to grow, large food and beverage corporations are expanding into middle-income countries.

Our findings demonstrate a double standard in the sweetening of the food supply, with manufacturers providing less sweet, “healthier” products in richer countries.

Read more:
How much longer do we need to wait for Australia to implement a sugary drinks tax?

Unexpected consequences of control

To reduce the health harms of high added sugar intakes, many governments have acted to curb their use and consumption. Sugar levies, education campaigns, advertising restrictions and labelling are among these measures.

But such actions can encourage manufacturers to partially or completely substitute sugar with non-nutritive sweeteners to avoid penalties or cater to evolving population preferences.

In our study, we found regions with a higher number of policy actions to reduce sugar intakes had a significant increase in non-nutritive sweeteners sold in drinks.

Why is this a problem

While the harms of consuming too much added sugar are well known, relying on non-nutritive sweeteners as a solution also carries risk. Despite their lack of dietary energy, recent reviews, suggest consuming non-nutritive sweeteners may be linked with type 2 diabetes and heart disease and can disrupt the gut microbiome.

And because they are sweet, ingesting non-nutritive sweeteners influences our palates and encourages us to want more sweet food. This is of particular concern for children, who are still developing their lifelong taste preferences. Additionally, certain non-nutritive sweeteners are considered environmental contaminants and are not effectively removed from wastewater.

Non-nutritive sweeteners are only found in ultra-processed foods. These foods are industrially made, contain ingredients you would not find in a home kitchen, and are designed to be “hyper-palatable”. Eating more ultra-processed foods is linked with more heart disease, type 2 diabetes, cancer and death.

Ultra-processed foods are also environmentally harmful because they use significant resources such as energy, water, packaging materials and plastic waste.

Foods that contain sweeteners can receive a “health halo” if they don’t contain sugar, misleading the public and potentially displacing nutritious, whole foods in the diet.

Read more:
Poorest Americans drink a lot more sugary drinks than the richest – which is why soda taxes could help reduce gaping health inequalities

Focus on nutrition

When making policy to improve public health nutrition, it is important to consider unintended consequences. Rather than focusing on specific nutrients, there is merit in advocating for policy that considers the broader aspects of food, including cultural importance, level of processing and environmental impacts. Such policy should promote nutritious, minimally processed foods.

We need to closely monitor the increasing sweetness of food and drinks and the growing use of added sugars and non-nutritive sweeteners. It is likely to shape our future taste preferences, food choices and human and planetary health.

Cherie Russell has received funding from an Australian Government Research Training Scholarship. The funder of the research was not involved in any aspect of the study. She is affiliated with the not-for-profit organisations Public Health Association of Australia and Healthy Food Systems Australia.

Carley Grimes receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council and is affiliated with Dietitans Australia.

Mark Lawrence receives funding from the Australian Research Council. He is a Board member of Food Standards Australia New Zealand. The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the positions of any organisation with which he is associated.

Phillip Baker receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Rebecca Lindberg is affiliated with The Community Grocer.

– ref. Food and drinks are getting sweeter. Even if it’s not all sugar, it’s bad for our health – https://theconversation.com/food-and-drinks-are-getting-sweeter-even-if-its-not-all-sugar-its-bad-for-our-health-187605

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Welch, Senior Lecturer, University of Auckland

New Zealand has likely passed the peak of the most recent COVID-19 wave, thanks to strong hybrid immunity in the community and with the number of hospitalisations at the lower end of what was originally expected.

The seven-day rolling average of new daily cases has fallen steadily from a peak of around 10,000 on July 15 to just under 7,800 yesterday.

The number of reported cases depends on how many people actually test when they feel unwell. The true number of infections is likely to be significantly higher. But there is no reason to think testing has dropped off significantly in the past two weeks, or even in the past few months.

The levelling off and subsequent decline of cases fits with the wave naturally reaching a peak. The amount of virus being detected in wastewater has also decreased in the past week. Altogether this means the fall in cases is likely to be real.

Importantly, cases have been falling in all age groups, including over-70s. This is particularly good news because the increase in case rates in older age groups had been a key driver of the steep rise in hospitalisations and deaths in this wave.

We may yet see an increase in cases in families with school-age children as they returned to school this week after the winter holiday break. But this is unlikely to be enough to reverse the falling trend, and hopefully won’t affect older age groups to the same extent.

Hospitalisations typically lag behind cases by a week or two. Consistent with this pattern, the number of people in hospital with COVID has recently shown signs of levelling off. It will probably start to fall in the coming week.

Immunity from the first Omicron wave

The BA.5 variant is driving the current wave. BA.5 has taken over from BA.2 as the dominant variant in New Zealand, as it has in other countries.

The leading hypothesis for why BA.5 has been able to outcompete BA.2 is its increased ability to evade immunity – whether that was acquired through vaccination or previous infection with a different variant.

However, new evidence from Qatar and Denmark (both yet to be peer-reviewed) suggests people who’ve had a previous Omicron infection have relatively strong immunity against BA.5. Qatar and Denmark both have highly vaccinated populations and this is evidence of the strength of hybrid immunity.

Read more:
Hybrid immunity: a combination of vaccination and prior infection probably offers the best protection against COVID

In England, it is estimated people who haven’t had COVID previously still account for the majority of new cases, despite being less than 15% of the population.

The strength of hybrid immunity induced by high vaccination rates and the large and relatively recent BA.2 wave in Aotearoa likely means this BA.5 wave is smaller than it would have been otherwise.

How long could it go on?

Following the first Omicron wave in March, cases dropped relatively slowly and plateaued at case numbers between 5,000 and 8,000 for several months. It’s possible we will again see a relatively slow decline in cases.

But there are also grounds for optimism that hospitalisations and deaths could drop lower than they did between the BA.2 and BA.5 waves. Although immunity isn’t perfect and wanes over time, those who haven’t yet been infected with Omicron are the easiest targets for the virus. But they’re getting harder to find as the number of people in New Zealand who haven’t yet been infected dwindles.

The rollout of fourth doses for eligible people more than six months after their last dose, coupled with building evidence for the strength of hybrid immunity, suggest New Zealand’s population is increasingly well protected against currently circulating variants.

Tracking reinfections and future waves

Currently, New Zealand is reporting around 500 potential reinfections per day, making up about 6% of all cases. Reinfections will certainly grow over time as immunity wanes.

The true number of reinfections is almost certainly a lot higher because cases can’t be classified as reinfections if the first infection wasn’t reported. And it’s possible people who know they’ve had COVID before are less likely to test, especially since their symptoms are likely to be milder the second time around.

Read more:
Reinfection will be part of the pandemic for months to come. Each repeat illness raises the risk of long COVID

But the fact reinfections are still a small proportion of cases is consistent with evidence that prior Omicron infection provides strong, albeit imperfect, protection against getting reinfected with BA.5.

Continuing to rely solely on people getting tested to keep track of where the virus is spreading will lead to greater and greater uncertainty, particularly if access to free testing becomes restricted in the future.

A regular prevalence survey of a representative sample of the population would be a much more reliable indicator of the true prevalence of the virus in the community.

Another new variant is likely to trigger the next wave. It’s impossible to predict its timing or exact characteristics with any certainty. The Ministry of Health plans to launch a random testing survey to determine the true community prevalence of the virus.

Having a prevalence survey in place before the next variant takes over would enable us to estimate the size and severity of the next wave more accurately. Combined with wastewater testing and genome sequencing, this would give us a world-class COVID surveillance system that could provide a blueprint for managing other existing or newly emergent pathogens.

David Welch has received funding from HRC, MBIE, and ESR for Covid-19 modeling and genomic analysis.

Jemma Geoghegan receives funding from the New Zealand Royal Society, Marsden Fund and Health Research Fund.

Michael Plank works for the University of Canterbury and receives funding from the New Zealand Government for mathematical modelling of Covid-19.

