The urgency of tackling climate change is even greater for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and other First Nation peoples across the globe. First Nations people will be disproportionately affected and are already experiencing existential threats from climate change.
The unfolding disaster in the Northern Rivers regions of New South Wales is no exception, with Aboriginal communities completely inundated or cut off from essential supplies.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have protected Country for millennia and have survived dramatic climatic shifts. We are intimately connected to Country, and our knowledge and cultural practices hold solutions to the climate crisis. Despite this, we continue to be excluded from leadership roles in climate solution discussions, such as the recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report.
As the paper tells us, climate change threatens our social and cultural determinants of health, including access to Country, traditional foods, safe water, appropriate housing and health services.
Aboriginal health services are already struggling to operate in extreme weather, with increasing demands and a reduced workforce. All these forces combine to exacerbate already unacceptable levels of ill-health within Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander populations and compound the historical and contemporary injustices of colonisation.
During the round table, we heard powerful and moving stories from communities on the front line of climate change.
Norman Frank Jupurrurla, a community leader from Tennant Creek, spoke of sacred waterholes drying up, ancient shade trees dying, temperatures rising, inadequate housing, power going out and spoiled essential food and medicines.
Vanessa Napaltjarri Davis, a Warlpiri/Northern Arrente woman and Senior Researcher at Tangentyere Council in Mparntwe/Alice Springs, spoke of changes to the availability of bush foods and medicines – essential to our health and well-being – due to changing temperatures and seasons.
For example, as Norman Frank Jupurrurla wrote:
…now the country is burning, getting destroyed, because of climate change. Already, I cannot see sand goannas any more.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples hold a deep and painful knowledge of the role dominant culture, racism and colonial power dynamics play within climate change. Although there have been many suggested solutions to climate change, access to these solutions is not equally or equitably available across Australia.
Norman Frank Jupurrurla demonstrated this when he shared the almost impossibly drawn-out process he has completed to become the first person to install solar panels on public housing in Tennant Creek, Northern Territory.
Indigenous peoples’ voices excluded from climate change conversations
Colonisation has ignored Indigenous ways of knowing, doing and being, right down to the weather. Colonisers insisted we live according to just four seasons, instead of the many seasons our people knew and respected.
This experience of marginalisation continues today where we have not been sufficiently included in national and international conversations about climate change, including being pushed to the sidelines at COP26.
The IPCC acknowledged this globally in its report last year. The report states that data and most reporting on climate change do not include Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander or local knowledge in the assessment findings.
The IPCC’s most recent report looks to recognise this omission and focuses specifically on the importance of our role and knowledge in addressing the climate crisis and the need for climate justice.
The calls from our work are clear. We must elevate Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voices within climate change action and centre Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as leaders in protecting Country. In the words of Seed Mob, “We cannot have climate justice without First Nations justice.”
In seeking solutions, we must consider how colonial ideologies and practices around climate change can impact on our peoples. As Rhys Jones wrote, “It is not possible to understand and address climate-related health impacts for Indigenous peoples without examining this broader context of colonial oppression, marginalisation and dispossession.”
Student climate protest in Melbourne. Shutterstock
We must correct power asymmetries and establish co-governance arrangements and become strong advocates of, not only our interests, but our capabilities to tackle climate change.
We must restore access to basic rights that will lay the groundwork for action that includes appropriate community participation/decision-making and incorporates cultural, environmental and sustainable design.
We must weave our knowledges and strengthen partnerships to ensure that our collective wisdom and knowledge as Australia’s First Nations is integrated into climate adaptation and mitigation planning, directly benefitting the whole nation.
Indigenous people know about this continent; we’ve looked after it for millennia.
The Uluru Statement from the Heart gives the opportunity to restore that ancient power – for the benefit of us all and the survival of the planet.
Pat Anderson receives funding from the Lowitja Institute, Batchelor Institute, Remote Area Health Corps, and UNSW-ILC (Uluru Statement from the Heart)
Veronica Matthews receives funding from the NHMRC and the ARC.
Janine Mohamed 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.
You may know of marvellous tree-lined roads that lead into your favourite rural and regional towns. Sometimes they have an arched, church-like canopy, while others have narrow ribbons of remnant vegetation.
But have you noticed they’ve changed over the past decade? Some have gone, some have thinned and others are now declining. This is because in general, roads are not safe places for plants and their ecosystems.
There are the obvious dangers from collisions with cars. But there are also more subtle dangers from road construction and maintenance that increase the chances of plant (and animal) deaths, such as by altering the chemical and physical environment, which introduces weeds and segregates wildlife.
This network of vegetation reserves and corridors along Australian roads must be properly valued and better protected. They stitch the landscapes and ecosystems of our nation together and, as they diminish and disappear, will become an unrecognised part of road toll. We will all be the poorer for it.
Overhanging canopies along roads are a sight to behold. Shutterstock
Ecosystems found on the roadside
Roadside vegetation are often important corridors connecting wildlife to their habitats. In some cases, they are the last bastions of rare and endangered plant species. Indeed, some of the grass and smaller flowering species of Australia’s once extensive grassy plains only persist on roadside refuges in parts of Victoria, New South Wales and South Australia.
These corridors are also important habitats for smaller birds, mammals, insects and reptiles. They not only provide access to food and water sources, but allow breeding with a broader animal population.
For example, nine different mammal species have been recorded along the roadside of Victoria’s Strathbogie Ranges, including koalas, brushtail possums, gliders and phascogales.
Roadside vegetation is often the only substantial remnant vegetation remaining in agricultural landscapes. This section, in northeast Victoria’s Strathbogie Ranges, is home to high mammal diversity, including the threatened greater glider. Google Earth
Roads also increase water run-off and carry nutrients, which can allow a diversity of species to flourish on verges (nature strips). Plants that may not survive elsewhere get a toehold on edge of the bitumen using the precious extra resources it provides.
Australian road authorities often acknowledge the importance of these habitat corridors when roads are set to be upgraded or widened. But when it comes to the crunch, it’s the engineering and bottom line demands that generally win out – and plants invariably suffer.
This has an impact to cultural heritage, too. We saw this all too clearly in 2020 when a Djab Wurrung directions tree was bulldozed in Victoria for a new highway, despite valiant protest efforts.
But based on my experiences over many years, when contractors breach one of these protections, there’s rarely enforcement or penalty.
For example, breaches can occur during powerline clearing across Australia, where old roadside trees can be decimated by losing much of their canopy. Trees may not survive such damage and if they do it will takes years for recovery.
Clearing roadside vegetation can occur on a monumental scale after bushfires. While burnt, dead trees may be dangerous and need to be removed or pruned, the clearing can far exceed the safety requirement.
Local communities have been left to lament the loss of their green and leafy road reserves from fires, as well as losses to the trees themselves from unnecessary clearing – it’s a double blow.
Clearing trees after bushfires can far exceed what’s required. Shutterstock
Herbicide is another very common, but rarely spoken of, cause of death for roadside trees and vegetation, with roadside verges routinely sprayed to reduce weeds encroaching onto the edges of roads and tarmac.
Herbicide spray can drift and kill non-target vegetation, such as crops on adjacent farms and even ancient remnant trees nearby. While such events have occurred in Australia, they are seldom reported and farmers are rarely successful in obtaining compensation for losses.
Vandalism is another major issue, with many local examples of street trees being poisoned, lopped or cut down, for instance, to secure prized coastal views.
Trees are supposed to be cleared according to codes of practice. Shutterstock
This not only affects Australia. In 2012 thousands of roadside and rural trees were illegally poisoned or cut down in the United States by billboard advertisers. Similar advertising-related tree removals also occurred in India.
Love your trees
More of us should take stock of roadside trees: they are links to Australia’s past, refuges of once more widespread natural communities, and remain an important part of cultural heritage.
Importantly, they connect us to a future under climate change. We cannot possibly fight to mitigate global warming without urban trees. If we do not value them, it is inevitable that we will be lamenting an expanding list of endangered species and possible extinctions.
Gregory Moore 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.
After two years of entry restrictions, New Zealand is re-opening its borders. Already, New Zealanders can re-enter the country without quarantine; they will be followed by Australians on April 12 and the rest of the world on May 1.
Families will be able to reunite. Grandparents will be able to visit new grandchildren for the first time. And the tourist industry is very keen to get cracking again.
But as international travel resumes, we should make sure flying doesn’t return to 2019 levels. That was incompatible with a safe climate and global emissions targets. At 2019 levels, there would be just ten years of flying left in the carbon budget for 1.5℃.
In 2019, New Zealand aviation emissions were 4.9 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO₂), having risen 43% since 2014 to become the sixth highest in the world per capita. At 12% of New Zealand’s total CO₂ emissions, they were a substantial chunk to be dealt with.
Domestic aviation is included in New Zealand’s Emissions Trading Scheme (NZETS) and carbon budgets. International aviation emissions are measured but are not included in national targets or regulations.
Preparing up-to-date state action plans detailing ambitious and concrete national action to reduce aviation emissions and submitting these plans to ICAO [International Civil Aviation Organization] well in advance of the 41st ICAO assembly.
In a new report, economist Paul Callister and I look at all the options. What would “ambitious and concrete action” to reduce aviation emissions look like for New Zealand?
In New Zealand, a two-seater electric plane with a 130km range crossed the Cook Strait for the first time in November last year. Unfortunately, its larger cousins won’t be here soon enough or in large enough numbers to affect emissions overall.
Despite the media attention on electric and hydrogen aircraft, they do not feature strongly in New Zealand’s plans. Larger electric aircraft don’t exist yet and we need to act sooner than they will become available.
Better fuel technology
Offsetting (by planting trees, for example) is a temporary fix. It transfersrisk to the next generation and does not get at the root of the problem, which is burning fossil fuels. Most pathways do not rely on much offsetting.
For the next few decades, emissions will be determined by traffic volumes, efficiency and sustainable aviation fuel.
Efficiency can be encouraged by using the most fuel-efficient planes (and possibly banning the others), filling them as much as possible, flying efficiently and increasing the price of fuel through a carbon charge or a sustainable fuel mandate, or both.
Sustainable aviation fuel is the main technological solution on the table. By 2035, New Zealand could conceivably build two NZ$520 million wood-based biofuel plants, producing 57 million litres a year each, and one 100MW e-fuel plant producing 40 million litres a year. Together they would provide 8% of New Zealand’s jet fuel at 2019 levels of demand.
However, neither of these technologies are yet in commercial use; the first demonstrationplants are only now under construction. The uncertainties are large.
A rendering of a 10-million-litre e-fuel plant which will soon start construction in Herøya, Norway. E-fuels are produced from water, air-sourced carbon dioxide and renewable electricity. Unless subsidised, e-fuels raise ticket prices while reducing carbon dioxide and other emissions at the source. Nordic Electrofuels, CC BY-NC
Traffic volumes are affected by price and regulation. Industry projections of very high growth (up to 120% by 2050) are not compatible with the Paris Agreement.
The present free ride for international aviation (no GST, no carbon charge, no fuel tax) is an obstacle. But now that the EU is considering a tax on jet fuel, this could change.
Curbing frequent flying
Flying less is the main remaining tool in the toolkit. Air travel is strikingly unevenly distributed. In Europe, 90% of households have aviation emissions of 0.1 tonnes of CO₂ per person per year (equivalent to one Auckland–Sydney return trip every four years); 9% emit 0.8 tonnes (Auckland–LA every two years); and the top 1%, 22.6 tonnes (Auckland–London six times a year).
So less frequent flying, especially by the hyper-mobile, has to be part of the solution. Non-flyers cannot reduce their aviation emissions. The Jump campaign asks people to limit flights to one 1500km return flight every three years, a level derived from a study of urban lifestyles compatible with 1.5℃.
The natural experiment of the COVID pandemic prompts the question of how essential such frequent flying is to well-being.
Stats New Zealand monitors well-being following international guidelines. While 81% of the population reported high overall life satisfaction in 2018, this rose to 86% in 2021. People adopted substitutes for international travel, including telecommunications, domestic tourism and local tourism.
However, there are confounding factors, namely the government stimulus, social solidarity and knowledge of the health risks of travel.
A recent UK study considers the role of curbing excess energy consumption in a fair transition. After comparing ten possible definitions of “excess”, they conclude that:
excess is whatever people can agree it is, based on ideas of “fairness” and “just” levels of consumption that can be rationalised, defended and justified to others … any policies that are used to target excess consumption and excessive consumers must be similarly reasonable and justifiable, based on the principles of deliberative democracy and exploring options, impacts and fairness with members of the public.
Two key events of the past decade reinforce the urgency of the situation. The first is the proven ability of the New Zealand aviation industry to increase emissions at a staggering rate when unregulated, as observed from 2014 to 2019. The second is COVID. Ensuring that aviation emissions remain permanently well below 2019 levels will make the longer-term task significantly easier.
Robert McLachlan 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.
A decade ago, and years before Treasurer Josh Frydenberg promised a budget that was “back in the black”, Prime Minister Julia Gillard promised the same thing.
At that time, in the lead-up to the 2012 budget, unemployment was higher than it is today, and inflation and wages growth were so low (1.6% and 2.3%, respectively) as to provide no impediment whatsoever to cutting unemployment further.
Yet Gillard was resolute in her determination to bring in a budget surplus, by which she meant a budget that spent less than it took in.
She titled her speech to Western Australia’s Chamber Of Commerce and Industry and Chamber Of Minerals And Energy “In the Black”
There was “no clearer sign of a strong economy than a surplus”.
It would “protect jobs”, provide a “buffer in case the global economy gets worse”, and allow the Reserve Bank to cut rates, “knowing that an interest rate reduction is good for families and business”.
Indeed, she added:
…let me make this clear once and for all: a budget surplus is not a political target but a potent economic tool.
I sometimes wonder whether she remembers this claim. I nearly asked her once, crossing North Terrace in Adelaide, but I chickened out.
As with Gillard, so with Abbott
Gillard never did get her budget surplus, and she and Kevin Rudd were followed as prime minister by Tony Abbott, who talked of a “budget emergency” that only a run of surpluses could fix.
While in opposition, his finance spokesman Barnaby Joyce had gone as far as to suggest that the debt run up by years of budget deficits (spending more than the government took in) was “getting to a point where we can’t repay it”.
That was too much even for Abbott, who dumped Joyce as finance spokesman a month later.
Neither Abbott nor his successors Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison ever did get a surplus, although Morrison came close in 2018-19.
The deficits and the way they were financed meant net debt continued to rise and rise. But the government didn’t run out of cash.
And when the pandemic struck, borrowing (and having the Reserve Bank create) hundred of billions to support businesses and their employees turned out not to be a problem.
So why did Gillard, Abbott, Turnbull, and for a while Morrison and Frydenberg, have their hearts so set on ultimately unachievable surpluses?
It might be because they didn’t understand how Australia’s money system works. More charitably, it might be because, while they did understand how Australia’s system works, they found it convenient not to pass that knowledge on.
They have been perpetuating the “government as households” metaphor, which ignores the role of the government as a currency issuer as well as a currency user.
In cooperation with its wholly owned central bank, Australia’s government produces Australian dollars. It can’t run out of them.
Budget money can’t run out
The government has good reasons for collecting taxes (to suppress spending that might accelerate inflation) and good reasons for borrowing by issuing bonds (to temporarily withdraw money from the economy). But these don’t include a need to fund its spending.
In truth, every dollar the government spends is a new dollar; every dollar it collects in taxes is a dollar destroyed.
Every bond it sells does nothing more than change dollars into transferable savings accounts at the Reserve Bank.
David Andolfatto, an economist who is vice president of the US Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis, puts it this way:
…it seems more accurate to view the national debt less as form of debt, and more as a form of money in circulation.
What this means is that Gillard was nearly right. She just needed to dump the word “surplus”.
The budget is indeed a potent economic tool. Too much spending without offsetting tax will indeed push up inflation. Not enough spending will keep people out of work and risk a recession.
But how much spending is needed relative to tax depends on the economy.
In 2020 and 2021 a willingness to push out much more money than was taken in supported an economy that would otherwise have crashed, and helped bring about two of the most rapid recoveries from recessions and downturns in history.
Horses for courses
What budgets should do depends on how things are, and if we haven’t learned this by now, we should have.
And what else have we learned? That complex global supply chains can be efficient but not necessarily resilient.
Which means a transition away from petrol towards renewables may have benefits beyond the purely environmental. That preventative health, health care and aged care are more important than we might have thought.
We have have also learned about the limits to the powers of the Reserve Bank.
While governments talked of surpluses, we continued to obsess about central banks using official interest rates to control inflation. When it tried to push up inflation, it couldn’t, until recently.
It might be that just as interest rate cuts were not the best way to stimulate inflation before the pandemic, interest rate hikes are not the best way to suppress inflation afterwards.
Higher interest rates impose costs on businesses.
And they actually increase some incomes, including those of savers and high earners who own products linked to treasury bonds.
When high interest rates can suppress inflation, they are likely to do it by triggering a slide in asset prices, including the price of housing assets, which, with household debt high, ought to give policy-makers pause for thought.
Taxing more and reining in government spending might do it better.
In any event, withdrawing money from the economy might not be the right thing to do at a time when when high prices are being driven by global events rather than spending at home.
There’s a lot we should have learned in the past decade, much of it set out in modern monetary theory – something the budget papers are likely to acknowledge quietly, if at all.
Steven Hail 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.
Tuesday’s budget will provide $49.5 million for aged care training for existing workers and people who want to work in the sector.
With aged care beset by a shortage of staff as well as an under-trained workforce the funding, over two years, will be for an additional 15,000 subsidised vocational education and training places.
But the sector’s workforce shortages go centrally to the issue of low wages.
The Australian Aged Care Collaboration, said in a Monday statement workers in the sector “should be getting the pay they deserve and career certainty”.
It said the royal commission into aged care had called for higher wages, better qualifications, and more time for staff to spend with those they were caring for.
“As we approach the 2022 federal election, the government and opposition have both so far failed to commit fully to implement and fund the royal commission’s workforce recommendations,” AACC said.
AACC represents six aged care peak bodies whose membership delivers the majority of aged care services in residential and home settings across Australia.
The budget will be firmly focused on the May election, its centrepiece a cost of living package, with a cut in petrol excise, expected to be temporary, and cash handouts to lower and middle income earners, pensioners and others tipped to be main sweeteners.
The government has already unveiled a $17.9 billion infrastructure package, sparking claims the project funding is politically skewed.
On the economic side the budget will forecast that Australia’s unemployment rate, now 4%, will fall to 3.75% in the September quarter. This would be the lowest rate since August 1974 – and three percentage points below the forecast in the October 2020 budget, delivered in COVID’s first year.
The budget will predict unemployment will stay historically low over the forecast period, and wages growth to pick up to their strongest in a decade. The budget’s deficit will be lower than forecast in the December mid-year update.
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said on Monday:“With more people in work and less people on welfare the budget bottom line is improving after providing unprecedented economic support to Australians.
“But there is more to do and now is not the time to risk the gains we have made in our economic recovery with Labor’s higher taxes.”
Anthony Albanese stressed to reporters the budget reply he will deliver on Thursday “is a speech. It is not an alternative budget.”
However his reply will contain a major policy announcement.
Parliament is back for just one week of sitting, before the election is called for May.
The Senate sitting was brought forward to Monday for a condolence motion for the late Labor senator Kimberley Kitching who died of a suspected heart attack. Her death triggered contested claims that she was bullied by senior Labor women senators, allegedly dubbed “the mean girls” by Kitching and some of her supporters.
In her condolence speech NSW Liberal senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells, who has just lost out in a preselection battle, drew parallels between her troubles and those of Kitching.
“The concept of mean girls is not confined to one political party,” Fierravanti-Wells said.
“I empathised with Kimberley about the bitter internal factional fights within our respective political parties. We both had factional enemies who desperately wanted to see us defeated, and they worked very hard at it.”
Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
You might think all important dinosaur “discoveries” are made as soon as fossils are collected in the field – that palaeontologists instantly know the significance of what they’ve found.
This is often true. But sometimes, and maybe more often than you’d think, fossils will be stored in museum collections for years before the right researchers come along to “rediscover” them. This was the case for one Australian ankylosaur skull, which we’ve published about today in the journal Frontiers in Earth Sciences.
Originally discovered in 2005 near the regional Queensland town of Boulia, the specimen remained at the South Australian Museum until we enquired about the museum’s dinosaur collection.
Ankylosaurs, the so-called “armoured” dinosaurs, are a group of dinosaurs that lived from the Early Jurassic to the Late Cretaceous – roughly 196 to 66 million years ago.
Compared to other dinosaurs, such as the long-necked sauropods and smaller herbivorous ornithopods, ankylosaur remains are rarely found in Australia and the broader southern hemisphere. So you can imagine our excitement when we “rediscovered” Australia’s second ankylosaur skull.
An analysis of the skull bones and teeth suggests it belongs to the genus Kunbarrasaurus, which also contains the first Australian ankylosaur skull.
Ankylosaurs were medium-to-giant herbivorous dinosaurs (anywhere between 200-5,000kg) that walked on four legs and were covered in armoured plates or spikes. Some are recognisable by tail clubs, such as the five-tonne Ankylosaurus magniventris from North America.
Of the 75 recognised ankylosaur species, only five are from the southern hemisphere. Several small and incomplete fossils are spattered across the ancient Gondwana supercontinent – which is now dispersed and broken up into Australia, India (which back then was in the southern hemisphere), Africa, Antarctica and South America.
These fossils offer tantalising hints of what was once a widespread ankylosaur presence in these regions. The five Gondwanan ankylosaur species are Kunbarrasaurus ieversi and Minmi paravertebra from Australia, Antarctopelta oliveroi from Antarctica, Spicomellus afer from Africa, and Stegorous elengassen from Chile.
