Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Olga Oleinikova, Senior Lecturer and Director of the SITADHub (Social Impact Technologies and Democracy Research Hub) in the School of Communication, University of Technology Sydney

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese visited Ukraine this month, promising an extra A$100 million in military aid and pledging to help the country for “as long as it takes”.

So when a humanitarian visa program allowing Ukrainians to live and work in Australia was announced to end on July 14, it caught many by surprise.

Such short-notice visa changes are an impossible challenge for Ukrainians facing the many complexities and stresses of fleeing the war. In response to these concerns, the deadline has since been extended, but only by two more weeks.

The decision to end the visa program is disappointing, given heavy fighting continues and the humanitarian crisis worsens.

While understanding there may be economic and other reasons for the visa program change, we hope the government considers exemptions and other alternatives to continue supporting displaced Ukrainians.

Worsening humanitarian crisis

Civilians continue to be killed and injured by Russian forces.

Houses, hospitals, schools and other infrastructure are being consistently damaged or destroyed.

Food production has been disrupted as there’s evidence Russian forces have placed landmines to contaminate agricultural areas, and stolen and set fire to Ukrainian grain harvests.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, about one third of Ukrainians have been forced to flee their homes.

More than nine million people – around a quarter of the country’s population – have had to seek refuge abroad. This has created the largest current refugee crisis in the world.

Several countries in Europe and other parts of the world opened their doors to host displaced Ukrainians. Poland remains at the top, sheltering more than 1.2 million refugees, while other popular destinations include Germany, Czech Republic, Italy, as well as the United States, Canada and Australia.

Why do Ukrainians choose Australia?

Australia is one of the most distant destinations offering shelter to displaced Ukrainians.

I (Olga) have researched and written a book on Eastern European migration to Australia, and am currently leading a project with the University of Technology Sydney on Ukrainian migration to Australia.

I’m undertaking a follow-up pilot study on the pathways to humanitarian protection for recent Ukrainian arrivals fleeing the war.

Unpublished preliminary results from my interviews reveal four main reasons why some Ukrainians choose Australia over very attractive humanitarian programs in countries like Poland, Germany and Norway.

These reasons are:

• relatives and friends in Australia

• distant location from war-torn Europe

• attractive three-year humanitarian program (Europe offers one year)

• job opportunities.

Anna Kolieda, one of the participants, escaped Ukraine and went to Germany before coming to Australia. She said:

I didn’t know much about the country. Except that it is safe, far away from other world, has beautiful landscapes and English like first language. It is also harder in Europe with jobs. But the very big factor was that I had a support from friends here. They invited me and were supporting on my way. [Settlement Services International] and government do a great job in providing help also, so it create a good start – I feel very comfortable on my second month here.

Australia’s response

Despite very few direct interests in the region, Australia has shown extraordinary support for Ukraine.

The Australian government has contributed over A$385 million in aid to date.

Support for Ukrainians in Australia is also strong on the ground. For example, the NSW Government has generously donated over 350 Opal travel cards to newly arrived Ukrainians, pre-loaded with money.

Settlement Services International, the Red Cross, other services, and the local Ukrainian community have organised airport pickups, hotel accommodation, food vouchers, and phone cards.

The Adult Migrant English Program and community groups have provided language instruction locally and free of charge. Such initiatives play a crucial role in speedily integrating them into Australia.

The impact of the visa program cut-off

Since February, Australia has granted more than 8,500 visas to Ukrainians. According to The Australian newspaper, around 4,100 of these people have accepted the offer and are now in the country.

Under the visa program, displaced Ukrainians can work, study, and access Medicare.

Because Ukrainians have to be physically in Australia to accept the visa offer, many people have had to hurriedly alter their travel plans to arrive before the deadline, creating a wave of disappointment, fear and pressure on those who had made plans for the coming months.

According to a survey by the Australian Federation of Ukrainian Organisations (AFUO) with over 530 responses, the key issues facing Ukrainians from the changes to Australia’s humanitarian visa program include:

• having purchased tickets for a later date

• delays trying to escape territories occupied by the Russian armed forces

• waiting for passports or other key travel documents to be issued or updated

• caring for sick relatives

• men 18 – 60 years old not being permitted to leave the country due to martial law.

AAP reports there’s concern that displaced Ukrainians who miss the deadline will have to reside in Australia on tourist visas, with no ability to work or access to Medicare.

Gendered impacts of the war are another concern. As most of those fleeing Ukraine are women and children, there are numerous further issues affecting them, including: a fear of sexual violence, worry for husbands and sons left behind, lack of access to sexual and reproductive health, vulnerability to trafficking, and loss of livelihoods.

It’s crucial that support for Ukraine from Australia and other countries doesn’t get phased out as the war drags on.

Read more:
Russia’s Ukraine invasion is slowly approaching an inflection point. Is the West prepared to step up?

Jaya A R Dantas received funding from Healthways (The Health Promotion Foundation of Australia) to undertake intervention projects with refugee and migrant women. She has lived and worked in post-conflict countries and examines the gendered impact of conflict. She is the International SIG Convenor of the Public Health Association of Australia, President of Australian Graduate Women and is on the Global Gender Equality in Health Leadership Committee for Women in Global Health, Australia.

Tetiana Bogachenko is a member of the Ukrainian Association of Western Australia.

Olga Oleinikova 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. Australia’s special visa program for Ukrainians to end, despite war raging on – https://theconversation.com/australias-special-visa-program-for-ukrainians-to-end-despite-war-raging-on-186829

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jessica Turner, PhD Candidate, University of Adelaide

The beloved Asian elephant Tricia died at Perth Zoo this month at the ripe old age of 65, making her one of the world’s oldest elephants.

Tricia was born in 1957 and arrived at Perth Zoo in 1963 from Vietnam. Her keeper described her as expressive, playful, and mischievous.

Tricia’s death has led to an outpouring of grief in Perth, especially among zookeepers and her fellow elephants, Putra Mas and Permai. But it has also sparked renewed debate about the ethics of keeping such long-lived, wandering animals in zoos for decades.

This is an important topic to debate as, historically, elephant welfare in captivity has been poor. So are elephants generally happy and safe in enclosures today?

The challenges of keeping elephants captive

Animal welfare, as a concept, is complex and evolving. In broad strokes, welfare is defined as an animal’s ability to avoid suffering and sustain fitness. This requires human carers to not only provide for physical needs, but mental ones.

But animal welfare wasn’t always a priority for captive elephants. A notorious example is elephants being held captive in circuses. These elephants were separated from their mothers at an early age for training, confined for long periods and moved improperly in flatbeds and box cars from place to place.

Read more:
China’s efforts to save its wandering elephants are laudable, but let’s not forget its bloody conflicts with the giants

Promoting good welfare for elephants in captivity is difficult due to their larger size, which requires greater resources such as water, space and up to 150 kilograms of food daily.

Satisfying their space and exercise needs in a captive environment is likely impossible. In the wild, elephants can roam great distances – up to 195km in a day – and are continually on the move.

These animals also have highly developed cognitive abilities, rivalling those of primates. For example, elephants can manufacture and use tools, such as manipulating and stripping branches to swat insects.

Elephants have a playful side. They splash water and mud or, in dry periods, use their trunks to entangle the trunks of others under the shade of a tree.

Various accounts suggest they can also show compassion, be cooperative, recognise themselves in a mirror, and demonstrate altruism.

Read more:
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They also demonstrate strong social bonds with other elephants. Emerging evidence suggests grief and comfort are displayed upon the death of a bonded family member. Management practices that disrupt these bonds lead to suffering.

Tricia became the foster mother of three elephant calves who came to Perth Zoo. Tragically in 2007, one of the elephants was euthanised due to health complications. Tricia grieved this loss for a year.

Animal welfare in modern zoos

Modern Australian zoos have made animal welfare a top priority. Some key considerations in assessing welfare are the complexity of the enclosure, a varied and species-appropriate diet, behavioural enrichment and regular heath care.

Carers also keep an eye out for behaviours suggestive of fear, stress, and anxiety, such as pacing, aggression, and self-harm.

Perhaps one of the best examples of the progress of zoological parks is Tricia herself. The captivity conditions in her early days were poor, by today’s standards.

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She was originally housed in a concrete enclosure. Tricia was moved to a new enclosure in 1986 that included a new barn and pool.

The current elephant enclosure at Perth Zoo has tripled in size and contains a swimming pool, mud wallow, trees, scratching posts, and a heated barn with sand floors and sleeping mounds.

Various activities aimed at improving her life quality were also available in the form of zoo walks and painting – an extension of drawing and scribbling elephants do in the wild.

As a reader you may be thinking that, sure, this sounds nice, but how could it really compare to the freedoms and space of the wild?

Unfortunately achieving good welfare in the wild is rarely a given either. Wild populations of Asian elephants are listed as endangered, with a rapidly decreasing population and a long time between generations of 22-25 years.

They face many threats such as urban encroachment, hunting and habitat decline. They’re also viewed as pests by farmers and timber loggers.

Today’s captive elephants are often part of breeding and conservation programs aimed at Asian elephants. While captive breeding programs are unlikely to make significant contributions to wild population numbers, highlighting their plight in the wild to visitors can promote the conservation message.

Some zoos also use their experience to become involved in conservation efforts in the elephants’ home countries, where success is more likely. As an example, Australia Zoo has invested funds in an Indonesian elephant hospital to rehabilitate injured animals.

The future of captive elephants

Australian zoos are recognising the challenges of keeping certain species within their walls. We’re seeing a shift away from actively adding or replacing exotic species, in favour of redeveloping larger and more complex enclosures for remaining animals. Priority is given to species part of conservation and breeding programs.

So can we re-introduce elephants who have spent most of their lives zoos, back into the wild? This would be unethical, due to their reliance on generational knowledge to find food, water and migration routes.

But there is increasing recognition of the need for stable social groups, and a resolve to house Asian elephants across fewer locations that can provide the best conditions for them.

For example, Perth Zoo is searching for a new home for their two remaining elephants where they can be integrated into a larger herd. And Melbourne zoo will house their herd at Werribee Open Range Zoo, which will expand to 21 hectares available for roaming.

Only time will tell what the future holds for elephants in zoos. But we should take heart in the progress that has been made to elephant housing and care over the last 50 years, as well as a greater recognition of any emerging issues, ensuring robust debate.

Jessica Turner has a PhD supervisor, affiliated with Zoos SA; however they were not involved with the creation of this article

Alexandra Whittaker has previously received funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council.

– ref. Was Tricia the elephant happy? Experts on the ethics of keeping such big, roaming creatures in captivity – https://theconversation.com/was-tricia-the-elephant-happy-experts-on-the-ethics-of-keeping-such-big-roaming-creatures-in-captivity-187016

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Holly Seale, Associate professor, UNSW Sydney

Back in mid 2020, it was suggested mask use was similar to seat belt wearing in cars. Not everyone wore a seat belt start straight away, but now it’s unheard of to get into a car and not put it on.

In reality, it took seven years for seat belt compliance to reach 90%.

Now we are about 900 days into the pandemic, we are certainly not seeing 90% of people wearing masks. In my local area, it is probably more like one in ten people wearing a mask in the local shops. And others on social media report low compliance on public transport.

So is the answer to reintroduce rules for mask use in certain settings or a more general mandate around their use?

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Listening to advice

Already Victoria’s Health Minister Mary-Anne Thomas has dismissed recommendations from the state’s chief health officer to mandate mask wearing in retail and early education settings in response to rising case numbers. (People are still required to wear masks in some Victorian settings including public transport, aircraft, courts, prison, if they have COVID or are a close contact.)

Mandates were not the most effective way of getting the message out about the importance of mask wearing, the minister said. The government instead wants to focus on empowering Victorians to make their own choice.

Doctors are not happy. Australian Medical Association of Victoria president, Roderick McRae said it was “very disappointing” the health minister had ignored recommendations to mandate masks in schools, child care, retail and hospitality.

How does mask compliance track with and without a mandate?

One study tracked mask use based on newspaper photos published in Victoria during one month in mid-2020. It found prior to the mandatory mask policy announcement, 43% of the people in the photos were wearing masks.

During the period when the mask policy had been announced but not formally enacted, 74% were wearing masks. Lastly, during the period when mask wearing was mandatory, 98% were wearing masks.

Obviously, there are limitations to this work. Only a small number of photos were reviewed and the photographers may have been purposely taking photos of people who were not complying (prior to policy introduction) or were following the rules (once the policy was in place).

However, the study authors also surveyed the community and found a rapid change in self-reported mask wearing, from just over 40% of participants reporting always or often wearing a mask on July 20, to 100% reporting always wearing a mask on 26 July.

Based on case numbers, the authors concluded masks were effective at reducing transmission and though they were “somewhat inconvenient” for the individual, they were “less likely to have unintended negative impacts on the broader community than policies restricting movement, social engagement and the operations of business, schools and childcare”.

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Will empowerment promote mask use?

Probably not. Community empowerment refers to the process of enabling communities to increase control over their lives. But that doesn’t mean everyone will feel empowered to do the safest thing.

“Empowerment” refers to the process by which people gain control over the factors and decisions that shape their lives. It can prompt innovation in health messaging and engagement.

In times of uncertainty, such as a pandemic which doesn’t yet appear to be nearing its end and new subvariants emerging, the simple act of not wearing a mask may give people a feeling of control over an unfamiliar situation.

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What about a nudge in the right direction?

Early in the pandemic, it was suggested that promoting social norms (the values within the community) such as the widespread use of masks (through strategic communication and community engagement) could be just as effective as enforcement.

Some suggested strategies included sharing evidence of widespread adherence and encouraging news stories about positive trends in mask-wearing. Research from Sao Paulo showed individuals who received a text message referring to COVID restrictions as a “civic duty” were over 12% more likely to report keeping an appropriate distance from others and 3% more likely always to wear masks.

Successful use of messages to increase mask-wearing intentions were also reported in another study, when individuals were encouraged to “rely on their reasoning” instead of “relying on their emotions” to make the decision.

A United States study from 2021 showed exposure to a message about mask use from the president or the Centres for Disease Control increased the stated likelihood of wearing a mask, particularly among then President Trump’s supporters.

Lastly, they found if a person tested negative, they were more likely to support mask use. Testing positive to COVID had no affect on mask support and in some cases reduced support.

This far into the pandemic though, role modelling by leaders, highlighting the benefits masks can have on reducing risk and the possible knock-on financial gains might not have the same nudging effects.

Misunderstandings around masks and vaccines

Waning immunity from vaccines and the emergence of new variants, only increases the value of wearing face masks. However, the current low levels of mask use suggest many members of the public still believe using masks in certain situations is unnecessary.

A study of people surveyed in mid 2021 showed many thought widespread COVID vaccination would ease the burden of wearing masks. But the risk of reinfection means that’s not necessarily the case.

Health experts and government officials need to continuously communicate with people to explain how effective face masks are at preventing infection, even after getting vaccinated. Decreasing individuals’ uncertainty about the role of masks and vaccines could improve their judgement.

It is important we continue to draw on the learnings so far and the behavioural nudges that have been shown to have an impact on mask use. However we also need to be realistic given the point we are in the pandemic. These nudges may not be enough and if there are any other shifts in severe COVID cases due to new variants, it is important to prime the community that mandates may be needed again.

In the words of Batman, a caped and masked crusader since 1939:

I wear a mask. And that mask, it’s not to hide who I am, but to create what I am.

Holly Seale is an investigator on research studies funded by NHMRC and has previously received funding for investigator driven research from NSW Ministry of Health, as well as from Sanofi Pasteur and Seqirus.

– ref. Mask mandates – will we only act on public health advice if someone makes us? – https://theconversation.com/mask-mandates-will-we-only-act-on-public-health-advice-if-someone-makes-us-186914

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tony Blakely, Professor of Epidemiology, Population Interventions Unit, Centre for Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, The University of Melbourne

New Zealand, Australia and many countries are experiencing a further Omicron wave driven by the latest BA.4/BA.5 subvariants. Our response to this threat is remarkably laissez-faire compared with past approaches, as society has pivoted more to “living with the virus”.

But in both New Zealand and Australia, there’s a real risk current policy settings will be insufficient to prevent health services being overwhelmed – and more will need to be done in coming weeks.

We might squeak through under current policy settings if many more of us get vaccinated, wear masks, and isolate well when sick.

So, how do New Zealand and Australia compare on key policy settings?

Free masks? And what kind?

New Zealand: Free masks for all in Aotearoa – available from testing centres, marae (Māori communal meeting ground) and community centres, and provided directly to schools. Some 16 million surgical masks have been distributed in the last two months, as well as 3 million N95 masks (the latter to high risk and vulnerable people).

Australia: free masks are occasionally distributed to certain groups (for example, some schools might have them). But access is extremely variable. (Also, one of us – Tony Blakely – has been in both Australia and New Zealand in last ten days, and can report mask wearing is much higher in New Zealand.)

Free Rapid Antigen Tests (RATs)?

New Zealand: access is similar to masks. 10.4 million free RATs distributed in last two months.

Australia: the federal government will not extend free rapid antigen tests for concession card holders past July 31. New South Wales and Victoria make RATs available for free for some under certain circumstances. But nationwide, access to free RATs is variable and limited. (One of us – Tony Blakely – received four free RATs on arrival in New Zealand, and zero on arrival in Australia.)

Accessing antivirals (and do you need to go to the GP)?

There are two oral antivirals available in both countries: Paxlovid and Lagevrio.

Both are effective at preventing disease progression (for example, stopping you ending up in hospital) if taken within five days of symptom onset.

New Zealand: available to higher risk groups – access has been expanded from 2% to 10% of cases. Available by prescription from GP and directly from pharmacist. No cost if you’re eligible.

Australia: available to certain higher risk groups. Prescription needed from GP. Co-payment of A$42.50 ($6.80 if concession card).

Read more:
Australia approves two new medicines in the fight against COVID. How can you get them and are they effective against Omicron?

Vaccines?