– ref. New Zealand’s latest COVID wave is levelling off, with fewer people in hospital than feared – https://theconversation.com/new-zealands-latest-covid-wave-is-levelling-off-with-fewer-people-in-hospital-than-feared-187773

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Meredith Nash, Professor and Associate Dean – Community, Australian National University

Women have been doing fieldwork in Antarctica for more than 40 years. Yet they comprise just 25% of expeditioners in the Australian Antarctic Program. Despite decades of progress, historical issues with sexism and gender bias continue in extreme field environments set up for men.

Managing menstruation, in particular, is an overlooked challenge for women working in Antarctica and other extreme, male-dominated environments.

If we want to build a diverse and inclusive polar workforce, we need to openly and willingly address the challenges that women, trans and non-binary menstruators face in the field.

Who gets to work in Antarctica?

Over the decades, toileting has been a primary way for men to control who has access to extreme environments. For instance, until the late 1970s women were being told they couldn’t work in Antarctica because there were no facilities for them on station.

Women have been similarly excluded from space travel because their hormonal bodies were deemed to be too unpredictable by NASA’s male leaders.

Sally Ride’s 1983 mission on the Space Shuttle Challenger heralded a new era of progress for women’s access to Antarctic fieldwork. If women could go to space, they could certainly go to Antarctica! It was around this time the British, United States and Australian National Antarctic Programs began to allow women to do fieldwork in Antarctica.

Ride’s mission also uncovered NASA’s inexperience with menstruation. In re-designing the space flight kit for her, NASA engineers famously asked Ride if 100 tampons would be enough for a one-week mission.

In my latest research, I spoke to dozens of women expeditioners about how they negotiated the hurdles associated with menstruating in Antarctica. They revealed that managing menstruation remains taboo, and has been made even more difficult by a culture of silence.

As one expeditioner told me:

I haven’t had great conversations with other women because there haven’t been any that I’ve worked with. I’ve been very much by myself with these things.

Life as a woman expeditioner

So why is menstruating in Antarctica difficult?

Well, for one, you can only toilet in certain places due to environmental protection laws. You must collect all your bodily waste in sealed containers, which are carried back to a station for incineration.

Because expeditioners may have to keep used menstrual products with them for several weeks in the field, they need to consider not only what products they will use, but how they will dispose of them.

Re-usable menstrual cups are often preferred because they produce no waste and can be left in the body longer (4-8 hours) than disposable products. However, cups must be emptied and cleaned at least three times within 24 hours to minimise the risk of toxic shock syndrome.

As one expeditioner explained:

Cups are amazing but [they are] also a huge learning curve. I started
learning to use them for [an expedition] because I’m like I can’t carry used tampons around in my bag anymore […] The hard thing is cleaning them discreetly.

Menstruators must also be prepared to manage their menstruation in small, shared spaces. The women I interviewed described the complexity of doing this in male-dominated teams:

The first time I went to Antarctica I was out on a boat […] It was me and [a group of] men. It’s my period and I’m like, oh, my god, what do I do here?

All Antarctic expeditioners wear many thick layers to protect themselves from the extreme conditions. However, women need to be able to change menstrual products without exposing their skin to the cold for prolonged periods. The participants in my study came up with creative ways to cope:

I sewed myself underpants that I could Velcro on the side so that I didn’t have to take all the layers off my legs and my feet to change my undies…

To avoid these challenges during long-duration expeditions, menstruators often rely on menstrual suppression technologies. These include the combined oral contraceptive pill, or long-acting reversible contraception (LARC) such as an intrauterine device or injection.

These methods prevent a period and pregnancy. And this is critical in extreme environments, where pregnancy is extremely high-risk.

LARC is convenient because it requires no extra supplies and little maintenance following insertion. That said, breakthrough bleeding or spotting can be a side effect:

Having my period [in Antarctica] was a nightmare. Somebody told me that they had an [Depo Provera] injection before they went […] and I thought, “Well, that wouldn’t be a bad idea, to not have a period for that particular time” […] but I had my period the whole time I was in the field.

How to support menstruators

Apart from their other already-demanding work, my research shows women must also undertake additional psychological and physical labour to manage menstruation in extreme environments. Whether in Antarctica or on military deployment, women will often:

• change their menstrual products without privacy or adequate sanitation

• carry bloody menstrual products around with them in the field for a long time

• improvise menstrual products when none are available

• keep menstrual products in their bodies for longer than recommended because they aren’t provided with adequate toilet stops

• alter their hormonal balance with medication to make menstruation less inconvenient.

The bottom line is this: menstruation in these settings has largely been treated as an individual problem, and not a site for organisational attention. This needs to change.

Some simple changes can be applied in any field environment where menstruation is difficult for women. Organisations should make it a priority to:

1. destigmatise menstruation and acknowledge the unique needs of diverse menstruators, including trans people and non-binary folk

2. update field manuals to include relevant information about toileting and menstruation

3. provide menstrual health education to all expeditioners – especially cisgender men leading field teams

4. make toilet stops standard operating practice

5. provide menstruators with free menstrual products, and make period underwear available as part of field gear.

I recently supported the Australian Antarctic Program to revise its field manual and help reconsider how field environments can be sensitised to the needs of menstruators. This is an important first step. But success will only come when inclusive operational measures happen by default.

Read more:
Supporting menstrual health in Australia means more than just throwing pads at the problem

Meredith Nash was Senior Advisor – Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity at the Australian Antarctic Division from 2020-22.

– ref. People stationed in Antarctica menstruate too – and it’s a struggle. Here’s how we can support them – https://theconversation.com/people-stationed-in-antarctica-menstruate-too-and-its-a-struggle-heres-how-we-can-support-them-187617

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

Russian President Vladimir Putin habitually rattles his nuclear sabres when things start looking grim for Moscow, and has done so long before his ill-advised invasion of Ukraine.

In February 2008, he promised to target Ukraine with nuclear weapons if the United States stationed missile defences there. In August the same year, he threatened a nuclear war if Poland hosted the same system. In 2014, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned that Russia would consider nuclear strikes if Ukraine tried to retake Crimea.

A year later, the Kremlin said it would target Danish warships with nuclear missiles if they participated in NATO defence systems. And within the space of a few months – in December 2018 and February 2019 – Putin warned the US that nuclear war was possible, and then promised to target the American mainland if it deployed nuclear weapons in Europe.

Since the invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin has waggled its nuclear arsenal so many times it’s starting to become tedious. Even the most peripheral slight is apparently fair game, like former President Dmitry Medvedev’s invocation of nuclear retaliation if the International Criminal Court (ICC) pursued war crimes investigations against Russian soldiers.

Deterrence

One explanation for Russia’s behaviour is that it’s attempting to deter NATO from attacking it. For nuclear deterrence to be effective, states possessing such weapons require three things, commonly referred to as the “Three Cs”: capability, communication and credibility.

Russia certainly has the first of these. With nearly 6,000 nuclear warheads it’s the world’s most heavily armed nuclear state. It also communicates – loudly and with regularity – those capabilities.

But the question of credibility remains an open one, reliant on the perceptions of others. Put simply, the US and other nuclear states must believe Russia will use nuclear weapons under a certain set of conditions, usually in retaliation for a similar attack or when it faces a threat to its survival.

But will it really use them?

Russia’s declared nuclear doctrine identifies the circumstances under which it would employ nuclear weapons in a fairly rational and sensible manner.

Its 2020 Basic Principles on Nuclear Deterrence stresses that Russia will reserve the right to use nuclear weapons “in response to the use of nuclear and other types of weapons of mass destruction against it and/or its allies”. Or, if Russia comes under such severe conventional attack that “the very existence of the state is in jeopardy”.

Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov addressed this directly on March 28, stating “any outcome of the operation [in Ukraine] of course isn’t a reason for usage of a nuclear weapon”.

Yet this has not prevented widespread acceptance of the view that Russia would use nuclear weapons in order to seize the advantage in escalation control. This idea, commonly referred to as “escalate to de-escalate” is even embedded in the US 2018 Nuclear Posture Review’s assessment of Russian intentions.

Read more:
Weapons of mass destruction: what are the chances Russia will use a nuclear or chemical attack on Ukraine?