A dinosaur from Boulia
The bones of the ankylosaur from Boulia were found encased in a large, hard rock called a concretion. Concretions often form around organic matter, and likely helped the initial preservation of the fossil. When it was discovered, all that was visible was a series of rock chunks that could have easily been overlooked.
The Boulia ankylosaur was excavated from the Warra station in 2005. (Block in the bottom left contains ankylosaur limb bones) Benjamin Kear (Uppsala University)
The collected fossils include limbs, vertebrae, many armoured plates and, excitingly, a partial skull. Along with several skull bones, the skull also includes the impressions of many teeth from the upper jaw.
The entire skull block was scanned at the Australian Synchrotron in Melbourne. The synchrotron shoots x-rays at the specimen, generating a series of images that can be processed to reveal the bones in 3D (as seen below).
This technique is often used for fossils that may otherwise get damaged or lose important information if physically removed from the rock.
We analysed the scans and discovered the bones are those of the roof of the mouth (or the palate). We also found several teeth “floating” within the block.
Placing southern ankylosaurs in the family tree
Identifying this new ankylosaur as Kunbarrasaurus suggests this particular dinosaur was potentially more widespread in Queensland than previously thought, and may have existed for more than five million years. But what do ankylosaurs from Australia, and Gondwana more generally, tell us about the group’s evolution as a whole?
As it stands, the vast majority of ankylosaurs are from either North America, Europe, or Asia. And most are from the late Cretaceous (100 to 66 million years ago). However our study suggests a separate and possibly earlier diversity of ankylosaurs in the south, a theory which is supported by recent discoveries from South America and Africa.
The southern radiation of ankylosaurs includes the species from Australia, Chile and Antarctica, all of which together form the group called Parankylosauria.
A reconstruction of Kunbarrrasaurus ieversi from Richmond, Queensland. Australian Geographic
The importance of the Boulia ankylosaur
Because the fossil block was scanned with x-rays and reconstructed in 3D, we were able to explore aspects of the ankylosaur’s airways, or “choanae”. These were not well preserved in the first and only other known Kunbarrasaurus skull.
Typically ankylosaur choanae are long, located close to the front of the snout and can have multiple openings within the palate. Coupled with complex nasal passages, these features point to the group generally having a keen sense of smell.
However, in the Boulia ankylosaur there is only one opening on each side, and they are located towards the back of the palate. This suggests Kunbarrasaurus did not have the complex nasal system seen in ankylosaurs such as Pawpawsaurus campbelli and Euplocephalus tutus. As such, it may have had a reduced sense of smell compared to most of its northern counterparts.
There is still a lot we don’t know about ankylosaur evolution, especially the Gondwanan species. Perhaps more of these discoveries await us in museum troves.
Nicolas Campione receives funding from Australian Research Council.
Phil Bell received funding from the Australian Research Council.
Timothy Frauenfelder 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.
It’s rare that an appealingly minor film wins the best picture Oscar – and a remake of a French film at that – but this year, CODA has done it.
Is it the best film from 2021? Absolutely not! But with best picture decided by preferential ballot (unlike the other awards), it makes sense that a sweet and inoffensive movie could sneak through.
One can imagine that CODA would have appeared at the second, third and fourth spot for numerous critics, unlike favourite The Power of the Dog which, as a divisive film, would have ranked last for many (as it was for this critic).
CODA is well made and very easy to watch, with its narrative following teenager Ruby (Emilia Jones) as she tries to develop her skills as a singer while living with Deaf parents and a Deaf older brother, helping run the family fishing business, and attending high school in their fishing community of Gloucester, Massachusetts.
In some respects, it’s nice that a low budget film like CODA won, though its upbeat, formulaic quality as a coming of age film will not appeal to people who like strange, challenging and intense cinema – in other words, works of art.
CODA is comfort cinema, firmly situated in the entertainment camp. But it’s not bad, and in this day and age, that’s pretty good for a best picture winner.
What people take away from Oscars ceremonies over the last decade is more and more the prepared content, less and less the acceptance speeches.
The award winners have only 45 seconds to speak. They get thrown into a career-defining moment more or less by surprise.
By contrast, the choreographed segments can be arranged so that audiences notice and recall them. This year we had Beyoncé’s all-lime curtain raiser, the minute of silence for #standwithukraine and the hosts’ rapid-fire roasting of celebrities.
There is a broader story about the history of speeches here: they are steadily losing their power as the medium that speaks for a moment.
The standout exception remains moments where a speech takes us outside the expected norm. Will Smith’s angry, ugly confrontation with Chris Rock might become the most talked-about moment of the night, but Troy Kotsur’s acceptance speech for best supporting actor for CODA, delivered in American Sign Language – with his interpreter choking back tears as it unfolded – should be a reference point for many in years to come.
Kotsur acknowledged the heroes of signing in his own life, both at home and at work. His speech gave a very public voice to people who communicate visually: to the Deaf community, to the children of Deaf adults who gave his film its name, and to a stage and screen community that has nurtured talent like his for much longer than most people have recognised.
–Tom Clark
Jane Campion’s second nomination – and first win
The Power of the Dog was nominated for an extraordinary 12 Academy Awards this year, with its director Jane Campion making history as the first woman to be nominated for best director more than once.
Despite collecting the most nominations of all the films this year, The Power of the Dog only came away with one win – Campion’s long overdue directing nod.
Her acceptance speech was notably prewritten, perhaps in an effort to avoid a recreation of her blunder at the Critics’ Choice Awards earlier this month in which she seemed to compare her struggles in male-dominated Hollywood to the challenges faced by Venus and Serena Williams as black female tennis players.
Campion’s award was The Power of the Dog’s sole win. In stacked technical categories like sound, cinematography and production design, it was outperformed by box office giant Dune.
Given The Power of the Dog’s divisive approach to storytelling (host Wanda Sykes quipped she had watched it three times and was only halfway through), it is perhaps unsurprising that The Power of the Dog was not as well received as its many nominations initially suggested.
2021 saw the release of an unusually large number of musicals, some of which were nominated for Oscars. With the most nominations (and the biggest budget) was West Side Story, and we also saw Tick… Tick… Boom! and Encanto on the podium.
CODA, while not a musical per se, puts music at the centre of its story, and Summer of Soul (winner of best documentary) brings an important music historical moment back to our knowledge. In the Heights unfortunately missed out on any nominations even though it deserved some in the technical categories. Dear Evan Hansen seems already to have been justly forgotten.
The one original musical (as opposed to stage-to-screen adaptations) among the nominations, Encanto (winner of best animated film), had two of its songs performed in the ceremony: the nominated Dos Oruguitas and the year’s biggest hit We Don’t Talk About Bruno. The latter should have provided some well needed relief from music that alternated between dull (the incidental music) and sombre (the other nominated songs), but the performance was let down by a confusing staging and sound mix and unnecessarily rewritten lyrics.
The box office and award disappointment of most of these musicals puts the future of the genre at risk. If a film as good as West Side Story fails to make back even half its budget, whether producers will continue to risk large-scale musicals is brought into question.
For now, it might only be an animated musical that can seem like a sure thing.
–Gregory Camp
A disappointing best actor winner…
Will Smith is a likeable enough film star, and he’s led numerous blockbusters throughout his career, effectively anchoring superb genre films like Independence Day, Enemy of the State, and Bad Boys.
The problem is, like many charismatic entertainers, this year’s winner for best performance by an actor is not a very good actor. He brings absolutely no nuance or originality to any of his “serious” roles. Everything he does is in his face – he tries to convince us with his eyes, with twitches of his cheeks, with stern or soft intonations of the voice, running through the gamut of expected mannerisms.
His Oscar-winning performance in King Richard is no exception. He offers a run-of-the-mill portrayal as the earnest, slightly cracked but sincere hustling father of the Williams sisters. He expresses emotion and intensity where we would expect it: he is sufficiently convincing in an obvious part in a thoroughly banal biopic.
We should not be surprised by any of this. Since excellent actor Denzel Washington won the best actor award for his role as Alonzo in Training Day (an excellent film, with a solid but very routine characterisation from Washington as the corrupt cop), no one has taken the award very seriously.
–Ari Mattes
… but a wonderful choice for actress
Unlike Smith, winner of the best performance by an actress award Jessica Chastain has acting chops, and her talent is on display in the caricaturish (but very funny) The Eyes of Tammy Faye.
Her embodiment as the real-life televangelist won’t be to everyone’s taste – and neither will the film, as a biopic its scope is already limited by the contours of reality – but Chastain is thoroughly convincing as the deluded but sincere figure who, notably, refuses to ostracise the gay community despite pressure to do so, interviewing pastor Steve Pieters, an AIDS patient, during the height of the AIDS epidemic.
Graduating from Juilliard in 2003, Chastain has been impressive in numerous films, from her improvised performance in Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life to her intense characterisation as Jo in John Michael McDonagh’s The Forgiven. Chastain is a solid actress whose best work, one hopes, is still to come.
–Ari Mattes
Where was the music?
As a musical event, the ceremony itself left much to be desired. The producers made a play for eclecticism by having three different musical sets: the first hour featured DJ D-Nice; a small band led by music director Adam Blackstone played in the second hour; a pit orchestra played for the rest.
We are used to hearing snippets of the film scores play while winners go to the stage, but this was mostly replaced with innocuous background music (even from the orchestra). We only heard the scores during clips of the nominated films and –perversely – the very shortest clips of all were in the nomination announcements for Best Original Score!
Billie Eilish’s performance was one of the few musical highlights of the night. EPA/ETIENNE LAURENT
The chance to introduce millions of viewers to these composers’ work was limited to about two chords per score.
Hans Zimmer’s win for Best Original Score for Dune further cements his place in the film scoring firmament. As expected, Billie Eilish and her brother Finneas won the award for best original song for No Time to Die, which also has a Zimmer connection (he wrote that film’s score). Their performance of the song in the ceremony was one of its few musical highlights, the composers presenting an intensely focused rendition of their work.
Just like a good film score, the musical programme of an awards ceremony should carefully take the audience on a cohesive aural journey. I hope next year’s producers make better musical decisions.
Seeing the first arrivals, it seemed that the trend for pastels might rule the fashion of the night.
The night began in pastels. AAP (various photographers)
There was Jessica Chastain in sparkling copper and lavender custom Gucci, Lily James in thigh-revealing pink Versace, Zoë Kravitz in Audrey Hepburn-esque delicate pink Saint Laurent sheath, Kodi Smit-McPhee in powder blue Bottega Veneta and the 15-year-old stars of King Richard, Demi Singleton and Saniyya Sidney in lilac Miu Miu and pale blue and pink Armani Privé, respectively.
But, as the event progressed the colours became brighter, the silhouettes bolder.
Ariana DeBose was glorious in custom tomato-red Valentino crop top and trousers, a long taffeta cape trailing behind her. She and the iconic Rita Moreno, in Carolina Herrera gown and black and white feather Adrienne Landau hat, made a delightfully striking pair.
It was a night of bold silhouettes. AAP (various photographers)
Bold sartorial choices also came from Kristen Stewart, who opted for Chanel micro-mini shorts (and quickly swapped her stilettos for brogues); Timothée Chalamet, shirtless with his sequined black Louis Vuitton jacket; and the inimitable Zendaya in a custom, midriff-baring Valentino cropped blouse and glittering silver skirt.
Making a political statement in support of Ukraine, Youn Yuh-Jung presented the dapper Troy Kotsur with his award whilst wearing a #withrefugees blue ribbon pinned to her Chanel dress. (Multiple others wore the ribbon or Ukrainian flag pins or pocket squares).
My highlights: Uma Thurman in a chic Bottega Veneta take on her iconic Pulp Fiction dance scene look. Maggie Gyllenhaal in structured Schiaparelli. And the ever-amazing Lupita Nyong’o looking like an Oscar in gold Prada (made perfect with matching gold spectacles) presenting the award to costume designer Jenny Beavan for her incredible work on Cruella.
–Harriette Richards
Les auteurs ne travaillent pas, ne conseillent pas, ne possèdent pas de parts, ne reçoivent pas de fonds d’une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n’ont déclaré aucune autre affiliation que leur organisme de recherche.
If you’re among the one in six Australians to experience the bitter pain of a marine stinger such as a bluebottle, you’ll know how quickly they can end a fun day at the beach.
We can’t stop the summer winds that deliver these creatures to our shores, but we can choose the safest spots to swim.
Our recent research provides the first evidence of what transports bluebottles to Australian beaches.
We found the direction a beach faces, relative to wind direction, largely determines how many bluebottles are pushed to shore. We hope these findings will help beachgoers safely plan where to take their next dip.
We can avoid bluebottles by understanding more about their drift. Jim Tiller/AP
Delicate ocean drifters
The bluebottle is a jellyfish found mostly along Australia’s east coast.
Most bluebottle stings occur while swimming, and are the top reason people seek assistance from surf lifesavers.
Bluebottles aren’t a single animal. They’re a floating colony of individual organisms, each variously responsible for reproducing, capturing or digesting food and catching the wind.
The bluebottle’s long, trailing tentacles are designed to sting prey and creatures they feel threatened by, including humans.
Bluebottles do not swim, but drift on the ocean’s surface. Their inflated blue bladder is sensitive to aerodynamic forces and acts as a sail.
Currents drive a bluebottle’s long tentacles below the ocean’s surface and wind drives the sail above it.
The bluebottle as a sailboat
A bluebottle’s body, including the tentacles, is not aligned with its sail.
Some sails point to the left of the body, and others to the right. This quirk is thought to help populations survive.
If all bluebottle sails pointed the same way, an entire group might pick up a prevailing wind and be blown to shore. But when half the group has sails facing the other way, some individuals are blown in a different – and hopefully less perilous – direction.
Our previous research sought to shed light on bluebottle drift by examining physical equations that determine how sailboats respond to winds and currents.
That research found wind force can cause right-leaning bluebottles to drift around 50⁰ left of the downwind direction, while left-leaning individuals drift around 50⁰ to the right.
The direction a beach faces largely determines its bluebottle numbers. Sam Mooy/AAP
Choose your swimming spot wisely
Our latest research explored how winds and other environmental factors affect bluebottle beaching.
We analysed daily bluebottle numbers and stings at three Sydney beaches – Maroubra, Clovelly and Coogee – over four years. The project was led by Masters student Natacha Bourg.
Bluebottles numbers were highest during summer, peaking a few weeks before maximum ocean temperatures.
Cold temperatures have previously been thought to hinder bluebottle movements. But we recorded bluebottles on beaches in winter and spring, which suggests other factors are at play.
Our research found wind direction was the main factor driving bluebottles onshore. On Australia’s east coast, both northeast and southerly winds bring bluebottles towards the beach.
Crucially, we also found the shape of the coastline, and its orientation relative to prevailing winds, affects the rate of bluebottle arrivals.
Maroubra faces east and is the longest and most wind-exposed of the three beaches. We found a summer north-easterly wind at Maroubra led to a 24% chance of bluebottles the following day.
But at nearby Clovelly beach, the chance was just 4%. Clovelly faces south and sits relatively protected at the end of a narrow bay. However, after southerly winds, the chance of bluebottle encounter there increased to 12%.
Coogee faces south and is smaller than Maroubra. A small rocky outcrop limits exposure to the ocean and therefore exposure to bluebottles.
Overall, bluebottles were most likely to be found at Maroubra, followed by Coogee then Clovelly. This reflects their varying beach lengths and orientation with respect to prevailing winds.
Maroubra had a 24% chance of bluebottles after a summer north-easterly. Sam Mooy/AAP
Planning your day at the beach
These conclusions can be applied beyond the beaches we studied. By checking beach orientation with wind direction, we can make an educated guess as to whether the chance of encountering bluebottles is high at any beach.
We know bluebottles are pushed around 50⁰ left or right of the wind direction. So a quick drawing in your head or on the sand may tell you which nearby beach is likely to be safest.
But there are exceptions to this rule. Strong ocean currents, for example, can influence bluebottle drift, especially when winds are weaker.
Rips and the circulation of water in surf zones are also linked to bluebottle beaching.
And bluebottles can extend and contract their sails and stinging tentacles which may change the direction of their drift.
So before entering the water, take plenty of precautions against bluebottles and other dangers. Surf Life Saving Australia urges all beachgoers to:
stop and check your surroundings
look for rips, large waves, rocks and other hazards
plan to stay safe, including swimming at a patrolled location
Plan to swim at a patrolled beach. Richard Wainwright/AAP
Learning more
Further research is needed to better understand bluebottles, including how climate change, and subsequent warming oceans, will affect their drift.
Citizen science provides a powerful opportunity to learn about bluebottle distribution, size and arrival at our beaches.
Next time you see bluebottles at the beach, take photos and upload them to this project in the iNaturalist app.
In this way, you can help researchers discover more secrets of these beautiful marine creatures – which will hopefully lead to fewer painful bluebottle encounters.
Dr Jasmin C Lawes works for Surf Life Saving Australia.
Amandine Schaeffer 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.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Thea van de Mortel, Professor, Nursing and Deputy Head (Learning & Teaching), School of Nursing and Midwifery, Griffith University
As we head towards winter, the likelihood of picking up a pesky cold increases. But COVID changes how we approach sore throats and runny noses.
If you have cold symptoms and return negative rapid antigen tests, isolating isn’t mandatory – but it’s a good idea. But how long should you stay away from others when you have a cold?
Generally, you’re infectious until your symptoms clear, and should stay away until you’re well again. Passing your cold onto others can mean unnecessary COVID testing for them.
Some people may have a lingering cough or other symptoms when they’re past the normal infectious period. If your RAT is clear for COVID and your symptoms linger, it’s a good idea to consult your GP to rule out other infections or complications.
Unlike other infectious diseases with one specific cause – such as COVID, which is caused by SARS-CoV-2 – the “common cold” is a viral upper respiratory tract infection with a set of classic signs and symptoms, but which is not caused by one specific virus.
Common colds affect the upper respiratory tract. Shutterstock
The common cold is most frequently caused by more than 100 different human rhinovirus serotypes (viruses within one species with the same number and type of surface proteins).
We repeatedly get colds because when we develop immunity to one type of virus that can cause colds, another comes along to which we don’t have immunity. Some of these mutate over time and “escape” from the antibodies we have produced to a previous infection.
While we tend to think of colds as harmless, in the very young, the elderly or others with less robust immune systems they can cause serious illness. This can result in hospitalisation and can trigger asthma in susceptible people.
How are colds transmitted?
Cold viruses are transmitted through touching your eyes, mouth, nose or food with hands contaminated by viruses, by direct contact with others, or by inhaling contaminated aerosols.
Children appear to be key drivers of community transmission and bring the infection home from pre-school or school.
Good hand hygiene reduces the chance of catching a cold. Shutterstock
Adults then take the infections into their workplaces. Poor ventilation in workplaces may increase the risk of exposure to cold viruses.
Colds are more common in autumn, winter and spring, or in the rainy season if you live in the tropics.
Common cold life cycle
The median incubation period (the most common time it takes to develop symptoms) can vary greatly from about half a day to five and half days, depending on which virus is involved.
In a rhinovirus infection it’s roughly two days, although symptoms can occur in as little as half a day.
Inflammation from the infection can cause a number of symptoms, including a sore throat, runny nose, nasal congestion, sneezing and cough.
The runny nose occurs because a chemical called histamine makes your blood vessels more leaky. Your snot starts out clear and runny. Over time it will tend to thicken.
As your immune cells fight off the infection, some white blood cells will die, changing snot colour. As the immune response kicks into high gear, white blood cells called neutrophils produce an infection-fighting chemical (myeloperoxidase) that has a green colour.
When lots of neutrophils die in the process of fighting the virus, the myeloperoxidase causes green snot.
If your runny nose persists for an extended period, or you develop facial pain, you may have acquired a sinus infection.
wash or sanitise your hands frequently because rhinoviruses can linger on fingers and objects for several hours
transmission occurs when you’re in close proximity to others. So you may choose to work from home, if possible. If you can’t, keep your distance from your co-workers
given aerosol transmission is possible, depending on the virus involved, you could also wear a mask at work for a week or two after your symptoms have cleared or if you have returned to work with a lingering cough
disinfect frequently touched surfaces.
Finally, train yourself to avoid touching your face. One study compared upper respiratory tract infections in two groups – one that handwashed only, and one that handwashed and used a Smartwatch with a sensor to track hand movements and give reminders about not touching the face.
The group with the hand-tracking and reminders touched their faces less frequently and had a 53% reduction in upper respiratory tract infections.
Thea van de Mortel teaches into the Graduate Infection Prevention and Control programs at Griffith University.
As high global oil prices, spurred by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, drive up the price of fuel and many other things too, there’s pressure on Australian politicians to offer some relief.
There are calls for the federal government to cut the fuel excise (currently 44.2 cents a litre) and for state governments to also respond.
The Tasmanian government is making bus services free for five weeks to offset cost of living increases. In New Zealand the government has halved fares.
But free public transport risks worsening social inequalities in Australian cities by benefiting wealthier households over the less affluent. From an overall welfare perspective, it’s economically regressive policy, contradicting the progressive positioning usually favoured by its proponents.
On average, about 80% of travel in Australian cities is undertaken by private vehicles, but car dependence differs significantly by area.
People who live in inner and middle suburbs and work in the CBD use public transport at much higher rates than residents and workers in outer and fringe suburban areas.
This is principally because public transport services are generally much better in inner and middle suburbs, and serve CBD-focused journeys well. The further a worker is located from the CBD, the more they are likely to be forced to rely on private automobiles and travel to dispersed workplaces.