Both countries are gradually widening access. Differences in one point in time may not be present in a few weeks. That said, as of mid-July 2022:

New Zealand: primary course (that is, the first two vaccines) available for all people five years and older. First booster available to all 16+ year olds. Second booster (that is, the fourth dose) available to all 50+ year olds (but targeted more to 65+ year olds, unless Māori or Pasifika, in which case all 50+ year olds prioritised). Free. Vaccines mandatory for health and disability sector workers.

Australia: primary course and first booster eligibility the same as in New Zealand. However, second booster encouraged for immunocompromised and all 50+ year olds, and available to 30-49 year olds if they wish. Free. Vaccines mandatory for some workers in some settings.

Income support for people who test positive?

New Zealand: several forms of assistance, including COVID-19 Leave Support Scheme for people who need to self-isolate.

Australia: very restricted availability.

Mask mandates?

New Zealand: mandatory for public transport, retail, visiting health care and aged care facilities, and public venues.

Australia: mandatory in aged and health care settings, on public transport and some other settings (but compliance is low).

Actual mask wearing is higher in indoor environments in New Zealand, based on direct observation in both New Zealand and Victoria by one of us – Tony Blakely – during July.

Mandatory self-isolation?

New Zealand: mandatory seven days self-isolation following positive test result. Household contacts also need to isolate for seven days, unless they have had COVID-19 in the last three months.

Australia: if you test positive for COVID-19 you must immediately isolate. However, the circumstances under which you can leave isolation may depend on which state you’re in. Household members in many places don’t have to isolate, as long as they have no symptoms.

Is either country getting it right?

Based on the above criteria, New Zealand is clearly “winning”. But getting policy settings right over the long haul is about more than just having the most favourable assessment on some selected (but important) criteria.

If the goal is to minimise hospitalisations, deaths and long-term illness, there is an argument for minimising infections by shifting from mitigation towards a suppression strategy.

Longitudinal studies are increasingly showing high rates of reinfection, which carry many of the same health consequences as the initial infection.

As the pandemic goes on (and on and on) we need to increasingly consider cost-effectiveness.

Giving out free RATs to all is a cost to governments, and carries sustainability consequences. Such interventions need to be effective and compared with alternative approaches.

These are complex decisions – and hard to quantify. We do not have a good enough crystal ball to know what is “right” now; we will, unfortunately, only know with the benefit of hindsight.

Tony Blakely is contracted to Moderna for provision of vaccine effectiveness estimates for Victoria, and in discussions with MSD for evaluation of Molnupiravir effectiveness in the Victorian population.

Michael Baker receives funding from the Health Research Council of New Zealand to conduct research on infectious diseases, including Covid-19

– ref. How are Australia and NZ managing the rising COVID winter wave – and is either getting it right? – https://theconversation.com/how-are-australia-and-nz-managing-the-rising-covid-winter-wave-and-is-either-getting-it-right-187020

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Fernandez-Perez, Senior Research Fellow in Finance, Auckland University of Technology

Think about the last time you bought something expensive to make yourself feel better after a disappointment or when you treated yourself with a fancy and expensive dinner after some accomplishment.

Emotions have a strong influence on purchasing decisions. More often than we realise, we make these decisions based on emotions rather than rational calculations and facts. It is well documented that financial decisions are also influenced by emotions.

In low mood periods people are more pessimistic about firms’ prospects, which is associated with decreases in stock market prices.

Because of the growing popularity of assets with a strong focus on environmental, social and governance (ESG) goals – companies with corporate policies that encourage them to act responsibly – we wanted to look at what role emotions can play in determining people’s preference for sustainable investments.

Why do investors choose sustainable investments?

There are several reasons why people may want to invest in sustainable assets. Some may be “social signalling” – they like to talk about how their investments are socially responsible.

Another reason can be found in how someone was raised. An individual’s propensity to invest in socially responsible assets is influenced by having parents owning similar assets or growing up in a family that values environmental sustainability.

Read more:
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The “warm glow effect”, which is a good feeling experienced through the act of giving, also explains why investors choose ESG assets. Investors experience positive emotions when choosing sustainable investments, irrespective of the investments’ impact.

But does an investor’s mood influence their preference for sustainable investments? There are several reasons why emotions might affect where people put their money.

The role of mood in our investment decisions

There are two competing theories when it comes to examining the role of mood and sustainable investment.

The first is based on the idea that sustainable assets are generally less risky. In this sense, assets that are considered completely or mostly sustainable have been shown to outperform less sustainable assets in crises, as investors see them as more trustworthy and having fewer structural, legal and reputational risks.

This theory is also based on the idea that a lower mood leads to more risk-averse behaviour. That is, when someone is sad, depressed or angry they tend to become more cautious when making investment decisions and choose investments with lower risk.

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A second and competing theory is based on the idea that a positive mood promotes prosocial behaviours and greater altruism. Investors with lower mood tend to focus on themselves and less about others. As such, they have less preference for sustainable investments.

Happier investors, on the other hand, may be more altruistic and favour sustainable investments because it benefits others (for example, community, workmates and the environment).

Our research has tested these theories, documenting evidence consistent with investors’ greater risk aversion.

More specifically, we found that a worse mood is associated with greater investment in sustainable assets. This is arguably due to a greater risk aversion pushing investors to favour sustainable investments that they perceive as less risky.

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How to identify sustainable funds and test investors’ mood?

To identify sustainable versus non-sustainable funds, we used the Morningstar Sustainability rating. This rating is intended to help investors better understand and manage total ESG risk in their investments. A higher sustainability rating is associated with a lower ESG risk.

To capture the change in the average mood of households for a given month, we used a metric called “onset and recovery” (OR). This metric measures the change in the monthly percentage of seasonally depressed individuals who are actively experiencing symptoms.

Higher OR indicates an increase in symptomatic depression cases and, therefore, lower mood on average. For the Northern Hemisphere, OR is high during autumn (September), low during spring (March), and moderate during summer and winter. Southern Hemisphere countries experience the same pattern in reverse.

We contrasted OR levels in relation to investment in sustainable equity mutual funds in 25 countries over the 2018–2021 period.

In general, mutual funds with high sustainability ratings tended to attract more capital, suggesting that investors value sustainable investments.

More importantly, however, we found that when there was an increase in the percentage of seasonally depressed individuals, capital inflows into high-sustainability funds increased relative to low-sustainability alternatives (an extra 0.070% per month or 0.84% per year).

For an average mutual fund with a size of US$100 million, this additional capital inflow equates to $840,000 per year.

This negative association is consistent with a risk-aversion interpretation, supporting the conclusion that lower mood leads to more sustainable investments as investors perceive them as being less risky.

Read more:
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Our study comes with a caveat. Given the features of our data, we cannot test if the investors’ mood improves after investing in sustainable funds. This would not only confirm that sustainable investments are a safer option, but also that investing in them will boost people’s mood.

So, is sadness good for the environment and society?

Our research explores a potential channel that could explain people’s preference for sustainable investments.

Our findings suggest that, when it comes to investing in sustainable equity mutual funds, risk aversion triggered by negative moods was a more likely cause of increased investing than the potential happiness connected to their pro-social behaviour.

This does not imply that sadness is good for the environment or society, it rather confirms that investors consider sustainable investments a safer option.

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. In the mood for sustainable funds? How feeling pessimistic can influence where investors put their money – https://theconversation.com/in-the-mood-for-sustainable-funds-how-feeling-pessimistic-can-influence-where-investors-put-their-money-186994

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Julaine Allan, Senior lecturer, University of Wollongong

At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the federal government’s pandemic response struggled to include the country’s most minoritised groups, including First Nations people.

Daily press conferences were broadcast, but the messages were not delivered or received equally across the country. Trust in the people delivering the messages and ability to follow health advice varies according to personal, social and cultural experiences.

Our study found First Nations people in rural NSW experienced significantly more anxiety and fear about COVID-19 than non-First Nations Australians.

Read more:
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Australia’s bungled response to communities hit hard by COVID

At the beginning of the pandemic Australia’s strategy resulted in low numbers of infected people until the Delta variant emerged. Then First Nations rural and remote communities were essentially left to fend for themselves. Even though First Nations people were found to be at greater risk of death and illness during past influenza pandemics.

The Aboriginal community-controlled health sector’s strengths based communication strategy led to culturally appropriate responses including the creation of pandemic tool kits and infection control advice. In some places this included closing remote communities and developing localised social media campaigns for these sites.

However, the Delta variant’s spread through Western NSW revealed limited access to vaccination and government’s failure to consult with hard-hit communities. These problems were compounded by complicated messages and limited attention to rural communities that has been a feature of pandemic communications in Australia.

Research limited with structurally marginalised communities

The research community responded rapidly to the need to investigate and inform responses to the pandemic. However, there was limited research about rural First Nations people’s perceptions of COVID-19 risks, or their information or communication needs.

There was also limited attention to the community needs in NSW where the largest population of First Nations peoples live in Australia.

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Study reveals how concerning COVID was for rural NSW First Nations communities

In our study we tested the links between age, sex, First Nations status, access to healthcare and family situation. We also asked how often First Nations people felt fearful about COVID-19, and how harmful they thought the virus was.

First Nations peoples felt afraid more often than non-First Nations people did. They also felt it was highly likely they would catch the virus, and that it would be very harmful to them and their community.

Nearly 60% of First Nations peoples thought there was nothing they could do about COVID-19, and only 11.6% of the rest of the sample agreed with this statement. This is interesting because when vaccines were first made available in Australia, First Nations people were identified as a high priority group.

Their fears were justified because the Delta variant of COVID-19 quickly took hold in small communities that have limited healthcare services. The availability of services needed to provide vaccinations was not taken into account in vaccine rollout plans.

Read more:
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Fear and mistrust stem from historical trauma

Our survey results of fear and perceptions of harm from COVID-19 is understandable when previous poor health care experiences and past harmful government practices has to led to distrust in health care by many First Nations Peoples.

Notably, two things that predicted high levels of anxiety in survey respondents were common to First Nations people in rural NSW – living with children under 18 years of age and living in small rural towns more than 20 kilometres away from the nearest health service.

One quarter of the First Nations population in Australia already experienced anxiety and depression before the pandemic. Lack of confidence in health services and health communications have been identified as things that will make anybody’s existing mental health conditions worse.

Fear of COVID infection has been linked to long-lasting post-traumatic stress symptoms. Combined with a shortage of mental health services in rural areas, there is an urgent need to consult with communities about how best to support them.

Co-designed health communication necessary

There were no First Nations representatives in daily government press conferences delivering health advice even though there were frequent mentions of risks to First Nations communities.

Different populations require nuanced communications that address their fears and concerns. To overcome distrust of government and poor health care experiences, including First Nations Australians in health communication design and delivery is essential.

Julaine Allan receives funding from NHMRC, Ian Potter Foundation and NSW Health. The research in this article was funded by. Charles Sturt University COVID-19 research grant.

Azizur Rahman receives funding from various organisations, including the Australian Government Department of Education, Department of Infrastructure, Regional Development and Cities, Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre of Excellence for Mathematical and Statistical Frontiers (ACEMS), Statistical Society of Australia (SSA), Institute for Governance and Policy Analysis (IGPA), Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute (AMSI), Australian Commonwealth Department of Health and Aging (DoHA) and Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI).

Jodie Kleinschafer receives funding from Transformative Consumer Research Association

Jayne Lawrence and Mark Lock (Ngiyampaa) 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. First Nations people in rural NSW lived with more anxiety and fear about COVID-19 than non-First Nations people – https://theconversation.com/first-nations-people-in-rural-nsw-lived-with-more-anxiety-and-fear-about-covid-19-than-non-first-nations-people-186730

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kathryn Lucas-Healey, Research Fellow, Battery Storage and Grid Integration Program, Australian National University

Rooftop solar panels and small batteries are driving Australia’s rapid shift towards renewable energy. Some 30% of detached homes on Australia’s national grid have these systems installed. By 2050, this proportion could reach 65%.

This means responsibility for maintaining our power supply is shifting from skilled, well-paid power station engineers to householders. Essentially, care for our energy system is becoming housework.

Our new research has found rooftop solar maintenance, as with other forms of housework, has the potential to become an equity issue. And the burden of this unrecognised work is set to worsen as the energy transition accelerates.

If our energy system relies on invisible care, we should acknowledge who the burden is falling on and whether we’re creating new inequalities.

Rooftop solar maintenance as housework

The things we do to maintain our worlds – be it ourselves, others, the environment or everything else — can collectively be thought of as care. Historically, the burden of care has largely fallen on women and marginalised communities. When society does not value their care work, inequality is exacerbated.

Housework is a form of care, and it tends to be invisible, unpaid and performed only by those who notice it needs doing. In many cases, this means women. What does it mean in the case of household energy technologies?

Read more:
Don’t give mum chocolates for Mother’s Day. Take on more housework, share the mental load and advocate for equality instead

When a householder decides to install technologies such as rooftop solar, they must determine what size and type of system will meet their needs and to research products and installers.

Once the system is installed, they then need to check it’s performing as intended and recognise when maintenance is required. When something goes wrong, they need to follow up with the relevant organisation to resolve it.

We cannot yet declare exactly who the burden of rooftop solar and battery care is falling to – more research is needed on this. But our recent study found the changing nature of household energy has the potential to reproduce existing forms of inequality across gender, cultural groups and generations.

What we found

We held interviews and focus groups with 55 Australian householders from metropolitan and rural areas who purchased energy technologies, as well as 18 people from installer businesses and community energy groups.

We found they envisage a more caring energy system – one that prioritises making sure everyone can pay their bills and facilitates sharing, rather than one that rewards individuals with the most resources and know-how.

We described the different types of care driving the energy transition, and found examples of community groups and businesses going above and beyond to provide support.

Read more:
Complicated, costly and downright frustrating: Aussies keen to cut emissions with clean energy at home get little support

For example, some installers we spoke with took time to help householders understand what type and size system best suited them. Others performed work for free to help someone out, such as one installer who told us:

We get customers right now because the company that installed it won’t come out and help them. That’s actually something we do promote as well, is that if you’re not our customer, we’ll help you. A lot of that is volunteer work.

But according to other research participants, some installers are only interested in making the sale, leaving neglected paperwork, missing components, or systems that just don’t work. Sometimes the householder is unaware their system is not working as intended.

One woman, a disability pensioner, had been sold an expensive solar and battery system that didn’t work. As she sought electricians to fix it, she lamented they were:

so male-dominated that they don’t want you looking over their shoulder […] they’re not willing to explain things either.

This example highlighted difficulties in establishing rapport between installers and householders of different genders, ages or cultural backgrounds, a finding shared by other researchers.

Read more:
‘Smart home’ gadgets promise to cut power bills but many lie idle – or can even boost energy use

Research from 2017 found technologies can be misused or ignored when optimistic assumptions are made about their user-friendliness. Other research from the United Kingdom showed developers of home technology rarely involve users in the design process, and tend to design for an idealised masculine consumer.

These different dynamics compound to the point where our energy system is designed to benefit those who understand its complexity and are able to take advantage.

A caring vision for our energy future

We also found our research participants wanted their caring visions for the future better represented in government policies.

For many, installing energy technology was about doing the right thing for the planet, rather than to lower their power bills or become self-sufficient in energy. But they told us how ideas based in care aren’t often taken seriously by industry and government.

Government incentive schemes that help people afford solar and batteries are important and effective. But they also give rise to opportunistic sales tactics and pitfalls for householders.

Read more:
What’s a grid, anyway? Making sense of the complex beast that is Australia’s electricity network

Incentive programs need to place high expectations on installers and expel operators with bad track records. More assertive regulation is needed that goes beyond simple consumer protections and puts less of an onus on householders to navigate their way alone. Governments can also support community groups that help in this task.

Policies should also accommodate caring, community-focused householders who aren’t just installing rooftop solar to benefit themselves. It might include allowing free or low-cost energy sharing at the local scale to help out neighbours and avoid spilling excess solar to the wider grid.

If we don’t recognise and act on creating a caring energy system, we could be left with one that’s partially built, unfair and rewards a race to the bottom.

Kathryn Lucas-Healey has received funding from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency for electric vehicle projects and the Australian Government Remote Communities Reliability Fund for microgrid projects.

Alice Wendy Russell receives funding from the Victorian Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning to study neighbourhood batteries. She is Director of Double Arrow Consulting, a consultancy specialising in deliberative engagement.

Hedda Ransan-Cooper has received funding from the State and Federal governments, including from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency for work related to solar, batteries, microgrids, and electric vehicles.

Hugo Temby received funding from the Victorian Energy and Water Ombudsman and Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning.

– ref. Australians are installing rooftop solar like never before. Who is burdened with taking care of it at home? – https://theconversation.com/australians-are-installing-rooftop-solar-like-never-before-who-is-burdened-with-taking-care-of-it-at-home-184840

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hunter Fujak, Lecturer in Sport Management, Deakin University

A particular eccentricity of the Australian sporting landscape is that, culturally, our football codes remain strongly tied to their geographic origins.

Australian rules originates from Melbourne, with the southwestern states as heartlands. The rugby codes made their Australian sporting debut in Sydney, with northeastern states as heartlands.

This phenomenon was dubbed “the Barassi Line” in 1978, describing a cultural dividing line based on football preference proposed to run from Eden, NSW, through Canberra and up to Arnhem Land. The term was first used by historian Ian Turner in his Ron Barassi Memorial Lecture that year.

The Barassi Line has been a focus of my research and has recently been plotted and visualised as part of a Wikidata fellowship.

In a country that has largely avoided political and cultural hyper-partisanship, the Barassi Line is perhaps our strongest sociogeographic dividing characteristic, and certainly novel in the global context.

Red states and blue states

Where one is raised has a remarkably strong bearing on likely football preferences.

If you walked down the streets of Melbourne, Adelaide, Hobart or Perth, every third person you walked by would be interested in Australian rules and no other football code.

If you entered a Melbourne pub filled with people interested in football (of any variety), 82% of them would AFL supporters.