But the Kremlin’s perpetual nuclear signalling has much more to do with its attempts to intimidate and attain reflexive control over the West. In other words, it’s seeking to get the US and other NATO members to so fear the prospect of nuclear war that they will accede to Russian demands. That makes it a coercive strategy, but crucially one that relies on never actually being tested.

There are plenty of signs this is working. In April 2022, Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz based his decision not to supply heavy weapons to Ukraine with the justification that “there must not be a nuclear war”.

A number of Western commentators have also begun reconsidering the “nuclear taboo”, worrying Putin might resort to nuclear weapons in Ukraine if he feels backed into a corner, or to turn the tide of the war. One particularly agitated opinion piece in the New York Times called for immediate talks before major power war became inevitable.

It makes little sense for Russia to go nuclear in Ukraine

But what if the Kremlin’s recent nuclear threats are aimed less at NATO and more at Kyiv? Under those conditions, the logic of nuclear deterrence (threatening a non-nuclear country) do not apply.

There are several reasons Putin might seek to use nuclear weapons against Ukraine: a decapitating strike, to destroy a large portion of Ukraine’s armed forces, to cripple Ukrainian infrastructure and communications, or as a warning.

This also generally means using different types of nuclear weapons. Rather than large city-busting bombs, Russia would employ smaller non-strategic nuclear warheads. It certainly has plenty of them: about 2,000 warheads in Russia’s stockpile are tactical nuclear weapons.

But none of these scenarios make sense for Russia. While Moscow has returned to regime change in Ukraine as a war aim, using a nuclear weapon to take out Volodymyr Zelenskyy would be difficult and risky. It presupposes ironclad intelligence about his location, entails significant loss of civilian life, and requires Moscow to accept significant destruction wherever Zelenskyy might be. It would hardly look good for victorious Russian forces to be unable to enter an irradiated Kyiv, for instance.

Punching nuclear holes in Ukrainian lines is equally risky. Ukraine’s army has deliberately decentralised so it can operate with maximum mobility (often referred to as “shoot and scoot”). Putin would have to order numerous nuclear attacks for such a tactic to be effective. And he would be unable to prevent radioactive fallout from potentially blowing over “liberated” portions of Donbas under Russian control, not to mention Western Russia itself.

Another possibility is a high-altitude detonation over a city, doing no damage but causing a massive electromagnetic pulse (EMP). An EMP attack would fry electrical systems and electronics, bringing critical infrastructure to a standstill. But again, it would be difficult to limit EMP burst effects to Ukraine alone, and it would leave Moscow with very little remaining usable industry.

Finally, the Kremlin might seek a demonstration effect by detonating a nuclear device away from populated areas, or even over the Black Sea. This would certainly attract attention, but would ultimately be of psychological value, without any practical battlefield utility. And Russia would join the US as the only countries to have used such weapons in anger.

Is Russia rational?

In all this, there’s naturally a big caveat: the assumption Russia’s regime is rational.

Having accrued vast personal fortunes and a taste for luxury, Russia’s rulers are likely in no hurry to commit suicide in a major nuclear cascade.

However, since there’s no way of being certain, the West must continue to take Russian nuclear posturing seriously – but also with healthy scepticism. Indeed, if the West capitulates to Russian demands due to fears of nuclear war, it will further embolden Putin and show other nations nuclear brinkmanship is appealing.

But Russia arguably faces the bigger risk here. If Putin uses nuclear weapons against Ukraine or a NATO member it would also make it very difficult for states that have quietly supported it (such as China) or sought to benefit from its pariah status through trade (like India) to continue to do so. It would also likely engender a broader war that he has tried hard to avoid.

Let’s continue to hope Moscow, although often misguided, remains rational.

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

– ref. Are Vladimir Putin’s nuclear threats a bluff? In a word – probably – https://theconversation.com/are-vladimir-putins-nuclear-threats-a-bluff-in-a-word-probably-187689

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hal Swerissen, Emeritus Professor, La Trobe University

Around 3% (6,100) of the 200,000 residents in Australia’s aged care facilities had COVID, as of July 22, in addition to 3,400 staff.

About 1,000 facilities – nearly 40% of the total – had an outbreak.

Aged care residents are also disproportionately dying of COVID. Those in nursing homes account for nearly 30% of the 11,000 deaths from COVID in Australia throughout the pandemic.

Why is this happening?

Age is a major risk factor for COVID. People aged 70 and over make up 85% of all reported COVID deaths.

People in residential care are the most frail and at risk. Aged care residents make up around 40% of the deaths of older Australians, but only about 5% of the population aged 65 and over live in residential care.

Read more:
Australia’s response to COVID in the first 2 years was one of the best in the world. Why do we rank so poorly now?

We’ve long known how to reduce the spread of COVID and unnecessary deaths. Effective responses throughout the aged care sector include:

• all residents and staff being fully vaccinated
• appropriate availability of personal protective equipment and rapid antigen tests (RATs)
• mask mandates for staff and visitors
• widespread use of antiviral treatments for those who catch COVID
• rapid responses to outbreaks, including a surge workforce and coordination with home care, GPs and hospital services.

But while mask mandates remain a requirement in residential aged care for staff and visitors, and RATS and PPE are now generally available, the other responses are still patchy, piecemeal and poorly coordinated.

Vaccination

Vaccination is the most important protection against COVID. People who are unvaccinated are about 50 times more likely to die from COVID compared with those who are fully vaccinated.

Yet, vaccinations in residential aged care has been a shambles. Early on in the rollout for aged care, staff weren’t fully vaccinated, there were squabbles over staff vaccination mandates, vaccination data was unavailable, and it was unclear who was responsible for making sure vaccination occurred.

Read more:
Is the COVID vaccine rollout the greatest public policy failure in recent Australian history?

While mandates have lifted worker vaccination rates, in June this year, only 50% of aged care residents were fully boosted with fourth doses.

That has improved following pressure from the new government. But even now, a quarter of residents are still not fully vaccinated with recommended boosters.

More needs to be done to systematically follow up facilities with low vaccination rates.

Antivirals

Early use of antivirals significantly reduces the risk of hospitalisation and death from COVID, possibly as much as 80%.

It has been clear for about six months that antivirals are a safe and effective COVID treatment. However, it wasn’t until July 11 that the Commonwealth Chief Medical Officer advised that all Australians 70 or older should be offered antiviral treatment within 24 hours when they test positive for COVID (where clinically appropriate).

The reality is that many older people who could benefit from antivirals aren’t getting them and they are going to waste, with thousands of doses nearing their use-by dates.

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

Rapid responses to out outbreaks

The new federal government appears to be tackling the issue with new urgency. The new aged care minister, Anika Wells, has released a “winter plan” to try to address the aged care crisis.

The plan includes prevention, outbreak management and recovery. But the plan continues to put most of the responsibility of prevention and management on individual providers – a strategy that has been ineffective in the past.

The federal government has almost no capacity to effectively coordinate a winter response across residential care, home care and health and support services within local service networks where it is needed.

Ideally, this would see close working relationships between aged care facilities, GPs and local hospitals, including the redeployment of clinical and support staff across facilities as required. This happened in Victoria during the 2020 outbreak.

But despite the recent Royal Commission’s recommendation to do so, the federal government has not put in place local or regional bodies or authorities to plan, coordinate and manage aged care.

Staff shortages

These pressures are hugely exacerbated by staff shortages. The over-reliance on a privatised market model for aged care and the decades-long under-investment in training, supervision, pay and conditions for aged care workers has come home to roost at the worst possible time.

Estimates suggest there is a shortfall of 35,000 workers in aged care, double the problem last year.

The industry is hoping the work value case before the Fair Work Commission will make a difference on these issues. Personal care workers in aged care are paid about the same as workers at McDonald’s – in some cases, less. Unions are arguing for a 25% increase in pay, which should make aged care a more desirable job, but this case won’t be determined for months.

Read more:
Labor’s plans for aged care are targeted but fall short of what’s needed

In the meantime, the industry still does not have a realistic workforce strategy. The federal government is scrambling to implement short-term measures through a “surge workforce”, including the recent deployment of 200 military personnel.