Public transport service quality
The first map shows Melbourne’s public transport network service quality. In the green areas, services are frequent and connected; in the black areas, they are residual.
The second map shows the economic vulnerability of households to higher fuel prices as well as inflation and mortgage interest rate rises. The areas of greatest vulnerability almost exactly match the areas with poor public transport service.
‘VAMPIRE score’ refers to the name of the dataset, the Vulnerability Analysis for Mortgage, Petroleum and Inflation Risks and Expenditure, which is available via the AURIN Map portal.
The third map shows the distribution of Melbourne households by weekly income. There are variations but poorer regions tend to poorly serviced by public transport.
Melbourne by household weekly income, calculated using data from Australian Bureau of Statistics. The authors, ABS, CC BY
Occupation, income and transport costs
These pattern of households in poorer areas being more dependent on private transport generally apply in every major Australian city (with some variance).
Research we’ve done using census data shows the commuting cost burden – the proportion of income spent on transport – for the average service worker in the retail and hospitality sectors is double that of a professional in the scientific and financial sectors.
The following map shows the commuting patterns for retail and hospitality workers who travel by car. These are highly dispersed, and largely in the areas poorly served by public transport. Making inadequate public transport free won’t help them much.
Car commuting patterns of retail and hospitality service workers. The authors
Now, by contrast, consider the commuting patterns for professional scientific and financial workers commuting by public transport. Free public transport will benefit them greatly.
Public transport commuting patterns of professional scientific and financial workers. The authors
What needs to be done
So what what would be a less regressive response to higher fuel prices?
In the short term the best response is income assistance, targeted to those who need it most. In the longer term the best response is to reduce dependence on fossil fuels and increase household resilience through greater wage and income equity.
Making public transport cheaper is less important than providing better and more equitably distributed services. This could be funded by cancelling road projects that entrench automobile dependence – such as Melbourne’s A$16 billion North East Link toll tunnel project – and spending the money on outer suburban public transport upgrades.
Another change would be to ensure new suburbs are built with good public transport services at the outset. Currently, plans for new growth areas don’t require an accompanying integrated public transport network plan and rollout program. This should be mandatory so there’s public transport in new suburbs from the outset.
Measures could also include incentives to accelerate the transition to electric vehicles, but these also require care to ensure subsidies do not just benefit wealthier purchasers who can afford a new car while those on lower income driving older cars miss out.
While there’s a push now to slash the fuel excise duty, there’s a long term case for actually increasing it, based on international evidence showing higher fuel taxes do shift travel behaviour away from cars and reduce reliance on fossil fuels.
A generalised carbon price could have a similar affect and help drive down emissions. However, the regressive aspects of increased taxation would also need to be addressed through income measures and ensuring the extra revenue is used to improve public transport in oil-vulnerable suburbs.
The authors’ research presented in this article was supported by funding from the National Environmental Science Program Clean Air and Urban Landscapes Hub and the Australian Urban Infrastructure Research Network.
Tiebei (Terry) Li receives funding from the National Environmental Science Program Clean Air and Urban Landscapes Hub and the Australian Urban Infrastructure Research Network.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jo Caust, Associate Professor and Principal Fellow (Hon), School of Culture and Communication, The University of Melbourne
The pandemic has been a wake-up call. Now, more than ever, the arts are a part of our daily lives. They are not something only “the elite” enjoy; they are an expression of the human condition.
As part of an interconnected system of collective well-being, it is vital to ensure arts practices continue across our entire community, and that everyone has access to them.
The arts reflect our whole culture, and our cultures are what make us who we are. When our culture is at the heart of our collective life, appropriate funding and support will naturally follow.
To move away from reductive concepts we need to think about what we understand by “the arts” and what they mean to us. What do we understand by “culture” and how does it manifest in our lives?
If we start by asking these questions, we can make more sense of the debate and find a way forward that works in our own unique cultural, social and political context.
There is abundant evidence to show the government’s financial support for the arts and culture has been significantly reduced over many years. Today the arts don’t even rate a mention in the title of the government department responsible for them.
Even worse, grants have been routinely awarded to communities in marginal electorates for party political purposes. Yet we know the arts are a public good and Australia is a wealthy country that can afford to provide adequate funding for them. So what needs to change?
For the past 20 years arts advocates have asked for a national cultural policy or a national arts plan. This has been reinforced by recommendations from two parliamentarycommittees within the past seven years.
Yet, aside from Labor’s short-lived Creative Australia in 2013, there has been no attempt since 1994 to address the needs of the sector or create a comprehensive plan for the future at a national level.
Relying on the political goodwill of governments to bring about change does not seem to be effective. Policy developed by one side of politics can be quickly undone when the opposition comes to power, and little bipartisan progress is made.
Establishing an Australian Ministry for Culture
Many countries resolve this problem with a Ministry for Culture.
An Australian Ministry of Culture might include the arts, First Nations arts and heritage, public broadcasting, film and cultural heritage in its ambit. All these areas are interconnected through their association with “culture”. Placing them together in an integrated and central location would help bring “culture” into the political mainstream.
An Australian Ministry of Culture might include the arts, First Nations arts and heritage, public broadcasting, film and cultural heritage. Shutterstock
While there might be concerns a Ministry of Culture could extend government control over arts practice, this could be prevented by use of the arm’s length principle of funding and peer review. Political intervention in grant decisions is in no one’s interest and reduces the credibility of the government and the minister concerned.
As part of a national cultural heritage framework, all major cultural organisations could then be funded directly by the government from within this department.
The list would include our major galleries, libraries, museums, archives and other national entities that are already direct-line funded, such as Screen Australia and the Australia Council.
The ministry would include all our major art galleries. Shutterstock
It could also include the major performing arts organisations, as they also represent aspects of our cultural heritage. That is, the state orchestras, the national opera company and perhaps a national theatre company.
Having a ministry that took responsibility for everything within the ambit of culture would ensure national protocols were put in place to protect the national interest against the commercial interests of private enterprise.
All public broadcasting would be part of this ministry to prevent private market forces from dominating the discourse. Entities such as the ABC, SBS and NITV enjoy public trust and are critical to the national public debate, freedom of expression and the right of citizens to hold politicians and their governments to account.
They have also played a significant role in presenting Australian stories and commissioning work from Australian writers, filmmakers and performers.
SBS has challenged the homogeneous norms of Australian culture and ethnicity and ensured the inclusion of a range of voices in the public space. NITV has provided a voice for our First Nations people and raised awareness and understanding of the culture within the wider population.
Middle-size and smaller arts organisations and individual artists would continue to be funded by the Australia Council; and film would continue to be funded through Screen Australia.
It might also be helpful to establish a new statutory authority, similar to the Australian Foundation for Culture and Humanities that was lost in a change of government 23 years ago. This entity could address the gap between community cultural heritage, local history and community arts, and ensure grants were awarded at arm’s length from political interests.
Obviously, the new entity would not be a cure-all, but it would allow the development of a critical mass of shared interests and knowledge that would benefit the country.
A wealthy country
A plan for future development of the arts and culture is also essential. A plan would allow goals to be set and ensure the decisions of government were proactive rather than reactive.
The pandemic experience has demonstrated that if we don’t develop clear policies, then sectors that are excluded from the political framework, such as the arts, could be sent to the wall.
Australia needs to mature as a nation by taking its arts and culture seriously, and a Ministry of Culture would provide a central platform for the nation’s identity.
We must all take responsibility for caring for our country and our culture. This means placing the arts at the centre of our thinking. We can do this – and we need to do this – to ensure our nation has a positive and creative future.
We are a wealthy country both materially and culturally. We need to acknowledge this and then act upon it, to ensure all future generations can enjoy their culture and practise their arts.
As our First Nations’ people have told us, arts, culture and country are all one.
This is an edited extract of New Platform Paper 2: Arts, Culture and Country, republished with permission from Currency House. The full paper is now available for free on www.currrencyhouse.org.au
Jo Caust has previously received from the Australia Council.
She is a member of NAVA and the Arts Industry Council (SA).
Speeding is more common among people regularly exposed to material encouraging speeding, our new study suggests.
Our research, published in the journal Traffic Injury Prevention, found self-reported exposure to content promoting or encouraging speeding on social media and mass media (e.g., movies, television or gaming) was higher in speeders compared to non-speeders.
Speeders also believed their friends more frequently engaged in speeding.
Speeding is a major road safety problem that contributes to many injuries and fatalities in Australia.
So it’s important to examine factors that may encourage speeding and contribute to making it socially acceptable.
Our survey revealed a trend between increasing exposure to speeding and self-reported speeding in the real world. Shutterstock
Self-reported exposure levels significantly higher in speeders
For our study, a total of 628 Queensland motorists (263 men and 365 women aged between 17 and 88 years) completed an online anonymous survey.
The survey included questions about:
their own speeding behaviour (specifically, how often they exceed the speed limit by more than 10km/h)
how often they believe they saw content on social media and mass media (such as TV, movies or gaming) encouraging or promoting speeding
how often they thought their friends exceeded the speed limit.
Overall, the study found:
half of the sample admitted they exceeded the speed limit more than 10% of the time they drive
on average, participants believed they came across social media content encouraging speeding behaviour 29% of the time while using social media
on average, they believed they came across mass media content encouraging speeding behaviour 40% of the time
on average, they believed their friends exceeded the speed limit 39% of the time
self-reported exposure levels across all these sources (mass media, social media and friends) were significantly higher in speeders than non-speeders.
We split the sample into quartiles, based on how often they reported exceeding the speed limit. This demonstrated increasing exposure corresponded with increasing frequency of speeding behaviour. Author provided
Unpacking the link between what we see and how we act
Our findings suggest many people believe they are regularly exposed to pro-speeding content online or via friends, and this might increase their risk of speeding in the real world.
Nevertheless, further research is needed. We are yet to clarify whether increasing exposure to this kind of content directly increases the propensity to speed. Conversely, it could be that people who engage in speeding seek out pro-speeding material because they like it, or notice it more than others because they’re more attuned to it.
We also need to determine if people’s estimations of how often they’re exposed to such images are accurate.
For example, the respondents’ estimation of pro-speeding messages was extremely high, which raises questions about whether some individuals are more sensitive to online content that reinforces pre-existing attitudes or behaviour.
In other words, they might be more likely to notice, process and remember speeding messages, simply because they have favourable attitudes towards speeding or regularly engage in it.
There is clearly a need for future research to examine the impact of online messaging on our attitudes and behaviour. This could help determine how what we see on TV, hear from friends and consume on social media relates to real world driving behaviour.
On average, participants believed they came across mass media content (such as via television or gaming) encouraging speeding behaviour 40% of the time. Shutterstock
This research was funded by the Motor Accident Insurance Commission.
James Freeman works at the University of the Sunshine Coast Road Safety Research Collaboration (USCRSRC) that receives funding from the Motor Accident Insurance Commission (MAIC)
Verity Truelove receives funding from the Motor Accident Insurance Commission (MAIC).
I was recently reading comments on a post related to COVID-19, and saw a reply I would classify as misinformation, bordering on conspiracy. I couldn’t help but ask the commenter for evidence.
Their response came with some web links and “do your own research”. I then asked about their research methodology, which turned out to be searching for specific terms on Google.
As an academic, I was intrigued. Academic research aims to establish the truth of a phenomenon based on evidence, analysis and peer review.
On the other hand, a search on Google provides links with content written by known or unknown authors, who may or may not have knowledge in that area, based on a ranking system that either follows the preferences of the user, or the collective popularity of certain sites.
In other words, Google’s algorithms can penalise the truth for not being popular.
Google Search’s ranking system has a fraction of a second to sort through hundreds of billions of web pages, and index them to find the most relevant and (ideally) useful information.
Somewhere along the way, mistakes get made. And it’ll be a while before these algorithms become foolproof – if ever. Until then, what can you do to make sure you’re not getting the short end of the stick?
One question, millions of answers
There are around 201 known factors on which a website is analysed and ranked by Google’s algorithms. Some of the main ones are:
the specific key words used in the search
the meaning of the key words
the relevance of the web page, as assessed by the ranking algorithm
the “quality” of the contents
the usability of the web page
and user-specific factors such as their location and profiling data taken from connected Google products, including Gmail, YouTube and Google Maps.
Research has shown users pay more attention to higher-ranked results on the first page. And there are known ways to ensure a website makes it to the first page.
One of these is “search engine optimisation”, which can help a web page float into the top results even if its content isn’t necessarily quality.
Results are tailored to the user conducting the search. In his book The Filter Bubble, Eli Pariser points out the dangers of this – especially when the topic is of a controversial nature.
Personalised search results create alternate versions of the flow of information. Users receive more of what they’ve already engaged with (which is likely also what they already believe).
This leads to a dangerous cycle which can further polarise people’s views, and in which more searching doesn’t necessarily mean getting closer to the truth.
A work in progress
While Google Search is a brilliant search engine, it’s also a work in progress. Google is continuously addressing various issues related to its performance.
One major challenge relates to societal biases concerning race and gender. For example, searching Google Images for “truck driver” or “president” returns images of mostly men, whereas “model” and “teacher” returns images of mostly women.
While the results may represent what has historically been true (such as in the case of male presidents), this isn’t always the same as what is currently true – let alone representative of the world we wish to live in.
Some years ago, Google reportedly had to block its image recognition algorithms from identifying “gorillas”, after they began classifying images of black people with the term.
Another issue highlighted by health practitioners relates to people self diagnosing based on symptoms. It’s estimated about 40% of Australians search online for self diagnoses, and there are about 70,000 health-related searches conducted on Google each minute.
There can be serious repercussions for those who incorrectly interpret information found through “Dr Google” – not to mention what this means in the midst of a pandemic.
Google has delivered a plethora of COVID misinformation related to unregistered medicines, fake cures, mask effectiveness, contact tracing, lockdowns and, of course, vaccines.
According to one study, an estimated 6,000 hospitalisations and 800 deaths during the first few months of the pandemic were attributable to misinformation (specifically the false claim that drinking methanol can cure COVID).
To combat this, Google eventually prioritised authoritative sources in its search results. But there’s only so much Google can do.
We each have a responsibility to make sure we’re thinking critically about the information we come across. What can you do to make sure you’re asking Google the best question for the answer you need?
In summary, a Google Search user must be aware of the following facts:
Google Search will bring you the top-ranked web pages which are also the most relevant to your search terms. Your results will be as good as your terms, so always consider context and how the inclusion of certain terms might affect the result.
You’re better off starting with a simple search, and adding more descriptive terms later. For instance, which of the following do you think is a more effective question: “will hydroxychloroquine help cure my COVID?” or “what is hydroxychloroquine used for?”
Quality content comes from verified (or verifiable) sources. While scouring through results, look at the individual URLs and think about whether that source holds much authority (for instance, is it a government website?). Continue this process once you’re in the page, too, always checking for author credentials and information sources.
Google may personalise your results based on your previous search history, current location and interests (gleaned through other products such as Gmail, YouTube or Maps). You can use incognito mode to prevent these factors from impacting your search results.
Google Search isn’t the only option. And you don’t just have to leave your reading to the discretion of its algorithms. There are several other search engines available, including Bing, Yahoo, Baidu, DuckDuckGo and Ecosia. Sometimes it’s good to triangulate your results from outside the filter bubble.
Muneera Bano 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.
The latest National Disability Insurance Scheme’s (NDIS) quarterly report shows the average plan size per participant fell 4% between 2020 and 2021.
This confirms what many disability advocates have been warning about for some time: that the government is seeking to rein in costs of the NDIS by reducing individual plans.
While 4% does not sound a lot, the impact is being felt more by some groups, and some future changes mean care funding may get worse in the future.
For some time, the government has been warning the NDIS is financially unsustainable, with predictions spending on the NDIS could grow to A$40.7 billion in 2024–25. This figure is more than $8.8 billion above what the government estimated the NDIS would cost annually.
There have been criticisms, by disability advocates and also Labour opposition, of these estimates of a cost blowout, so at the end of last year the government commissioned a review of these predictions, known as the Taylor Francis report.
This report confirmed the baseline estimates for the NDIS are likely a moderate underestimate, but the upper predictions are probably a slight overestimate.
The higher than anticipated costs for the scheme seem to be largely driven by a greater number of participants entering the scheme than originally projected, and fewer children (0–14 years) exiting the scheme, rather than increases in participant spending.
The National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA – the agency that runs the NDIS) has cited concerns over its financial sustainability, and it appears to be attempting to reduce costs by reducing individual budgets to participants.
Last year we saw the proposed introduction of Independent Assessments fail. The government argued these were an important mechanism to improve equity of access to the scheme, but many in the disability sphere were opposed to these as they were seen as a cost-cutting measure designed to reduce the average plan size.
Part of the NDIS’ purpose was getting carers back into the workforce. Shutterstock
Around the same time these measures were being explored, there were reports the NDIA had created a task force aiming to cut growth in funding packages and participant numbers.
The government argues this task force is no longer active, but over the past few months we have seen many NDIS participants report they have had their funding package cut during their regular review.
What does this mean for NDIS participants?
The headline figure of an average of 4% reduction does not seem like a lot, and represents a shift in the average plan from $71,200 in 2020 to $68,500 in 2021. But as that’s an average, some people would be worse affected, and the overall trend is concerning.
Unfortunately, the report doesn’t give much detail on who is experiencing the cuts, but we do know 34% of participants saw a cut of more than 5% in their budget in the last six months of last year. That’s 3% more than in 2020-21 and 10% more than in 2019-20.
Making people with disability and their families contest funding cuts is incredibly stressful. Shutterstock
There has also been a large increase in the number of people disputing these decisions. Between July 2021 and January 2022, an extra 1,423 people with disability have asked the Administrative Appeals Tribunal for a review, a 400% increase in people disputing their NDIS plan.
Not only do these disputes take time and effort on the part of the individuals contesting plans, but the NDIA also spends a lot on external legal firms to represent them at these reviews. In 2020-21 we saw a 30% increase in spending on legal firms, bringing this amount to $17.3 million.
For individual participants these cuts can be devastating. It means existing supports that facilitate their lives disappear overnight. Some people will lose independence and suffer significant disruption to the lives of them and their entire families. All of this can provoke severe anxiety and distress.
It is not just the individual NDIS participant who feels the impact of packages being cut. One of the original drivers for the scheme was the argument that introducing the NDIS would prove a good return on investment because it would support more people with disability and their families to enter the workforce.
For many, the supports the NDIS has provided to their family members have allowed them to go back to work. But there have been several recent media stories about family members who are going to have to quit work following NDIS cuts and move on to welfare payments. While costs to the NDIS might be lower, the overall government spend will be higher.
More changes ahead
For some, the cuts to plans will also be accompanied by changes that are being made to the NDIS Price Guide. From the middle of this year, disability service workers will need to be paid for a shift that is at least two hours long rather than the previous one hour.
Those who work broken shifts will also get an additional allowance and changes are being made around client cancellation rules. All of these mean participants may find their plans do not go as far as they did before. NDIS participants may be in for a more tough time than ever in the months ahead.
Everyone wants a financially sustainable NDIS, most of all people with disability and their families, but this cannot be achieved by simply cutting individual budgets and causing trauma for people with disability and their families.
This year significant reforms to New Zealand’s health care system will be introduced. But to achieve its goals of an equitable system, the government needs to make deeper changes than it has proposed.
For two decades, New Zealand has had 20 district health boards (DHBs) planning and funding local services and owning public hospitals, and 30 primary health organisations to coordinate GP and related primary care services. These will no longer exist.
DHB functions will be absorbed within a new national body, Health NZ. GP and primary care services will be delivered through new “locality networks”. A new Māori Health Authority will work on behalf of Māori, planning and funding services, in partnership with Health NZ. A series of regional offices will facilitate the work of Health NZ and the Māori Health Authority.
Health Minister Andrew Little announcing the government’s public health sector reforms last year. Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images
The reforms are significant and underpinned by important goals: to bring equity and national consistency into the health system, between people and regions, with a strong focus on improving services and outcomes for Māori and other groups. Improving patient experience through better integrating care and processes is also a key aim.
But neither of these goals will be achieved unless issues related to the underlying institutional arrangements are tackled.
Equity requires a better funding model
Let us not forget that the foundations for how healthcare is delivered today in New Zealand were created in a historic compromise between the government and medical profession over 80 years ago when the government sought to create a national health service. The compromise split primary care from hospital services and allowed development of parallel public and private hospital sectors.
Two key changes to the proposed reforms need to be made.
First, in common with the UK and others, New Zealand healthcare is tax funded. This is a simple method where government funding is allocated to the public sector to provide services, some then procured from private providers.
Tax funded systems usually feature public hospital waiting lists and service restrictions, along with considerable government responsibility for planning and providing services. With longstanding under-investment in healthcare services, the UK and New Zealand governments are both being criticised at present for failing to adequately plan for an event such as COVID-19.
New Zealand’s historic compromise allowed for public hospital doctors to also build a private practice. New Zealanders with private insurance or deep pockets routinely pay to see them, rather than wait for public treatment (some only work publicly; some only private; many work in both sectors). Many conditions will never be treated publicly.
This means considerable suffering and disadvantage, disproportionately falling on Māori, Pacifika and the less well off, which the government hopes to address with its reforms. This will not be possible without massive funding and infrastructure investment and a shift in workforce towards the public sector.
New Zealand doctors have the option to work within both the public and private sector, giving New Zealanders with money or insurance the option to skip the public waiting list for medical treatment. Phillip Simpson/Getty
That said, reducing private practice in favour of public is politically untenable; it would require regulation, financial and other incentives. Private specialists do extremely well, leveraging off their public sector roles and training, with back up from the public system and the Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC).