In a similar Sydney sport pub, 73% would support a rugby code. Notably, however, support for the rugby codes varies significantly across Sydney’s geographic subregions. For example, rugby league interest is nearly half as prevalent in North Sydney (28%) as compared to Sutherland (52%).

If you’re Australian, you might be thinking, “Yeah – of course!” But this is not the international norm.

In the United States, for instance, where terrain can range from snow fields to desert landscapes, the variance in popularity between mainstream professional sports leagues is comparatively minimal.

While basketball’s popularity is linked to inner-city urbanisation and baseball retains a rural stronghold, Google search volume data nonetheless reveals that 48 of America’s 51 states exhibit an identical hierarchy of sport league popularity (being gridiron, basketball, baseball and ice hockey).

Where is the Barassi Line and how has it changed?

Australian rules authorities have actively attempted to shift the Barassi Line.

As early as 1903, Australian rules administrators began investing in game development, spending more than £10,000 on footballs, jumpers, and school coaches to promote the code in Sydney.

In the past decade, the AFL has distributed A$220 million in additional funding to its four northern expansion clubs (the Sydney Swans, GWS Giants, Brisbane Lions and Gold Coast Suns).

Yet despite ever-increasing media coverage and professionalisation, it is remarkable how intact the line remains.

Come 2019, AFL free-to-air telecasts averaged 261,000 Melbourne viewers, compared with 21,000 and 23,000 in Sydney and Brisbane, respectively (when not featuring a local team).

Similarly, NRL matches held an average rating in Sydney of about 197,000, compared with ratings typically between 5,000 and 20,000 across southern markets.

Mapping the battlefront

Given the Barassi Line represents a metaphorical battlefront, however, real progress is perhaps best measured at the frontline.

Here, the Wikidata fellowship work visualising community football clubs is insightful. This mapping identifies 1,504 Australian rules and 861 rugby league clubs nationally. (Of course, as primarily a creative work, it is possible some clubs were missed in this mapping project). But the distribution of clubs is particularly illuminating, noting:

where Aussie rules was dominant, it was clearly dominant, with league making up just 15% of the two-code-preferred at most in Aussie rules states […] League on the other hand, even when the dominant code, still had a much higher percentage of Aussie rules clubs.

The conclusions outlined in this data visualisation align with those in my book Code Wars.

Australian rules is successfully creeping the Barassi Line northward, with the border-straddling region of Murray in NSW aligned with Australian rules.

Significantly, this mapping work suggests Australian rules is also advancing in the adjacent Riverina region.

These regions, while small in population, are of high strategic importance to the football codes because such regional areas produce a disproportionate amount of elite athletes.

Wagga Wagga in the NSW Riverina is known as the “City of Good Sports”. It not only produces a very high number of elite athletes per capita (“the Wagga effect”), but does so across an amazing diversity of sports.

Luminaries include Mark Taylor, Michael Slater, Alex Blackwell, Wayne Carey, Paul Kelly, Peter Sterling, Nathan Sharpe, as well as the Mortimer and Daniher families.

The Barassi Line is hence not just of academic interest, but of vital importance for our football codes in terms of maintaining vibrant junior participation bases. This helps secure the nation’s best future athletes.

The Barassi Line and the broader NSW-Victoria rivalry

A noteworthy feature of the Barassi Line is how it reflects more broadly upon New South Wales and Victoria, which remain fierce cultural, political, and economic rivals more than 120 years after federation.

This was brought into particular focus by political barbing over COVID management, but is otherwise most regularly overt in sport.

Sporting barbs fuel the state rivalry because Melbourne consciously targeted becoming Australia’s sporting capital in the 1980s. This was a means of economic salvation by diversifying from manufacturing. Sydney, by contrast, positioned itself as the nation’s preferred financial centre.

While Melbourne’s sport attendance culture is widely lauded, Sydney advocates have previously quipped this reflects the city’s otherwise dullness.

Irrespective of our individual sporting preferences, the Barassi Line is something to honour.

It not only puts Australia among the world’s most unique sports cultures. It also explains why we have so many professional football teams and leagues to support.

That Australia’s relatively small population can sustain such an abundance and diversity of football is worth celebrating.

Hunter Fujak 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 Barassi Line: a globally unique divider splitting Australia’s footy fans – https://theconversation.com/the-barassi-line-a-globally-unique-divider-splitting-australias-footy-fans-185132

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Gleeson, Associate Professor of Law, Macquarie University

Since the change of government at the May federal election, the fate of the contentious religious discrimination legislation remains unclear.

There is bipartisan consensus that Commonwealth legislation should protect individuals of different faiths from discrimination in the workplace and elsewhere.

But Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has not committed to a timeline to enact any new legislation. His government has also stepped away from controversial areas of this policy promoted under the Morrison government that focused on “religious freedoms”.

The new government may be closer to the public mood.

Read more:
A ‘Christian nation’ no longer: why Australia’s religious right loses policy battles even when it wins elections

Results of the 2022 Australian Cooperative Election Study (ACES) confirm that voters do not see religious discrimination a significant issue. Only a minority (27%) agree that “Australians who hold religious beliefs face a lot of discrimination”. A majority either disagree (31%) or are neutral (42%). Clear majorities oppose protections of religious freedom seen as discriminating against LGBTIQ+ individuals.

Much of this controversy has centred on schools. Since the advent of anti-discrimination laws in the mid-1970s, religious schools have benefited from exemptions allowing them to refuse to employ staff or accept students based on their sexuality or gender identity — if this is contrary to the ethos of the school.

Despite these exemptions, campaigns to strengthen “religious freedoms” intensified following marriage equality legislation in 2017. The debate was further inflamed by the sacking of rugby player Israel Folau for posting social media comments about gay people and others, in line with his Christian faith, in 2019.

Read more:
How might an apology feature in the new religious freedom bill?

In response, the then prime minister, Scott Morrison, drafted “religious freedoms” bills in 2019 and 2021. The latter was based on an election promise to override state and territory laws to protect “statements of belief” made by individuals “in accordance with doctrines, tenets, beliefs or teachings of their religion”.

The bill was dramatically shelved in February 2022. Five moderate Liberal MPs crossed the floor in the House of Representatives. They objected to the bill’s protections for potentially anti-LGBTIQ+ commentary without any accompanying commitment to protect transgender children from exclusion from schools. The bill was doomed to fail in the Senate.

The conservative Australian Christian Lobby in turn targeted moderate Liberals in the election campaign, portraying them as opponents of religious protection.

Our new data reinforce the extent of voter resistance to aspects of the “religious freedoms” agenda in the lead-up to the election.

The ACES asked voters a series of questions about religious schools and conditions for staff and students. A clear majority (67%) disagreed that “religious schools should be able to refuse to employ staff based on their sexual orientation”. Only 15% agreed.

Almost identical results were reported for the statement about refusing to “employ staff because of their transgender identity” (65% disagreed and 16% agreed). Voters also disagreed by very similar margins that religious schools should be able to “exclude students based on their sexual orientation” or “their transgender identity”.

There were predictable demographic differences for all four statements. Women consistently expressed disagreement in the 74% to 79% range. Men also disagreed, but with smaller majorities (56% to 59% range). Younger voters were most inclined to express disagreement, while the majority of voters aged 65 and over also registered disagreement.

These findings suggest Morrison misjudged the electoral mood. He defended the Liberal candidate for Warringah, Katherine Deves, whose views on sports and transgender identity generated backlash against the Coalition.

If the Coalition was looking to win conservatives in outer-metro electorates, its efforts did not succeed on election night.

Indeed, 39% of respondents to the ACES agreed that “Australian politics is too focused on the rights of religious people”. Only 21% disagreed with the statement, and 40% expressed a neutral view.

US-style religious politics appear to have limited appeal in a country with a growing distance from organised religion. Last month’s Census results showed 39% of Australians do not identify as religious.

Responding to a similar question in ACES, 49% identified as non-religious. At the same time, Australians appear on board with sexual and gender diversity. They reject protections for religious organisations to exclude people from employment and schooling on these bases.

No doubt the Albanese government will be weighing this reality as it considers its next steps in addressing religious discrimination in law.

Survey note: The Australian Cooperative Election Survey (ACES) is a collaborative project involving Australian universities that used YouGov panel data and methodologies to study the 2022 federal election. The survey was fielded online in May 2022 with an overall sample of 5,988 voters and 1,044 voters for the religion module. Data were weighted to reflect the population and the methodology is detailed here.

Kate Gleeson has received funding in the past from the Australian Research Council

Robert Ross has received funding from The John Templeton Foundation.

Shaun Wilson receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. Australians reject discrimination that is based on religious belief: new research – https://theconversation.com/australians-reject-discrimination-that-is-based-on-religious-belief-new-research-186751

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jack Feehan, Research Officer – Immunology and Translational Research, Victoria University

COVID cases are surging across Australia. The rise of the BA.4 and BA.5 sub-variants of Omicron, and the rapid increase in COVID hospitalisations, has prompted policymakers to expand fourth dose vaccine eligibility.

If you’re aged 30 or over, you can now receive an additional COVID booster (a fourth dose), three months after your first booster (third dose). And you can get it at the same time as your flu shot.

If you’ve recently had COVID, you’ll need to wait three months before getting boosted.

If you’re aged under 30, you’re not yet eligible.

Read more:
Access to a second COVID booster vaccine has been expanded to people 30 years and over

New variants present new challenges

The current COVID vaccines are based on the original strain of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID. The more mutations the variants amass, the less the antibodies produced by vaccination can target it.

In the context of the BA.4 and BA.5 variants, this is exacerbated further, as even immunity from previous Omicron infection is less effective at protecting against future infections. This makes it possible for people with so called “hybrid” immunity – from vaccines and infection – to be re-infected.

This has driven the government to revise the timeframes around post-infectious immunity, as we are likely to see significant numbers of people reinfected after only a short period of time.

Immunity wanes after your third dose

Immunity provided by COVID vaccines diminishes over time. A third dose of vaccine provides good initial protection against Omicron. But immunity wanes after three to six months, meaning it’s less able to prevent infection.

Protection against severe disease remains stronger but still reduces slowly over time.

Waning immunity from vaccination is a particular concern for those aged over 55, as immunity in older age groups decreases faster and further.

Protection from a fourth dose

Given neither three doses nor infection appears to offer significant protection against BA.4 and BA.5, a fourth dose is the best way to prevent infection and severe disease, as well as helping to manage health system demand.

Initial data from Israel, which has been very aggressive in its roll out of additional doses, shows rates of Omicron infection and severe disease are lower after a fourth dose, compared with after three doses.

The protection against infection decreased rapidly, however. After six weeks, it had diminished, but still offered some protection. Importantly, protection against severe disease did not decrease over the six-week study period.

As yet, there is no evidence available on the direct effects of a fourth vaccine dose on BA.4 and BA.5, (as the Isaeli study covered the original Omicron variant). A first booster (third dose) has been shown in preliminary data to generate immunity against the new variants, but it waned rapidly.

Based on this data, and the ongoing excellent safety profile of the vaccines, Australia’s immunisation advisory group, ATAGI, recommends Australians aged over 50 receive a fourth dose over winter. They join the existing eligible groups: immunocompromised adults, those living in care facilities, and adults with chronic or complex health conditions.

ATAGI has also authorised the vaccine to be given to those from 30-49, as it is safe and likely to be effective. However, it notes the benefits in this cohort, on a population level, are less certain. People in this age bracket are advised to consider personal circumstances when deciding whether to get a second booster – such as vulnerable people around them and occupations where they are at high risk of contracting or transmitting disease, such as aged care or hospitality.

Read more:
Here’s why you might need a 4th COVID vaccine dose this winter

When should I get it?

The best time to get your fourth dose is as soon as you’re eligible and able to, as COVID case numbers are currently rising across Australia.

Don’t wait to get a booster so you’re better protected at the end of winter. This may lead to a more rapid community spread in the meantime, and blunt the impact of the booster campaign.

The infection risk is already high, making rapid action more important, particularly for those over 50, whose immunity from boosters administered in 2021 is already significantly diminished. Being vaccinated now will confer at least some immunity throughout winter.

What if I’ve recently had COVID?

If you have recently had COVID, you need to wait at least three months before receiving a fourth dose.

In this period, immunity is likely to be similar or greater than those who have been vaccinated, so you are still protected to a degree, but it’s possible to be infected.

Once the three months have passed, you can, and should, get a booster, as reinfection rates with BA.4 and BA.5 are high.

What about the flu?

The 2022 influenza season in Australia has been a particularly bad one thus far. The good news is that you can safely receive both the COVID and flu vaccines together – at the same time.

Decreasing rates of the flu in the community will relieve significant pressure on a health care system already stretched by COVID, making it a strong priority.

Read more:
Flu may be back, but COVID is far from over. How do they compare?

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. When can I get my next COVID booster or fourth dose? What if I’ve recently had COVID? Can I get my flu shot at the same time? – https://theconversation.com/when-can-i-get-my-next-covid-booster-or-fourth-dose-what-if-ive-recently-had-covid-can-i-get-my-flu-shot-at-the-same-time-186830

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Macintosh, Professor and Director of Research, ANU Law School, Australian National University

The federal government has launched an independent review of Australia’s central climate policy, the Emissions Reduction Fund, after we and others raised serious concerns about its integrity.

The review will examine, among other issues, whether several ways of earning credits under the scheme lead to genuine emissions reductions.

One method singled out for scrutiny involves regrowing native forests to store carbon from the atmosphere.

Our new analysis suggests the vast majority of carbon storage credited under this method either has not occurred, or would have occurred anyway. Here we explain why.

The background

The Emissions Reduction Fund provides carbon credits to projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions. For the past decade, it has been the centrepiece of Australia’s climate policy.

Under the fund, projects that reduce emissions receive carbon credits that can be sold to the federal government and private entities that are required, or choose to, offset their emissions.

We are experts in environmental law, markets and policy. The lead author of this article, Andrew Macintosh, is the former chair of the Emissions Reduction Assurance Committee, the government-appointed watchdog that oversees the Emissions Reduction Fund’s methods.

Earlier this year, we went public with details of serious integrity issues in the scheme. One main concern involves a method known as “human-induced regeneration of a permanent even-aged native forest”.

This method accounts for almost 30% of the carbon credits that have been issued, roughly 30% of registered projects, and more than 50% of carbon credits contracted for sale to the federal government.

Read more:
We blew the whistle on Australia’s central climate policy. Here’s what a new federal government probe must fix

Problems with the method

Under the method, landholders get credits for regenerating native forests by changing the way they manage their properties.

When the method was created, it was assumed projects would be located in areas where vegetation had previously been cleared, and where grazing and repeated clearing were suppressing regrowth.

But most projects have been located in parts of Australia’s arid and semi-arid rangelands where native vegetation has never been cleared (because it is not economic to do so).

There are two main problems with the method and how it’s been applied. We outline these below.

Read more:
Climate change is white colonisation of the atmosphere. It’s time to tackle this entrenched racism

Problem 1: trees existed before projects began

First, data published by the regulator shows proponents have been allowed to include a substantial number of mature trees in the areas for which they receive carbon credits. This has led to substantial over-crediting – in simple terms, the carbon abatement is not real.

So how has this occurred?

Under the method, proponents do not have to measure tree growth – they estimate it using a model.

The model assumes all trees in the forest begin regenerating at the same time when the project activities start. The modelled tree growth starts slowly, then accelerates to peak when the forest is young and vigorous. It then slows as the expanding trees compete with each other.

The model cannot be validly applied to estimate tree growth in areas where substantial numbers of pre-existing mature trees exist. But this is what’s happening.

As a consequence, proponents are being issued credits for growing trees that were already there when the projects started.

Problem 2: rain is making trees grow, not the project activities

The method is based on the premise that changes in land management are necessary to regenerate the forests. But our analysis shows that, where trees are regenerating, it is due mainly to rainfall.

Almost all current projects seek to regenerate forests by reducing grazing pressure. For this to make sense, grazing would need to be responsible for dramatically reducing the prevalence of trees in the rangelands. It would also have to be possible to regenerate these “lost” forests by reducing grazing pressure. Neither of these are true.

For more than 30 years, there has been a heated debate in ecological and natural resource management circles about the causes of “woody thickening” (or increasing density of native trees and shrubs) in grazing areas. The two dominant, competing hypothesis are that woody thickening is:

• caused by grazing and an accompanying reduction in vegetation burning

• a cyclical phenomena in which vegetation slowly accumulates over time, especially following runs of wet years, until a drought causes woody plant cover to stabilise or decline.

There’s no material evidence or support for the notion that grazing alone (in the absence of clearing) has significantly reduced tree cover over vast areas of the rangelands.

In fact, every year, between 200,000 and 400,000 hectares of land cleared for grazing is re-cleared. This demonstrates that grazing is rarely sufficient on its own to stop regrowth without mechanical or chemical interventions to kill trees.

Read more:
No more excuses: restoring nature is not a silver bullet for global warming, we must cut emissions outright

Restoring integrity

Regeneration of native forests in cleared areas is a valid and desirable way to reduce emissions and generate carbon credits.

But the human-induced regeneration method is deeply flawed. It has led to credits being issued for tree growth that is not real, or would have occurred anyway.

The review, to be led by former chief scientist Ian Chubb, is a chance to restore integrity to this method and ensure that credits are only issued for legitimate regeneration projects.

Because as climate change worsens, Australians need to know our most important climate policy is both value for money, and delivering real environmental gains.

The Clean Energy Regulator, which operates the Emissions Reduction Fund, did not respond to The Conversation’s request for comment on the authors’ claims. However in a previous statement it said:

Prof Macintosh and his colleagues have not engaged with the substance of the ERAC’s comprehensive response papers on human induced regeneration … The government has said it will undertake a review of the ERF and details will be announced shortly. We do not wish to pre-empt the scope of the review or its findings. We welcome the review and look forward to engaging substantively with the review process once it commences.

Andrew Macintosh is a Director of Paraway Pastoral Co. Ltd, a pastoral company that undertakes projects under the Emissions Reduction Fund.