But this is unlikely to be enough to address the staff shortages associated with the winter wave. Some providers are now reporting they are down 20-40% of staff.

The result is excess hospitalisation and death, misery for residents and their families, and stress for staff and providers. If the situation continues to deteriorate, this will have to become a major priority for National Cabinet.

And the already stretched state health systems will have to play a greater role to fix the immediate problems.

Non Executive Director of Murray PHN
Non Executive Director of Bendigo Kangan Institute

– ref. 4 in 10 nursing homes have a COVID outbreak and the death rate is high. What’s going wrong? – https://theconversation.com/4-in-10-nursing-homes-have-a-covid-outbreak-and-the-death-rate-is-high-whats-going-wrong-187775

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Benjamin Cooke, Senior lecturer, RMIT University

You would have heard Australia’s environment isn’t doing well. A grim story of “crisis and decline” was how Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek described the situation when she launched the State of the Environment Report last week. Climate change, habitat destruction, ocean acidification, extinction, and soil, river and coastal health have all worsened.

In response, Plibersek promised to protect 30% of Australia’s land and waters by 2030. Australia committed to this under the previous government last year, joining 100 other countries that have signed onto this “30 by 30” target.

While this may be a worthy commitment, it’s not a big leap. Indeed, we’ve already gone well past the ocean goal, with 45% protected. And, at present, around 22% of Australia’s land mass is protected in our national reserve system.

To get protected lands up to 30% through the current approach will mean relying on reserves created by non-government organisations and Indigenous people, rather than more public reserves like national parks. This approach will not be sufficient by itself.

The problem is, biodiversity loss and environmental decline in Australia have continued – and accelerated – even as our protected areas have grown significantly in recent decades. After years of underfunding, our protected areas urgently need proper resourcing. Without that, protected area targets don’t mean much on the ground.

What counts as a protected area?

In 1996, the federal government set up the National Reserve System to coordinate our network of protected areas. The goal was to protect a comprehensive, adequate and representative sample of Australia’s rich biodiversity.

Since then, marine reserves have expanded the most, with the government protecting Commonwealth waters such as around Cocos Islands and Christmas Island.

On land, the government has been very hands-off. Progress has been driven by non-government organisations, Indigenous communities and individuals. New types of protected area, offering different levels of protection, have emerged. The Australian Wildlife Conservancy now protects or manages almost 13 million hectares – about twice the size of Tasmania. Bush Heritage Australia protects more than 11 million hectares. While these organisations do not always own the land, they have become influential players in conservation.

Partnerships between Traditional Owners and the federal government have produced 81 Indigenous Protected Areas, mainly on native title land. These cover 85 million hectares – fully 50% of our entire protected land estate. Independent ranger groups are also managing Country outside the Indigenous Protected Area system.

Read more:
December global biodiversity summit at risk of failure

Protected areas have also grown through covenants on private land titles, aided by groups such as Trust for Nature (Victoria) and the Tasmanian Land Conservancy.

In total, public protected areas like national parks have only contributed to around 5% of the expansion of terrestrial protected area since 1996. Non-governmental organisation land purchases, Indigenous Protected Areas and individual private landholders have facilitated 95% of this growth.

The real challenge for protected areas? Management

So how did non-government organisations become such large players? After the national reserve system was set up, the federal government provided money for NGOs to buy land for conservation, if they could secure some private funding. Protected lands expanded rapidly before the scheme ended in 2012.

Unfortunately, federal funding did not cover the cost of managing these new protected areas. Support for Traditional Owners to manage Indigenous Protected Areas has continued, albeit on erratic short-term cycles and very minimally, to the tune of a few cents per hectare per year.

As a result, NGOs and Traditional Owners have increasingly had to rely on market approaches and philanthropy. Between 2015 and 2020, for example, the Traditional Owner non-profit carbon business Arnhem Land Fire Abatement Limited earned $31 million in the carbon credit market through emissions reductions. This money supports a significant portion of the conservation efforts of member groups.

What does this mean? In short, corporate partnerships and market-based approaches once seen as incompatible with conservation are now a necessity to address the long-term shortfall of government support.

Read more:
How marine protected areas help safeguard the ocean

You might think wider investment in conservation is great. But there are risks in relying on NGOs funded by corporations and philanthropists to conserve Australia’s wildlife.

For instance, NGOs may no longer feel able to push for transformative political change in conservation if this doesn’t align with donor interests. There’s also lack of transparent process in how conservation funding is allocated, and for what purpose.

Protection on paper isn’t protection on the ground

On paper, conservation in Australia looks in good shape. But even as protected areas of land and sea have grown, the health of our environment has plunged. The 2021 State of the Environment Report is a sobering reminder that it’s not enough simply to expand protected areas. It’s what happens next that matters.

If we value these protected lands, we have to fund their management. Without management – which costs money – protected areas can rapidly decline, especially under the impacts of climate change.

We also have to tackle what happens outside protected areas. We can’t simply keep sectioning off more and more poorly funded areas for nature while ignoring the drivers of biodiversity loss, such as land clearing, resource extraction, mismanagement and the dispossession of Indigenous lands.

It’s excellent our new environment minister wants to begin the environmental repair job. But creating protected areas is just the start. Now we have to answer the bigger questions: how we care for ecologies, whose knowledge is valued, who does this work and how will it be funded over the long term.

We also have to go beyond lip service to Indigenous knowledge and Caring for Country to genuinely acknowledge First Nations sovereignty and support self-determination.

On this front, moves by conservation organisations to return land to First Nations suggests a willingness in the conservation community to begin this work.

While our protected area estate is large and set to grow further towards the 30 by 30 goal, lines on a map do not equate to protection. We have long known the funding and capability for actual protection is woefully inadequate. For us to reverse our ongoing environmental collapse, that has to change.

Read more:
How to meet the ambitious target of conserving 30 per cent of Earth by 2030

Benjamin Cooke receives funding from The Australian Research Council and has conducted contract research for the Australian Land Conservation Alliance (ALCA), Trust for Nature, Victoria (TfN) and the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning (DELWP). He is affiliated with Trust for Nature, Victoria through a Committee of Management (CoM) on a Trust for Nature property.

Aidan Davison receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Jamie Kirkpatrick received funding from the Australian Research Council for this project, is Chair of the Tasmanian Independent Science Council and a member of the University of Tasmania Council.

Lilian Pearce receives funding from the Australian Research Council and has conducted contract research for the Australian Land Conservation Alliance (ALCA).

– ref. Protecting 30% of Australia’s land and sea by 2030 sounds great – but it’s not what it seems – https://theconversation.com/protecting-30-of-australias-land-and-sea-by-2030-sounds-great-but-its-not-what-it-seems-187435

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Neil Saintilan, Professor, School of Natural Sciences, Macquarie University

It may not always be clear why global temperature rise must be kept below 1.5℃, compared to 2℃ or 3℃. Research published today in the journal Science shows this apparently small distinction will make all the difference for the world’s tidal marshes.

Tidal marshes fringe most of the world’s coastlines. These coastal wetlands are flooded and drained by salt water brought by tides. They provide valuable habitat for animals, support fisheries that feed millions of people and take carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, storing it in their roots.

New roots build up the marsh soil, while stems trap sediment. Both processes help tidal marshes keep pace with sea-level rise. Indeed, tidal marshes increase the amount of carbon they store as the rate of sea-level rise increases.

This feedback has led scientists to question whether tidal marshes might survive future sea-level rise. Unfortunately, our research shows that’s unlikely if warming exceeds 1.5℃.

Read more:
Rising seas allow coastal wetlands to store more carbon

A 20-year experiment provides the answer

I am part of an international team of scientists who embarked on an experiment nearly 20 years ago to test whether tidal marshes were keeping pace with sea-level rise. Nearly 500 devices called “surface elevation tables” were installed in tidal marshes in countries including Australia, the United States, Canada, Belgium, Italy, the United Kingdom and South Africa.