Instead, a new funding method is needed.
It is time for a national debate around shifting from tax funding to social insurance. This is found in Germany as well as Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and elsewhere. Like ACC, social insurance is agnostic about who provides care and simply funds patients based on need.
If introduced in New Zealand, the private sector could continue to function as it does, alongside public hospitals, but all patients would receive the same access to care regardless of ability to pay.
A fundamental element of social insurance is delivering on equity. Social insurance is funded by payroll and employer contributions with a corresponding drop in taxes. There is no perfect health funding model. Tax funding will not solve our equity challenges, given our institutional structures. Unless the government is prepared to nationalise service provision, social insurance offers an important alternative.
Divided funding will undermine the system
The second necessary change is in the allocation of funding to primary and hospital care. From mid-year, the split between these two sectors will be exacerbated as the two will be funded quite separately, undermining efforts at whole system integration.
Locality networks will presumably be funded where they can show a range of primary care providers are working collaboratively to manage a population. Hospitals will continue to be funded by Health NZ, in partnership with the Māori Health Authority, rather than the DHBs.
A bold government would combine and place the two funding lines between primary care and hospitals, requiring a collaborative approach to service delivery. This would take away boundaries between primary and hospital care and instead place the focus on how the different providers work to build a system.
The Labour-led government is taking important steps to address challenges in New Zealand’s health system. Goals of equity, service integration and responding to Te Tiriti o Waitangi are laudable.
But it will be a struggle to deliver on these goals without the two key changes outlined above. These would be significant and challenging. Without them, we can predict another round of reforms in future to address the same problems the current efforts will fail on.
Robin Gauld receives funding from the Health Research Council of New Zealand.
For the sixth time in the last 25 years, the Great Barrier Reef is bleaching. During bleaching events, people are quick to point the finger at different causes, including sunscreen.
Why sunscreen? Some active ingredients can wash off snorkelers and into the reef, contaminating the area. So could this be the cause of the Barrier Reef’s bleaching?
In a word, no. I reviewed the evidence for sunscreen as a risk to coral in my new research, and found that while chemicals in sunscreen pose a risk to corals under laboratory conditions, they are only found at very low levels in real world environments.
That means when coral bleaching does occur, it is more likely to be due to the marine heatwaves and increased water temperatures that have come with climate change, as well as land-based run-off.
Why have we been concerned over the environmental impact of sunscreens?
After we apply sunscreen, the active ingredients can leach from our skin into the water. When we shower after swimming, soaps and detergents can further strip the these sunscreen chemicals off and send them into our waste water systems. They pass through treatment facilities, which cannot effectively remove them, and end up in rivers and oceans.
Sunscreen isn’t the cause of the coral bleaching. Shutterstock
It’s no surprise, then, that sunscreen contamination has been detected in freshwater and seas across the globe, from Switzerland to Brazil and Hong Kong. Contamination is highest in the summer months, consistent with when people are more likely to go swimming, and peaks in the hours after people have finished swimming.
Four years ago, the Pacific island nation of Palau made world headlines by announcing plans to ban all sunscreens that contain specific synthetic active ingredients due to concern over the risk they posed to corals. Similar bans have been announced by Hawaii, as well a number of other popular tourist areas in the Americas and Caribbean.
These bans are based on independent scientific studies and commissioned reports which have found contamination from specific active ingredients in sunscreen in the water at beaches, rivers and lakes.
Notably, the nations and regions which have banned these active ingredients, like Bonaire and Mexico, have local economies heavily reliant on summer tourism. For these areas, coral bleaching is not only an environmental catastrophe but an economic loss as well, if tourists choose to go elsewhere.
How do we know sunscreen isn’t the issue?
So if contamination concerns over these active ingredients are warranted, how can we be sure they’re not the cause of the bleaching in the Great Barrier Reef?
Put simply, the concentrations of the chemicals are too low to cause the bleaching.
The synthetic ingredients used in most products are highly hydrophobic and lipophilic. That means they shun water and love fats, making them hard to dissolve in water. They’d much prefer to stay in the skin until they break down.
Because of this, the levels found in the environment are very low. How low? Think nanograms per litre (a nanogram is 0.000000001 grams) or micrograms per litre (a microgram is 0.00001 grams). Significantly higher levels are found only in waste water treatment sludge and some sediments, not in the water itself.
So how do we reconcile this with studies showing sunscreen can damage corals? Under laboratory conditions, many active ingredients in sunscreen have been found to damage corals as well as mussels, fish, small crustaceans, and plant-like organisms such as algae and phytoplankton.
The key phrase above is “under laboratory conditions”. While these studies would suggest sunscreens are a real threat to reefs, it’s important to know the context.
Studies like these are usually conducted under artificial conditions which can’t account for natural processes. They usually don’t account for the breakdown of the chemicals by sunlight or dilution through water flow and tides. These tests also use sunscreen concentrations up to thousands of times higher – milligrams per litre – compared to real world contamination levels found in collected samples.
In short, laboratory-only studies are not giving us a reliable indication of what happens to these chemicals in real world conditions.
Laboratory studies don’t tend to account for dilution in seas or rivers. Shutterstock
If it’s not sunscreen, what is it?
The greatest threats to the reef are climate change, coastal development, land-based run-off like pesticides, herbicides, and other pollutants, and direct human use like illegal fishing, according to a 2019 outlook report issued by the reef’s managing body.
Reefs get their striking colours from single-celled organisms called zooxanthellae which grow and live inside corals. Importantly, these organisms only grow under very specific conditions, including narrow bands of temperature and light levels. When conditions go outside the zooxanthellaes’ preferred zone, they die and the coral turns white.
As a result, the likeliest cause of this bleaching is climate change, which has increased ocean temperatures and acidity and resulted in more flooding, storms, and cyclones which block light and stir up the ocean floor.
So do you need to worry about the impact of your sunscreen on the environment? No. Sunscreen should remain a key part of our sun protection strategy, as a way to protect skin from UV damage, prevention skin cancers, and slow the visible signs of ageing. Our coral reefs face much bigger issues than sunscreen.
Associate Professor Wheate in the past has received funding from the ACT Cancer Council, Tenovus Scotland, Medical Research Scotland, Scottish Crucible, and the Scottish Universities Life Sciences Alliance. He is Fellow of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute. Nial is the Science Director of Canngea Pty Ltd, chief scientific officer of Vairea Skincare LLC, a Board Director of the Australian Medicinal Cannabis Association, and a Standards Australia panel member for sunscreen agents.
People get transported through two main components: empathy with the characters, and imagination of the plot.
Empathy is when people develop positive feelings toward a character and identify with the character’s values and fate.
Imagination means people generate vivid images of the things a character does, so they feel as though they are doing it themselves.
The more familiar people are with a story topic and the more they are able to fantasise, the more narrative transportation increases and the more a story can change them.
Soap operas, with their long and involved storytelling and large audience reach, can be uniquely positioned to enable this narrative transportation. For decades, educational content has intentionally been placed in soap operas to spread ideas and bring about behavioural and social change.
Here are five notable examples of the persuasive power of soap operas.
The first recognisable intervention was launched on radio with The Archers.
Launched in 1951 (and still on air today), BBC Radio and the UK Ministry of Agriculture created this “everyday story of country folk” to encourage farmers to try new techniques to increase productivity.
Set in the fictional town of Ambridge, the series follows the lives of the residents who live there, and in particular their work in the nearby towns. Over its run it has included obscure details of pig husbandary and milking-parlour technology alongside its more generalist entertainment.
2. Secret of the Land
Secret of the Land started airing on Egyptian television in 1989, and, like the Archers, the series was established to encourage better farming practices.
At the heart of the show was a funny, but not-too-well-educated farmer. More experienced farmers, including the mayor of the village and an agricultural engineer, humorously critique and reform his not-too-smart agricultural decisions and daily actions in the field.
By showing the older and wiser farmers consulting with government-appointed agricultural experts, the series also successfully increased the experts’ credibility among the viewing farmers.
3. Soul City
In its fourth season, the popular South African soap Soul City (broadcast from 1994 to 2014) portrayed how neighbours might intervene in a domestic violence situation.
The prevailing cultural norm in South Africa at the end of the 90s was for neighbours to not to intervene during the abuse. Partner abuse was considered to be a “private” matter conducted in a “private” space, with curtains drawn and behind a closed front door.
In Soul City, the neighbours collectively decided to break the ongoing cycle of spousal abuse in a neighbourhood home. While an abuser was beating his wife, they gathered around the residence and collectively banged their pots and pans, censuring the abuser’s actions.
This episode highlighted the importance of energising neighbours, who, for cultural reasons, had previously felt powerless.
After this episode was broadcast, towns throughout South Africa reported pot banging to stop partner abuse.
4. Taru
The purpose of the Indian radio soap opera Taru was to promote caste harmony, community development, gender equality, small family size and reproductive health.
Broadcast from 2002 to 2003, the soap revolved around Taru, a young, educated woman who worked for the village health and community centre. Taru was idealistic, intelligent and polite as she worked to empower rural women.
Taru was friends with her coworker, Shashikant, who belongs to a lower caste. The cast villagers discriminated against him, even as he prevented a child marriage and encouraged girls to be treated on par with boys.
Taru’s mother Yashoda was highly supportive of her daughter’s friendship with Shashikant, but Mangla, Taru’s rogue brother, derided Taru’s social work, and ridiculed her friendship with the lower-caste Shashikant.
With Taru, Shashikant, and Yashoda as positive role models, the soap inspired communities to stop child marriages, launch adult literacy programs for dalit (low-caste) women, and welcome dalits to social events.
5. Cut Your Coat
The “well planned family” was the centre of the Nepalese soap Cut Your Coat According to Your Cloth (broadcast between 1996 and 2003), which encouraged spouses to plan their families to suit their own interests and make choices jointly.
In the series, two village elders vied for power, and community members struggled to reconcile contemporary concerns with traditional values. Colourful heroes and villains, and plenty of suspense, kept the audience eager to tune into the next episode.
Among these high-octane stories were subtler storylines about spacing between births and limiting family size. In this way, the series encouraged women to express their aspirations and concerns about reproduction and family in a culture that traditionally offered little opportunity for women to do so. It empowered women to speak openly to people in authority such as health workers and community leaders.
Surveys showed that while the national Nepalese use of contraceptives remained steady around 39%, contraceptive use in the areas where the soap was broadcast rose from 36% to 49%.
Tom van Laer 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.
Scott Morrison finally got his way at the weekend when the Liberal federal executive agreed to candidates for several key NSW seats being picked by a three-person committee rather than the rank and file having their say.
The executive decision culminates a long and extraordinary saga, in which Morrison’s factional ally, minister Alex Hawke, had obstructed preselection contests being called.
Imminent preselection ballots in Parramatta, Hughes and Eden-Monaro have now been cancelled. A preselection in Warringah was expected to be run, but won’t be held.
The executive decided the PM, NSW premier Dominic Perrottet, and a former Liberal federal president Chris McDiven would choose the candidates for these and a number of other NSW seats.
This course flies in the face of a push in recent years for internal democracy within the NSW division, and is expected to bring a backlash from discontented party members.
The shambles which has left a swathe of seats without Liberal candidates until so close to the election reflects the dysfunction of the division due to extreme factional infighting, including the determination of the minority Morrison-Hawke faction to use whatever muscle it could muster to make up for its lack of numbers.
The federal executive resisted intervening for months but eventually had to give in to Morrison’s pressure.
These particular seats are important. Hughes and Warringah are held by crossbenchers; Eden-Monaro is narrowly Labor; Parramatta will be vacant, with the Labor member retiring.
Ironically, Anthony Albanese is trying to shoehorn high profile economist Andrew Charlton, who lives in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, into Parramatta, in the city’s west. This has angered some local Labor party members. Nominations for the Labor candidate, who will be preselected by the ALP national executive, close Monday.
Albanese told reporters at the weekend: “Andrew Charlton is someone who would make a great member of the House of Representatives. […] He would bring an extraordinary capacity.” Charlton was an advisor to then prime minister Kevin Rudd.
Also at the weekend veteran ALP senator Kim Carr abandoned his fight for political survival, announcing he would retire. There has been a prolonged fight over the Victorian ticket, that also put into limbo the late senator Kimberley Kitching’s preselection, which her friends have said put her under considerable stress before her sudden death.
Carr, in parliament since 1993, who was a minister in the Labor government, admitted in a statement he would have liked to stay on. But, he said, “issues with my health have made that inadvisable. In light of recent tragic developments, and following determined urgings from my children, I concluded that it was time for me to reassess my priorities.”
The Senate’s budget week sitting has been brought forward to Monday for condolence speeches for Kitching.
On the Liberal side, the NSW division, in a statewide mass vote, dumped senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells in favour of senator Jim Molan for third place on the Senate ticket.
The third spot will be very difficult to win but Molan, who polled strongly “below the line” last election when he was relegated to an unwinnable spot on the Coalition ticket, would have more pulling power than Fierravanti-Wells.
When Molan later filled a senate casual vacancy he said he would not recontest at this election. It seems likely if he did win Molan, 71, who has been ill, would retire some time into the term, providing a casual vacancy for the Liberals to fill.
The last minute preselection flurries come as the government prepares to deliver on Tuesday the budget that will be its launch pad for the May election.
While voters will be focused on what the budget offers on cost of living, the government will also highlight infrastructure, saying its rolling 10-year infrastructure investment pipeline will increase from $110 billion to over $120 billion. It said on Sunday that the budget would commit $17.9 billion towards new and existing infrastructure projects in the pipeline.
Speculation about cost of living measures centres on cash payments for low and middle income earners, and for pensioners, and some relief on fuel excise.
At the weekend, Morrison was back campaigning in Western Australia where the government has several seats at risk.
Asked whether pensioners would get the planned cost of living bonus Morrison said, “we have got a cost of living package, which works right across the Australian community”,
Shadow treasurer Jim Chalmers indicated Labor would not make a fight of budget action on fuel excise, which many experts say would be bad policy.
“The expectation I think broadly […] is some kind of temporary cut to the fuel excise. We’re unlikely to stand in the way of that,” Chalmers told the ABC.
He also made clear a Labor government’s first budget would cut money for contractors and consultants in the public service and for “discretionary funds where ministers have been rorting funding for political purposes rather than for an economic dividend”.
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.
One of the major themes in my life, as a baby-boomer growing up in the 1960s, has been the relationship between ‘man’ (aka humankind) and ‘nature’. Science – especially applied science, and western philosophy – was presented as a progressive economic project which involved ‘taming nature’. And indeed there were successes, many of them arising from a wholehearted commitment to applying the ‘germ theory of disease’. It was in the 1960s that, with the help of television advertising, fastidious cleanliness became a key attribute of ‘civilised’ man or woman.
(The present version of this economic project is the emphasis of education as being a ‘means to a job’, and the highlighting of STEM – science, technology, engineering and maths – in the curriculum.)
The post-WW2 (World War 2) epoch was characterised by the new magic of ‘antibiotics’; it’s all in the ‘anti’ part of the word. And in the idea that we would soon escape the earth’s gravitation and land a man on the moon. It was a heroically progressive age.
It was also a time of pushback. With our nuclear weapons we could destroy nature; or at least our earthly habitat. We still have that capacity. With DDT in the 1960s, we had the makings of a ‘silent spring’. Ecology became the new ‘left-wing’ science of nature; a counter to the perceived right-wing social science of economics, with its ‘physics envy’, and mathematical gymnastics that have been described as ‘autistic’. Eastern philosophies and religions came into fashion.
Malthusian thinking also came back into fashion; classical political economy meeting the new political ecology. The earth could carry only so many people; surely less than eight billion? But there were critiques of that kind of thinking, more nuanced and more hopeful, such as Barry Commoner’s The Closing Circle (1971). This critique of unsustainable growth economics aroused my interests in ecology and economics.
Three other very important books from the 1970s should be cited here, too. First, the Social Limits to Growth (1976) by Fred Hirsch, who sadly died later that decade, still a young man. Hirsch showed, among other things, that primitive capitalism itself eroded the social capital which its success depended upon.
Second, I read James Lovelock’s short 1979 book Gaia: A new look at life on Earth, in which human agency is treated very much as a potential nature-enhancing regulating mechanism within the life-force of planet earth. The earth, as nature, could be understood as a single living organism. This contrasts with a liberal-mercantilist worldview which treats the nation-state as a living organisation; subserving individual rights to the economic and political strategies of the officers of the national waka, the ship of state.
Third, a book written in 1976 – Plagues and Peoples, by William H McNeil – which I only read in 2020. This was macro- and micro-ecology writ large. (See my Microbes and Macrobes; lessons from biology and history, 8 Dec 2020.) And writ with humans in their context as a species embedded in nature. Humans do not at all represent the apex of nature; rather humans are subject to the predation of macropredators – such as the one wreaking havoc in Eastern Europe – and micropredators such as SARS-Cov2 and many much worse. Life is life a game of ‘paper, scissors, rock’; none is on top.
The end of history has not come. Everyman has not won. That idea was, at best, naïve. We live with nature, not over nature. We settle with nature; and we settle in nature. We adapt to nature, and that includes learning about nature, complex nature, and vaccinating or otherwise insuring ourselves against the episodic excesses of nature. When we try to banish nature, it comes back to ‘bite us on the bum’. Hence the existential threats which we call the ‘climate crisis’. Then there is the idea that we can sustain ourselves from micropredators through the ongoing application of measures such as social distancing, retreating to our domestic castles and our internet devices, wearing facemasks, and banning foreign-domiciled intruders from our national territories.
The Old Normal
The way we lived before 2020 was problematic in many ways, but not all bad. We took much of the good stuff for granted, converting natural systems of regulation and renewal into – in our minds – simple inconveniences. Bugs – visible or microscopic – became ‘disgusting’ but otherwise a natural part of life. Most of us would get a ‘common’ ‘head cold’ most years, usually in winter. When we got a really bad ‘cold’, we would call it ‘the flu’. We accepted these inconveniences grudgingly; we might even go to the trouble to take an annual flu vaccine, if it was ‘free’. For most of us the cost of such sickness was a few days off work, and the price of a few medicines from the local pharmacy.
We could get more seriously ill, of course. Indeed the vast majority of us accept that individual death is integral to the systemic sustainability of nature. Most of us – but not all – would die old. That was our contract with nature.
We also came to learn that our gut germs – though disgusting – were more beneficial to us than harmful. And we learned that we are mildly intolerant to many of our staple and nutritious foods; the likes of wheat, milk, fodmaps, and nightshades. We adapt to these foods, rather than eschewing them. We find our balance points – enough, but not too much – and we train our bodies to tolerate ‘a bit more’.
When learning about nature through formal science, we tended to focus on the more serious end of the spectrum of nature-induced ailments; hence nature presented itself to career scientists as a foe to be overcome. We learned much less about the recurring minor ailments which we take for granted.
Most of us never learned that the viruses and other microbes that cause illnesses have evolved into acceptable equilibria; evolved from ‘novel’ forms that could create havoc amongst one or many species for a short or a long period of time. The unfamiliar yet familiar things we take for granted almost always have fascinating backstories. We have encountered our pathogens in the past when in dangerous forms, and have adapted to them, reducing their habitats, and suffering their foibles. Our historical memory is mainly confined to the most severe episodes; to the 1918 flu pandemic rather than the 1957, 2009, or 2017 episodes. And to the second plague pandemic – which started as the ‘black death’ – rather than to the third plague pandemic which in 1900 created havoc in Sydney and briefly visited Auckland. Plague is less of a threat to humans today, thanks to antibiotics, and thanks to the long gaps between waves of disease; though it still kills lots of rodents in their burrows.
Rarely do we think that such microbes could be doing us some favours. Dr Richard Webby – a New Zealander living in Memphis, USA – has been interviewed at least twice on RNZ during the current pandemic. He says (Flu season could follow hard on the heels of Omicron, 20 Feb 2022): “We do think that once you get one virus there is a period of time where you’re less susceptible to other viruses that are trying to get into that same part of your body”. The observation is pure ecology, that the human respiratory trace is a ‘habitat’, and that an occupied habitat represents a form of protection from intruders. Better to be occupied by the ‘lesser evil’ than to be open to the greater evil.
A very worthwhile scientific hypothesis is as follows: many of the microbes that annoy us, in the process of being annoying, may be actually protecting us from more serious micropredators. And, in doing so, they may inhabit spaces in our bodies that, in effect, represent a ‘no vacancy’ sign to other potential occupiers. And they may generate co-immunity – or cross-immunity – meaning that they may act like natural vaccines, building defences against their more dangerous first and second cousins.
Thus, in the old normal, and according to the undisproven hypothesis above, exposure to viruses saved us from viruses. (Science works through falsifying – disproving – hypotheses. Thus, in science, ‘truth’ is a body of hypotheses that have been subject to testing, and that have not so far been disproved. True scientists are never arrogant enough to act as if they are our guardians of truth.)
Disturbing the Old Normal in Unforeseen but Foreseeable Ways
In terms of the Covid19 pandemic, we humans are not the foe or rival of any of the variants of the covid virus. We are a host species of these coronaviruses. The principal rival of omicron-covid is delta-covid. Yes, nature – the circulatory system of nature – can be served by the extinction of species, such as smallpox, or variations of species, such as delta-covid. Already, omicron-covid may be well on its path of evolutionary conquest; the mutating journey of a novel – probably hybrid – coronavirus to becoming humans’ fifth common ‘common cold’ coronavirus. (And see my reference to a BBC story about the ‘common cold’ ‘booting out’ covid: Common Cold exposure may be, in effect, a partially effective Covid19 vaccine, Scoop 8 Apr 2021.)