Don Butler receives funding from the federal Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment. He also works with the Queensland Department of Environment and Science as a science advisor for natural capital programs..

Megan C Evans receives funding from the Australian Research Council through a Discovery Early Career Research Award and has previously been funded by the Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment, WWF Australia, and the National Environmental Science Program’s Threatened Species Recovery Hub.

– ref. Australia’s central climate policy pays people to grow trees that already existed. Taxpayers – and the environment – deserve better – https://theconversation.com/australias-central-climate-policy-pays-people-to-grow-trees-that-already-existed-taxpayers-and-the-environment-deserve-better-186900

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Halsey, Professor, School of Education, Flinders University

Students in regional, rural and remote Australia have been behind their urban counterparts on almost every recognised measure of successful schooling for decades. This is unacceptable and has to change.

To achieve this change, it will be vital to draw on and build the neglected capacities of parents, families and communities to improve student achievements at school. The National School Reform Agreement between the Commonwealth, states and territories aims to lift student outcomes across Australia. But the current five-year agreement, which runs to the end of 2023, almost entirely ignores the lives of students outside schools.

The world outside the school fence is where students spend most of their time. What’s happening and not happening there directly impacts their motivation and ability to learn. Education policies and practices have to embrace this reality.

Schools can’t do it all on their own

Now under review by the Productivity Commission, the next National School Reform Agreement will have to respond to the diversity of school locations and communities, especially in regional, rural and remote areas. It should include a strong focus on building the capacity of these communities to help improve learning.

To date, we have seen the intensification of schooling via curriculum changes, micro-managing teaching and learning, and growing accountability and administration workloads. It’s clearly not working for students in regional, rural and remote areas.

All the pressure has been on schools to do the heavy lifting. That’s neither sustainable nor effective.

The review is an opportunity to radically rethink what needs be done to close the schooling gaps across the country.

Read more:
National curriculums don’t always work for rural and regional schools

Local disadvantage feeds into schooling

The 2021 Dropping Off The Edge report by Jesuit Social Services looks at disadvantage around Australia. Little has changed since the last Dropping Off The Edge report in 2015. Most disadvantaged communities are in regional, rural and remote locations.

The report reveals, yet again, the profound effects of poverty, family disruptions and conflict, and an absence of hope and positive role models on achievements and opportunities beyond school.

Most efforts to improve education across the board have focused on what happens in schools. These efforts include modifying what students learn, changing assessments, varying teaching methods, increasing ICT and more.

While this work needs to continue, there is more to be done. Student achievements and opportunities are shaped by a diverse blend of in-school, home and community factors, the interactions between them and knowledge of what is happening in the wider world. For some students this productive dynamic is missing, or operates minimally.

The reasons are many and varied. They include poor health and diet. It is very hard, perhaps impossible, for students to focus on learning if they feel hungry and are often unwell or “out of sorts”.

These difficulties are compounded if their home life is stressful and chaotic, there is a long history of unemployment and underemployment, and another problem always seems to be just around the corner.

In short, what’s going on outside the school fence has a large impact on what happens in school. It’s time to release this handbrake on students reaching their potential.

Read more:
How to solve Australia’s ‘rural school challenge’: focus on research and communities

Policy ignores what goes on outside schools

The Productivity Commission is reviewing three reform directions in the National School Reform Agreement:

1. supporting students, student learning and student achievement
2. supporting teaching, school leadership and school improvement
3. enhancing the national evidence base.

For each of the reform directions there are national policy initiatives. These directions and initiatives are very school-focused.

The agreement does not refer at all to the contributions that parents, families, communities and social and personal relationships make to student achievements. The diversity of learning contexts and locations, especially in regional, rural and remote areas, is also mostly invisible.

Ignoring what is going on and continuing to ramp up pressures on schools to do all the heavy lifting will lead to the next Dropping Off The Edge report in five years’ time again showing little or no change.

Read more:
Return-to-school plans overlook chronic teacher shortages outside the big cities

It’s time to focus on community solutions

The next National School Reform Agreement must include a strong focus on community capacity-building to improve learning.

This is fundamentally about tapping into existing opportunities or creating new ones to make students’ out-of-school lives richer, more optimistic, more stable and better supported for learning.

Where multiple disadvantages are at play, capacity-building requires sensitivity and persistence to develop local expertise and resilient working relationships with individuals and families. Critically, what is learnt needs to be fed back into reforming systemic policies and practices.

In addition to education experts, this means drawing on health services, enterprises and employment, justice and policing, local governance, parents and residents, linked to each school or cluster of schools.

Flexibility is essential as community capacity-building can vary enormously on the ground. It might involve individuals or small teams of trusted adults who are 24/7-go-to people “no matter what”, or start-up enterprises such as local construction and hospitality programs linked to tourism opportunities, or music and arts events, and more.

Sport can play a vital role, particularly when participants are recognised and valued for more than being a good player.

Enlisting young people to become skilled emergency volunteers is another way to build the capacities of individuals and communities. This training can be a bridge to formal learning.

Read more:
Why rural Australia is facing a volunteer crisis

Community capacity-building requires substantial long-term funding. Importantly, local improvements produce many offsetting benefits by boosting school completion rates, employment, health, local optimism and general well-being, while reducing youth crime and incarceration.

Education that fully engages young people and nurtures and builds their capacities throughout their formative years is a very sound investment. It will be repaid many times over a lifetime.

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

John Halsey was engaged by the Australian Government in 2017 to undertake a review into regional, rural and remote education in Australia. His report was presented to government in January 2018. This article is part of The Conversation’s Breaking the Cycle series, which is about escaping cycles of disadvantage. The series is supported by a philanthropic grant from the Paul Ramsay Foundation.

– ref. Don’t expect schools to do all the heavy lifting to close the education divide between the big cities and the rest of Australia – https://theconversation.com/dont-expect-schools-to-do-all-the-heavy-lifting-to-close-the-education-divide-between-the-big-cities-and-the-rest-of-australia-186586

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alicia (Lucy) Cameron, Senior Research Consultant, Data61

The COVID-19 pandemic has had an enormous impact on the global economy, with the total cost likely to exceed US$12.5 trillion dollars according to International Monetary Fund estimates.

At the same time, the crisis has accelerated huge changes in the way we live and work, and the adoption and invention of new technologies.

Policymakers and leaders in science and industry are pinning their hopes on further innovation to drive economic recovery.

It is a good plan, but stimulating innovation is not easy. I have studied attempts to stimulate local innovation around the world over the past century, and found six broad approaches, each with strengths and weaknesses.

1. Place

This is the development of specialised high-tech clusters or hubs (think the next Silicon Valley). There is good evidence high-tech clusters are crucial for national competitiveness.

Industrial clusters (and cities more generally) are centres of innovation, productivity, skills development and new enterprise creation. Clusters aid both co-operation and competition between firms, build local supply chains, and can create regional brands such as watches from Geneva or suits from Savile Row.

Many governments have tried to create these clusters from scratch with public research institutions, creating science and technology parks, or providing financial and other incentives. Only a few of these attempts have succeeded.

Attempts to accelerate existing or emerging industry clusters have been more successful. Building new industry clusters is also incredibly costly, and can take decades to pay dividends.

2. Culture

This approach seeks to build an innovative, entrepreneurial environment through enhancing lifestyle, culture, and public amenity. It seeks to create a “people climate” where residents can experiment, build, share knowledge and form creative partnerships. This should also attract and retain the young, creative, educated wealth-builders of the future.

Urban revitalisation projects worldwide have followed this approach. These projects repurpose downtown and inner-city areas into hip and trendy environments which encourage incidental interactions, casual conversations and group learning.

However, lifestyle enhancement doesn’t always lead to more innovation. It can lead to rapid gentrification, which displaces creative communities who can no longer afford the rising rents.

3. Skills

Another way to boost innovation is to increase the local level of valuable skills. This can be done by attracting skilled migrants or training up the local population.

The problem with focusing on skills alone is that people are mobile. Skilled people will leave if they’re not provided with ongoing opportunities, or if the financial, lifestyle or creative rewards are higher elsewhere.

Global competition for highly educated or skilled people with experience in creating successful ventures or products is becoming fierce.

However, skills-led approaches to innovation can be powerful as part of the “triple helix model” which integrates research, government, and industry. Critically, skills development needs to be matched with local opportunity.

4. Mission

The mission-based approach pools private and public funding and skills to tackle a mid- to long-term challenge. The most famous example is the US moonshot: the 1961 mission to send a person to the Moon and back by 1970.

NASA had funding for the moonshot over three presidencies. The mission succeeded, and in the process it developed several new technologies and products.

Since that time, “mission statements” have become common in business and government. Governments and NGOs use missions and targets to inspire action on a range of challenges, from net-zero commitments and the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals to developing vaccines for global pandemics in under 100 days.

However, missions can run into trouble through lack of ongoing funds, unclear goals, competing interests, and the generation of unintended consequences. Missions can also divert funding from curiosity-driven “blue sky” research, which has been responsible for some of the greatest scientific breakthroughs of all time.

5. Finance

One crucial element in boosting innovation is increased funding for research and development, universities and other research institutions, and commercialising new technologies. However, the relationship between increased funds and increased innovation is complicated.

As countries become more advanced, spending on innovation can become less efficient. Once early gains have been achieved from adopting existing technologies, further advances can only come from the more expensive and riskier processes of creating and commercialising new technology.

This pays off for countries with large markets and existing levels of high productivity, but is harder for other countries.

The venture capital that enables many emerging companies to expand rapidly is highly geographically concentrated. Venture capital also tends to focus on a few sectors, including the information technology and pharmaceutical industries.

6. Technology

This approach uses government spending to provide purpose and funding for new and emerging technologies such as drones, AI, blockchain, and robotics.

When governments engage with innovative local companies early, building their capabilities and co-developing technology applications, it can be good for government and industry. Government gets more modern services, while industry has a strong client.

Read more:
Australia’s future depends on science. Here’s what our next government needs to do about it

This approach has built some of the largest and most successful innovation hotspots in the world, including Silicon Valley. The downsides of this approach are that it can gamble with funds allocated for other government purposes, embarrass governments when things go wrong, and relies on government being able to rigorously assess new technologies.

No magic bullet

Success in building vibrant, innovative areas at a local level is crucial for boosting and growing the national economy. None of these six approaches alone will be a “magic bullet” for innovation and economic recovery.

So what will work? Paying close attention to local contexts, and balancing all of these approaches: mixing and matching for local circumstances, while focusing on national productivity, technology development, and future markets.

Read more:
China’s ‘innovation machine’: how it works, how it’s changing and why it matters

Alicia (Lucy) Cameron 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. 6 ways governments drive innovation – and how they can help post-pandemic resilience – https://theconversation.com/6-ways-governments-drive-innovation-and-how-they-can-help-post-pandemic-resilience-186910

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ying Ian Chen, Director, ARC Research Hub for Safe and Reliable Energy, Deakin University

In 2016, experts writing in Nature listed seven breakthroughs in how we process chemicals that could change the world for the better. We believe we’ve just ticked one of those off the list.

We found a highly efficient and entirely novel way to separate, purify, store and transport huge amounts of gas safely, with no waste.

Why is this breakthrough so important? We believe it will help overcome the key challenge of hydrogen storage by allowing us to safely store and transport huge quantities of green hydrogen as a solid at a fraction of the energy cost. This will allow us to accelerate uptake of green hydrogen, as well as allow oil refineries to use much, much less energy, and make processing many other gases easier.

Right now, breaking crude oil into petrol and other gases in oil refineries relies on the hugely energy intensive process of cryogenic distillation. This accounts for up to 15% of the world’s energy use. By contrast, we estimate our new method would cut this energy use by up to 90%.

This method offers the world a solid storage method for gases with a far higher capacity than any previous material. The absorbed gases can be recovered via a simple heating process leaving both the gases and the powder unchanged, allowing for immediate use or re-use.

What did we find?

The breakthrough is so significant – and such a departure from accepted wisdom on gas separation and storage – that our research team repeated our experiment 20 to 30 times before we could truly believe it ourselves.

So how does it work? Our new approach uses a new method called “ball milling” to store gas in a special nanomaterial at room temperature. This method relies on mechanochemical reactions, meaning machinery is used to produce unusual reactions.

The special ingredient in the process is boron nitride powder, which is great for absorbing substances because it is so small yet has a large amount of surface area for absorption.

To make this work, boron nitride powder is placed into a ball mill – a grinder containing small stainless-steel balls in a chamber – along with the gases that need to be separated. As the chamber spins at progressively higher speeds, the collision of the balls with the powder and the wall of the chamber triggers a special mechanochemical reaction, resulting in gas being absorbed into the powder.

Better, one type of gas is always absorbed more quickly, separating it out from the others, and allowing it to be easily removed from the mill. You can repeated this process over several stages to separate out the gases you want, one by one. You can store the gases in the powder for transport, and separate them back into gas. And better still, boron nitride powder can be used to carry out the same gas separation and storage process up to 50 times.

The process requires no harsh chemicals and creates no by-products. It doesn’t require energy-intensive settings like high pressure or low temperatures, offering a much cheaper and safer way to develop things like hydrogen powered vehicles.

This ball-milling gas absorption process uses around 77 kilojoules per second to store and separate 1,000 litres of gases. That’s roughly the energy needed to drive the average electric vehicle 320 kilometres. It’s at least 90% less energy than the cryogenic distillation method used in oil refineries.

Read more:
Oil companies are going all-in on petrochemicals – and green chemistry needs help to compete

That’s why we believe this breakthrough may tick off one of the seven chemical separation method improvements which could change the world – specifically, improving separation of olefin-paraffin, a key part of the petrochemical industry.

This is the culmination of 30 years work in nanomaterials and mechanochemistry by researchers at Deakin University’s Institute for Frontier Materials.

How will this help us switch to clean energy?

The gas crisis facing Australia’s east coast has drawn attention to our reliance on these fuels. In response, there have been growing calls to hasten the switch to cleaner gas fuels such as green hydrogen.

The problem is storage. Storing enormous quantities of hydrogen for practical use is very challenging. At present, we store hydrogen in a high-pressure tank or by cooling the gas down to a liquid form. Both require large amounts of energy, as well as dangerous processes and chemicals.

That’s where this method could help accelerate uptake of hydrogen, by enabling safe and efficient solid-state storage technology on a large scale. When stored as a powder, hydrogen is extremely safe. To retrieve the gas, you simply heat the powder in a vacuum.

This new process can achieve unprecedented gas storage capability, well above any known porous materials. For instance, our new process can store 18 times more acetylene than the highest uptake achieved by metal-organic frameworks, another approach using porous materials.

The remarkably high gas storage capability is due to the novel way gas molecules stick to the powder during the ball milling process, which does not break the gas molecules.

For this process to be able to scale, however, we have to perfect the milling process. There’s a sweet spot in milling which creates the weaker chemical reactions we want – without producing stronger reactions which can destroy the gas molecules. We will also have to figure out how to get the best storage rate for each material based on milling intensity and pressure of the gases.

With industry support, our novel process can be scaled rapidly to provide practical solutions to ensure we never have to face another gas crisis – and can speed up decarbonisation.

Read more:
Green hydrogen is coming – and these Australian regions are well placed to build our new export industry

Ying Ian Chen receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Srikanth Mateti receives funding from Australian Research Council

– ref. Breakthrough in gas separation and storage could fast-track shift to green hydrogen and significantly cut global energy use – https://theconversation.com/breakthrough-in-gas-separation-and-storage-could-fast-track-shift-to-green-hydrogen-and-significantly-cut-global-energy-use-186644

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

Anthony Albanese received his fourth COVID jab this week. A commendable example to the community, now that eligibility for the “winter shot” has been widened.

Well, commendable up to a point. Noticeably, neither Albanese nor the health worker wielding the needle was wearing a mask, and the prime minister quickly came in for some flak.

Masks are currently a front-line topic in the debate about how we deal with the new COVID wave that is seeing an average of 45 deaths a day, taking deaths this year alone north of 8,000.

Earlier this week Victoria’s acting chief health officer recommended mandating masks in a number of settings, only to be rebuffed by the state health minister, Mary-Anne Thomas. She said it “was not the most effective way to get the message out about the importance of mask wearing”.

Masks have been a political and ideological football throughout the pandemic.

Unlike in many other countries, pre-COVID you’d not see Australians masked up except in hospitals and the like, so we weren’t used to them.

In the early stages of the pandemic, before the way COVID is transmitted was clearly understood, there was vigorous dispute among health experts about their efficacy.

Later, the general population accepted them, with various degrees of willingness or reluctance.

Some people dislike masks because of their inconvenience. One gets that.

But, more peculiarly, for the political right masks have become a culture war rather than a matter of effectiveness. Stephen Reicher, professor of psychology at the University of St Andrews, writing in the Guardian, argues that some who hold a certain world view see masks as “a potent symbol of control: they are muzzles”. What these people reject “is less the mask and more the political and scientific establishment that proposes it”.

Given current public opinion, the mandating of mask wearing will stay limited. But in view of their place in the anti-COVID tool box, it would be helpful if politicians remembered to lead the way when appropriate.

We have reached a hinge point in the pandemic, and the weeks ahead present a huge challenge for political leaders. The community has moved on from COVID. But COVID has not moved on from the community. It has dug in.

A mind reset is needed. But that’s hampered by many in the public and in the political class being unwilling to accept that we haven’t “pushed through” to “live with COVID” in a safe sort of way. To the extent we are “living with COVID” we are accepting a crisis in the hospital system and a level of deaths that, if it had occurred in 2021, would have generated a massive reaction.

The earlier wisdom was that when the population was highly vaccinated, the situation would be under control. But it hasn’t worked out like that.

Vaccination is limiting the seriousness of the illness for most; it cuts deaths in relative terms.

But it hasn’t been successful against transmission, which means the virus is spreading like wildfire (currently hundreds of thousands have it). In absolute numbers, many people are getting quite sick, and there will be a good deal of “long COVID”.