These devices measured the amount of sediment and root material accumulating in the marshes. They also measured changes in the marsh’s surface elevation. Nearby tide gauges measured the rate of sea-level rise. This rate varied across the network.

Some coastlines such as Australia’s have a stable land mass – so the rate of sea-level rise reflects the rise in ocean volume driven by global warming.

On other coastlines, including much of North America, the land may still be sinking or rising after the removal of massive ice sheets at the end of the last ice age. What’s more, extracting oil and water resources from underground can cause local subsidence, increasing “relative” sea-level rise.

The data we gathered provide insights into what might happen to tidal marshes as sea-level rise accelerates.

Read more:
Sea levels are rising fastest in big cities – here’s why

What do the findings tell us?

One set of findings was encouraging. These data showed the rate at which material accumulates in tidal marshes around the world corresponds closely to the varying rates of sea-level rise.

Even the marshes experiencing sea-level rise of 7-10mm per year – the rate anticipated globally under high-emissions scenarios – were accumulating sediment and organic matter at a comparable rate.

However, measuring changes in elevation produced a very different picture. Even though marshes under higher rates of sea-level rise were accumulating more sediment, this did not translate into more elevation gain.

The new research suggests a simple explanation for this.

The additional sediment and water accumulating on the surface weigh the marsh down, compressing the sediment below. This is particularly apparent in marshes with high organic content: precisely the type that develops under high rates of sea-level rise.

This insight accords with observations emerging from the paleo record, which also suggest tidal marshes are highly vulnerable to rapidly rising sea levels.

Read more:
Just 16% of the world’s coastlines are in good shape – and many are so bad they can never fully recover

A story of good news and bad

To protect our tidal marshes, we must try to reduce global carbon emissions that cause global warming and sea-level rise.

Sea level rise has averaged about 3.7mm per year since 2006. Our research shows tidal marshes are capable of keeping up with this on most of the world’s coastlines.

But global sea-level rise is set to increase. Modelling by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projects it will reach 7mm per year if warming reaches between 2℃ and 3℃.

Current global commitments put Earth on a trajectory for this level of warming. And once we reach tipping points for sea-level rise, they are locked in for centuries, regardless of subsequent cuts in emissions.

Read more:
Global emissions almost back to pre-pandemic levels after unprecedented drop in 2020, new analysis shows

The best hope for preserving the world’s existing tidal marshes is to meet the Paris Agreement goal of limiting global warming below 2℃ – and if possible 1.5℃.

But we should even now be considering how we might allow for these important ecosystems to shift landwards. This has been their natural adaptation to episodes of high sea-level rise in the past. Countries with large expanses of undeveloped coastal floodplain, such as Australia, are well placed to provide areas to preserve shifting tidal marshes in a warmer future.

Neil Saintilan receives funding from the Australian Commonwealth Government’s National Environmental Science Program.

– ref. Not waving, drowning: why keeping warming under 1.5℃ is a life-or-death matter for tidal marshes – https://theconversation.com/not-waving-drowning-why-keeping-warming-under-1-5-is-a-life-or-death-matter-for-tidal-marshes-187540

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lucas Walsh, Professor and Director of the Centre for Youth Policy and Education Practice, Monash University

You might think that in 2022 it would be utterly uncontroversial for a footy club to have rainbow colours on a jersey to celebrate diversity.

Unfortunately, the Manly Sea Eagles’ episode this week shows that simply expressing support for LGBTQ+ Australians can engender painful opposition. As gay rugby 7s player Sharni Williams told The Sydney Morning Herald: “It’s a bit of a punch in the face”.

This is just the latest example of how queer people’s identities and rights in Australian society continue to be topics of incredibly hurtful and harmful public debates.

We know that queer young people experience disproportionate levels of prejudice and discrimination. This can impact their feelings of belonging and hinder their access to the support they need.

So, what do young LGBTQ+ people want from their community, politicians and schools? Our new research explores these questions in their own words.

Our research

Last year, we surveyed more than 500 Australians aged 18-24 and interviewed 30 more about pressures in life – from education and employment to health and wellbeing.

Just over one in five young people we surveyed were queer and our new report focuses on their experiences.

We use the term queer to refer to young people who identify as one or more of the identity categories within and beyond the LGBTQ+ umbrella, while acknowledging the individuality of queer young people’s lives.

A sense of belonging

Our research highlights how queer young people in Australia face more pronounced challenges than cisgender and heterosexual young people. These challenges influence their sense of belonging at school, the barriers they face in accessing healthcare, and in the community more broadly.

Read more:
Explainer: what does it mean to be ‘cisgender’?

Our interviewees were critical of how governments and politicians engaged in public discussions surrounding the queer community. They emphasised that the poor handling of these debates causes real harm, particularly around issues such as the marriage equality postal vote and bill in 2017, trans women in sport and trans students in schools.

Some of our interviewees also felt the previous federal government had engaged with these issues for political gain. As one 24-year-old interviewee told us:

The only reason they looked like they cared about [same-sex marriage] is because it affected whether or not they got votes.

Feeling safe at school

The queer young people we surveyed were 21% less likely to feel like they belonged at their educational institution than cisgender and heterosexual young Australians.

Queer young people were 33% more likely to experience significant stress at least sometimes when interacting with other students. They were also 11% more likely to experience significant stress in relation to interacting with teachers and other educators.

This is perhaps unsurprising. Queer young people have people have previously reported harassment is common at school.

Our interviewees talked about the importance of queer spaces:

[it] gives the opportunity to just be yourself without any fear of judgement or repercussions. I think that’s really important to have.

But even then, feelings of belonging and safety were often fleeting. As a 20-year-old non-binary person told us:

There are a few times when I really had really strong feelings [of belonging], but they very quickly disappeared again […] the only time I really feel like that will be at events run by the trans community. Even then, as soon as you leave that event, it’s almost like you have to hold your breath again. It’s kind of suffocating.

The queer young people we surveyed were also 27% less likely to be satisfied or very satisfied with the health and mental health support in their educational institution.

Accessing healthcare when needed

Research has previously shown how queer young people’s experiences of social stigma, discrimination and prejudice impact their mental health and wellbeing. We also know existing health services are not meeting their needs.

One 20-year-old trans interviewee painted a bleak picture:

I have a few health problems myself [and] being trans, there are a lot of issues getting into the healthcare system to try and figure things out […] there is a 15-month to two year waiting list, to even be able to see a gender specialist in hospitals and healthcare systems […].

In our survey, queer young Australians were 84% more likely than cisgender and heterosexual young people to have sought and received mental health support in the last two years, and were 71% more likely to have sought but not received this support in the same time period.

In terms of who they would seek help from, queer young people in our study were more likely to seek assistance from health or mental health professionals. They were less likely than the broader population to seek support from religious mentors or those at home.

What should governments do?

Our data indicates queer young people are aware of the challenges faced by their community, but feel their concerns are not being heard. One interviewee told us:

as a trans person, it’s often really disheartening […] A lot of the time, it’s […] as though we’re not here.

Australian governments need to consult with queer young people and provide support to address their concerns. As a start, governments need to ask more inclusive questions about gender and sexuality when it comes to data collection, such as the census. This will mean support can be better targeted.

Read more:
Labor promised a new committee of 15 young people to guide policy. So who gets picked, and how?

What should schools do?

A typical young person in Australia spends 11,000 hours in education; it’s a hugely significant part of their lives.

Read more:
Supporting trans people: 3 simple things teachers and researchers can do

It’s key that school systems ensure all teachers have training and are supported to use queer-inclusive teaching resources. There are also easily accessible resources around gender and sexuality more broadly.

What can you do?

The responsibility for addressing the challenges outlined in our research does not rest with queer young people.

As a start, we recommend allies, friends, family members and colleagues use inclusive language, as well as learn how to recognise and intervene when marginalising language is used by others. A good guide can be found here.

If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call Lifeline on 13 11 14.

Lucas Walsh receives funding from The Paul Ramsay Foundation. This article is part of The Conversation’s Breaking the Cycle series, which is supported by a philanthropic grant from the Paul Ramsay Foundation.