Charts done recently (see Respiratory Viruses: Seasonal Mortality Compared, Evening Report18 Feb 2022, noting the cited European countries) show that the pattern of human mortality associated with the most recent covid wave in Europe already looks much like any other virus that visits Europe in the winter or early spring.
Maybe nature can be best served through the extinction of humans? Not necessarily, though this could happen, as nature responds to the anthropogenic stresses that it faces. Taking optimism from the Gaia hypothesis, through reasoned thought – humans, like microbes, can act relatively quickly to correct threats to nature. Being able to do so doesn’t necessarily mean that human will actually do so, however.
In defending ourselves against a new micropredator, SARS-Cov2, the last thing we want to do is reactivate – to re-arm – former dangerous viruses that we got used to, and which got used to us. Immunity to certain types of viruses may be short-lived; and is maintained by regular – eg seasonal – re-exposure. Indeed, this cycle of waxing and waning immunity is one of the principles behind the annual influenza jab; the jab that, ‘under the public health radar’, lengthened many ‘first world’ lives after it was introduced late last century. Further, influenza jabs are not the only vaccinations that offer a considerable degree of immunity while falling short of giving lifelong immunity. The word ‘booster’ preceded the word ‘covid’.
The fortress behaviours that may protect us from an immediate micro-threat can, if persevered with, also be the measures that undermine the misunderstood old normal. Indeed, it is tempting for us to think that these barrier protections, by keeping out the adapted old-normal viruses, will actually confer on us additional benefits. Under this ‘any germ is a bad germ’ idea, more cleanliness is always better than less cleanliness; the safest environment is a sterile environment. The idea becomes that, by providing explicit and indefinite barriers from nature, we – a part of nature – can become a whole lot healthier. Better to divorce from nature than to be married with nature.
The ‘scrub it within an inch of its life’ ethos – which was the ethos of 1960s’ consumerism – well and truly returned in 2020, when anything that may have come into contact with the SARS-Cov2 coronavirus had to be “deep-cleaned”.
My recent chart analysis on Evening Report – Covid19 Deaths and Facemasks: some rich countries compared, 24 Mar 2022 – indicates that the countries with the fewest pandemic excess deaths in 2021 (especially Denmark, Sweden and Finland; the text also mentions Japan) are the countries which had the lightest facemask mandates. Generally, the Scandinavian countries imposed the least facemasking requirements; they also tended to impose the least of other types of public health restrictions.
The website ourwordindata.org/coronavirus has data series for pandemic outcomes and policies, including measures for mask-mandating, and a ‘stringency’ index. My charts show excess deaths alongside published Covid19 deaths. Although Denmark in particular has had high covid infection rates, it has had excess deaths lower than its southern neighbours. Sweden, with less mask use had even lower death rates than Denmark in 2021/22; although Sweden did have more deaths in 2020.
Generally, the data supports the hypothesis that public health ‘protections’, such as mask-wearing, should be brief – otherwise populations become vulnerable (more naïve) to future waves of coronaviruses and other respiratory viruses. (Greece is a country of particular concern, which imposed strict mandates, and managed to stem the Covid19 tide through most of 2020. See the fourth chart in my Ages of People Dying in excess numbers during the Omicron Wave of Covid19, Evening Report 17 Mar 2022.)
Don’t Throw out the Baby with the Bathwater
My analysis suggests that most countries with high enough incomes to impose expensive public health mandates indeed ‘threw out the covid bathwater’. They also threw out the ‘old-normal immunity baby’. The health and other consequences of governments (and their retinues) working against nature rather than with nature may be quite long-lasting. Nature includes us. For the most part, the rest of nature is our friend, and our home; though not always an easy friend with which to cohabit.
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Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.
Wimbledon, the most iconic tennis grand slam, is considering its position on the participation of Russian nationals.
The British sports minister, Nigel Huddleston, recently suggested that for any Russian to play at Wimbledon, “assurances” might be needed about their position on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine:
Absolutely nobody flying the flag for Russia should be allowed or enabled. We need some potential assurance that they are not supporters of Putin and we are considering what requirements we may need to try and get some assurances along those lines.
The All England Lawn and Tennis Club is in discussions with the sports minister about the nature of any assurances and whether they would be applied at Wimbledon.
Umpire’s call
It now seems likely that Russian players, including the second-ranked male player, Daniil Medvedev and top women like Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, will be expected to divest themselves of symbols and language linking them with the Russian state, and commit to taking part at Wimbledon as “neutrals”.
Medvedev has taken a step in this direction already, removing the Russian flag from his social media profiles. He also stated a wish for world peace.
However, the generic statement of hoping for peace isn’t the same as taking a position on a war in which one’s country is the antagonist. Medvedev is himself taking a neutral position on a war the British government opposes.
Make no mistake: the Wimbledon tournament – hosted by a NATO country – is more than an exhibition of tennis. It’s also a demonstration of what Britain regards as appropriate, which is unlikely to be diplomacy and accommodation.
Huddleston seems only comfortable with Russian athletes who either oppose the war or do not support it, and thus are prepared to distance themselves from Russian President Vladimir Putin.
In or out?
The global angst against Putin has been so profound that sport itself has been compelled to come out behind its customary veil of “neutrality” in political matters. As such, sports organisations around the world have taken positions on the participation of both Russian and Belarusian teams and athletes.
One response has been exclusion, with an expectation that isolating Russian teams from world sport is a necessary affront to the largest military invasion in Europe since the second world war. That’s the position taken by swimming, athletics and soccer.
However, some sports bodies, such as tennis and biathlon, are allowing Russian and Belarusian individuals to compete under the proviso they do as “neutrals”. Tennis bodies have, however, suspended both Russian and Belarusian players from team-based competitions.
Moreover, at the recent Beijing Paralympics, several countries refused to participate against Russian teams, with the result that organisers were pressured into excluding Russian athletes.
Spin or substance?
The All England Lawn and Tennis Club has the capacity to decide entry rules for Wimbledon. It may diplomatically align with the ATP and WTA (the organising bodies of the men’s and women’s tours), or it could ban Russians outright.
All of this is controversial. Some critics have suggested that the human rights of Russian athletes are being denied, as they aren’t responsible for the military activities in Ukraine.
However, some Russian sports stars – whether voluntarily or otherwise – have made their position known. Several have made public appearances sporting the letter Z, which has become a symbol of support for Russia’s attack on Ukraine.
Perhaps the most emphatic pro-Putin advocate is Russian chess champion Sergey Karjakin, who took to Twitter to praise his country’s “special military operation”.
By contrast, some Russian sports stars have voiced their disapproval of the war, a perilous stance given this type of dissent is now deemed a crime – with some 15,000 Russian people already arrested.
Strings attached
Countries opposed to Russia’s ongoing demolition of Ukraine have at this point relied on economic sanctions as a principal deterrent. Unfortunately, these measures hurt and harm ordinary Russians.
Some critics argue that the West’s sanctions are hypocritical considering American and allied military interventions in places like Iraq, or Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories.
From that perspective, global sanctions ought to have been implemented against the United States or Israel, with flow-on implications for sport. Discussions about Ukraine have, therefore, not only focused squarely on Russian imperialism and Putin’s fascism, but also the turpitude of the Washington-led “rules-based order”.
Whether the All England Club bans Russian players or accepts them as neutrals, it will have arrived at a decision in concert with the UK’s sports minister, at a time when Britain is supplying arms to Ukraine.
None of this is edifying.
Russian tennis players, if allowed to play, will be under enormous scrutiny both on and off the court. Would a win for Medvedev be a victory for Putin? Would the absence of Medvedev contribute to the anti-war effort?
In the middle of all this are athletes who, like ordinary Russians, may become – perhaps unfairly – the target of sanctions.
But war is the epitome of unfair.
Daryl Adair 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.
The NSW parliament is now considering a bill, sponsored by Greens MP David Shoebridge, proposing crucial child protection reforms. The legislative assembly passed the bill in late February. Whether it passes the lower house in the coming weeks will be a test of the parliament’s commitment to reducing the number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in out-of-home care.
The bill’s passage (or otherwise) will also lay bare the extent of the government’s resolve to address ongoing harms caused by generations of forced, systematic removals of Aboriginal children.
Inquiries such as Family is Culture have repeatedly identified three crucial policy changes needed to address the over-representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and families in child protection systems across Australia:
services must become transparent and accountable to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families and communities
self-determination in service design and delivery is crucial to ensure culturally safe and trusted services that properly address the needs of families
proper funding and resourcing of services is needed to address the legacies of racist laws and policies, which have resulted in intergenerational trauma and poverty.
The NSW bill takes meaningful steps towards addressing recommendations for reform from the Family is Culture review. It does this through its acknowledgement of historical harms and the importance of Aboriginal family and cultural connections. The bill also aims to improve the child protection system’s accountability towards Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, families and communities.
The bill increases legal protections for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and families at the different stages of their involvement with the child protection system.
Importantly, the bill clarifies the functions of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Child and Young Person Placement Principles. The purpose of these principles is to prioritise children’s placement within their own extended family, community and culture.
Yet, there are ongoing, serious problems with compliance with the principles. For instance, just under 50% of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in care in NSW are placed with non-Aboriginal carers.
The bill incorporates the five key elements of the principles, which provide clearer provisions for:
prevention of children’s separation from families, by providing supports that address underlying causes of child protection concerns
partnership with communities, through the involvement of community representatives in the design and delivery of services and in care decision-making
ensuring children and families participate in decisions about children’s placement
participation of children and young persons and their parents in all key decision-making concerning children’s care and protection
maintaining children’s connections with family, community, culture and country, when children are placed in out-of-home care.
The bill also includes important provisions regarding accountability. It requires the NSW Department of Communities and Justice make “active efforts” to support families to access culturally appropriate services, designed and delivered where possible by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisations.
Families can apply for a declaration from the Children’s Court of New South Wales that the department has failed to make active efforts. The minister must report such declarations to parliament, and also report on measures taken by the department to prevent children’s separation from their families.
Significantly, the bill responds to longstanding concerns about legislative amendments made in 2018, which set a maximum of 24 months for parents to address protective issues, or face permanent removal of their children.
The current bill increases these time frames, allowing parents up to 48 months to address broader protective issues, such as finding safe housing, escaping family violence or accessing services to support mental health and other concerns.
Maintaining children’s connections with family, community, culture and country should be a high priority. shutterstock
The bill also provides that the Children’s Court must give a representative of the relevant Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander community the opportunity to be heard in individual care matters. Importantly, it introduces a rebuttable presumption that removing an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander child from their family causes harm. This means that there is a presumption that removal will cause harm unless evidence is presented to the contrary.
The Children’s Court must explain how it has considered this presumption when making care orders, and how it has considered other legal principles concerning Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, including those regarding family and community organisations’ participation and the placement principles.
The bill is not perfect. There remains a worrying lack of oversight for children who are permanently placed under the independent care of a guardian. The legislative assembly did not pass recommendations in Shoebridge’s original bill protecting Aboriginal children from being adopted. The assembly also did not pass Shoebridge’s recommendation prohibiting the accreditation of for-profit out-of-home care agencies and agencies that do not meet minimum standards.
However the bill provides a crucial opportunity. It represents an improved pathway to safety and stability for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children who have been failed across decades of reforms.
Moreover, the bill provides measures with respect to accountability and supports for some of the most vulnerable children, which can and should be extended nationally.
Terri Libesman has nothing to disclose.
Eloise Chandler and Wendy Hermeston 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.
Readers are advised that the following article contains the names and images of deceased Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander persons. This article also contains mention of past deaths of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. There is also mention of sexual assault.
In November 2019, Police Constable Zachary Rolfe was charged with murder after fatally shooting Warlpiri teenager Kumanjayi Walker in the Northern Territory. It was described as the first time a police officer has faced a murder trial in a death in custody case since the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody in 1991.
But Rolfe, whose trial ended with his acquittal this month, is [not the first policeman] to be charged with murder but not be convicted. In fact, to many people, the case carries echoes of previous instances in which a very similar cycle has played out.
The cycle of police violence, murder charge and acquittal reminds us of the last time in Australian history when seven men were executed for the massacre of Aboriginal people in northwestern New South Wales in 1838. They were white settlers, not police, but their execution was described as an act of “judicial murder”. After this, settlers maintained that no white man should in the future be prosecuted for the killing of a black person.
Members of Walker’s Warlpiri community in Yuendumu, 300km north of Alice Springs, saw historic links between his death and the Coniston massacre in 1928 on a cattle station not far from Yuendumu.
The Warlpiri were among a large group of Indigenous peoples killed by a party of mounted troopers on a punitive expedition led by army veteran Constable George Murray.
The massacre was in retaliation for the murder of a white dingo shooter, Frederick Brookes. An internal police inquiry into the mass shootings of Warlpiri people denied legal aid to the Indigenous communities involved. No inquests were held to ascertain numbers killed and Murray intimated that the killing of Warlpiri was an act of self-defence.
The inquiry concluded there was no provocation for the local Aboriginal people’s hostility to white men, despite it being widely understood that Brookes’ murder was possibly retaliation for the alleged abuse of an Indigenous woman in the community.
Two Warlpiri men, Arkikra and Padygar were charged with Brookes’ murder and were eventually found to be not guilty. The police involved in the massacre were exonerated and reinstated.
A long history of police violence
In a similar episode in the Kimberley two years earlier, a white pastoralist, Frederick Hay, was murdered by Lumbia, an Oombulgarri man, in retaliation for Hay raping Anguloo, Lumbia’s wife.
In response to Hay’s death, two police officers led an expedition that resulted in the deaths of 15 Aboriginal men, women and children. Their bodies were incinerated.
The police officers involved in this attack were charged with murder, but a trial never went ahead. They were instead reinstated. Lumbia, however, was convicted of murder and imprisoned for life.
And in 1934, a white police constable fatally shot Pitjantjatjara man Yokununna at Uluru following his escape from police custody. An inquiry found that, although unwarranted, the shooting was legally justified as an act of self-defence.
Police Constable Bill McKinnon continued with his duties and was eventually promoted to senior inspector.
These cases of police violence in the interwar years led to widespread discontent with policing and the justice system. Reforms were demanded, including the abolition of all-white juries, implementing native courts and the separation of the powers of police and protector, as most protectors of Aboriginal people were police officers.
In 1934, such protests resulted in the aborting of yet another police-led punitive expedition into east Arnhem Land and the High Court overturning a murder conviction for Dhakiyarr Wirrpanda following the death of a white police officer. He later disappeared.
In the midst of these protests, however, A.P. Elkin, the chair of anthropology at Sydney University, described police as “agents armed with the power of life and death”. As recorded on pages 3 -4 of an historical policy document authored by Elkin he noted that those who knew the history of relations between black and white understood that “teaching the natives (sic) a lesson” meant the use of guns and the death of many.
He went on to say,
“If giving the natives (sic) a lesson by sheer force of arms is the only way in which we can establish harmonious relations …, it is time that we realised our own incompetence, let alone our lack of imagination and of a sense of justice.
These words resonate in the Rolfe case, where Walpiri are demanding that guns be removed from police in their dealings with them and in their communities.
No more guns in the NT
The fatal shooting of Walker was justified by Rolfe as an act of self-defence against a violent man allegedly threatening the lives of him and his partner.
For the Warlpiri, it was a continuation of police violence against their communities and the memory of police retribution and its cost. With this context in mind, it might be possible to consider that Walker’s violent response was an act of self-defence, too.
For Walker’s community, the most important lesson was something that their historical experience made all too clear. In the words of elder Ned Jampinjimpa Hargraves:
We don’t want no guns. Enough is enough.
Alison Holland 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.
University of Canberra Professorial Fellow Michelle Grattan and University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor Professor Paddy Nixon talk about this week in politics.
They discuss the imminent election-oriented budget, the government’s about-face to finally accept the New Zealand offer to resettle up to 450 people who arrived in Australia by boat, Labor’s win at the South Australian election, and University of Canberra research in the marginal Sydney seat of Wentworth, where a high-profile “teal” candidate is challenging the Liberals.
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.
The draft security agreement between China and Solomon Islands circulating on social media raises important questions about how the Australian government and national security community understand power dynamics in the Pacific Islands.
In Australian debates, the term “influence” is oftenused to characterise the assumed consequences of China’s increasingly visible presence in the Pacific.
There’s an assumption China generates influence primarily from its economic statecraft. This includes its concessional loans, aid and investment by state-owned enterprises (which partly manifests in Beijing’s involvement of Pacific Islands in its Belt and Road Initiative).
On its face, the leaked draft seemingly proves Chinese spending “bought” enough influence to get the Solomon Islands government to consider this agreement. But such an interpretation misses two key issues.
The role of domestic politics
First, the draft agreement is primarily about Solomon Islands domestic politics – not just geopolitics.
As explained by Dr Tarcisius Kabutaulaka after the November 2021 riots in Honiara, geopolitical considerations intersect with, and can be used to, advance longstanding domestic issues.
These include uneven and unequal development, frustrated decentralisation, and unresolved grievances arising from prior conflicts.
Power in the Pacific is complex. It is not just politicians in the national government who matter in domestic and foreign policy-making.
Take, for example, the activism of Malaita provincial governor Derek Suidani, who pursued relations with Taiwan after Solomon Islands switched diplomatic recognition to China in 2019. This highlights the important role sub-national actors can play in the both domestic and foreign policy arenas.
Neither Solomon Islanders (nor other Pacific peoples) are “passive dupes” to Chinese influence or unaware of geopolitical challenges – and opportunities. Some do, however, face resource and constitutional constraints when resisting influence attempts.
Australia’s current policy settings are not working
The second key issue is that Australia’s current policy settings are not working – if their success is measured by advancing Australia’s strategic interests.
Australia is by far the Pacific’s largest aid donor and has been on a spending spree under its “Pacific Step-up” initiative.
Australia spent billions leading the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI), as well as significant bilateral programs to the country. Yet Australia has not been able to head off Honiara considering the security agreement with China.
Perhaps Canberra has not sought to influence Solomon Islands on this matter. But given Australia’s longstanding anxieties about potentially hostile powers establishing a presence in the region, this is unlikely.
Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews has already commented in response to the leaked draft that:
This is our neighbourhood and we are very concerned of any activity that is taking place in the Pacific Islands.
The rumours (subsequently denied) that China was in talks to establish a military base in Vanuatu, and China’s attempt to lease Tulagi Island in Solomon Islands had already intensified Australia’s anxieties. Such concerns partly motivated the government’s investment in the Pacific Step-up.
Article 1 provides that Solomon Islands may request China to “send police, police, military personnel and other law enforcement and armed forces to Solomon Islands” in circumstances ranging from maintaining social order to unspecified “other tasks agreed upon by the Parties”.
Even more concerningly for Solomon Islands’ sovereignty, Article 1 also provides that
relevant forces of China can be used to protect the safety of Chinese personnel and major projects in Solomon Islands.
It remains unclear what authority the Solomon Islands government would maintain once it consents to Beijing’s deployment of “relevant forces” to protect Chinese nationals.
Article 4 is equally vague. It states specific details regarding Chinese missions, including “jurisdiction, privilege and immunity […] shall be negotiated separately”.
The agreement also raises questions about the transparency of agreements Beijing makes and their consequences for democracy in its partner states.
According to Article 5,
without the written consent of the other party, neither party shall disclose the cooperation information to a third party.
This implies the Solomon Islands government is legally bound not to inform its own people and their democratically elected representatives about activities under the agreement without the Chinese approval.
The version circulating on social media may prove to be an early draft. Its leak is likely a bargaining tactic aimed at pursuing multiple agendas with multiple actors – including Australia.
Australian High Commissioner Lachlan Strahan met yesterday with Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare and announced Australia will extend its assistance force until December 2023. It will build a national radio network, construct a second patrol boat outpost, and provide SI$130 million (A$21.5 million) in budget support.
That China has been able to persuade Solomon Islands to consider an intrusive security agreement raises questions about our understanding of how power and influence are exercised in the Pacific.
If influence is taken to result in concrete behavioural changes (such as entering into a bilateral security agreement), and if Australia is going to “compete” with China on spending, you’d need to ask, for example: how much “influence” does an infrastructure project buy?
This understanding of power, however, is insufficient. Instead, a more nuanced approach is required.
Influence is exercised not only by national governments, but also by a variety of non-state actors, including sub-national and community groups.
And targets of influence-seekers can exercise their agency. See, for example, how various actors in Solomon Islands are leveraging Australia, China and Taiwan’s overtures to the country.
We must also consider how power affects the political norms and values guiding governing elites and non-state actors, potentially reshaping their identities and interests.
The draft security agreement may come to nothing – but it should provide a wake-up call to Australia and its partners.
Old assumptions about how power and influence are exercised in the Pacific need urgent re-examination – as does our assumption that explicitly “competing” with China advances either our interests or those of the Pacific.
Joanne Wallis receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the Australian Department of Defence.
Czeslaw Tubilewicz 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.
As the devastating war in Ukraine continues, Michelle Grattan speaks with ABC journalist Sarah Ferguson about her experiences in reporting her Four Corners episode Despair and Defiance – how she was able to capture this story – and her views on where the conflict is likely to go from now.
Sarah and her team presented a raw portrayal of the conflict and its human toll in Kyiv and elsewhere.
“[In reporting] so much of these things comes down to simple practicalities. Can you get food? Can you get a driver? Can you get out? And once we’d got all of those things in place, we were good to go.”
Ukranian officialdom knows how vital it is to get its story to the world. Ukranian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy “has understood the importance of telling people the story of what’s happening.”