The Albanese government has launched initiatives, including a campaign to urge boosters and action on anti-virals. But it’s like chasing a fleet-footed tiger.

And the government has refused to extend the emergency payment for workers forced to stay home, or the free RATs for concession card holders. It cites the budget. But we can imagine what Labor would be saying if it were still in opposition. There is some stirring within Labor ranks, with NSW Opposition Leader Chris Minns and federal backbencher Mike Freelander (a doctor) saying the emergency payment should be restored.

The new situation has caused havoc with what in 2020 was that (mostly) widely welcomed line from politicians that “we follow the expert advice”.

It’s been a roller coaster for the experts. Lauded and leaned on initially, they then ran into rougher times. They argued among themselves. They were dragged into the politics and demonised by critics who thought the politicians were listening too much to them.

Now we’re seeing the politicians grabbing back their agency, as the experience of the Victorian health official showed. More problematic, the politicians, including federal Health Minister Mark Butler, are making it clear the experts have to operate in the real world of where we’re up to with community opinion.

While this seems sensible at one level, things become complicated. When we get a piece of “expert” advice, do we assume it’s unadulterated, or a sort of shandy – containing a dash of “real world” lemonade?

There is also some counter-intuitive action at the “expert” level. With large numbers of deaths occurring in aged care homes, the NSW chief health officer, Kerry Chant, this week signed a public health order making it no longer mandatory for visitors to these facilities to be vaccinated. This is in line with the situation in Victoria and Queensland but the timing seemed odd.

It came as the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee (AHPPC), consisting of federal and state chief officers, last week reminded “individuals, employers and governments” of their shared responsibility to minimise the impact of COVID.

The question is whether political leaders have either the will or the ability to inject new urgency and potency into the fight against COVID, given the only practical weaponry in this time of pandemic fatigue is “light touch” ammunition.

Brendan Crabb, director of the Burnet Institute, who is highly critical of how the pandemic has been allowed to run away, says leaders and health ministers at national and state levels should admit the mistakes of this year.

“For the last six months we just tried to protect the old and the immunocompromised,” he says. “We didn’t address transmission.”

Any sort of mea culpa mightn’t be so hard at the federal level, where the new government can blame the former one, but it’s another matter in Victoria and NSW, where governments face elections soon.

Beyond that, Crabb is essentially arguing for more energy to be put into the struggle against transmission. He points to the Biden administration intensifying its efforts, and the AHPPC’s exhortation.

Business doesn’t like a strong focus on COVID, even though fast transmission is doing it immense damage. Even if we are well beyond lockdowns and (mostly) beyond mandates, business fears the impact of, for example, Victorian advice this week for people to work from home. But Crabb argues business should be in favour of a range of these less drastic measures to try to keep transmissions low, because it suffers from the high rates of infection.

Crabb says that “bringing the community along” is crucial. “A part of that, of showing you’re serious, is leaving no one behind.” He says making available high-quality masks, RATs and support to isolate “are not only essential if the interventions are to take hold, they are the litmus test of the government’s seriousness.

“COVID is one of the biggest issues the country faces at the moment, but the country doesn’t know it.”

To elevate that awareness Albanese – who has agreed to a national cabinet meeting on Monday on COVID – will need personally to become much more central in the messaging.

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: Albanese needs to step up (and mask up) to help create a new mindset to meet the COVID crisis – https://theconversation.com/grattan-on-friday-albanese-needs-to-step-up-and-mask-up-to-help-create-a-new-mindset-to-meet-the-covid-crisis-187023

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Niro Kandasamy, Lecturer in History, University of Sydney

Sri Lanka is in the grip of an economic, political and humanitarian crisis.

In a remarkable display of anger on Saturday, thousands of protesters disregarded government curfews, rampant military and police presence to storm the presidential palace and the prime minister’s residence, demanding their resignations.

It came as the Rajapaksa government halted the sale of fuel to ordinary people. It is the first country to do so since the global oil crisis in 1979.

For several months, Sri Lankans have suffered shortages of food, fuel and other critical supplies. Schools have been closed for several weeks. Other services are operating at critically reduced capacity.

Hours before the protest, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled the country without resigning. Instead, he appointed Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, from the opposition United National Party (UNP), as the interim president. It’s a move that has further angered protesters.

In his first actions as president, Wickremesinghe declared a state of emergency across the island. He ordered the military to “do whatever is necessary to restore order”. Protesters are being met with tear gas by the police and shots are being fired by the military, yet they continue to occupy his residence and the streets.

Read more:
Sri Lanka scrambles for aid – but Australia still seems preoccupied by boats

Who is Ranil Wickremesinghe?

Wickremesinghe is deeply despised by protesters, with many of them critical of his close relationship with the Rajapaksa family. But he also has a long history of discrimination and militarisation against the Tamils.

Wickremesinghe was first elected to parliament in 1977. He was prime minister from 1993 to 1996 and has held senior positions within the United National Party (UNP), including further terms as PM, ever since.

A centre-right party, the UNP has fanned ethnic tensions, overseeing numerous attacks against the Tamils – in 1977, 1979, 1981 and 1983. The party also orchestrated the colonisation of the north and east of the island, altering the ethnic composition and forcibly evicting Tamils from their homes.

Read more:
Why do Tamil asylum seekers need protection — and why does the Australian government say they don’t?

Like Rajapaksa, Wickremesinghe has close ties to the military. This includes its current chief, Shavendra Silva, who is barred from entering the US due to his role in the massacre of Tamils in 2009. Wickremesinghe rejected the UN Expert Panel report that outlined Sri Lankan government atrocities against the Tamils.

As prime minister during the 2019 Easter bombings, Wickremesinghe admitted he and his government had failed to act on intelligence communicated by India. This lapse resulted in the deaths of over 250 people in bomb blasts across the island. He stated: “India gave us the intelligence but there has been a lapse in how we acted on that.”

The damage caused by Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism

Politicians like Wickremesinghe and Rajapaksa have been put in positions of political power by the majority Sinhalese people due to their Sinhalese Buddhist nationalist ideology, which has resulted in a long history of discrimination and rioting against minorities on the island. This position of power has allowed these leaders to grow their personal wealth, while mismanaging the economy and ultimately bankrupting the country.

Within the Sinhalese Buddhist ideology, anyone who is not Sinhalese-Buddhist is excluded. Since the country’s long civil war ended, all major Sri Lankan parties have rejected criticisms of the Sri Lankan state, including international calls for investigations into human rights violations and war crimes committed against the Tamils.

Rajapaksa’s refusal to resign, despite mass protests, is an indictment of his authoritarianism, which can also be attributed to Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism.

In fact, the Sri Lankan constitution grants Buddhism foremost power, paving the way for ongoing discrimination against marginalised groups. This discrimination began in 1956, when Prime Minister S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike implemented the Sinhala Only Act, making Sinhalese the official language of the island and forcing Tamils out of key employment sectors.

As political expert Neil DeVotta explains of Sri Lanka’s road to political ruin:

It was nationalism that enabled governance rooted in meritocracy to be supplanted by ethnocracy, which over time has led to kakistocracy – governance by a country’s worst citizens.

Read more:
What’s happening in Sri Lanka and how did the economic crisis start?

A bleak outlook

Anti-government protesters will continue to express their fury on the streets. But if they are going to push for meaningful political change, their demands must be representative of everyone on the island, especially those who have been historically marginalised by successive Sri Lankan governments.

An impassioned plea from a young Tamil protester urged the majority Sinhalese community to pay attention to the patterns of the past:

Niro is a volunteer at the Tamil Refugee Council

– ref. Sri Lanka’s crisis is not just about the economy, but a long history of discrimination against minority groups – https://theconversation.com/sri-lankas-crisis-is-not-just-about-the-economy-but-a-long-history-of-discrimination-against-minority-groups-186747

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jeff Borland, Professor of Economics, The University of Melbourne

It’s not an academic way to start an article about Australia’s latest jobs numbers, but all I can think is “wow”.

The official unemployment rate in June fell to 3.5%. It’s almost 50 years – August 1974, to be exact – since it was lower.

How we got there was through more people getting hired: 88,400 people compared with 60,600 the month before.

This reduced total unemployment by 54,300, even as the labour force swelled by 34,200 to 14,093,000.

90,000 new jobs a month

After the hit to employment in 2021 from shutdowns due to the Delta variant of COVID-19, there was always going to be a rebound. But the strength is amazing. Since October last year, employment has grown, on average, by more than 90,000 people a month.

We can compare this with what happened during the initial recovery from the onset of COVID-19, from May 2020 to January 2021.

That recovery came after a much bigger loss of jobs compared with late 2021. This makes the past eight months more impressive. With less opportunity for catch-up, slower growth could reasonably have been expected.

Climbing job vacancies

Along with a record-high proportion of the population employed – 64.4% – there is a record-high proportion of vacant jobs: 3.4%.

Exceptional growth in the demand for labour is encouraging people to join (or rejoin) the labour force. The proportion of the population in work or looking for work in June rose to 66.8%.

But also record sickness

Offsetting more people wanting to work, however, is more people being away from work ill.

In the first six months of 2022, on average, 5.2% of workers did fewer hours than usual due to illness. This compares to 3% in the same months from 2017 to 2019.

It’s likely some employers are needing to hire extra workers to cover for increased rates of absenteeism due to COVID-19 or the flu, adding to demand.

So what about wages?

The puzzle in all this is wages growth. How can we have unemployment so low and yet so little evidence of stronger wages growth?

Even with record low unemployment and record high job vacancy rates, in the 12 months to the end of March, wages grew by just 2.4%. This compares with prices (inflation) growing by 5.1%. Real wages therefore declined by 2.7%.

This lack of “market” response is most likely due to Australia’s institutional arrangements for wage-setting. These arrangements make some lag in wages responding to demand inevitable.

Read more:
Why there’s no magic jobless rate to increase Australians’ wages

About 35% of employees are on enterprise bargaining agreements, which are renegotiated on average every two to three years. Those agreements might have annual wage increases built in, but based on the labour market as it was when the collective agreement was struck.

About 23% of employees are on awards – and increases to these are set by the Fair Work Commission just once a year.

Nevertheless, the Fair Work Commission’s decision last month to lift wages for award workers by up to 5.2% shows that wages do eventually reflect labour market conditions. A higher rate of wage growth should also happen progressively for workers covered by collective agreements, as employers adjust their expectations about what they need to pay to keep and attract employees.

Read more:
This 5.2% decision on the minimum wage could shift the trajectory for all

Still, fears that wage increase will get out of hand, leading to a wage-price spiral as in the 1970s, are exaggerated.

Many factors have changed. In the 1970s, Australia had “pattern bargaining” – whereby if one group of workers got a big wage increase it would pretty much automatically flow to all other workers. This is no longer the case. Moreover, the decline in union representation, and the rise of technology and globalisation, have all made it more difficult for workers to bargain for higher wages.

Jeff Borland receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. 3.5% unemployment: Australia’s jobless rate at its lowest since 1974 – https://theconversation.com/3-5-unemployment-australias-jobless-rate-at-its-lowest-since-1974-186917

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lydia McGrady, PhD Candidate, University of Technology Sydney

For First Nations people, land is the most important aspect of life and well-being. Successful land rights claims for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are the result of years of protest and advocacy.

This success led to the creation of land rights Acts across Australia. However, the recent figures of unprocessed land claims in New South Wales point to failures in the processes of land rights for Aboriginal communities.

Successful land rights claims lead not only to rights to land, but also to the ability to provide health and housing services for Aboriginal communities. When land rights claims are denied or prolonged, First Nations Peoples’ health and well-being can suffer, from not being allowed ownership of their own Country.

In approving land rights for First Nations People, there is potential for economic independence for communities through the establishment of more community-led land councils, with revenue providing for community benefit programs.

Read more:
WA’s new Aboriginal Heritage Act keeps mining interests ahead of the culture and wishes of Traditional Owners

So what’s happening in NSW?

In NSW, the creation of land councils across the state led to the successful granting more than 3,000 land rights claims. However, this is just a fraction of the number of unprocessed claims, of which there were reportedly 37,000 as of 2020 – many of them having been lodged more than a decade earlier.

The number in 2022 has climbed higher still, and is now 38,200.

Based on the current rate of approvals, it would not be until 2044 that these claims would be processed. These claims impact more than 1.12 million hectares of land.

The auditor-general’s 2022 report suggests neither the NSW Department of Premier and Cabinet nor the NSW Department of Planning and Environment has the resources needed to process all these land rights claims in a timely manner.

The NSW Department of Planning and Environment may not been meeting its statutory requirement to process claims resulting in ongoing delays. This has resulted in Aboriginal land councils and communities being denied rights to land because their claims remain unprocessed for many years.

Without land rights claims being processed, communities may lack access to basic services and economic development as well as being denied their rights to land.

Read more:
A history of destruction: why the WA Aboriginal cultural heritage bill will not prevent another Juukan Gorge-like disaster

A history of fighting for our land

The issue of land rights for First Nations peoples claims stretches back many decades. However, there have been responses from affected communities that have provided positive outcomes.

One example is the Wave Hill strikes in 1966 began as a call for wages and grew into advocacy which demanded the return of land. This land was given back by Prime Minister Gough Whitlam in 1972. After the failure of the Gove land rights case, the Whitlam government launched the Woodward Commission to examine how land could be given back to Aboriginal communities. The result was the first land rights Act passed by the Fraser government in 1976. This allowed for the purchase of land by the government or granting of Crown lands for claims to be held for Aboriginal communities.

Similar Acts were then passed in the following years, including the Aboriginal Land Rights Act 1983 (NSW). Through this Act, land councils were created which could make claims to land as compensation for communities and to promote economic growth. The Act in NSW, however, only allows the claiming of Crown land – that is, unoccupied land held by the state.

Legislative challenges

The land claims must refer to land that is not impacted by native title, so it is essential to know the difference between land rights and native title.

Land rights are classified as claims to land made by Aboriginal land councils, whereas native title are claims by Traditional Owners. The establishment of native title was a result of the Mabo (No. 2) decision and led to the creation of the Native Title Act 1993. Land rights legislation predates this and can often lead to overlap between land rights and native title claims which can impact various cultural groups’ claims to Country.

Aboriginal land councils are organisations created by the Act and run by community leaders, whereas Traditional Owners have a traditional claim to land based on ongoing occupation.

Read more:
The NSW government needs to stop prosecuting Aboriginal fishers if it really wants to Close the Gap

Improvements to the land claims process

However the 2022 report lists possible improvements to allow for the processing of land rights claims. These suggestions include improved governance, a ten-year plan, staff education programs and procedural updates to the registrar system.

The NSW Department of Planning and Environment should also have better communication and cooperation with land councils. This would be the greatest improvement to the process ensuring First Nations land councils are able to be heard.

Local Aboriginal Land Councils have described the ongoing failing as a lack of transparency. However, there are some positives emerging.

In mid-2020 the NSW Department of Planning and Environment created an Aboriginal Land Strategy Directorate, increased staffing and set targets. This resulted, in the second half of 2021, the granting of 207 claims, many more than previous years.

In addition, consultation with Aboriginal land councils has resulted in the prioritising of claims. Despite this, many more claims need to be processed. It leads to hope that the latest 2022 auditor-general report will lead to more substantial policy reform.

Lydia McGrady 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. In NSW there have been significant wins for First Nations land rights. But unprocessed claims still outnumber the successes – https://theconversation.com/in-nsw-there-have-been-significant-wins-for-first-nations-land-rights-but-unprocessed-claims-still-outnumber-the-successes-186121

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David King, Senior Lecturer in General Practice, The University of Queensland

It’s hard to get through a winter without suffering sore throat, but luckily they normally get better within a few days.

Sore throat is a common symptom of COVID and its newer variants. And of course, many sore throats are caused by viral colds or flu, so they can be treated at home.

The most common treatment is probably throat lozenges – but do they really work any better than sucking on a hard lolly?

Why does my throat hurt so much?

A sore throat can fall anywhere between slight discomfort to a sensation of “swallowing razor blades”. Occasionally it hurts so much to swallow that people dribble saliva from their mouths, rather than swallowing it.

Bacteria and viruses can invade the thin moist skin (mucosa) lining the throat. This kills many lining cells and triggers inflammation, which appears as redness, swelling and increased secretions.

Infections in the nose also cause thick mucus to travel down the back of the throat and cause further irritation. This is referred to as “post-nasal drip”. A blocked nose causes reliance on mouth breathing, which tends to dehydrate the already inflamed throat. Ouch.

Read more:
When RAT-testing for COVID, should you also swab your throat?

What do lozenges do?

Lozenges are a solid medication intended to be dissolved or disintegrated slowly in the mouth. They consist of one or more active ingredients and are flavoured and sweetened to make them pleasant tasting. Hard lozenges are generally formed using sucrose or other sugars similar to the process for hard candy confections.

There are many active ingredients added to lozenges, including antiseptics; pain relievers; menthol and eucalyptus oil; cough suppressants such as dextromethorphan and soothing compounds. “Cough drops” and sore throat lozenges are almost identical but may contain different proportions of these ingredients.

Different brands of lozenges advertise a confusing choice of formulations. It is more common now to see brands with “triple action” ingredients that promise to be anaesthetic (to numb pain), antiseptic (to kill germs) and anti-inflammatory (to reduce redness).

Unfortunately, clinical trials directly comparing the benefit of different medication types for most common conditions (head to head trials) are rarely undertaken. This is likely due to the added complexity of such trials compared with placebo controlled trials, and medication research often being funded by the pharmaceutical manufacturer of the products. So, we have to rely on indirect comparisons instead.

The traditional approach to treating sore throat is to assume lozenges or gargling with antiseptics will reduce sore throat by treating the infection causing it.

However, a limited number of trials of antiseptic lozenges (such as Strepsils and Betadine lozenges) produced only a small reduction in sore throat pain (a difference of one unit in a ten-point pain scale compared with placebo). So they do seem to provide a small degree of relief, and continue to be sold.

More and more brands are including other medications beyond antiseptics in their range of throat lozenges

Read more:
Health Check: do cough medicines work?