Beatriz Gallo Cordoba, Blake Cutler, and Cathy Waite 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. ‘It’s kind of suffocating’: queer young Australians speak about how they feel at school and what they think of politicians – https://theconversation.com/its-kind-of-suffocating-queer-young-australians-speak-about-how-they-feel-at-school-and-what-they-think-of-politicians-187010

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

Jim Chalmers delivers bad economic news well, which is a good thing because there’s a great deal of it about, with a lot more to come.

The treasurer – at this early stage shaping up as one of the government’s strongest performers – comes across as combining frankness with empathy.

That doesn’t, of course, mean he or the government can do a lot to ease the financial pain many people will experience over the next year.

Chalmers’ Thursday economic statement to parliament put an overview on what most ordinary Australians know. From buying groceries, filling their petrol tanks, to paying their mortgages, households are feeling a big squeeze, and they’re aware it’s getting worse.

On Tuesday, the constraints on many people’s budgets will tighten further, when the Reserve Bank unveils another hike in interest rates.

The bank talks in aggregates when it announces increases, emphasising the buffer that exists to absorb rate rises.

Chalmers personalises the position families hit by inflation and rate rises find themselves in.

After Wednesday’s release of the 6.1% inflation figure (to the year ending June), he told a news conference: “A lot of people are living pay cheque to pay cheque for whom this inflation will be devastating because it’s getting harder and harder for them to substitute things out of their household budgets.”

And on Thursday he said: “There’s no point pretending these rate rises don’t hurt – they do and they will.”

Outlining the latest economic projections (revised from Treasury’s pre-election numbers), Chalmers said Australia’s growth forecast for this financial year has been reduced from 3.5% to 3%. For 2023-24, the forecast is down from 2.5% to 2%.

Inflation is now expected to peak at 7.75% in the year to December. It will still be at 5.5% by mid next year, on the new estimates.

Real wages are forecast “to start growing again in 2023-24”.

If the Morrison government had been re-elected, it would be facing the same difficult outlook. The major drivers of the economic bad news are coming from abroad, especially the war in Ukraine and China’s COVID lockdowns. But there are some domestic factors too, such as pent-up demand for spending post-lockdown.

In face of a bleak picture, the government’s messaging strategy is threefold.

First, Chalmers makes much of saying he wants to level with the public about how tough things are. He talks about taking the Australian people into his confidence, and uses the word “confronting” a lot when describing the economic situation.

Second, to the extent local factors are contributing to the bad news, Labor is loading maximum blame onto the former government. It condemns its lack of action on everything from climate change to properly skilling the workforce.

Third, the treasurer is holding out the prospect that things will all get better in the end, helped by Labor’s election policies.

In political terms the Albanese government, at least in the short term, is rather better placed to deal with situation than Scott Morrison would have been.

The new government is still in its honeymoon and so can call on considerable goodwill from the community.

But this can only be temporary. Exploiting the rising cost of living helped Labor to win power, but already voters are starting to be somewhat sceptical. This week’s Essential poll reported that four in ten people thought the government was doing a poor job in managing cost-of-living pressures.

Chalmers’ statement was a warm-up for the October budget. On this, one of his messages was that people shouldn’t get carried away when, in coming weeks, the budget outcome for 2021-22 reveals a “dramatically better” (smaller) deficit than originally expected.

The various factors producing this bit of brightness wouldn’t last long, he warned. There were other drags on the budget in the pipeline, including the rising cost (from higher interest rates) of servicing the debt left by the Coalition.

We’ll hear a lot more about all this as the government attacks the former government’s “waste and rorts” in the budget. The big question will be: how deep will the cuts go?

Chalmers has more than one reason for talking up budget pressures. Like treasurers before him, he will be anxious to head off demands.

Thus he keeps saying the cut in petrol excise won’t be extended. Calls for the relief to be maintained for a few more months will be loud ahead of the September expiry date.

Chalmers’ budget talk is directed to his own colleagues as well as to the public. As the budget approaches, the temptation to throw some money around will be great. He’s already had to wear hundreds of millions going to extending the pandemic leave payment.

The stark economic picture Chalmers paints just underlines the need for urgent action on immigration and training.

The economy desperately needs migrants and that requires improving visa processing and probably active recruitment. Targeted skills training is crucial.

These issues will be canvassed at the September jobs summit. But much of what has to be done is already clear – it’s a matter of acting as quickly as practicable.

For Chalmers, there must feel an element of deja vu. He was a senior staffer to then treasurer Wayne Swan during the global financial crisis.

Despite the problems with some programs, the Rudd government did well in handling the GFC, during which Australia avoided the recession that hit many countries.

The economic challenges of the long tail of this pandemic are very different from those of the GFC, and therefore so are the policy prescriptions. Then, large-scale spending was vital. Now, it’s a question of winding back spending.

Being involved in the GFC has provided Chalmers with experience he can bring to the present situation. He’ll also remember a salutary political lesson. Even if Australia comes out of the next year to 18 months in good shape, the government can’t expect the community will necessarily be grateful to it. It wasn’t after the GFC.

Then again, Chalmers might hope he could sell the message of success better than Labor did all those years ago.

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. Grattan on Friday: Jim Chalmers is a good performer, but can he hold the public’s trust through hard times? – https://theconversation.com/grattan-on-friday-jim-chalmers-is-a-good-performer-but-can-he-hold-the-publics-trust-through-hard-times-187872

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

As he had promised to do almost since the day he became treasurer, Jim Chalmers has presented a gloomy set of forecasts for the Australian economy in his first formal economic statement to the new parliament on Thursday.

Inflation is now forecast to peak at 7.75% in the December quarter of this year.

That’s higher than the Reserve Bank’s most recent (informal) forecast peak of 7%, and way above the 4.25% forecast in the March budget for the year to June, and the 3% forecast in that budget for the year to June 2023.

The annual rate is then expected to decline to 5.5% by June next year, and then to 3.5% by December next year, before dropping to 2.75%, back within the Reserve Bank’s target band, by June 2024.

The new forecast implicitly assumes consumer prices will rise by an average of 1.8% in each of the September and December quarters (as they did in the June quarter), then increase by 0.9% in the first two quarters of next year, and then 0.8% in the last two quarters of next year, and 0.5% in the first two quarters of 2024.

Provided Russian President Vladimir Putin doesn’t do anything that prompts a further jump in energy or food prices, those forecasts look plausible. Most other commodity prices have already begun to fall.

There are now tentative indications that some of the disruptions to global supply chains that played such an important role in the rise in inflation around the world over the past year or so are beginning to ease.

Especially in the United States, surveys that picked up some of the producer price pressures which subsequently showed up in rising consumer price inflation are now pointing in the opposite direction.

And, perhaps most importantly of all, from the standpoint of how much central banks will eventually need to lift interest rates to bring inflation back down to their targets, we are beginning to see some evidence, at least in the US, that longer-term inflation expectations are beginning to recede, rather than become entrenched at high levels.

Of course, forecasts that inflationary pressures will begin to abate from the beginning of next year incorporate an expectation that central banks will continue lifting interest rates, and that those higher interest rates will result in slower economic growth – as they are intended to do.

Slow ahead

So it’s hardly surprising that Chalmers also announced downward revisions to the forecasts for economic growth in the March budget.

Australia’s economy is now estimated to have grown by 3.25% in the 2021-22 financial year – half of one percentage point less than forecast in March.

And that budget’s forecasts for real GDP growth in 2022-23 and 2023-24 have each been revised down by a similar margin, to 3% and 2%, respectively.

These are actually slightly larger downward revisions than the ones made by the International Monetary Fund to its forecasts for Australia’s real GDP growth in calendar years 2022 and 2023 in its update released on Tuesday.

Slower economic growth almost inevitably means higher unemployment.

And so it was also no surprise to see the Treasurer revising up the previous Budget forecast for the unemployment rate in the June quarter of 2024 by one-quarter of a percentage point, to 4%.