“The Russians actually shelled people during the evacuations and fired on people. […] The Russians aren’t observing the sort of conventions of war where civilians are able to be evacuated. So getting them out and witnessing that was unquestionably dangerous. It was a dangerous place to be.”
Caught in this horrific situation, ordinary Ukrainians can do little but just think “from day to day” rather than contemplate the future. “‘If I can get through today, what is my plan for tomorrow?’ […] The fear of what lies ahead is so grim that the human can’t – you can’t live with that amount of fear. So in order to function, you keep your horizon nearer.”
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.
From rainforests to savannas, ecosystems on land absorb almost 30% of the carbon dioxide human activities release into the atmosphere. These ecosystems are critical to stop the planet warming beyond 1.5℃ this century – but climate change may be weakening their capacity to offset global emissions.
This is a key issue that OzFlux, a research network from Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, has been investigating for the past 20 years. Over this time, we’ve identified which ecosystems absorb the most carbon, and have been learning how they respond to extreme weather and climate events such as drought, floods and bushfires.
The biggest absorbers of atmospheric carbon dioxide in Australia are savannas and temperate forests. But as the effects of climate change intensify, ecosystems such as these are at risk of reaching tipping points of collapse.
In our latest research paper, we look back at the two decades of OzFlux’s findings. So far, the ecosystems we studied are showing resilience by rapidly pivoting back to being carbon sinks after a disturbance. This can be seen, for example, in leaves growing back on trees soon after bushfire.
But how long will this resilience remain? As climate change pressures intensify, evidence suggests carbon sinks may lose their ability to bounce back from climate-related disasters. This reveals vital gaps in our knowledge.
Australian ecosystems absorb 150 million tonnes of carbon each year
Between 2011 and 2020, land-based ecosystems sequestered 11.2 billion tonnes (29%) of global CO₂ emissions. To put this into perspective, that’s roughly similar to the amount China emitted in 2021.
OzFlux has enabled the first comprehensive assessment of Australia’s carbon budget from 1990 to 2011. This found Australia’s land-based ecosystems accumulate some 150 million tonnes of CO₂ each year on average – helping to offset national fossil fuel emissions by around one third.
For example, every hectare of Australia’s temperate forests absorbs 3.9 tonnes of carbon in a year, according to OzFlux data. Likewise, every hectare of Australia’s savanna absorbs 3.4 tonnes of carbon. This is about 100 times larger than a hectare of Mediterranean woodland or shrubland.
But it’s important to note that the amount of carbon Australian ecosystems can sequester fluctuates widely from one year to the next. This is due to, for instance, the natural climate variability (such as in La Niña or El Niño years), and disturbances (such as fire and land use changes).
In any case, it’s clear these ecosystems will play an important role in Australia reaching its target of net-zero emissions by 2050. But how effective will they continue to be as the climate changes?
How climate change weakens these carbon sinks
Extreme climate variability – flooding rains, droughts and heatwaves – along with bushfires and land clearing, can weaken these carbon sinks.
While many Australian ecosystems show resilience to these stresses, we found their recovery time may be shortening due to more frequent and extreme events, potentially compromising their long-term contribution towards offsetting emissions.
Take bushfire as an example. When it burns a forest, the carbon stored in the plants is released back into the atmosphere as smoke – so the ecosystem becomes a carbon source. Likewise, under drought or heatwave conditions, water available to the roots becomes depleted and limits photosynthesis, which can tip a forest’s carbon budget from being a sink to a carbon source.
If that drought or heatwave endures for a long time, or a bushfire returns before the forest has recovered, its ability to regain its carbon sink status is at risk.
Regrowth after bushfires return forests from carbon source to carbon sink. Shutterstock
Learning how carbon sinks may shift in Australia and New Zealand can have a global impact. Both countries are home to a broad range of climates – from the wet tropics, to the Mediterranean climate of southwest Australia, to the temperate climate in the southeast.
Our unique ecosystems have evolved to suit these diverse climates, which are underrepresented in the global network.
This means long-term ecosystem observatories – OzFlux, along with the Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network – provide a vital natural laboratory for understanding ecosystems in this era of accelerating climate change.
Over its 20 years, OzFlux has made crucial contributions to the international understanding of climate change. A few of its major findings include:
the 2011 La Niña event led to a greening of interior Australia, with ecosystems flourishing from increased water availability
heatwaves can negate the carbon sink strength of our ecosystems, and even lead to carbon emissions from plants
Each hectare of Australia’s savanna’s sequesters, on average, 3.4 tonnes of carbon every year. Bryn Pinzgauer/Wikimedia, CC BY-SA
Critical questions remain
Plans in Australia and New Zealand to reach net zero emissions by 2050 strongly depend on the ongoing ability for ecosystems to sequester emissions from industry, agriculture, transport and the electricity sectors.
While some management and technological innovations are underway to address this, such as in the agricultural sector, we need long-term measurements of carbon cycling to truly understand the limits of ecosystems and their risk of collapse.
Indeed, we’re already in uncharted territory under climate change. Weather extremes from heatwaves to heavy rainfall are becoming more frequent and intense. And CO₂ levels are more than 50% higher than they were 200 years ago.
So while our ecosystems have remained a net sink over the last 20 years, it’s worth asking:
will they continue to do the heavy-lifting required to keep both countries on track to meet their climate targets?
how do we protect, restore and sustain the most vital, yet vulnerable, ecosystems, such as “coastal blue carbon” (including seagrasses and mangroves)? These are critical to nature-based solutions to climate change
how do we monitor and verify national carbon accounting schemes, such as Australia’s Emissions Reduction Fund?
Critical questions remain about how well Australia’s and New Zealand’s ecosystems can continue storing CO₂.
Caitlin Moore is affiliated with the Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (TERN)
David Campbell receives funding from the NZ Ministry for Primary Industries and the Agricultural GHG Research Centre.
Before her retirement as an employee of CSIRO, Helen Cleugh received funding from CSIRO and the Australian government through many programs including the National Environmental Science Programme and TERN.
Jamie Cleverly receives funding from the Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network and the Queensland Government, and is currently the director of OzFlux.
Jason Beringer receives funding from the Australian Research Council and NCRIS TERN.
Lindsay Hutley receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the Terrestrial Ecosystems Research Network
Mark Grant works for the Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (TERN).
On Wednesday, a United Nations committee became the first international law body to recognise that criminalising female same-sex sexual activity is a fundamental breach of human rights.
The landmark decision means all countries that criminalise women having sex with other women should immediately repeal these laws.
Many people assume these laws only apply to men having sex with men, but that’s not the case. Sexual conduct between women is prohibited in the criminal codes of 34 of these 71 countries.
Countries with sharia law such as Afghanistan, Nigeria and Saudi Arabia also essentially criminalise lesbian sex. So there are 43 countries where it’s a crime for women to engage in same-sex sexual activity – almost a quarter of all countries in the world.
The majority of the countries that criminalise same-sex sexual activity are members of the Commonwealth, whose anti-homosexuality laws were introduced by the British Empire.
However, Britain only ever criminalised male homosexual activity, and the expansion of these laws to explicitly include female sexual activity is a relatively recent phenomenon. Countries that have done so include: Trinidad and Tobago (1986), Solomon Islands (1990), Sri Lanka (1995), Malaysia (1998) and Nigeria (2014).
In the past 35 years, ten jurisdictions that previously only criminalised same-sex male sexual intimacy changed their laws to include, for the first time, new criminal sanctions of lesbians and bisexual women.
The laws criminalising same-sex activity between women aren’t just arcane laws that are never enforced. In Malaysia just over three years ago, two women were caned six times for attempting to have sex.
And late last year, a lesbian activist in Iran was arrested while trying to flee to Turkey to seek asylum. Before this, she was detained for 21 days by the Iraqi Kurdistan police following an interview she did with BBC Persian about the situation of the LGBTQ+ community in Iraqi Kurdistan.
The case
The case of Flamer-Caldera v Sri Lanka was brought by a lesbian activist to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).
She argued that Sri Lanka’s criminal laws violated her right to live her life free from discrimination based on her sexual orientation.
The CEDAW committee agreed.
It found the effect of Sri Lanka’s criminal code was that lesbian and bisexual women lived with the constant risk of arrest and detention. And the laws facilitate a culture where discrimination, harassment and violence against lesbians and bisexual women can flourish.
Law is a tool that governments use to communicate to society what is acceptable and unacceptable behaviour. When the Sri Lankan government declared any sexual intimacy between consenting women is a crime, it signalled to Sri Lankans that vilification, targeting and harassment of lesbians and bisexual women is acceptable, because they are criminals.
The laws not only criminalise same-sex sexual conduct. They also perpetuate homophobia, stigmatise the LGBTQ+ community and sanction gender-based violence against lesbians and bisexual women.
This decision sends a clear message to all governments who think it’s OK to persecute, harass and discriminate against lesbians and bisexual women – you are wrong.
Sri Lanka now has six months to provide a written response to the CEDAW Committee setting out the action it has taken, or will take, to give effect to the committee’s decision.
Repealing the specific provision in the criminal law will not be enough. A much more holistic and nuanced response is required. In particular, the government will need to:
develop campaigns to counter prejudice and stereotypes directed at the LGBTQ+ community
enact anti-discrimination laws prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity and intersex status
embed human rights education in schools, promoting equality and respect for all regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity
provide training for police, judges and other law enforcement officials to increase their understanding of, and respect for, the human rights of LGBTQ+ people. This will also enable women to report homophobic crimes to the police without fear of retribution and with the knowledge the perpetrators will be prosecuted
ensure there are adequate civil and criminal remedies for members of the LGBTQ+ community who are subjected to discrimination and gender-based violence.
The decision in Flamer-Caldera v Sri Lanka represents a watershed moment in international human rights law and will reverberate around the world.
It’s now beyond dispute that criminalising consensual adult same-sex sexual conduct violates a woman’s right to privacy, dignity and non-discrimination.
All governments have a duty to protect all women, including lesbians and bisexual women, from discrimination, gender-based violence and other harm.
Any country that criminalises the sexual conduct of lesbians and bisexual women, regardless of whether they enforce the laws, is guilty of violating international law.
Paula Gerber is a director of Kaleidoscope Human Rights Foundation, a not-for-profit organisation advocating for the rights of LGBTIQ people in the Asia-Pacific region.
Meet Eli. He entered the second year of his life with gusto and now, aged 18 months, he is discovering new things every day including ideas he wants to try out immediately. Like, right now. Waiting is not an option.
Combined with his passion for life he often becomes emotionally overwhelmed and erupts into frequent meltdowns. Words and phrases like “no”, “do it myself” and “mine” are used often.
Sometimes the smallest thing ends with Eli kicking, biting and crying. Although he’s still developing a command of words, he shouts “I don’t love you, Dad!” with devastating accuracy. These outbursts happen at home and out in public.
Research shows tantrums occur in 87% of 18 to 24-month-olds, 91% of 30 to 36-month-olds, and 59% of 42 to 48-month-olds – often on a daily basis.
The “terrible twos” might sound accurate, but branding toddlerhood (18 months to 36 months) this way is an injustice to this group. The generic label fails to grasp the huge developmental growth happening at this age. It also fails to celebrate the developing emotional life of a toddler, at once complex, multifaceted and exhilarating.
Eli is at a “developmental touchpoint”, where a unique surge in capacities is coupled with behaviour falling apart. At this age, children begin to establish independence while simultaneously needing to learn ways of coping with intense feelings such as fear, anger, frustration and sadness. Researchers are still discovering what a normal trajectory for emotional regulation development looks like, and what might help or hinder it.
Intense, uncontrolled feelings and defiance are normal at this age. But it can be challenging for parents to support their toddlers through this stage.
Focusing solely on a toddler’s behaviour fails to capture the significant role sensitive care-giving plays in social and emotional development in the early years.
A core component of sensitive and responsive parenting is a parent’s capacity to put themselves into the mind of their very young child and understand the child’s behaviour has meaning and is driven by internal experiences such as feelings, thoughts, desires and intentions.
Being able to understand the world from the child’s perspective helps a parent to anticipate, interpret and respond to the child’s behaviour in ways that build a child’s capacity to regulate their emotions.
Eli’s dad didn’t experience tantrums with his first child, who had a calmer disposition, so he finds Eli’s emotional outbursts hard to tolerate. He becomes angry when Eli refuses to do what he is told and yells at him to “stop it!”. This frightens Eli, who sometimes retreats and sometimes escalates in his distress.
Eli’s dad is unaware of his toddler’s internal experiences and is confused by his own “out-of-control” feelings when parenting him. Frequent emotional outbursts coupled with an authoritative parenting style places children at risk of developing more serious emotional and behavioural problems.
Eli’s dad needs to understand that his primary role at this stage is to put his child’s experiences at the centre of his mind. This requires him to try to make sense of what Eli is communicating about himself through his behaviour and to respond in a sensitive way. This can help a child like Eli not be overwhelmed by intense feelings.
It’s important to figure out the big feeling behind the tantrum. Shutterstock
3 guidelines for parents:
1. Be aware of your own responses
Tantrums can be emotionally activating for parents. Being aware and making sense of your own feelings will help you to respond sensitively to your child’s distress. When Eli’s dad makes sense of his struggles with managing anger, he is calmer, enabling him to focus on Eli’s emotional experiences.
2. Identify and validate your child’s difficult feelings
Young children need help from their parents to recognise that the feelings they are expressing through their behaviours are just that: feelings that will pass in time. They need help to name them, work out what is causing them and figure out what might help.
3. Search for underlying meaning
Remember not to take emotional outbursts personally. Viewing a tantrum as a means of communication helps parents consider the likely causes of a child’s distress and to think through possible solutions.
Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are is a tribute to tantrums.
With new insights, parents like Eli’s dad can can help their child put themselves back together again after emotional outbursts, which may be less frequent. With consistent support, toddlers can learn to tolerate frustration, gain a sense of control of strong feelings and find words to express what is happening inside them.
Parenting a toddler is no easy task. Today’s parents have the advantages of remarkable leaps in neuroscientific and developmental knowledge. However, these can be difficult to access and even more difficult to put into practice. Unwittingly we can fall back into the familiar ways we were parented, or we might attempt try to do the opposite of how we were parented only to find we have lost direction.
Investment in early intervention programs for everyone or at a targeted level where the parent-child relationship is in trouble, could provide the building blocks for lifelong emotional well-being for families and for society.
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.
A draft security cooperation agreement between China and Solomon Islands has been leaked on social media.
The unverified document includes seven articles, which discuss the scope of cooperation between both nations.
Massey University’s Centre for Defence and Security senior lecturer Dr Anna Powles has seen the agreement on social media.
She told RNZ Pacific that the document is presented as a draft: “It doesn’t have any dates, nor is it signed.
“There are still questions around its authenticity but if it is authentic, it raises some serious questions and if it’s not authentic then it also provides some interesting insights into the way in which the geopolitical dynamic is playing out domestically in the Solomon Islands,” she said.
Dr Powles said that the draft document includes a request between the Solomon Islands government and China to send armed police personnel and other law enforcement and armed forces to the Solomon Islands.
“Now that raises a lot of questions obviously, what is the distinction between police and armed police, and who are the other law enforcement and armed forces that are referred to in the agreement.
‘Maintaining social order’ “It also talks about what kind of tasks that a Chinese contingent would be involved in such as maintaining social order, it’s not clear what that means, it also talks about providing assistance on other tasks and it’s also unclear what those other tasks would be.”
Massey University’s Dr Anna Powles … “There are still questions around [the draft agreement] authenticity but if it is authentic, it raises some serious questions.” Image: RNZ
Dr Powles points out that the agreement refers to protecting lives and property, humanitarian assistance and disaster response.
In February, a team of Chinese police officers began working in Solomon Islands. This was two months after the Solomons government accepted Beijing’s offer to help restore law and order following anti-government riots in November 2021.
Dr Powles believes that if the draft agreement is authentic, then the deployment was a natural extension of the document.
The document also contains some concerning provisions which allow China to send ships to the Solomon’s “according to its needs”.
“The agreement states that China may, according to its own needs and with the consent of the Solomon Islands government make ship visits to the Solomons and carry out logistical replenishment and stopover and transition in the Solomons.”
She said that such provisions would need to be clarified as it was unclear what “China’s own needs” refer to.
Concerns over ‘strategic interests’ Are those strategic interests for instance? If so, that would raise a number of concerns. Particularly as to what would happen if China’s interests cut across the interests of the Solomon Islands or of its key regional partners such as Australia or Papua New Guinea.
The Adkonect printing complex in Ranadi was among dozens of businesses destroyed in the riots last November. Image: Namoi Kaluae/RNZ
“And it also suggests that logistical support would be provided for ship visits in the Solomon Islands and suggests that perhaps China could seek to establish a logistical supply base in Solomon Islands to support those ship visits.
The document does not specify what types of ships, but Dr Powles said “we could safely assume that they are referring to the People’s Liberation Army Naval (PLAN) ships.”
“In the Pacific, we have seen PLAN ship visits to the region. China has a strong interest in maritime issues and in the Pacific maritime domain. And so that probably is not surprising and there have been long-standing concerns and very public long-standing concerns about the potential for increased ship visits for China increasing its engagement in the Pacific maritime domain and potential implications that may have for a potential base to support those ship visits.”
Dr Powles also drew attention to one particular provision of the agreement, which raised alarm bells with respect to the control of information around security cooperation.
That provision stated that information between the Solomon Islands and China could only be released on mutual agreement by both parties.
“And that suggests that there would be the intent to control public information, to control media briefings, to control what access media has to information about security arrangements between the two countries.
“We can be legitimately concerned about lack of transparency about a degree around this agreement,” she said.
A Whanganui iwi leader says the Aotearoa New Zealand government’s decision to ease covid-19 measures at this time is a disgrace and shocking.
He is warning Māori to stay vigilant against omicron and prepare for more to come.
Tūpoho chair Ken Mair says Māori must continue to be extremely careful and take precautions against covid-19, despite the government’s new strategy to begin living with the virus.
Yesterday, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said gathering limits would ease before the weekend, with no limit for outside venues and gatherings of up to 200 allowed inside.
Vaccine passes and scanning would no longer be needed from April 4, and mandates would be scrapped for all except those in the health and aged care sectors, Corrections and at the border.
But Mair said the country was far from out of the woods, as shown by the number of daily covid-19 cases being reported — with 11 new deaths and 18,423 infections.
“It just seems crazy that the government are putting in place this strategy right now, at the worst time in regard to the high numbers of omicron within our community. It’s extremely dangerous,” Mair said.
‘Where’s the Māori lens?’ “Where’s the Māori lens over this? Certainly, within our community there are hundreds [of cases] and there are a number in hospital.
“I just can’t understand a strategy where there hasn’t been any real analysis with substance in regard to the impact upon iwi, hapū and Māori, noting that we’re an extremely vulnerable community in the context of respiratory and asthma ailments.”
Mair said he understood some Māori leaders had been in discussion with the government and had made recommendations for the new strategy, but it appeared they had been ignored.
“I’ve been deeply concerned over the last couple of months where there doesn’t appear to be a strong Māori voice coming through or anything that might indicate that the government have a clear understanding of the ramifications of their decision around the covid strategy.
“This is a classic example — decisions being made right in the midst of cases going up, new variants around the corner, without understanding the impact and implications for Māori. I just think that’s a disgrace and shocking.”
Mair said he thought the strategy had been politicised, with Labour’s polling and political pressure the key factors.
“What motivates you to put in place an extremely dangerous strategy? You can only assume the motivation’s around political expediency and the impact upon economic wellbeing, without having the health lens driving your decision making.
Risk for vulnerable ignored “The decisions by the prime minister and the government clearly have not taken into account the real vulnerability of Māori, and I think Māori, iwi and hapū have to be extremely careful in this precarious time.”
Yesterday, the prime minister said restrictions were being eased because it was safe to do so. Mair said this ignored the risk that remained for the vulnerable and sent the wrong message.
“I think because of the government’s strategy, people are saying things like: well, we’re going to get it anyway, it doesn’t matter, let’s get on with it and get back to normality as quickly as possible.
“The problem with those comments, of course, is the vulnerability of our Māori community, hapū and iwi is extremely high.
“I think our community in general is beginning to take a kind of defeatist approach and we should be, I think, extremely careful and vigilant in regard to dealing with this omicron.
“I have no doubt in my mind there’ll be more variants around the corner and we should always be prepared.”
Local Democracy Reporting is Public Interest Journalism funded through NZ On Air. Asia Pacific Report is a community partner.
Carving up the Papuan provincial cake. Graphic: Image: Lugas/tirto.id
On Thursday, 10 March 2022, thousands of Papuan people in the Lapago Wamena Cultural Area took to the streets to paralyse Wamena city. They occupied Wamena City. They rejected the Indonesian colonial plan to expand Papua province.
Remember: The voice of the people is the voice of God. The Papuan people, people and leaders of Indonesia, Melanesia, Pacific, Africa, European Union. USA, Australia, listen to the voices of the two million Melanesian people in West Papua who are currently on their way to being annihilated due to Indonesia’s systemic racist politics.
The expansion of Papua provinces, Special Autonomy Volume 2 and military operations in six regencies in Papua is not a solution for West Papua. Only one order — give us the right of self-determination for the political rights of the Papuan nation in West Papua. Our greetings and prayers from Wamena, the heart of Papua.
Waaa … waaa … waaa.
SPECIAL REPORT:By Yamin Kogoya
The above text was written by Markus Haluk, director of the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) on Thursday, March 10. The text encapsulates the sentiments of Papuans protesting across West Papua and Indonesia, calling for Jakarta to stop the creation of new provinces.