Checking the effects

There are some other explanations for the apparent effectiveness of any treatment for a self-limiting infection. How do we know if the symptom or infection would have lasted longer if we hadn’t used that treatment? To tell, we’d need a control group who didn’t receive the treatment, and a large sample size to overcome the role of chance causing the difference.

Relief might come from something other than the active ingredient. After all, sucking on a sweet, hard lozenge could soothe a dry throat by increasing saliva release. To test this effect, we’d need a true placebo medication – identical in every respect apart from the active ingredient.

Several well-designed and well-conducted controlled clinical trials show some active ingredients provide significantly better pain relief than placebo lozenges. These medications fall into two main groups: local anaesthetics (such as benzocaine) and anti-inflammatory agents (flurbiprofen).

A study comparing benzocaine lozenges, (now offered in many brands of lozenges) to placebo lozenges found quicker pain relief (20 minutes for benzocaine compared to more than 45 minutes for the placebo). More study participants felt relief using the medication, though very few reported complete pain relief.

A systematic research review found nine studies that supported the benefit of flurbiprofen lozenges (available in Australia in Strepfen Intensive lozenges) for a range of sore throat conditions. In one of the reviewed studies, flurbiprofen produced greater reductions in sore throat pain (47%) as well as difficulty swallowing (66%) and swollen throat (40%) over the first 24 hours compared with placebo.

One of the common sore throat treatments sold in Australia is Difflam, which contains the anti-inflammatory medication benzydamine. One clinical trial found a greater than two point reduction in the ten point pain scale by day three in those using Benzydamine versus placebo.

Are lozenges better than sore throat sprays?

A study using radioactive labelled medication demonstrated more prolonged and complete delivery of medication in the mouth for lozenges compared to spray and gargle. This seems to be the basis for the claim that sprays are less effective than lozenges.

However, drawing conclusions from such evidence is less accurate than a study that directly compares the effectiveness of the various modes of delivery on actual pain. One study compared flurbiprofen and found similar pain relief benefit between lozenges and spray.

So the choice of delivery method can be based on personal preference, including the taste of the product.

The takeaway

Sore throat lozenges and sprays provide some additional relief for the pain of sore throat, particularly those with anti-inflammatory or local anaesthetic ingredients. They are often combined with an antiseptic agent, which may or may not add any significant benefit.

Used as directed, these agents seem safe and have negligible adverse effects. They are also affordable and readily available.

But this shouldn’t stop us using other treatments we know also soothe sore throats, such as a small spoonful of honey.

Read more:
How to actually fix a lost voice, according to science (hint: lemon and honey doesn’t work)

David King 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. Sore throats suck. Do throat lozenges help at all? – https://theconversation.com/sore-throats-suck-do-throat-lozenges-help-at-all-184454

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robert Nelson, Honorary Principal Fellow, The University of Melbourne

How high should you put the heating up over winter? If you don’t mind the bills and ecological impact, you have the encouragement of the World Health Organization to keep the house warm. They recommend an indoor temperature of at least 18°, declaring that you face health risks at lower temperatures. This advice is echoed by the Australian government. The tone of some reports is monitory and severe.

Based on these instructions, anyone would feel a reflex to bump up the thermostat. But before you brace for the bill-shock amid soaring energy prices, consider a different approach. Some people cope positively with the freeze and others face deep winter with panic. Given the range of psychological responses, I can only imagine there would be a difference in how people’s health would fare. If I’m full of dread at the prospect of feeling chilly, this stress could aggravate existing health issues.

It is entirely possible to avoid heating your entire house to 18℃ to stay warm. If you view your cold house as a project, you can take pleasure in the power of staying warm in your modern cave, while remembering that we evolved to withstand the cold with fewer options than we have today.

Staying warm in a cold house

Over the last couple of winters, I’ve discovered many strategies for comfortable living at lower room temperatures. To add to traditional methods such as multiple layers of clothing and physical activity, there are now excellent appliances to fend off the chill. Personal heating devices have become rightly popular, such as electrical heated throw rugs to warm your clothing rather than ambient air.

These new devices – think a more flexible electric blanket – are extremely efficient. Canberra energy efficiency enthusiast David Southgate found using these devices rather than heating the air cut his heating bill by 95%.

Personally, I have found adequate clothing makes a temperature of 15℃ acceptable. In fact, dressing warmly poses more risk of overheating with low levels of activity. It’s satisfying to create your own warmth rather than rely on artificially supplied warmth. You start to notice thermodynamic properties of clothing that you’d never appreciate by relying on a thermostat.

If you wear a hooded gown, you’ll find not only that your ears are warm from being covered, but your uncovered face becomes flushed. That’s because warmth generated by your body wafts upward to escape through the aperture of the hood. As a result, the air that you breathe is also warm.

When it comes to clothing, we can equate warmth simply with insulation. In turn, we assess the insulating qualities of textiles with their thickness or air-trapping abilities. We often tend to overlook the design of the clothing, which plays a key role in funnelling body warmth to exposed skin. The archetype of the hood was known two millennia before thermostats in both Greece (the garments μαφόρτης and κάλυμμα) and Rome (the garments cucullus, lacerna and tunica palliolata). They’re just as effective today.

Wearing a cowl won’t warm up your hands; but if the rest of you is warm – especially your feet – your exposed hands will benefit by the circulation. For anyone unconvinced by this assurance, fingerless gloves are a backstop.

The way medical science has catastrophised indoor temperatures lower than 18℃ wouldn’t be so bad if it were only incurious and unimaginative. Alas, there are alarming ecological consequences of a population believing that they’ll automatically get sick in the cold.

Carbon emissions from domestic heating are significant. You get a picture from gas bills in Queensland, which go up 1.4 times from summer to winter. In colder states, the figure is much higher: 3.5 times in Victoria and 5.2 times in nippy Tasmania. We have to scrutinise if we really need our thermostats pegged at 18℃.

Before we accept recommendations on indoor temperatures by medical authorities, we need to know if the science has grappled with different experiences of cold.

Future research must distinguish between people in a cool room who feel cold and miserable or feel protected against cold by a range of practical measures.

Understanding the effect of these variables is urgent, because current authoritative guidance pushes us into heating our houses more than we have to. For most of the world, that means burning fossil fuel.

Robert Nelson 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. Heat yourself, not your house: how to survive winter with a 15℃ indoor temperature – https://theconversation.com/heat-yourself-not-your-house-how-to-survive-winter-with-a-15-indoor-temperature-185587

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexia Maddox, Research Fellow, Blockchain Innovation Hub, RMIT, RMIT University

Have you ever told a stranger a secret about yourself online? Did you feel a certain kind of freedom doing so, specifically because the context was removed from your everyday life? Personal disclosure and anonymity have long been a potent mix laced through our online interactions.

We’ve recently seen this through the resurgence of anonymous question apps targeting young people, including Sendit and NGL (which stands for “not gonna lie”). The latter has been installed 15 million times globally, according to recent reports.

These apps can be linked to users’ Instagram and Snapchat accounts, allowing them to post questions and receive anonymous answers from followers.

Although they’re trending at the moment, it’s not the first time we’ve seen them. Early examples include ASKfm, launched in 2010, and Spring.me, launched in 2009 (as “Fromspring”).

These platforms have a troublesome history. As a sociologist of technology, I’ve studied human-technology encounters in contentious environments. Here’s my take on why anonymous question apps have once again taken the internet by storm, and what their impact might be.

Why are they so popular?

We know teens are drawn to social platforms. These networks connect them with their peers, support their journeys towards forming identity, and provide them space for experimentation, creativity and bonding.

We also know they manage online disclosures of their identity and personal life through a technique sociologists call “audience segregation”, or “code switching”. This means they’re likely to present themselves differently online to their parents than they are to their peers.

Digital cultures have long used online anonymity to separate real-world identities from online personas, both for privacy and in response to online surveillance. And research has shown online anonymity enhances self-disclosure and honesty.

For young people, having online spaces to express themselves away from the adult gaze is important. Anonymous question apps provide this space. They promise to offer the very things young people seek: opportunities for self-expression and authentic encounters.

Risky by design

We now have a generation of kids growing up with the internet. On one hand, young people are hailed as pioneers of the digital age – and on they other, we fear for them as its innocent victims.

A recent TechCrunch article chronicled the rapid uptake of anonymous question apps by young users, and raised concerns about transparency and safety.

NGL exploded in popularity this year, but hasn’t solved the issue of hate speech and bullying. Anonymous chat app YikYak was shut down in 2017 after becoming littered with hateful speech – but has since returned.

These apps are designed to hook users in. They leverage certain platform principles to provide a highly engaging experience, such as interactivity and gamification (wherein a form of “play” is introduced into non-gaming platforms).

Also, given their experimental nature, they’re a good example of how social media platforms have historically been developed with a “move fast and break things” attitude. This approach, first articulated by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, has arguably reached its use-by date.

Breaking things in real life is not without consequence. Similarly, breaking away from important safeguards online is not without social consequence. Rapidly developed social apps can have harmful consequences for young people, including cyberbullying, cyber dating abuse, image-based abuse and even online grooming.

In May 2021, Snapchat suspended integrated anonymous messaging apps Yolo and LMK, after being sued by the distraught parents of teens who committed suicide after being bullied through the apps.

Yolo’s developers overestimated the capacity of their automated content moderation to identify harmful messages.

In the wake of these suspensions, Sendit soared through the app store charts as Snapchat users sought a replacement.

Snapchat then banned anonymous messaging from third-party apps in March this year, in a bid to limit bullying and harassment. Yet it appears Sendit can still be linked to Snapchat as a third-party app, so the implementation conditions are variable.

Are kids being manipulated by chatbots?

It also seems these apps may feature automated chatbots parading as anonymous responders to prompt interactions – or at least that’s what staff at Tech Crunch found.

Although chatbots can be harmless (or even helpful), problems arise if users can’t tell whether they’re interacting with a bot or a person. At the very least it’s likely the apps are not effectively screening bots out of conversations.

Users can’t do much either. If responses are anonymous (and don’t even have a profile or post history linked to them), there’s no way to know if they’re communicating with a real person or not.

It’s difficult to confirm whether bots are widespread on anonymous question apps, but we’ve seen them cause huge problems on other platforms – opening avenues for deception and exploitation.

For example, in the case of Ashley Madison, a dating and hook-up platform that was hacked in 2015, bots were used to chat with human users to keep them engaged. These bots used fake profiles created by Ashley Madison employees.

Read more:
‘Anorexia coach’: sexual predators online are targeting teens wanting to lose weight. Platforms are looking the other way

What can we do?

Despite all of the above, some research has found many of the risks teens experience online pose only brief negative effects, if any. This suggests we may be overemphasising the risks young people face online.

At the same time, implementing parental controls to mitigate online risk is often in tension with young people’s digital rights.

So the way forward isn’t simple. And just banning anonymous question apps isn’t the solution.

Rather than avoid anonymous online spaces, we’ll need to trudge through them together – all the while demanding as much accountability and transparency from tech companies as we can.

For parents, there are some useful resources on how to help children and teens navigate tricky online environments in a sensible way.

Read more:
Ending online anonymity won’t make social media less toxic

Alexia Maddox 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. Sendit, Yolo, NGL: anonymous social apps are taking over once more, but they aren’t without risks – https://theconversation.com/sendit-yolo-ngl-anonymous-social-apps-are-taking-over-once-more-but-they-arent-without-risks-186647

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gemma Sou, Vice Chancellor’s Research Fellow, RMIT University

We know young people are “angry, frustrated and scared” about climate change. And they want to do more to stop it.

However, the school system is not set up to help them address their concerns and learn the information they seek.

There are no explicit mentions of climate change in the Australian primary school curriculum and it is mainly taught through STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) subjects in high school.

Read more:
How well does the new Australian Curriculum prepare young people for climate change?

More broadly, the main ways we talk about climate in the community and media are focused on science and economics. They tend to involve abstract ideas such as “the planet is warming” or “rainfall is more unpredictable”. While these are important components, they overlook the social, cultural and psychological ways people around the world are affected by climate change.

So, how can we better support schools and teachers to approach climate change in a way that will suit young people’s interests and concerns?

Our comic

We are geography and environment researchers who have written a comic that looks at how people around the world experience climate change. This is aimed at high school students, but will also appeal to university students and the broader public.

Called Everyday Stories of Climate Change, it looks at the ways low-income families have had to adapt to climate change in five countries across three continents.

It begins with a student, waking up in Australia and heading to school. Here the teacher notes that climate change is impacting people around the world, “today we are going to explore some of these places”.

For example, in Bangladesh, sea-level rise has contributed to the salinity of the local river. So women must walk hours to get fresh water from another river. In Puerto Rico, after hurricane Maria, people struggle to get nutritious food and the streets are too dirty for the kids to play outside. In Barbuda, the government is trying to displace people from their lands, so that private businesses can build luxury hotels after hurricane Irma.

The characters in the comics are fictionalised but their stories are based on research – via interviews and surveys – the comic authors did about people’s experiences of climate change in Bolivia, Puerto Rico, Barbuda, South Africa and Bangladesh.

The importance of stories

Researchers have long argued we need to put a human face on climate change and communicate in ways that resonate with people. This means, we need to do more than present a graph or rattle off statistics.

Comics are an effective way to put a human face on issues because they allow us to show first-person narratives and experiences. This can create both understanding of the issues and evoke empathy in readers.

The comic is deliberately engaging and accessible. By showing real people going about their lives, it also challenges patronising ideas about people and places adversely impacted by climate change in the so-called “global south,” which often portrays them as “helpless” victims.

The comic also allows people to see the tangible, everyday ways people around the world live with, respond to and adapt to climate change.

For example, the family in Puerto Rico raise their own chickens and grow their own vegetables so they can eat the food they want during food shortages after hurricane Maria. In drought-stricken Cape Town, people save the bathwater for the garden and plant drought-tolerant aloes.

It is important to show these solutions as research suggests it gives people a sense of agency and hope they can adapt to climate change.

Parents, teachers and students can download the comic for free here and here.

Everyday Stories of Climate Change is a collaboration between Gemma Sou (RMIT University), Adeeba Nuraina Risha (BRAC University), Gina Ziervogel (University of Cape Town), illustrator Cat Sims and the Geography Teachers’ Association of Victoria.

Gemma Sou receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council and the Royal Geographical Society-IBG

Adeeba Nuraina Risha receives funding from BRAC Institute of Governance and Development (BIGD), BRAC University

Gina Ziervogel receives funding from AXA Research fund.

– ref. How do we teach young people about climate change? We can start with this comic – https://theconversation.com/how-do-we-teach-young-people-about-climate-change-we-can-start-with-this-comic-186740

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

The federal government has announced Anne Aly is Australia’s new minister for youth. This will restore youth consultation to government decision-making after the abolition in 2013 of the Youth Advisory Council and the Office for Youth.

Labor has promised a new youth engagement model driven by a steering committee of up to 15 young people.

Getting this panel of 15 young people right will be crucial to its effectiveness. Here are three factors to consider.

1. Young Australians are diverse

Generation Z (10–24 years old) represents about 18% of Australia and about 30% of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population.

(Looking at an older cohort of young people, Australian Bureau of Statistics data show about 3.2 million young people aged between 15–24 years made up 12% of the Australian population in 2020).

ABS data show 74.5% of young people lived in major cities, 16.6% lived in inner regional areas and 8.9% live in outer regional, remote and very remote areas. So including voices from regional, rural and remote Australia on the government youth advisory committee will be important.

According to 2019 data, about a quarter of young people aged 15–24 were born overseas; 9.3% had a disability; just over half (51%) were male, 49% female; and 6.1% identified as gay, lesbian or having another sexual orientation.

Other Australian Bureau of Statistics data is notably limited. Questions in the recent census were not inclusive of a wider spectrum of gender and sexuality.

So, finding 15 people who can advise on behalf of such a diverse constituency is no easy feat.

2. The population is changing

The demographic makeup of Australia is shifting. From 1971 to 2020, the population of people aged 15–24 grew from 2.3 million to 3.2 million.

But sustained low fertility and increased life expectancy has also meant their proportion relative to the Australian population is declining.

In 2021 we released our Australian Youth Barometer, which drew on a survey of more than 500 Australians aged 18-24, and interviews with 30 more about health, education, employment, money, housing, food, safety and citizenship.

We found just under a quarter of young people are pessimistic about having children in the future.

Young people remain a significant proportion of the population and their choices will continue to shape the future demographic makeup of Australia. The 15-person youth advisory committee should seek to reflect the range of views among Australian young people on issues such as family and future.

3. Who puts their hand up?

Who typically volunteers to participate on such a steering committee? Attempts at youth representation sometimes skew towards those most likely to self-nominate, such as the highly educated, articulate and confident.

But often it’s those least likely to put their hand up whose voice we need to hear the most.

Voices from disadvantaged backgrounds can be particularly absent.

The stakes are high for young people

As Labor notes:

younger people now face a future of high underemployment, depleted retirement savings, significant barriers to education and training, and a rent and housing affordability crisis.

While youth underemployment has slightly fallen recently, it remains pervasive. Australia also has the fourth-highest incidence of part-time employment in the OECD.

65% of Australians believe owning a home is no longer an option for most young Australians.

Climate change looms large. An Australian Institute for Disaster Resilience survey of 1,447 Australians aged 10–24 found more than 80% of participants above the age of 16 were concerned about climate change.

Looking at data from the 2021 Australian Youth Barometer, 20-year-old Rebecca from our Youth Reference Group said many young people feel ignored and so turn to

protesting and using social media to share their voices and enact their agency. It is important that the diversity of young people’s voices are being listened to, encouraged, and supported.

Young people are also acutely aware – and critical – of the standards set by politicians.

One female survey respondent, aged 21, said:

In parliament there are people who are getting sexually assaulted and the government doesn’t say jack shit about it […] You don’t understand the dangers of being a woman.

Many young people don’t feel that politicians actually listened or respected them.