Read more:
3.5% unemployment: Australia’s jobless rate at its lowest since 1974

But because the labour market is expected to be a bit tighter in the interim than had been assumed in the previous government’s last budget (as reflected in the June unemployment rate of 3.5%, the lowest since August 1974), the forecasts for growth in average wages in 2022-23 and 2023-24 have been revised upwards, by half of one percentage point, to 3.75%.

Although a bigger increase, it represents a quite large fall in real wages in the current financial year, followed by a small increase in 2023-24.

All these forecasts emanate from the same source as the ones that have now been revised (the Treasury) – and so are no less subject to uncertainties around the assumptions on which they rest, in particular about geopolitical events and the outlook for major overseas economies.

It’s not impossible that things could turn out “better” than these forecasts – in which case, no doubt Treasurer Chalmers will want to claim some credit.

They could, of course, also turn out worse.

Budget impacts bad, but undisclosed

Chalmers chose not to disclose much about the implications of these revisions to economic forecasts for the shape of the budget itself.

He did say the upward revisions to forecasts of prices and wages would add about $30 billion over the forward estimates period to budget payments.

But he didn’t give any hints as to the impact of higher bond rates on the budget interest payments. Nor did he give any indication of the likely impact of slower economic growth, or lower commodity prices, on budget revenue.

Those details – and what, if anything, the government proposes to do by way of response to them – will apparently have to wait until Chalmers presents his revised budget – the second this year – on October 25.

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

Saul Eslake 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 Chalmers graphs: 7.75% inflation, plunging real wages, weak growth – https://theconversation.com/the-chalmers-graphs-7-75-inflation-plunging-real-wages-weak-growth-187851

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amanda Coles, Senior Lecturer, Employment Relations, Department of Management, Deakin University, Deakin University

It has been a fantastic year for Australian cinematographers in Hollywood.

Australian directors of photography represented two of the five nominees for best cinematography at the 2022 Oscars. Greig Fraser won the Oscar for his work as cinematographer on Dune. Ari Wegner became the second woman ever to be nominated for best cinematography in the 94-year history of the Oscars, for her work on Power of the Dog.

Now, the work of Aussie director of photography Mandy Walker is being seen by audiences around the globe on Baz Luhrmann’s film Elvis, grossing more than US$210 million (A$304 million) at the worldwide box office.

The director of photography or cinematographer is responsible for the overall look of a film. This key creative leadership role demands advanced artistic and technical expertise. Our new report, A Wider Lens: Australian camera workforce development and diversity, looks behind the red carpet glitz to analyse the workforce, the work model and the work culture of Australian film and television camera departments.

We have found a workplace lacking in diversity and a toxic work culture rife with discrimination, stress and precarious employment.

Our findings suggest Australian cinematographers are succeeding on the international stage in spite of – rather than because of – labour markets and working conditions in the Australian film and television production industry.

A serious lack of diversity

Commissioned by the Australian Cinematographers Society, the report draws from Screen Australia production data and on 640 complete responses to a survey of Australian film and television camera professionals conducted in early 2021.

In line with a growing body of research in Australia and internationally on diversity in the film and television production industry, our study finds that gender inequality is a defining feature of work and labour markets in the camera department.

The Australian film and television camera workforce is 80% men, 18% women and 2% trans/gender diverse. It is an ageing workforce, with nearly 70% of camera professionals over the age of 35. It is also largely white, with 63% identifying as Anglo-Celtic. Only 2% of the survey respondents identified as Indigenous, and only 13% as non-European.

The workforce is 85% heterosexual, and 8% identify as a person with a disability.

This data snapshot must be understood in relation to the quantity and quality of work for film and television camera professionals – and indeed in the film and television production industry more generally.

A stressful environment

Work as a camera professional is high-performance, requiring a highly specialised, technical skill set and intense concentration for extended periods of time.

Job stress is compounded by the fact that film crews commonly work in unusual, and at times dangerous, locations.

The very real dangers that camera professionals face in doing their jobs is demonstrated by the tragic deaths of director of photography Halyna Hutchins on the set of Rust in 2021, and of camera assistant Sarah Jones on the set of Midnight Rider in 2014.

Read more:
We are filmmakers who work with firearms. This is what is important in on-set safety

Work stress is compounded by an employment model that is the definition of precarity.

Employment and income insecurity are driven by short-term freelance contracts that can be for as little as one day. Employment is accessed through highly exclusionary, informal hiring networks.

Half our survey respondents report directly experiencing discrimination in the hiring process, with gender, age and racial discrimination being the most frequently encountered.

When work is secured, working patterns are highly erratic, with irregular, frequently excessive and antisocial hours.

This work model produces severe consequences for workforce development and wellbeing. From our survey respondents, 60% of all camera professionals – and 70% of women – reported the work model actively prevents work-life balance.

Precarity and health stressors are even further exacerbated by what can only be described as a toxic industry work culture. Discrimination and harassment at work is commonly experienced.

Half of all non-European and Indigenous respondents report experiencing racism at work. Sexism at work has been experienced by 75% of trans and gender diverse respondents, and 89% of women. Sexual harassment is routine for women.

Those in positions of power and influence are often the perpetrators of discrimination, harassment and bullying. Unsurprisingly, reporting is a key challenge facing the industry.

Freelancers work in a reputation economy. There is widespread fear that reporting incidents of bullying, discrimination and harassment will jeopardise both future job prospects and career longevity in the camera department.

A workforce-wide problem

The timing is good for action. Many of the key policy and industrial issues fall across Tony Burke’s dual portfolios as Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, and Minister for the Arts.

These issues aren’t unique to film sets. Many of the issues raised by the report speak to key issues in Australian work places more generally.

The upcoming Jobs + Skills Summit offers an opportunity to advance the core issues raised here as emblematic of the types of workforce development and diversity issues cultivated by high-skill, low-quality and insecure work.

A lack of diversity in camera departments will not be solved by simply adding different people to the existing toxic system.

An industry-wide commitment to equity, diversity and inclusion must first focus not on the excluded, but those doing the excluding.

Read more:
Tony Burke’s double ministry of arts and industrial relations could be just what the arts sector needs

The research project was funded by the Australian Cinematographers Society.

Justine Ferrer and Vejune Zemaityte 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. Precarious employment, hiring discrimination and a toxic workplace: what work looks like for Australian cinematographers – https://theconversation.com/precarious-employment-hiring-discrimination-and-a-toxic-workplace-what-work-looks-like-for-australian-cinematographers-187080

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Therésa Jones, Associate Professor in Evolution and Behaviour, The University of Melbourne

As the Moon rises on a warm evening in early summer, thousands of baby turtles emerge and begin their precarious journey towards the ocean, while millions of moths and fireflies take to the air to begin the complex process of finding a mate.

These nocturnal behaviours, and many others like it, evolved to take advantage of the darkness of night. Yet today, they are under a increasing threat from the presence of artificial lighting.

At its core, artificial light at night (such as from street lights) masks natural light cycles. Its presence blurs the transition from day to night and can dampen the natural cycle of the Moon. Increasingly, we are realising this has dramatic physiological and behavioural consequences, including altering hormones associated with day-night cycles of some species and their seasonal reproduction, and changing the timing of daily activities such as sleeping, foraging or mating.

The increasing intensity and spread of artificial light at night (estimates suggest 2-6% per year) makes it one of the fastest-growing global pollutants. Its presence has been linked to changes in the structure of animal communities and declines in biodiversity.

Read more:
We attached tracking devices to West Africa’s green turtles. This is what we learnt

How animals are affected by artificial lighting

Light at night can both attract and repel. Animals living alongside urban environments are often attracted to artificial lights. Turtles can turn away from the safety of the oceans and head inland, where they may be run over by a vehicle or drown in a swimming pool. Thousands of moths and other invertebrates become trapped and disoriented around urban lights until they drop to the ground or die without ever finding a mate. Female fireflies produce bioluminescent signals to attract a mate, but this light can’t compete with street lighting, so they too may fail to reproduce.