Haluk’s words were written amid escalating protests in various parts of West Papua’s customary lands and across Indonesia over Jakarta’s plans to create six new provinces under the unilaterally renewed — and unpopular — Special Autonomy Law 21/2001.
15/3/22 Yahukimo, West Papua
Indonesian forces shot dead Yakub Meklok (39) and Herson Wisapla (21) during forced dispersal of thousands of people protesting against Jakarta’s plan to create new provinces.
Jayapura – Mamta customary land Tuesday, March 8: Hundreds of students and communities clashed with Indonesian security forces at university campuses in Waena and Abepura cities, protesting against the expansion. The protest coordinator, Alfa Hisage, stated that this demonstration was to reject the creation of a new province altogether.
Wamena – La Pago customary land Thursday, March 10: Doni Tabuni, the coordinator of the demonstration in the highlands of Wamena (the location that Markus Haluk refers to in his text) warned on March 10 that the expansion would wipe out Papuans. Protesters declared: “We will stop all government office activities in the Lapago region if the central government does not stop the expansion,” reported CNN Indonesia (10 March 2022).
“The expansion will not bring prosperity to Papuans; it will only serve to benefit the elites, bring more migrants, and create more opportunities for military and human rights violations,” said Doni Tabuni.
14/3/22 Paniai, West Papua
Hundreds of West Papuans protested against Jakarta’s plan to create new provinces – which will lead to further dispossession and militarisation.
Paniai – Meepago customary land Monday, March 14: thousands of residents of Paniai took to the streets to demonstrate against the expansion of the “New Autonomous Region”, also known as “Daerah Otonomy Baru” (DOB). The demonstrators repeatedly shouted against the new proposal and do not want to join the province of Central Papua, which would become a new autonomous region.
Petrus Yeimo, a member of the Paniai Regency Legislative Council (DPRD), said that communities are not involved in the formation of this new region.
“That’s why we Paniai people firmly reject the expansion,” said Petrus, when he was met by the mass in front of the DPRD office (innews.id).
West Papuan women against the creation of new provinces by Jakarta that will cause further dispossession and militarisation.
Manokwari – Domberai customary land Tuesday, March 8: The same message also echoed in Manokwari city — a coastal town popularly known as a “city of the gospel” for its historical significance of the landing of the first two German missionaries (C.W. Ottow and J.G. Geissler) for the “Christianisation” project in the mid-1800s.
17/3/22 Sorong, West Papua
Another big protest against Jakarta’s plan to create new provinces.
Sorong – Domberai customary land Monday, March 21: A series of protests has also taken place in Sorong city, at the Western tip of West Papua, involving sections of Papuan society, including students and communities.
Protesters in Sorong carry a banner saying, “The expansion of the new autonomous region is oppression against the Papuan people.” Image: APR
“The expansion of new autonomous region depletes our forests, depriving us of our land rights. The goal of our meeting is to convince the mayor, who is also the head of the creation of the new Southwest Papua province that we Papuans all over Sorong Raya oppose the expansion,” said action coordinator Sepnat Yewen on Monday. But they were disappointed that they were unable to see the mayor twice (Compass.com, 21 March 2022).
11/3/22 Jakarta
102 West Papuan students were forcibly dispersed and arrested during a protest. They reject Jakarta’s plan to create new provinces in West Papua that would lead to further dispossession.
Jakarta – the heartland of the colonial powerhouse Tuesday, March 11: Papuan students held protests in central Jakarta, calling on Jakarta to stop the colonial expansion of their homeland, during which one police officer, Ferikson Tampubolon, was injured on the head (Detiknews, 12 March 2022).
Indonesian security forces line up against Papuan protesters in Jakarta. Image: APR
South Sulawesi – an Indonesian island In Kendari city of South Sulawesi, the Papuan Student Association declared that the newly created provinces would not benefit Papuans. Kiminma Gwijangge, the group coordinator, said that this was a game of the political elites and rulers who control the public service in Papua and ignoring the rights and wishes of Papuans. These Papuan students demanded that the Papuan elites, who eat money and expand on behalf of Papua, be stopped immediately.
15/3/22 Yahukimo, West Papua
Earlier today, speaker: “people reject expansion, people want independence”.
Yahukimo – La Pago customary land Tuesday, March 15: Tragically, a peaceful demonstration for the same cause in the Yahukimo region did not go well. Two young men, Yakop Deal, 30, and Erson Weipsa, 22, have been martyred for this cause by the Indonesian police — the cause for which Papuan men and women courageously risked their lives to fight against fully armed, western-backed, modern security forces with advanced mechanical weapons.
Two young Papuans gunned down and a dozen wounded Witness accounts of the Yahukimo tragedy stated that the protest initially went ahead safely and peacefully. However, provocation by police intelligence officers posing as journalists in the midst of the protest led to the shooting.
It is alleged that an unidentified Indonesian person flew a drone camera during the demonstration. Seeing that action, protesters warned the Indonesian man not to use drones to record the protest, creating fear.
The protestors also asked for his identity and whether or not he was a journalist, but he failed to respond. The crowd protested against his action. He then ran for cover towards hidden police officers who had been on standby with weapons. Immediately, members of the police fired tear gas at the crowd without asking for the person responsible for the peaceful demonstration. Soon after, police opened fire on the crowd.
Papuan Police public relations chief Kombes Pol Ahmad Musthofa Kamal confirmed that two protesters had died, and others suffered gunshot wounds (Suara.com).
Gathering evidence of the Yahukimu atrocity – alleged shootings by the Indonesian military. This Papuan man was shot in the back. Image: APR
OPM and civil society groups The Free Papua Movement, also known as Organisasi Papua Merdeka (OPM), and their military wing, The West Papua National Liberation Army, which was launched in the 1960s to protest against the Indonesian invasion, are opposed to the new expansion of provinces. Sebby Sambon, the group spokesperson released a statement that threatened to shoot Papuan elites who imposed Jakarta’s agenda onto Papuans (tribunnews.com, 12 February 2022)
More than 700,000 people have also signed the Papuan People’s Petition which represents 111 organisations opposing Special Autonomy.
These protests are not the first and they will not be the last. Papuans will continue to resist any policy introduced by Jakarta that threatens their lives, cultural identities, and lands.
This is an existential war, not a political one — it is a war of survival and resisting extinction.
The genesis of these recent protests Those protests are not simply a reaction against the new expansion, but a part of a movement against the Indonesian invasion that began when Papuans’ independent state was seized by the Western governments and given to Indonesia by the United Nations in 1963.
This is a conflict between two states — the state of Papua and the state of Indonesia. Having the big picture is vital to prevent misrepresentation of these protesters as just another angry mob on the street demanding equal pay in Indonesia.
However, the protests that cost those two men their lives in Yahukimo had a specific genesis. It began in 1999 when 100 Papuan delegates went to then-President Habibie and demanded independence after the collapse of Suharto’s 31-year New Order regime.
Habibie and his cabinet were shocked by this demand, as people whom they thought were members of his family suddenly told him they no longer wanted to be part of the great Indonesian family.
Having been shocked by this unexpected news, Habibie and his cabinet told the Papuan delegation to go home and think it over in case it had been a mistake. But this was not a mistake. It was the deepest desire of Papuans being communicated directly in a dignified manner to the country’s highest presidential palace.
This occurred during a time of great turmoil in Indonesia’s history. Strongman national father figure Suharto, once considered immortal, no longer was. His empire had crumbled.
Suddenly, across the archipelago, a cacophony of demonstrators unleashed more than 30 years of dormant human desires for freedom, frustrations, and fear, combined with the ravages of the Asian economic collapse.
If there was a time when the Papuans could escape the tormented house, this was it. One hundred Papuan delegates marching to Habibie indeed made their mark in that respect.
At this momentous time, the man who understood this deepest desire and would help Papuans escape was President Abdurrahman Wahid, better known as Gus Dur. He lives on in the memories of Papuans because of his valiant acts.
President Gus Dur – a political messianic figure On 30 December 1999, or exactly two months and 10 days after being inaugurated as the 4th President, Gus Dur visited Irian Jaya (as it was known back then) with two purposes — to listen to Papuan people during the congress, which he funded, and to see the first millennium sunrise on January 1, 2000. On this day, a significant moment in human history, he chose to stand with Papuans and for Papuans.
During his stay, he changed the region’s name from Irian Jaya to Papua and allowed the banned Papuan Morning Star flag to be flown alongside Indonesia’s red and white flag.
Changing the name was significant for Papuans because these changes marked a significant shift in how the region would be governed. The former name symbolised Indonesia’s victory and the latter symbolized Papuan victory.
Prior to these historical occurrences, the region was known as Netherlands New Guinea during Dutch rule, then as West Papua during a short-lived, Dutch-supported Papuan rule in 1961, then from Irian Barat to Irian Jaya when Indonesia annexed it in May 1963.
Just as their island has been dissected and tortured by European and Asian colonial powers, so too have Papuans, being tortured with all manner of racism and violence in the name of the civilisation project.
The messianic Gus Dur’s spark of hope instilled in the hearts of Papuans was short-lived. In July 2001, he was forced out of office after being accused of encouraging Indonesia’s disintegration. Gus Dur’s window of opportunity for Papuans to escape the tortured house was closed. The new chapter that Gus Dur wrote in Indonesia-Papua’s tale of horror was ripped out of his hands during the most pivotal year of human history — the new millennium 2000.
The demand for independence conveyed to President Habibie a year earlier by one hundred Papuan delegates was discarded. Instead, Jakarta offered a special gift for Papuans — gift the Special Autonomy Law 21/2001.
There was a belief among foreign observers, and Papua and Jakarta elites that this would lead to something special. It reflects Jakarta’s ability in terms of its semantic structure and highly curated selection used in law.
Rod McGibbon, an analyst and writer on Southeast Asian politics in Jakarta, noted in a Wall Street Journal article on 14 August 2001 that despite the challenges Jakarta faces in its dealings with Irian Jaya (Papua), the Special Autonomy approach represents the best opportunity for Jakarta to begin meaningful dialogue with provincial leaders. He also predicted that if Jakarta fails special autonomy, the province will suffer further ethnic and regional conflicts in the future.
He was right, 20 years later Special Autonomy turned out to be a big mess.
The law consisted of 79 articles, most of which were designed to give Papuans greater control over their fate — to safeguard their land and culture.
Furthermore, under this law, one important institution, the Papuan People’s Assembly (Majelis Rakyat Papua-MRP), together with provincial governments and the Papuan People’s Representative Council (Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat Papua-DPRP), was given the authority to deal with matters that are most important to them, such as land, population control, cultural identity, and symbols.
Section B in the introduction part of the Special Autonomy law reads as follows: “That the Papua community as God’s creation and is a part of a civilised people, who hold high human rights, religious values, democracy, law and cultural values in the adat (customary) law community and who have the right to fairly enjoy the results of development”
Assassination of prominent Papuan leader and Papuan chief Three weeks after the law was passed, popular independence leader Theys H. Eluay was killed by Indonesian special forces (Kopassus). Ryamizard Ryacudu, then-army chief of staff, who in 2014 became Jokowi’s first Defence Minister, later called the killers “heroes” (Tempo.co, August 19, 2003).
In 2003, the Megawati Soekarnoputri government divided the province into two. She was violating a provision of the Special Autonomy Law, which was based on the idea that Papua remains a single territory. As prescribed by law, any division would need to be approved by the Papuan provincial legislature and MRP.
Governor Lukas Enembe – Melanesian chief On August 22, 2019, Narasi (central Jakarta’s TV programme) invited Papua provincial Governor Lukas Enembe and others (both Papuans and Indonesians) to discuss mass demonstrations that erupted across West Papua and Indonesia after Papuan students were racially attacked in Surabaya.
The programme host, Najwa Shihab, was shocked to hear the governor’s response. When asked about his opinion about the situation, the governor said that Papuans already had their own concept to address problems in West Papua, but they needed an agreement/treaty under international auspices — or something of the sort — because no Jakarta-made law would work in Papua.
The host then asked, “you are a governor, but why don’t you believe the authority of Special Autonomy Law?” Governor Enembe replied, “The Special Autonomy Law 21/2001 has not worked until now.”
The governor stressed that Papuans do not have political power or free will to make any meaningful decision.
“We are supposed to make our own law under this Special Autonomy, but Jakarta refuses to allow it. Jakarta only gives money under this law, that’s all.”
The statements come from Papua’s number one man and not from someone on the street. The ruling elites in Jakarta are not fazed about breaking their own laws, showing their disrespect of the Papuan people and their integrity as a nation.
The governor is not the only official in the country’s highest office who lacks faith in the central government. Otopianus Tebai, a young Papuan senator who represents Papua in the central government said in a response to this new expansion plan that most Papuans reject the divisions (Suara.com, March 18, 2022). Divisions of which Papuans are being coerced into by the old special autonomy law renewal, which Governor Enembe declared as a total failure.
The MRP, Papua’s highest institution established under the special autonomy law to safeguard cultural identities, no longer has the power to act as intended. This institution has been stripped of its power, as well as other things, as a result of the 2021 amendment to the law which was passed two decades ago.
Timotius Murib, the chairman of this institution, said that the plan to create an autonomous region did not reflect the wishes of the people of Papua and would probably create more problems if Papuans were divided over it.
The chairman emphasised the law was designed for Papuans to have specific authority to implement local laws pertaining to our affairs, but the central government removed that authority by destroying any legal or government mechanism that materialised this authority.
Adding to these statements from the highest offices, more than 700,000 people have signed the Papuan People’s Petition, which represents 111 organisations opposing Special Autonomy.
Indonesian Brimob forces ready to move against Papuan protesters in Jakarta. Image: APR
Deep psychological war against Papuans – ‘divide and rule’ tactic Despite overwhelming opposition from many segments of Papuan society, the Indonesian government persists in imposing its will upon Papuans. It is precisely this action that is causing protests and havoc in recent weeks.
But not all Papuans are against it. Several regents (mostly Papuans) are supporting this expansion with their cronies and supporters, in conjunction with the Indonesian government, a few Papuan elites in Jakarta, and other misfits and opportunists.
The issue has caused division among indigenous Papuans. Among the Papuans, it plays directly into identity politics, as many tribes speak different languages, live in different ancestral and customary lands, and even practise different religions.
A protracted horizontal conflict between these languages, cultural, and geographical lines was already being created by the creation of more regencies and districts in the past. Adding three new provinces would lead to more regencies, which means more districts, which means more security forces and settlers and more problems.
In the midst of this drama, Jakarta is setting traps for Papuans by forcing them to face each other and preventing them from collectively confronting the system that is tearing them apart. The creation of more provinces and regions is leading to such traps since this will divide the people — which is clearly Indonesia’s ultimate goal.
If Papuans are too busy fighting one another, then the atrocities of the elites will fly under the radar, unopposed. What West Papua needs is unity, which has been demonstrated in recent protests. Together, Papuans will always be stronger than apart in their cause, and Jakarta will stop it with all its tricks.
If you are an imperial strategist or scammer in an empirical office somewhere in London, Canberra, Washington DC, or Jakarta, you might think that this is the best way to control and destroy a nation.
But history shows that, all dead ancient empires and the current dying Anglo-American led Western empires use this little magical trick “divide and rule” over others until it collapses from its wicked pathological and hypocritical weights from within.
Imperial planners in Jakarta should be focusing on overcoming their own internal weaknesses that would eventually bring them down rather than chasing after the monster they created out of West Papua.
In this frame of mind, any vestige of hope for Papua’s restoration and unity, whether contained within or outside the law, is a threat that will be undermined at any cost. The term autonomy is also defined differently in Papua’s affairs because Jakarta does not intend to empower Papuans to stand on their own two feet.
There is no real intention for Jakarta to give Papuans a chance to have some level of self-rule, which is exactly what being autonomous means in essence.
Papua’s autonomous status seems to be all part of the settler-colonial regime: occupation, expansion, and extermination. Papuans have been told that West Papua is special, but Jakarta is undermining and paralysing any mechanism it agrees upon to convince them that that is truly not the case.
In other words, Jakarta introduces a law, but it is Jakarta that violates it. The situation is analogous to students having a teacher who is not just negligent but hypocritical; everything the teacher believes in, they teach, not taking time to critically analyse their actions and how it all contradicts itself.
Under the whole scheme, Indonesia is presented as a self-appointed head of the class that they are holding hostage. They believe they are the only ones capable of teaching the stupid Papuans, of civilising the naked cave men, of saving the wild beasts, and developing the underdeveloped people.
But under the guise of the pathological civilisational myths, Jakarta poisons and destroy Papuans with food, alcohol, drugs, pornography, gambling, diseases and the ammunition which is used against them.
Rulers in Jakarta act as narcissistic sociopaths — they promise development, happiness, or even heaven while committing genocidal and homicidal acts against Papuans. They portray themselves as the “civilised” and the Papuans as the “uncivilised” – a psychological manipulation that allows them to avoid accountability for their crimes. Jakarta makes Papuans sick, then prescribes medication to cure the very same illness it caused.
A deep psychological game is being played to convince themselves (colonisers), and the Papuans (colonised) that Indonesia exists so that West Papua can be saved, improved, and developed. This pathological game is then embedded into the psyche of Papuans through all the colonial development products Jakarta sells to Papuans through education and indoctrination.
This programming is evident in the way that a few Papuans (with Jakarta acting as the puppeteer) fool their own people by telling them that Indonesian rule will bring salvation and prosperity.
Even the mental work of most Indonesians is being reprogrammed to view West Papua with that lens – they believe that Indonesia is saving and improving West Papua. Unbeknownst to them, this entity called “Indonesia” annihilates Papuans.
Local Papuan elites legitimize their power by saying that their own people also have serious problems (backwardness, stupidity, poverty) and that they have solutions to solve these problems. However, the solution is Jakarta-made, not Papuan-made, and that is the problem.
When governor Enembe said we need an international solution rather than a national one, he was conscious of these games being played against his people in his homeland. The Indonesian government exterminates Papuans by controlling both poison and antidote, but there is no antidote to begin with. It is all poison; the only difference is the label.
Markus Haluk’s words Markus Haluk’s words make a desperate plea for help as they face what he terms “annihilation” due to Indonesia’s racism, responding to mass demonstration in his own homeland.
His words highlight that the only viable solution is to grant the people the right to self-determination to establish their nation-state and declare that the people’s voice is the voice of God.
As tragic and ironic as it is, it is highly unlikely that Haluk’s words “the voice of the people is the voice of God” will mean anything to the ruling class in Jakarta since in the past 20 years all the attacks, betrayals, torture, racism, and killings have been committed after these words were written on the Special Autonomy Law No 21/2001.
Section B in the Introduction part of the law reads: “That the Papua community as God’s creation and is part of a civilized people, who hold high Human Rights, religious values, democracy, law and cultural values in the adat (customary) law community and who have the right to fairly enjoy the results of development.”
It seems that these words are merely part of the theatrics — the drama of cruelty, torture and death.
Settler-colony – the logic of ‘destroy to replace’ Indonesia’s occupation in West Papua is not temporary — they are not simply taking resources and going home. The Indonesians want to make West Papua their permanent home.
This is a permanent population resettlement colonial project based on the logic of destroy to replace. Papuans are being destroyed — and even worse, they are being replaced by Indonesian settlers. They are powerless to stop the annihilation and perversion of their ancestral homelands.
To occupy and own the land is the ultimate goal of settlers. Settler states aim to eradicate Indigenous societies through what an Australian historian and scholar, Patrick Wolfe, refers to as a the “logic of elimination” in his paper, Settler colonialism and the elimination of the native (2006).
Colonialism through population resettlement is the most destructive form of colonial project underpinned by self-righteous, pathological rationality which exterminates the original inhabitants as a moral requirement to justify the process of replacing itself.
In this pathological project, genocide is not considered evil but a necessity to achieve its exterminating objective. That is why the assassination of Theys H. Eluay just three weeks after the passing of the Special Autonomy Law was perhaps seen as a necessary evil to satisfy this colonial project.
West Papua: not just another one of Indonesia’s provinces Over the past 60 years, virtually all literature ever produced on West Papua failed to refer to it as a settler colony. The region is still treated as if it were just another province of Indonesia, and Jakarta insist on creating more provinces as if they have legal and moral rights. This is misleading and illegal considering Indonesia’s genocidal actions and the circumstances in which the region was incorporated into Indonesia in the 1960s.
Indonesia did not merely incorporate West Papua; it invaded an independent state by military force supported by Western governments by manipulating the UN’s system. Our continued use of West Papua as a part of Indonesia has distorted our understanding of the nature of the Indonesianisation programme being carried out there.
We need to scrutinise Jakarta’s activities on West Papua’s soil with a settler-colonial lens. This will help us frame our questions and structure our languages differently regarding Indonesian activities in West Papua.
It will also help us to see how West Papua is being destroyed under settler colony, similar to how European colonisation destroyed Indigenous people in Australia, New Zealand, the United States, and Canada.
We need to frame any administration centres of any type, whether religious, political, cultural, educational, legal, social or security forces established on West Papuan soil with a settler-colonial lens.
This will allow us to see how Jakarta created these parasitic colonial spaces camouflaged as province and regency to occupy, expand, and eventually exterminate its original inhabitants.
The settler-colonial system is a structure that facilitates this whole extermination project. Replacing one landscape for another, one people for another, one language for another, one system for another.
In light of this, it would appear that any law, policy, decree, regulation, or project enacted and enforced by Jakarta serves the purpose of eradicating the Papuan population from the land and replacing them with Indonesian settlers.
This has been done in Australia, America, Canada, and New Zealand, and now these Western powers are aiding Indonesia to do the same in West Papua.