As one young Indigenous person told us in a different piece of research:

[politicians] have no respect for Aboriginal people […] There was a big debate about ‘was this country settled’ […] It wasn’t settled, it was invaded.

Going beyond the committee

It’s encouraging that the new government is seeking to engage with young people, which strikes a different note to their predecessors (remember when politicians told School Strike 4 Climate Action protesters to “stay in school”?)

The new government has vowed to engage with young people in a way that goes

beyond the committee, by incorporating local forums, workshops, and town halls for young Australians to directly engage in debate and offer their perspectives and ideas.

This is promising; too often, young people’s voices are sought in tokenistic or symbolic ways.

But the government’s approach must reflect the diversity of young people, include voices less commonly heard and address the big-ticket items identified by young people.

As one 20-year-old from Victoria told us:

Obviously, we’re going to be the future leaders, presidents, prime ministers and treasurers and all that, so we have to make sure that we have our priorities set now, going into the future, so that when we do take over, we know what plans and goals to achieve and what action to take.

Read more:
Growing up in a disadvantaged neighbourhood can change kids’ brains – and their reactions

Lucas Walsh is a Chief Investigator of The Q Project, a partnership between Monash University and the Paul Ramsay Foundation investigating and improving the use of research by educators. This story is part of The Conversation’s Breaking the Cycle series, which is about escaping cycles of disadvantage. It is supported by a philanthropic grant from the Paul Ramsay Foundation.

– ref. Labor promised a new committee of 15 young people to guide policy. So who gets picked, and how? – https://theconversation.com/labor-promised-a-new-committee-of-15-young-people-to-guide-policy-so-who-gets-picked-and-how-186037

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stavros Selemidis, Professor of Pharmacology, RMIT University

Flu season has begun uncharacteristically early this year, and so far we’ve seen around 187,000 laboratory-confirmed cases, 1,323 hospitalisations, and 113 deaths.

The risk of infection from either COVID or influenza this winter will be very high. The risk of being infected with both at the same time will also be significant, and will likely put a huge strain on our already overburdened health system.

A large number of people who get the flu do not get tested, unless the symptoms are severe. Early detection of flu can improve treatment to prevent significant illness, particularly in the young, elderly and immunocompromised.

A simple RAT test, the same as the ones we’ve become accustomed to using for COVID, could potentially help in detecting the virus early, and stopping the spread of flu.

How do flu RATs work?

RATs are short for rapid antigen tests and they can quickly test whether a person has Influenza A or B – two of the most common strains of flu virus.

The test is designed to pick up the presence of specific antigens of the flu virus, which when detected produce a coloured band to indicate a positive test result, similar to the line you’ve seen on your COVID RATs.

At the moment, RAT tests for flu are not widely available, are expensive compared to the COVID tests, and most suffer problems with sensitivity and/or specificity (their ability to detect positive cases) that need further work and testing. However, this could change if there was more demand for flu RATs.

Could flu RATs make a different to rates of flu and illness from flu?

Influenza and COVID cause similar symptoms, however, the drugs we have to manage these diseases require a precise identification. This is critical, as it governs what type of antiviral drug is given.

Current flu RATs are most sensitive up to four days after symptom onset. A positive detection during this period can facilitate a quicker treatment strategy with antivirals, as these drugs have a narrow window of therapeutic opportunity.

If a patient tests positive for flu, they can then receive Tamiflu, the antiviral recommended for flu cases, which reduces the risk of hospitalisation.

However this must be taken within two days of infection (when symptoms emerge) for it to be effective. Everyone can get Tamiflu but they require a prescription, which makes it difficult to get the drug within the two-day window needed to be effective.

Tamiflu would not work against COVID, which requires a different antiviral for elderly and otherwise unwell patients, such as Paxlovid.

A flu RAT would benefit people at risk of severe illness such as babies, young children, the elderly and the immunocompromised. This would increase the chance of early detection to enable treatment, and it could also give us more accurate figures of the number of people with flu each season.

Flu RATs could also help in the management of outbreaks in high-risk communities such as aged care, nursing homes, schools and day care. A quick detection of flu could assist in measures to reduce the chances of transmission by antiviral treatment and isolation, as we’ve seen with COVID.

Read more:
New ad urges us to ‘take on winter’ by getting COVID and flu vaccines. But it misses some key things

Are flu RATs available in Australia?

There are currently no flu RATs approved by the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) in Australia, for public use at home. The TGA has approved eight tests that are used only in a clinical setting, and these are designed to detect both flu and COVID.

We need to lobby the government to action TGA approval of home flu RATs, as public demand will help drive this process. The TGA will require time and money to test and develop the RATs to a high standard.

Therefore we can’t expect Australian-based RATs for this flu season, but given we are now all so comfortable with at-home antigen testing, testing for flu is the logical next step.

Read more:
Flu may be back, but COVID is far from over. How do they compare?

Stavros Selemidis receives funding from National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia.

Doug Brooks receives funding from National Health and Medical Research Council.

John O’Leary receives funding from National Health and Medical Research Council.

– ref. RATs for flu exist – should we be self-testing for that too? – https://theconversation.com/rats-for-flu-exist-should-we-be-self-testing-for-that-too-185602

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Duckett, Honorary Enterprise Professor, School of Population and Global Health, and Department of General Practice, The University of Melbourne

Overall, Australian governments managed the first two years of the COVID pandemic well. Border closures and state actions such as lockdowns averted 18,000 deaths in 2020 and 2021.

This came at a cost in terms of separation of families and friends because of border closures, disruption to schooling and economic activity, and individual stress.

The public supported these measures and thought state governments had managed the pandemic well. Support for the Commonwealth government was also high until mid-2021, when the bungled vaccine rollout caused support to plummet.

Now, we are in the grip of a fresh COVID wave. Hospital systems and ambulance services are under severe strain, not just because of an increase in patients, but because the virus has decimated their own workforces. Governments now appear to be much more reluctant to introduce measures to curb its spread, a big difference from the start of the pandemic in 2020.

So, how did it come to this?

Contest of values and rhetoric

Despite the much-vaunted national cabinet, for most of 2020 and 2021 there was no coherent national leadership of COVID-19 response. Then-Prime Minister Scott Morrison and other federal ministers downplayed COVID risks and undermined state public health measures. They attacked lockdowns, state border closures and school shutdowns, while dog-whistling to anti-vaxxers.

This weakened the states’ social licence to pursue effective public health measures.

The differences between the Commonwealth and state governments were in part due to different weighing of the risks of COVID. In 2020 and for the first half of 2021, there was either no vaccine or not enough vaccines, and the prevalent virus strain was quite virulent. As a result, other public health measures were key to controlling the pandemic and minimising hospitalisations and deaths.

But from the middle of 2021, the rhetoric and messaging changed. Led by the Commonwealth government, there was increasing talk of “living with COVID”, reducing restrictions and reopening borders, with the underlying assumption being that, with vaccines, the pandemic was under control. Even the advent of the Omicron wave in late 2021 didn’t lead to a reset, as it was dismissed as “mild”.

There have also been ideological differences throughout the pandemic. Morrison preferred “personal responsibility” to mandates, the latter of which was viewed pejoratively. Individual responsibility is a comfortable position for conservative politicians who tend to minimise the role for government.

In contrast, the very essence of public health is that it is an organised response by society, to quote a standard definition of the field.

Read more:
How has COVID affected Australians’ health? New report shows where we’ve failed and done well

The federal electoral context

By early 2022, the effect of undermining the social licence was increasingly prevalent. The public, especially those that who had borne the brunt of the more extensive public health measures, were tired of lockdowns. The evidence about vaccine waning had not yet become apparent, so reliance on vaccines was seen as the appropriate principal public health response. “Living with COVID” was becoming the dominant narrative.

Around the same time, anti-vaxxers had begun to get organised and protested against any public health measures. States sniffed the wind and began to roll back their restrictions.

A Melbourne joke from 2021 went like this:

Question: what is the hardest part of a one-week snap lockdown?
Answer: Week five.

The federal Coalition attempted to paint Labor as the party that would reintroduce lockdowns and border closures. The Labor opposition did not want to talk about the pandemic to avoid that bullet.

Post-election politics

This long history is necessary context for the confusion we see today. Despite its defeat at the election, the Morrison government’s pandemic legacy is hindering Australia’s ability to manage the pandemic because of the weakening of the social licence to regulate.

Labelling the more transmissible Omicron variant as mild hasn’t helped, as low average severity coupled with high incidence still leads to overburdened hospitals. The Morrison rhetoric of personal responsibility has proved hard to shift as well. It is certainly seductive – “it is your job to protect yourself and if you don’t, tough luck, you will wear the consequences”.

Of course, that position assumes we are all perfectly rational decision-makers and we bear the full cost of our decisions. Neither is true. We tend to discount future consequences of our decisions, and we are unrealistically optimistic about the chances of getting COVID and its consequences.

Just one person’s infection can have a big impact on others – for example, if they are hospitalised, that impedes access to hospital beds for others – so the cost of poor choices by one person potentially falls on others too.

The public health messaging is also confusing. If I have had only two doses, am I “fully vaccinated”? Does “individual responsibility” involve my lugging a very heavy HEPA filter to ensure clean air in any room I go into? Is the Omicron variant genuinely mild? If so, why do we see all those stories about hospital problems?

And what is the right thing to do about masks? Are cloth masks any good? Or should we all have N95s? And should they then be subsidised? And if masks are “strongly recommended”, why are they not mandated?

It all comes back to the COVID social licence. What proportion of the public will accept a mask mandate? If the public is not convinced of the threat or benefit to themselves and others, compliance will be low. This means public health leaders need to talk up collective responsibility and collective benefit, the antithesis of the individual responsibility mantra. This has been missing from the national response.

Talking up individual responsibility means leaders don’t have to lead or shape collective behaviour. Media hype about regulatory fatigue, a fraught catch-all concept where the evidence is still developing, hasn’t helped either.

Both New South Wales and Victoria face elections in the next 12 months. Neither government wants to be attacked as the government of lockdowns and mandates when the risks of not acting have been downplayed for so long.

Read more:
How the pandemic has brought out the worst — and the best — in Australians and their governments

So where to from here?

Public health messaging over the past six months has been woeful. Political leaders are sometimes seen in masks, but mostly not. There has been little messaging about third and fourth doses, and so we have poor third-dose rates, despite what we now know about vaccine waning. The “Omicron is mild” message has led to a “no worries mate” insouciance among the public.

But political and public health leaders must now exercise leadership. Public health requires collective action, not simply a reliance on the easy cop-out of individual responsibility. This will require a carefully planned transition from the discredited positions that have made a public response so much harder now than it was a year ago, and consistent positions across party lines that put the public’s health ahead of cheap political shots.

Leaders need to adopt a more nuanced approach to responding to COVID, jettisoning the simplistic all-or-none dichotomy.

Finally, the mainstream media also need to resile from their knee-jerk rejection of any public health action as akin to lockdowns and economic catastrophe.

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. We lost the plot on COVID messaging – now governments will have to be bold to get us back on track – https://theconversation.com/we-lost-the-plot-on-covid-messaging-now-governments-will-have-to-be-bold-to-get-us-back-on-track-186732

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Mathews, Professor Emeritus, Macquarie Business School, Macquarie University

Gone are the days when the federal government would cheer on Australia’s fossil fuel exports to the exclusion of all else, while seemingly doing everything in its power to hold back the switch to renewables.

Now we have a new government, the clean energy transition is accelerating. Labor is framing the transition not just as decarbonisation but as a green economic boom through manufacture of electrolysers, green steel, green cement and green fertiliser. If successful, this will amount to a green industrial revolution.

This radical new vision was laid out in Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s speech this week to the Sydney Energy Forum. He proposed a new era for Australian energy industries and exports as well as using our wealth of renewables to drive deeper involvement in our region.

It makes good commercial and climate sense for the federal government to target the Indo-Pacific for this green industrial revolution, since the region is already the world’s leader in clean energy investments.

As of 2021, our region accounts for over 80% of the world’s private investment in clean energy. India, China, Japan, Korea, Indonesia and Pacific nations are natural partners for Australia in this new green push as well as leaders creating the market for clean energy and green products.

What does this actually look like?

For a sign of what’s to come, look to the massive Sun Cable project, launched four years ago with early funding by Australian billionaires Mike Cannon-Brookes of Atlassian and Andrew Forrest of Fortescue Minerals Group.

The project’s ambitious goal is to become the first intercontinental exporter of renewables, by generating massive amounts of energy from solar farms in the Northern Territory and transmitting it to energy-hungry Singapore through a 4,200 km-long high voltage undersea cable. Government backing will help it progress faster.

The project has gained strong support from both territory and federal governments, and is now attracting support from the Indonesian and Singaporean governments. Indonesia’s government has given in principle approval for the cable’s undersea route through its national waters and has approved the undersea survey permit. There will be spillover benefits, such as $A1.5 billion earmarked for a marine repair base in Indonesia.

Sun Cable and other renewable megaprojects, such as Western Australia’s proposed Asian Renewable Energy Hub, show the move away from reliance on fossil fuel exports is actually happening. The Albanese government has signalled its intention to promote clean energy exports as well as green industrial development across the Indo-Pacific.

Our research project on the clean energy shift in north-east Asia has captured the progress made by major regional economies China and Korea in powering ahead with their own green transitions since the 2000s. These ongoing transitions offer major opportunities, such as exporting Australian-made green hydrogen to fuel cars in these countries.

Our clean and green transition is bigger than just renewables

Since Labor took office, we’ve heard a lot about our future as a renewables superpower. Often overlooked is the fact this would mean not just generating renewable electricity and green hydrogen at vast scale but also investing in new industries and processes to grasp as many opportunities as we can.

This would mean investing in upstream industries such as solar array fabrication and electrolyser manufacture, as well as downstream industries such as green steel, green cement and green fertiliser. These new green products would be produced using locally generated supplies of green hydrogen and cheap clean renewable power, as economist Ross Garnaut has outlined.

Green energy is no longer a niche concern. Australia’s largest companies are leading the way.

Andrew Forrest’s new spin-off company, Fortescue Future Industries, has begun constructing a $1 billion project building green hydrogen manufacturing components, cabling and renewable generation in central Queensland. This single project is expected to double the global production capacity of green hydrogen. It will make Queensland home to a new green hydrogen fuel and components export industry.

Read more:
Will Australia’s new climate policy be enough to reset relations with Pacific nations?

If our new government can pull this off and turn vision to reality, we could embrace a new green growth economy and begin our own green industrial revolution.

Better yet, Australia could finally make full use of its abundant land and renewable resources to fast-track the clean economic development of our Indo-Pacific neighbours.

Green energy comes with security and geopolitical benefits

For decades, Pacific nations have seen climate change as the single greatest threat to their people. As a result, Australian investment in exportable renewables will become a key diplomatic tool as geopolitical competition between China and the US intensifies in our region.

China isn’t standing still either. Until recently, China focused its regional aid and investment on traditional infrastructure projects such as airports, roads and stadiums. Now Beijing is ramping up its climate responses to the region, with climate change issues at the top of the agenda at the China-Pacific Islands forum held in 2019.

In light of China’s growing green activism in the Pacific, the Australian government has a lot of ground to make up.

It should start with a major rethink of Australia’s traditional approach to financing energy projects, which has seen us support fossil fuel power in the region.

We can no longer keep propping up fossil fuels, with the costs of this support not only environmental, but geostrategic as well. Partnering with China on Pacific projects, as Pacific minister Pat Conroy has flagged, could also help.

Albanese’s speech this week was promising. He laid out a very different role for Australia in our region – one where our regional engagement policy is in line with a new domestic policy on climate goals, and where renewable energy provides a means of deepening regional cooperation on tangible investment projects. Now comes the hard part: delivery.

Read more:
South Korea’s Green New Deal shows the world what a smart economic recovery looks like

John Mathews receives funding from the Australia Research Council (ARC) Discovery Project 2019-2022.

Elizabeth Thurbon currently receives funding from the Australia Research Council (ARC), the Academy of Korean Studies (AKS), and the Commonwealth Department of Defence. She has previously received funding from The Korea Foundation and the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia (ASSA). She is currently a Fellow of The Asia Society (sponsored by the Commonwealth Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade) and a member of the Research Committee of the Jubilee Australia Research Centre.

Hao Tan receives funding from the Australia Research Council (ARC) Discovery Project 2019-2022. He previously received funding from the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, and funding from the Confucius Institute Headquarters under the “Understanding China Fellowship” in 2017.

Sung-Young Kim receives funding from the Australia Research Council (ARC) and has previously received funding from the Academy of Korean Studies (AKS). He is on the Executive Committee of the Australian Political Studies Association (APSA) and also on the Executive Committee of the Korean Studies Association of Australasia (KSAA).

– ref. Albanese just laid out a radical new vision for Australia in the region: clean energy exporter and green manufacturer – https://theconversation.com/albanese-just-laid-out-a-radical-new-vision-for-australia-in-the-region-clean-energy-exporter-and-green-manufacturer-186815

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joanne Gray, Lecturer in Digital Cultures at The University of Sydney, University of Sydney

China’s digital economy has advanced rapidly over the past two decades, with services, communications and commerce moving online.

The Chinese government has generally encouraged its citizens to accept digital technologies in all aspects of daily life. Today China has around a billion internet users.

China has made clear it aims to be a global leader in digital infrastructure and technologies. Leadership in digital tech has been deemed critical to China’s future economic growth, domestically and internationally.

Like Western countries, China has seen the rise of a handful of dominant digital platform or “big tech” internet companies. We studied China’s recent efforts to regulate these companies, which may hold lessons for Western nations trying to manage their own big tech problems.

China’s ‘big four’ tech companies

China’s biggest tech firms are Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent and Xiaomi (often collectively called BATX for short). Broadly speaking, Baidu is built around search and related services, Alibaba specialises in e-commerce and online retail, Tencent focuses on messaging, gaming and social media, and Xiaomi makes phones and other devices.

Like their Silicon Valley counterparts Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple (or GAFA), the BATX companies dominate their competitors. This is largely thanks to the enormous network effects and economies of scale in data-driven, online business.