Each year it is estimated millions of birds are harmed or killed because they are trapped in the beams of bright urban lights. They are disoriented and slam into brightly lit structures, or are drawn away from their natural migration pathways into urban environments with limited resources and food, and more predators.

Other animals, such as bats and small mammals, shy away from lights or may avoid them altogether. This effectively reduces the habitats and resources available for them to live and reproduce. For these species, street lighting is a form of habitat destruction, where a light rather than a road (or perhaps both) cuts through the darkness required for their natural habitat. Unlike humans, who can return to their home and block out the lights, wildlife may have no option but to leave.

For some species, light at night does provide some benefits. Species that are typically only active during the day can extend their foraging time. Nocturnal spiders and geckos frequent areas around lights because they can feast on the multitude of insects they attract. However, while these species may gain on the surface, this doesn’t mean there are no hidden costs. Research with insects and spiders suggests exposure to light at night can affect immune function and health and alter their growth, development and number of offspring.

Read more:
Sex on the beach might be fun for people – but it’s bad for dunes and wildlife

How can we fix this?

There are some real-world examples of effective mitigation strategies. In Florida, many urban beaches use amber-coloured lights (which are less attractive to turtles) and turn off street lights during the turtle nesting season. On Philip Island, Victoria, home to more than a million short-tailed shearwaters, many new street lights are also amber and are turned off along known migration pathways during the fledging period to reduce deaths.

In New York, the Tribute in Light (which consists of 88 vertical searchlights that can be seen nearly 100km away) is turned off for 20-minute periods to allow disoriented birds (and bats) to escape and to reduce the attraction of the structure to migrating animals.

In all cases, these strategies have reduced the ecological impact of night lighting and saved the lives of countless animals.

However, while these targeted measures are effective, they do not solve what might be yet another global biodiversity crisis. Many countries have outdoor lighting standards, and several independent guidelines have been written but these are not always enforceable and often open to interpretation.

As an individual there are things you can do to help, such as:

1. default to darkness: only light areas for a specific purpose

2. embrace technology: use sensors and dimmers to manage lighting frequency and intensity

3. location, location, location: keep lights close to the ground, shield at the rear, and direct light below the horizontal

4. respect the spectrum: choose low-intensity lights that limit the blue, violet and ultraviolet wavelengths. Wildlife is less sensitive to red, orange and amber light

5. all that glitters: choose non-reflective finishes for your home. This reduces the scattered light that contributes to sky glow.

In one sense, light pollution is relatively easy to fix – we can simply not turn on the lights and allow the night to be illuminated naturally by moonlight.

Logistically, this is mostly not feasible as lights are deployed for the benefit of humans who are often reluctant to give them up. However, while artificial light allows humans to exploit the night for work, leisure and play, in doing so we catastrophically change the environment for many other species.

In the absence of turning off the lights, there are other management approaches we can take to mitigate their impact. We can limit their number; reduce their intensity and the time they are on; and, potentially change their colour. Animal species differ in their sensitivity to different colours of light and research suggests some colours (ambers and reds) may be less harmful than the blue-rich white lights becoming commonplace around the world.

Therésa Jones receives funding from the Australian Research Council (DP210101915). She is a co-director of the Australasian Dark Sky Alliance (ADSA).

Kathryn McNamara is employed as a research associate on an ARC grant awarded to Therésa Jones (DP210101915).

– ref. Artificial light at night can change the behaviour of all animals, not just humans – https://theconversation.com/artificial-light-at-night-can-change-the-behaviour-of-all-animals-not-just-humans-183028

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonti Horner, Professor (Astrophysics), University of Southern Queensland

Looking for something spectacular to brighten a cold, dark winter’s night?

Well, this weekend might just have something in store: not one, not two, but three meteor showers active at the same time – combining to provide a celestial firework display almost all through the night.

Although the best night to watch will be the evening and night of Saturday July 30 (through to dawn on Sunday morning), the three showers will be near their peak rates from tonight. So you’ll have plenty of chances to catch the show while avoiding bad weather or other commitments.

Best of all, there’s going to be a New Moon, which means there won’t be much glare spoiling the show.

Not one meteor shower, but three?

The Solar System is full of debris left behind from the formation of the planets more than 4.5 billion years ago. Some of this debris – comets and asteroids – moves on orbits that cross Earth’s path around the Sun.

Each time those comets and asteroids swing in towards the Sun, they shed debris. Over hundreds or thousands of years their orbits become shrouded in broad streams of dust.

Earth continually passes through these streams of detritus as it moves around the Sun, which gives birth to the annual meteor showers. Each year, we return to the same place in our orbit, encounter the same stream of debris, and get another nice show as that debris burns up harmlessly, 80 kilometres overhead.

In the depths of the Australian winter, Earth is moving through a bit of space where three streams of debris intersect with our planet’s orbit. Those three streams give birth to the stars of this weekend’s show: the Southern Delta Aquariids, the Alpha Capricornids, and the Piscis Austrinids.

The International Meteor Organisation has 3D animated visualisations of the Southern Delta Aquariid and the Alpha Capricornid meteor streams, which show how the debris is distributed across space.

A tale of three showers

So, let’s introduce the stars of the show.

The Southern Delta Aquariids is the most active of the three showers, with the fastest-moving meteors. Most of the meteors you’ll see this weekend will likely be members of this stream.

The origin of the Southern Delta Aquariids is the topic of some debate. They are one of several meteor showers seemingly linked to one parent object, as though a large comet fell apart long ago, leaving behind a vast amount of debris, potentially including fragments large enough to be comets in their own right.

Over millennia, the debris has spread out, so Earth runs into it multiple times each year. At the moment, the Southern Delta Aquariids are tentatively tied to a comet called 96P/Machholtz, which is the most active object in the debris stream.

The Southern Delta Aquariids have been known to throw up some surprises. In 2006, they produced an outburst, with some people observing more than 60 meteors per hour at their peak. No outburst is forecast for this year, but you never know what might happen!

The second of our triumvirate of showers is the Alpha Capricornids. These produce the slowest meteors of the three showers. They also have a reputation for being a “fireball” shower – often producing spectacular meteors that outshine the brightest stars.

These are the meteors you’re most likely to catch on film, and provide a great opportunity to practise astrophotography.

The final shower, the Piscis Austrinids, are perhaps the least studied of the three. Like the Alpha Capricornids, they are a minor shower that yields just a few meteors per hour, even at their peak. Their meteors are of medium speed.

Read more:
I’ve always wondered: why are the stars, planets and moons round, when comets and asteroids aren’t?

So where, and when, should I look?

The key for observers is to work out when the shower’s “radiant” will be above the horizon. The radiant is the point in the sky from which all the meteors in the shower appear to radiate.

Meteor showers are named after the location of their radiant. The Alpha Capricornids, for example, radiate from a point near the star Alpha Capricorni.

In the case of our midwinter trio, we’re quite lucky. All three radiants rise in the early-to-mid evening from Australia, and reach a reasonable altitude by about 10pm.

As a result, you’ll be able to see meteors any time from the mid-evening onward. The best rates will be visible from about 10pm, until dawn.

Once you’re settled into a comfortable spot from which to observe, try to avoid looking at your phone. You’ll want to let your eyes properly adjust to the darkness so you can see the faintest meteors. Glancing at a screen, even for a second, will send you back to square one.

We find the best place to look when watching a meteor shower is around 45 degrees above the horizon, and about 45 degrees to the left or the right of the radiant.

In the early evening, it would therefore be best to look to the east or northeast. By midnight, and immediately after, looking to the north would be best. And in the hours before dawn, you should look west or northwest.

And don’t fret once it’s over! While these three showers are shaping up to put on a decent show, they aren’t the best meteoric event of the year. That’s the Geminids, coming up in December. So there’s much to look forward to yet!

Read more:
Fragments of a dying comet might put on a spectacular show next week – or pass by without a trace

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

– ref. A triple meteoric spectacle is set to grace our skies this weekend – https://theconversation.com/a-triple-meteoric-spectacle-is-set-to-grace-our-skies-this-weekend-187767