The BATX businesses (again, like GAFA) are also known for gobbling up potential competitors. In 2020, Tencent reportedly made 168 investments and/or mergers and acquisitions in domestic and international companies. Alibaba made 44, Baidu 43 and Xiaomi 70.

The tech crackdown

In the past 18 months or so, the BATX companies have come under increased scrutiny from the Chinese government.

In November 2020, an IPO planned for Ant Group, an affiliate of Alibaba, was effectively cancelled. Ant Group was forced to restructure after Chinese regulators “interviewed” the company’s founder.

The following month, Alibaba’s Ali Investment and Tencent’s Literature Group were fined RMB 500,000 (about A$110,000) each for issues relating to anti-competitive acquisitions and contractual arrangements.

At the same time, China’s General Administration of Market Supervision opened a case against Alibaba for abuse of its dominant market position in the online retail platform services market.

In March 2021 more fines were issued including to Tencent and Baidu. They were fined RMB 500,000 each for anti-competitive acquisitions and contractual arrangements.

Read more:
Facial recognition for gamers, app store bans for Didi: what’s behind China’s recent crackdown on big tech?

Then in April 2021, Chinese authorities met with 34 platform companies, including Alibaba and Tencent, to provide “administrative guidance sessions” for internet platforms. That month Alibaba was also fined a spectacular RMB 18.228 billion (around A$4 billion) and Tencent another RMB 500,000 for anti-competitive practices.

In July 2021, Chinese authorities prohibited a merger between two companies that would have further consolidated Tencent’s position in the gaming market.

The government’s efforts are ongoing. Earlier this week, regulators imposed new fines on Alibaba, Tencent and others for violating anti-monopoly rules about disclosing certain transactions.

What’s motivating Chinese authorities to intervene?

The evolution of China’s digital giants shows how data-driven markets work on a “winner takes all” basis in both state-managed and capitalist economies.

The BATX companies now wield significant social and economic power in China. This conflicts with China’s ideological commitment to state-managed social order.

In January 2022, President Xi Jinping called for stronger regulation and administration of China’s digital economy. The goal, he said, was to guard against “unhealthy” development and prevent “platform monopoly and disorderly expansion of capital”.

State-orchestrated social order is not possible where there is an excessive accumulation of private power.

China’s digital policy agenda is designed to achieve strong economic growth. However, the Chinese Communist Party also seeks to maintain strong state control over the structure and function of digital markets and their participants to ensure they operate according to Chinese values and Chinese Communist Party objectives.

What can we learn from China’s approach to ‘big tech’?

How can we regulate digital platforms, particularly to improve competition and public oversight? This remains a largely unsolved public policy challenge.

Australia and the EU, like China, have demonstrated significant willingness to take up this challenge.

In Europe, for example, where the US platforms dominate, policymakers are actively seeking to achieve independence from foreign technology companies. They are doing this by improving their own domestic technology capacities and imposing rules for privacy, data collection and management, and content moderation that align with European values and norms.

Read more:
China’s tech and finance crackdown is a challenge to western ideas that cuts across developing world

While the EU and China are aiming at very different goals, both are willing to take a significant role in regulating digital platforms in accordance with their stated economic, political and social values.

This stands in stark contrast to the situation in the US, which has so far had little appetite for meaningfully restricting the behaviour of tech companies.

In theory, China’s centralised political power gives it space to try different approaches to platform regulation. But it remains to be seen whether Chinese authorities can successfully overcome the tendency for monopolies to form in digital markets.

If China succeeds, there may be valuable lessons for the rest of the world. For now we must wait and watch.

Read more:
TikTok and geopolitics: how ‘digital nationalism’ threatens to entrench big tech

Joanne Gray has previously received research funding from Meta Platforms Inc. formerly known as Facebook Inc.

Yi Wang 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. China’s big tech problem: even in a state-managed economy, digital companies grow too powerful – https://theconversation.com/chinas-big-tech-problem-even-in-a-state-managed-economy-digital-companies-grow-too-powerful-186722

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Serena Kelly, Senior Lecturer, National Centre for Research on Europe, University of Canterbury

It’s easy to understand New Zealand’s motivation for securing a free trade agreement (FTA) with the European Union (EU). What’s less apparent is why the EU chose to pursue the agreement with a small and distant country, currently ranked its 50th most important trading partner.

By contrast, the EU is New Zealand’s fourth largest trading partner (after China, Australia and the US). And although the deal has been criticised by some in the dairy and meat industries, it is still expected to be worth an extra NZ$1.8 billion per annum to the New Zealand economy by 2035.

But the trade deal, announced in late June during Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s European visit (during which she also attended a NATO summit), has been hard won.

It went through 12 negotiation rounds in the face of various challenges and distractions for the EU: Brexit, EU opposition to New Zealand agricultural exports, the global pandemic and the war in Ukraine. All of which suggests more than just economic motivations were at play for the 27 EU member states.

Digging deeper, then, we can see several significant strategic considerations for the European Union that demonstrate some of its current thinking, not only about the direction of its global trade policy but also its international ambitions.

The EU back on track

Negotiations between the EU and New Zealand were formally launched in 2018 (alongside a yet-to-be concluded EU–Australia FTA). At the time, New Zealand was one of only a handful of countries that had neither concluded nor was negotiating a preferential trading relationship with the EU.

The EU fast-tracked New Zealand and Australian negotiations as a counter to the perceived trade protectionism represented by Brexit and the Trump presidency in the US.

Read more:
Some see NZ’s invite to the NATO summit as a reward for a shift in foreign policy, but that’s far from accurate

With a population of five million and a GDP of just US$250 billion, New Zealand doesn’t represent much financially for the EU. Symbolically, however, it has wider significance.

The agreement has been called a “welcome and much-needed resumption of an ambitious EU trade agenda”. This had been hampered by member state resistance to ratifying the FTA with the South American regional trade bloc Mercosur, increased protectionism due to the pandemic, and EU trade sanctions against Russia.

Climate change and security

The EU has also hailed the agreement as containing the “most ambitious sustainability commitments in a trade agreement ever”. The inclusion of mutually sanctionable commitments to the Paris Agreement, is part of strengthening the EU’s claim to be a world leader in climate change policy.

The EU already has some of the strongest climate policies in the world, with around 87% of its citizens agreeing “the EU should set ambitious targets to increase renewable energy and support energy efficiency”.

Read more:
Behind the ‘inclusive’ window dressing, the NZ-UK free trade deal disappoints politically and economically

Although the EU was a leading voice in the Paris Agreement, it is trickier to persuade non-member countries to follow its own high environmental standards. This FTA will set a new standard, not only for the EU but also the world.

A voice in the Indo-Pacific

Perhaps most importantly, though, closer cooperation with New Zealand can strengthen the EU’s place in the increasingly fraught Indo-Pacific, a region where it has already named New Zealand as one of its partners.

EU and New Zealand officials often play up their shared values of democracy, human rights and the rule of law. And the EU is an important stabiliser in the rules-based international system that remains so important for small states like New Zealand.

EU cooperation with like-minded countries in the Pacific is a key factor in its pursuit of recognition and legitimacy in a region that is increasing in geo-strategic importance.

Read more:
German election: the race to replace Angela Merkel and why it matters to New Zealand

The EU launched its Indo-Pacific strategy in 2021, following the example of Australia (2016) and the US (2017), and New Zealand’s own Pacific Reset (2018).

And while New Zealand is a small country, it enjoys a broadly positive international image through its independent foreign policy, and is an important regional player. It is a member of the Pacific Islands Forum, and was the first country in the world to sign an FTA with China.

Benefits beyond trade

The establishment of the AUKUS pact in 2021 further elevated the significance of New Zealand’s importance as an Indo-Pacific partner to the EU, involving as it did the withdrawal of Australia from a contract to buy French submarines.

That deal had been viewed by France as the cornerstone of its own approach to the region. Its collapse has somewhat soured Australia’s relationship with one of the EU’s key players.

For all these reasons, then, the EU-NZ FTA can be viewed as a positive development that cements an economic relationship as well as emphasising common values, goals and benefits beyond purely monetary gains.

While potentially economically advantageous to New Zealand – and not without its critics – it can be understood as a signal of the EU’s intention to extend its global influence beyond trade, staking a claim as a political and security actor of real significance.

Serena Kelly receives funding from the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union. She is affiliated with the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs and the European Studies Association of Australia and New Zealand.

Mathew Doidge receives funding from the Erasmus+ programme of the European Union. He is affiliated with the European Studies Association of Australia and New Zealand (ESAANZ).

– ref. A trade deal with the EU makes sense for NZ, but what’s in it for Europe? Symbolically, a lot – https://theconversation.com/a-trade-deal-with-the-eu-makes-sense-for-nz-but-whats-in-it-for-europe-symbolically-a-lot-186637

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Janette Young, Lecturer in Health Promotion, University of South Australia

For you and your pooch a pet-friendly workplace may seem a no-brainer.

More of us are facing pet separation anxiety than ever before. Dog ownership surged with pandemic lockdowns and working from home. Now, with the boundaries between work and home already so blurred, shouldn’t every inclusive, caring employer embrace an open-doggy-door policy?

What’s the harm? After all, isn’t there a growing body of research showing the benefits of pets in the workplaces?

Maybe. Yes, pets certainly can bring benefits to the workplace. These include reducing stress
and improving social interaction and job satisfaction.

Read more:
Pet therapy: how dogs, cats and horses help improve human wellbeing

But the same studies showing benefits, and that most people support pet-friendly workplace, also highlight the risks, hazards and concerns that must be considered for a pet-friendly workplace to be inclusive, equitable and sustainable.

Dogs aren’t for everyone

Not everyone loves dogs. Some people just don’t like them, and a small percentage fear them – a condition called cynophobia.

A commonly reported number of how many this affects is 5% of the population, but this is likely US-specific, with rates differing by country and culture. Global studies suggest about 3.8% have a lifetime animal phobia (2% of men, 5.4% of women), including dogs and cats.

About 10–20% of the global population are allergic to dogs or cats. This rate is increasing.

But 100% of workers have a right to feel safe and not have their health compromised at work.

This doesn’t automatically rule out a pet-friendly policy, but it does require exploring and addressing all these issues adequately.

Read more:
Understanding dog personalities can help prevent attacks

Equity matters

Does everyone get to bring their pet to work?

If the boss can because they have a separate office but those sharing a open-plan space can’t, it’s likely to cause resentment.

The time spent petting, feeding or taking a dog for toilet breaks may also stoke negative feelings among some colleagues.

What about those with other types of pets? Some cats also suffer separation anxiety. Parrots (budgerigars, cockatiels, conures and others) also form strong attachments to humans and can become highly stressed when left alone.

Getting to work is also an equity issue. In many countries a pet-friendly workplace will require driving to work, because only registered assistance animals are allowed on public transport and in public spaces. It’s unfair if the only workers able to take advantage of a pet-friendly workplaces are those who can drive.

Read more:
How the presence of pets builds trust among people

What’s in it for the dog?

Even though most dog owners want to take their dog to work, it’s very important to ask if that really is in your pet’s best interest.

Yes, dogs are a highly social species; and yes, your dog likes to be around you. But, like humans, not every dog is a people person. For some dogs home is their safe space. Even with their “human” they may be stressed away from it.

Dogs, being sensitive to human emotions, may well feel stressed by your workplace if it also stresses you.

Other animal issues to consider include the presence of other dogs.

Organisational factors

A workplace therefore needs to consider multiple factors to make a pet-friendly policy work.

It needs to ensure the feelings of all workers have been considered, and whether the policy favours some at the expense of others.

In needs to ensure the work space is suitable for both human and animal well-being and hygiene. Though dogs’ space needs vary enormously, even the smallest dog needs space out of walkways and kick zones – being under a desk is not really suitable – as well as ready access to water bowls and outdoor toileting areas.

It needs policies codifying expected standards of behaviour – both human and animal. This may include requiring proof of proper socialisation, such as a certificate of basic obedience.

It needs procedures mapping out all contingencies. Owners should be responsible for cleaning up after their dogs and ensuring they do not cause disruption. But whose insurance will cover potential animal or human injuries, or damage to property? Do workers’ compensation policies cover animal-related incidents?

How to make pet-friendly work

It may seem we’re focusing on barriers to workplaces being dog-friendly. But assessing and addressing all the risks makes the likelihood of success much greater.

A useful document to help work through all the issues is the Pets at Work Tookit (funded by pet food maker Mars Petcare) which covers things from making a case to senior management to how to create a workplace pet policy.

Another useful document is the Safe Animal Friendly Environments multi-species companion-animal risk management tool developed in 2021 by University of South Australia researchers for the UK’s Society for Companion Animal Studies.

Though designed specifically to promote people entering aged care to keep their pets, this document includes a comprehensive list of risks, responsibilities and mitigation actions.

So if taking your dog to work appeals to you, chat to your colleagues, identify the issues and put a policy in place.

It may prove to be a great thing for your colleagues, you and most of all your dog.

Janette Young has received funding from the not-for-profit Society for Companion Animals (UK) to develop a multi-species risk management tool for including companion animals in communal care settings. She is a Director of Animal Therapies Ltd.

Saravana Kumar 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. Paws for thought: the pros and cons of a pet-friendly office – https://theconversation.com/paws-for-thought-the-pros-and-cons-of-a-pet-friendly-office-185761

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Cherine Fahd, Associate Professor of Visual Communication in the School of Design, University of Technology Sydney

The first task I give photography students is to create a starscape.

To do this, I ask them to sweep the floor beneath them, collect the dust and dirt in a paper bag and then sprinkle it onto a sheet of 8×10 inch photo paper. Then, using the photographic enlarger, expose the detritus-covered paper to light. After removing the dust and dirt, the paper is submerged in a bath of chemical developer.

In less than two minutes, an image slowly emerges of a universe teeming with galaxies.

I love it when the darkroom fills with the sound of their astonishment the moment they realise the dust beneath their feet is transformed into a scene of scientific wonder.

I was reminded of this analogue exercise when NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope shared the first deep field images. The public expression of wonder is not unlike that of my students in the darkroom.

But unlike our makeshift starscapes, the Deep Field images capture an actual galaxy cluster, “the deepest, the sharpest infrared view of the universe to date.”

This imaging precision will help scientists to solve the mysteries in our solar system and our place in it.

But they will also inspire continued experiments by artists who address the subject of space, the universe and our fragile place in it.

Read more:
Two experts break down the James Webb Space Telescopes’s first images, and explain what we’ve already learnt

Creating art of space

Images of the cosmos afford considerable visual pleasure. I listen to scientists passionately describing the information stored in their saturated colours and amorphous shapes, what the luminosity and shadows are, and what lurks in the deep blacks that are spotted and speckled.

The mysteries of the universe are the stuff of science and of the imagination.

Throughout history, artists have imagined and created proxy universes: constructions that are lyrical and speculative, alternate worlds that are stand-ins for what we imagine, hope and fear is “out there”.

There are the photo-real drawings and paintings of Vija Celmins. The night sky painstakingly drawn or painted by hand with extraordinary detail and precision.

There is David Stephenson’s time lapse photographs that read as lyrical celestial drawings reminding us that we are on a moving planet. Yosuke Takeda’s ambiguous star bursts of colour and light. Thomas Ruff’s sensuous star photos made through the close cropping of the details of existing science images he bought after failing to be able to capture the cosmos with his own camera.

There’s also the incredible work of the Blue Mountains based duo Haines & Hinterding where polka dots become stars, black pigment is the night sky, bleeding coloured ink is a gas formation. They make rocks hum and harness the sun’s rays so we can hear and smell its energy.

These artworks highlight the creative drive to draw on science for the purposes of art. The divide between science and art is an artificial one.

Read more:
How making a film exploring Indigenous stories of the night sky enriched my perspective as a scientist

Pictures of our imaginations

The Webb telescope shows science’s capacity to bring us images that are aesthetically imaginative, expressive and technically accomplished but – strangely – they don’t make me feel anything.

Science tells me these shapes are galaxies and stars billions of years away, but it isn’t sinking in. Instead, I see a fabulously constructed landscape like James Nasmyth’s famous moon images from 1874.

In my imagination, I picture the Webb images as made of fairy lights, coloured gels, mirrors, black cloth, filters and photoshop.

Art’s stand-ins invade my psyche. When I look at the deep field and planetary nebula, I remember that even these “objective” machine made images are constructed. The rays of light, holes and gases are artistic experiments in photographic abstraction, examining what lies beyond vision.

Imaging technology always transforms what is “out there”, and how we see it is determined by what is “in here”: our own subjectivity; what we bring of ourselves and our lives to the reading of the image.

The telescope is a photographer crawling through the cosmos, making more of the unseen seen. Giving artists more references for appropriation, imagination and also critique.

While scientists see structure and detail, artists see aesthetic and performative possibilities for asking pressing questions that concern the politics of space and place.

Art in space

Webb’s images present a renewed opportunity to reflect on the work of American artist Trevor Paglen, who sent the world’s first artwork into space.

Paglen’s work examines the political geography that is space and the ways in which governments aided by science use space for mass surveillance and data collection.

He created a 30 metre diamond-shaped balloon called the Orbital Reflector, supposed to open up into an enormous reflective balloon and be seen from Earth as a bright star. It was rocketed into space on a satellite, but the engineers could not complete the sculpture’s deployment due the unexpected government shutdown.

Paglen’s artwork was criticised by scientists.

Unlike astronomers, he wasn’t trying to unlock the mystery of the universe or our place in it. He was asking: is space a place for art? Who owns space, and who is space for?

Space is readily available to government, military, commercial and scientific interests. For the time being, Earth remains the place for art.

Read more:
James Webb telescope: a scientist explains what its first, amazing images show – and how it will change astronomy

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

– ref. How the James Webb deep field images reminded me the divide between science and art is artificial – https://theconversation.com/how-the-james-webb-deep-field-images-reminded-me-the-divide-between-science-and-art-is-artificial-186818