Physically and psychologically, these new provinces (whether materialised or not) have become new battlefields in the war on Papuans. Indeed, Papuans are being forced onto these battle grounds, as in Rome’s Colosseums, to fight for their lives.
The most tragic outcome for Papuans is going to be Jakarta pitting brother against brother and sister against sister in Indonesian’s controlled colosseum of vile games. The blood of these young Papuans that was shed in Yahukimo during the recent demonstration, shows how Papuans are paying the ultimate price in this theatre of killing.
A way forward Let the same mechanism of the UN that was used to betray West Papua 60 years ago be used to deliver overdue justice for the Papuan people.
United States of America, the Netherlands, Indonesia and their allies of all kinds — thieves, criminals, thugs, militias and multinational bandits who betrayed the Papuan people and continue to drain them of their natural resources must take responsibility for their crimes against Papuans.
Countless of Resolutions on West Papuan human rights issues that have been written on paper in the offices of the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG), Pacific Islands Forum (PIF), African, Caribbean, and Pacific States (ACP), UN Human Rights Council (UNHC), and European Union (EU) must be materialised to end this tragic and unjust war Papuans are forced to face on their own.
These institutions need to unite and put their words into actions if they place any value on human life.
If no action is taken in these resolutions, their words only serve the imperial purposes, such as these meaningless words used in the Law 21/2001 on Special Autonomy, providing false hope to deceive people whose lives and lands are already at stake.
Remember what Markus Haluk wrote on March 10 — reproduced in the introduction to this article — calling on the world’s humanity to listen to the voices of two million Papuans and to intervene.
Yamin Kogoya is a West Papuan academic who has a Master of Applied Anthropology and Participatory Development from the Australian National University and who contributes to Asia Pacific Report. From the Lani tribe in the Papuan Highlands, he is currently living in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.
A report commissioned by Universities Australia released on Wednesday found one in 20 (4.5%) students had been sexually assaulted since starting at university.
The National Student Safety Survey report also found one in two students (48%) had experienced sexual harassment at least once in their lifetime. One in six (16%) had been sexually harassed since starting their studies, and one in 12 (81%) in the preceding 12 months.
Chair of Universities Australia, Professor John Dewar described the findings as “distressing, disappointing and confronting” and said the situation was “unacceptable”.
Wednesday’s report was the second national survey to explore rates of sexual assault and harassment among university students, following the Australian Human Rights Commission’s landmark Change the Course report in 2017.
The Change the Course survey found 1.6% of students reported having been sexually assaulted on at least one occasion in 2015 and/or 2016 in a university setting. One in five students (21%) reported having been sexually harassed in a university setting in 2015 and/or 2016.
Changes in methodology and the impact of COVID make it difficult to compare Wednesday’s report with findings in 2017. But it still shows the prevalence of sexual assault and harassment experienced by Australian university students has not markedly shifted.
Universities are this week reiterating many of the same catchphrases as after the 2017 report. They’re taking student feedback “very seriously” and adopting a “zero tolerance” approach to sexual violence. They’re also echoing many of the same commitments they made in 2017. This lack of substantive progress reflects the absence of robust enforcement mechanisms in regulatory oversight.
Students lack confidence in their institutions
The latest report found just 5.6% of students who had experienced sexual assault, and 3% who had experienced sexual harassment had made a formal report or complaint to their university. This is a deterioration from 2016 when the comparable reporting rates were still a troubling 13% and 6% respectively.
Of those who reported sexual assault in 2021, only 29.7% were satisfied with the university’s process. For those reporting sexual harassment, this went up to 41.3%. These figures indicate thousands of students are not seeking out or receiving the support they need following distressing incidents.
More than half of students participating in the survey knew “very little or nothing” about their university’s sexual assault and harassment policies and almost as many knew “nothing or very little” about where they could seek support or assistance within the university.
Submissions to the survey highlighted students’ lack of confidence in university responses and called for greater transparency around reporting avenues and disciplinary action.
What have universities done?
Australian universities are autonomous and self-regulating institutions. While they vary in size, resources and appetite to take on this difficult work, they all engage with students experiencing sexual assault and harassment.
[…] universities had instigated 800-plus actions and initiatives targeting sexual violence.
Universities’ commitments have included: independent reviews of university policies, new sexual assault and harassment policies, online reporting tools and confidential data collection, increased respectful relationship and consent education, first responder and bystander training programs, enhanced access to counselling services and increased visibility of support and reporting pathways.
Some universities have been proactive in reporting on their institutions’ efforts in recent years. For instance UNSW’s Annual Report on Sexual Misconduct includes information on key institutional actions as well as data recording the status and outcome of each investigation.
But not all universities have been as transparent, and assessing whether universities have actually delivered on their commitments can be incredibly difficult.
Given universities’ independent status, Universities Australia has no authority to enforce good practice with their members and has not monitored or evaluated the implementation of their sector-wide guidance or resources.
What about the university regulator?
The national higher education regulator, the Tertiary Education Quality Standards Agency (TEQSA) – usually tasked with registering providers and accrediting courses – says it has
moved to ensure that all higher education providers are fostering safe environments and supporting students in need.
However my PhD research indicates little support in the sector or among key stakeholders for TEQSA to lead this work. Research participants have suggested the regulator’s efforts have been impeded by resource constraints, insufficient expertise and an apparent reluctance to employ the regulatory tools at its disposal.
TEQSA used a complaints mechanism to investigate scenarios where students believed their university’s policies or procedures had failed them and breached legislated standards around well-being and safety.
Senate Estimates information that I’ve collated in my research indicates that this avenue has proven futile for complainants. The regulator investigated 21 such complaints between 2017–2020, mostly relating to universities. But in none did TEQSA find any reason to use its formal powers, such as placing conditions on a university’s registration. The strongest sanction applied by TEQSA has been “monitoring and annual reporting” of several universities.
While the average processing time for these complaints was almost six months, one case lodged by End Rape on Campus Australia in October 2019 was not finalised until June 2021. The organisation subsequently stopped recommending students use TEQSA’s complaints pathway.
In 2019 TEQSA endorsed university efforts to address sexual assault and harassment in a report to the education minister, after universities had self-reported their progress to the regulator. But later, in response to Senate Estimates questions on notice, TEQSA acknowledged it was aware of “discrepancies between the self-reported actions and the findings of the independent experts”.
Following this week’s report, TEQSA issued a statement saying it was “concerned” about the findings. That it has been monitoring university responses and is encouraging
[…] all registered providers to review their policies and procedures and ensure that information on sexual assault or sexual harassment prevention and response, including how students can access support services or institutional complaints frameworks, are shared with all their students.
Like university responses this week, this encouragement simply appears to be more of the same.
We need effective external oversight
After the Change the Course report, advocates proposed the establishment of an independent expert-led taskforce. This would have overseen university (and residential college) efforts to better manage and prevent sexual assault and harassment and enhance institutional accountability.
Sex Discrimination Commissioner Kate Jenkins, who led the 2016 survey, has made clear in her response to this week’s report that monitoring and accountability will be critical to achieving change. Such monitoring and accountability is not being delivered within the sector, nor by the national regulator.
It’s now time to revisit the taskforce proposal or consider a similar external oversight mechanism.
Allison Henry was the Campaign Director for The Hunting Ground Australia Project 2015-2018 and in this capacity worked closely with advocate groups and was involved in the development of the Taskforce proposal referred to in this article. She is an Associate of the Australian Human Rights Institute at UNSW.
This month, the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft will make the first fully-private, crewed flight to the International Space Station. The going price for a seat is US$55 million. The ticket comes with an eight-day stay on the space station, including room and board – and unrivalled views.
Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin offer cheaper alternatives, which will fly you to the edge of space for a mere US$250,000-500,000. But the flights only last between ten and 15 minutes, barely enough time to enjoy an in-flight snack.
But if you’re happy to keep your feet on the ground, things start to look more affordable. Over the past 20 years, advances in tiny satellite technology have brought Earth orbit within reach for small countries, private companies, university researchers, and even do-it-yourself hobbyists.
Science in space
We are scientists who study our planet and the universe beyond. Our research stretches to space in search of answers to fundamental questions about how our ocean is changing in a warming world, or to study the supermassive black holes beating in the hearts of distant galaxies.
The cost of all that research can be, well, astronomical. The James Webb Space Telescope, which launched in December 2021 and will search for the earliest stars and galaxies in the universe, had a final price tag of US$10 billion after many delays and cost overruns.
The price tag for the International Space Station, which has hosted almost 3,000 scientific experiments over 20 years, ran to US$150 billion, with another US$4 billion each year to keep the lights on.
Even weather satellites, which form the backbone of our space-based observing infrastructure and provide essential measurements for weather forecasting and natural disaster monitoring, cost up to US$400 million each to build and launch.
Budgets like these are only available to governments and national space agencies – or a very select club of space-loving billionaires.
Space for everyone
More affordable options are now democratising access to space. So-called nanosatellites, with a payload of less than 10kg including fuel, can be launched individually or in “swarms”.
Since 1998, more than 3,400 nanosatellite missions have been launched and are beaming back data used for disaster response, maritime traffic, crop monitoring, educational applications and more.
A key innovation in the small satellite revolution is the standardisation of their shape and size, so they can be launched in large numbers on a single rocket.
CubeSats are a widely used format, 10cm along each side, which can be built with commercial off-the-shelf electronic components. They were developed in 1999 by two professors in California, Jordi Puig-Suari and Bob Twiggs, who wanted graduate students to get experience designing, building and operating their own spacecraft.
Twiggs says the shape and size were inspired by Beanie Babies, a kind of collectable stuffed toy that came in a 10cm cubic display case.
Commercial launch providers like SpaceX in California and Rocket Lab in New Zealand offer “rideshare” missions to split the cost of launch across dozens of small satellites. You can now build, test, launch and receive data from your own CubeSat for less than US$200,000.
The universe in the palm of your hand
Small satellites have opened exciting new ways to explore our planet and beyond.
One project we are involved in uses CubeSats and machine learning techniques to monitor Antarctic sea ice from space. Sea ice is a crucial component of the climate system and improved measurements will help us better understand the impact of climate change in Antarctica.
Spire Global operates a fleet of more than 110 nanosatellites. Spire Global
Sponsored by the UK-Australia Space Bridge program, the project is a collaboration between universities and Antarctic research institutes in both countries and a UK-based satellite company called Spire Global. Naturally, we called the project IceCube.
Small satellites are starting to explore beyond our planet, too. In 2018, two nanosatellites accompanied the NASA Insight mission to Mars to provide real-time communication with the lander during its decent. In May 2022, Rocket Lab will launch the first CubeSat to the Moon as a precursor to NASA’s Artemis program, which aims to land the first woman and first person of colour on the Moon by 2024.
Tiny spacecraft have even been proposed for a voyage to another star. The Breakthough Starshot project wants to launch a fleet of 1,000 spacecraft each centimetres in size to the Alpha Centauri star system, 4.37 light-years away. Propelled by ground-based lasers, the spacecraft would “sail” across interstellar space for 20 or 30 years and beam back images of the Earth-like exoplanet Proxima Centauri b.
Small but mighty
With advances in miniaturisation, satellites are getting ever smaller.
For a few hundred dollars you can build and launch a tiny working satellite. Ambasat
“Picosatellites”, the size of a can of soft drink, and “femtosatellites”, no bigger than a computer chip, are putting space within reach of keen amateurs. Some can be assembled and launched for as little as a few hundred dollars.
A Finnish company is experimenting with a more sustainably built CubeSat made of wood. And new, smart satellites, carrying computer chips capable of artificial intelligence, can decide what information to beam back to Earth instead of sending everything, which dramatically reduces the cost of phoning home.
Getting to space doesn’t have to cost the Earth after all.
Shane Keating and Clare Kenyon will be discussing CubeSats and the Space Bridge program at Design beyond Earth: The future of Earth observation, an in-person and online event at Scienceworks in Melbourne on Sunday March 27, 12pm-1pm.
Dr Shane Keating and the IceCube project are funded by the UK-Australian Space Bridge program, which is managed and led by SmartSatCRC in collaboration with the other funding partners and supported by Austrade, the Australian Space Agency, the UK Government and UK Space Agency. The IceCube project has also received in-kind support from Spire Global (UK).
Clare Kenyon 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.
Several months ago, Australia’s Murdoch media news outlets launched a new climate change campaign advocating a path toward net-zero emissions by 2050. The launch included a 16-page wraparound supplement in all of its tabloids supporting the need for climate action.
We do not usually expect news media to campaign for political and social causes. Yet, here was one of the most powerful media organisations in the country not only implying it has held an editorial stance against climate action in the past, but also declaring a plan to reverse this position.
In announcing the launch, News Corp said a major reason climate action has stalled in Australia is “the debate has fallen victim to a culture of constant complaint”.
[…] so here you will see only positive stories: real, practical and pragmatic solutions that will help the planet and also help Australia’s interests as well.
Can a leopard change its spots? My analysis of the Murdoch outlets’ recent flood coverage suggests not.
Climate change is reported in a range of ways in news media to help audiences understand its causes and consequences, as well as the policy responses.
Extreme weather events such as bushfires and floods allow journalists to show how climate change is contributing to the severity of natural disasters in an urgent and visual way.
However, my analysis of recent flood coverage in the Murdoch news outlets shows that although the terms “climate change” and “floods” were placed together in a range of articles, these outlets are still well behind others when it comes to emphasising the connection between extreme weather events and our warming planet.
I looked at 171 articles (both news and opinion) in major Australian print and online news media from March 1–13 that mentioned climate change and floods together – and those that downplayed the link between the two.
Climate Floods Graph.
There was some standout coverage making the link in at least one Murdoch outlet, news.com.au. This included a report about the Climate Council’s warnings of the impact of climate change on flooding, and another about the impact of climate change on food prices.
Yet the total number of articles linking climate change to floods in the Murdoch outlets (which also include The Australian, Herald Sun, Daily Telegraph and Courier Mail) lagged behind ABC News, the Nine newspapers, The Guardian and The Conversation.
The analysis also shows the Murdoch outlets were the only news organisations where voices argued the floods were not exacerbated by climate change.
As reported by Crikey, The Guardian and ABC’s Media Watch, conservative commentators such as Andrew Bolt and Chris Kenny continue to muddy the water when it comes to the impact of climate on extreme weather.
The pretence that climate policies can relieve us of these natural traumas is a ridiculously emotive and deceptive ploy.
The Australian’s Chris Mitchell even complained that other media outlets such as the ABC put too much emphasis on the link between climate change and flooding.
How the media advocate on issues
This analysis suggests the Murdoch outlets are not overtly advocating for climate action, nor linking catastrophic flooding with the need for political action aimed at achieving net zero by 2050.
Indeed, editorial hostility toward climate change is alive and well among the most powerful voices at the Murdoch outlets, with coverage that is seemingly more interested in advocating against climate action than for it.
This provides insight into different styles of news coverage and their influence on democratic debate.
Although Australian audiences expect media outlets to produce news that is objective, ideologically neutral and independent of politics, journalists and commentators sometimes play the role of “advocates” for particular issues and causes.
This style of journalism is not widely understood because it clashes with the idealised expectation that journalists shrug off their own perspectives to report without fear or favour.
In a recent study I conducted, I propose there are three styles of advocacy journalism – radical, collaborator and conservative. And each one either enhances or degrades democratic debate.
What I call “radical advocacy” is when journalists deliberately campaign to increase the diversity of voices in news media, particularly when those voices are marginalised from mainstream debate.
An example is The Guardian’s “Keep it in the ground” campaign, which is transparently aimed at improving the public’s understanding of climate change. This style of journalism – although subjective and biased – arguably has a positive influence on democracy since its mission is to increase understanding of a crucial global issue and rally the public to join the cause.
“Collaborator advocacy” journalism is when media organisations cooperate with government, such as when they broadcast flood warnings, advise the public what to do in an emergency or agree not to publish the locations of troops at war.
This style of advocacy can be good for democracy when it is deemed in the public interest. It can, however, be detrimental if the government controls media coverage to the point at which opposition voices are deliberately excluded.
The third style of advocacy – “conservative advocacy” – is one I’ve coined to describe journalism and commentary that promotes the agenda of powerful players in a political or social debate.
An obvious example is the Murdoch media traditionally siding with big fossil fuel and oil interests through their longstanding editorial hostility to policies designed to address climate change.
Conservative advocacy degrades democracy by locking less powerful voices out of the debate, spreading what some would deem misinformation and deliberately downplaying or countering scientific research and evidence-based policy.
If the Murdoch media follow through with their promise to advocate for net zero by 2050, their campaign would fit within the radical definition. But since these outlets are historically entrenched in a conservative tradition, this shift to a more radical position on climate might prove difficult to achieve.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alex Polyakov, Clinical Associate Professor, Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry & Health Sciences., The University of Melbourne
Shutterstock
In response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and overwhelming destruction of property and loss of innocent lives, a number of western companies – from McDonalds to Apple – stopped or severely limited their activities in the Russian Federation.
One glaring exception appears to be the majority of western pharmaceutical companies that continue to supply medicines and equipment.
There is growing political and consumer pressure on these companies to take steps to join the concerted efforts designed to pressure the
Russian government to stop the war in Ukraine.
The counterargument advanced by the companies continuing business in Russia revolves around the fact medicines are exempt from sanctions on humanitarian grounds.
However there is a way pharmaceutical companies could signal their disapproval to Russia, without risking the lives of ordinary Russian citizens.
Western countries that imposed crippling sanctions on the Russian economy are not technically at war with Russia. Therefore, unless directed by their governments as part of the sanctions regime, these companies have no legal barriers to continuing to supply medicines to Russia.
It is also true that any interruption in the supply of medicines will disproportionately affect the most disadvantaged members of the Russian society, while having minimal impact on the country’s elite and decision-makers.
Furthermore, one could legitimately argue the majority of the Russian people are not responsible for the decisions made at the top and should not suffer unjustly. It is also likely the current government of Russia may not be swayed by the suffering of its people and therefore any interruption of supply of medicines may create human misery without any appreciable gain.
Still, there is little doubt widespread abandonment of Russia by western companies will have a substantial impact on the Russian government, economy and population. Therefore, it is morally essential for western drug companies to take some concrete steps to participate in the effort to influence the Russian government as well as its people.
A list of companies that either withdrew, scaled back or continue to operate in Russia demonstrates the majority of pharmaceutical companies have either scaled back their involvement in the Russian economy or continue to operate at pre-war levels.
Those that scaled back have done so to a variable extent, in some instances only reducing their activity by a tokenistic amount, such as suspending advertising in Russia, delaying new investments or pausing clinical trial enrolments.
These minimalistic measures are unlikely to have a meaningful impact and are likewise unlikely to be acceptable by the general public in the west or by activist shareholders. Some companies appear to have taken no steps to reduce their activities in Russia and appear at the very bottom of the list.
Western pharmaceutical companies must balance two conflicting considerations: they must provide life-saving medicines to avoid humanitarian disaster in Russia, and at the same time they must not appear to support in any way the humanitarian catastrophe currently taking place in Ukraine.
It is a difficult line to tread, however there is a pragmatic compromise. Essential medicines, as defined by the World Health Organisation’s Expert Committee on Selection and Use of Essential Medicines, could continue to be supplied, with all other business ceasing.
Medicines on this essential list are defined as:
those that satisfy the priority health care needs of the population. They are intended to be available within the context of function health systems at all times, in adequate amounts, in the appropriate dosage forms, of assured quality and at prices that individuals and the community can afford.
This would include medicines for serious chronic illness, life-saving cancer drugs, antibiotics, antivirals, poison antidotes, and pain relief and anaesthetics.
Western pharmaceutical companies should only supply medicines in this list to Russia and suspend all other commercial activities including local manufacturing of medicines, advertising, clinical trials, scientific collaborations and infrastructure investments. Medicines not included on the essentials list should be withheld, which include drugs for non-life threatening complaints such as acne, erectile dysfunction, cosmetic medications and fertility drugs.
This action would be consistent with both their humanitarian obligations towards Russian patients and their obligations as global citizens.
Any profits derived from business activities in Russia could be considered tainted by the actions of the Russian government. Pharmaceutical companies that continue to supply essential medicines to the Russian market should consider donating profits generated by such transactions to established charities closely involved in managing the devastating humanitarian effects of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, such as the UNICEF Ukraine Emergency Appeal.
Alex Polyakov was born in Kyiv, Ukraine but left the country in 1989, before the fall of the Soviet Union. He has no other ongoing affiliations or relationships with any entities in either Ukraine or the Russian Federation.
Julian Savulescu consults to Bayer Pharmaceutical and Avon cosmetics. He is Partner Investigator on a grant co-funded by Illumina, but neither he nor his institution receive those funds. He received a fee for speaking as a panellist podcast sponsored by MyProtein in August 2020.
Satellite image/Maxar Technologies – via Getty Images
At least seven forest fires continue to burn around the Russian-held Chernobyl nuclear site in Ukraine, raising fears radionuclides could spread from the defunct facility.
Earlier this week, the Ukrainian parliament issued a statement blaming the fires on shelling or arson by Russian forces that captured the site in February.
According to the statement, the fires now cover an area ten times larger than the emergency criteria for the site’s exclusion zone, but the ongoing war prevents firefighters from putting them out.
Nuclear disasters are caused by a mix of technical, environmental, social and political conditions. And these contingencies don’t always match with the branding of nuclear energy as peaceful, safe and sustainable. This contrast is at its starkest in war zones, but also in the growing advocacy for nuclear energy as a low-carbon solution to climate change.
Are nuclear disasters really beyond expectation?
Consider how Tokyo Electric Power Company knew in 2008 that a tsunami of more than 15.7m could hit Fukushima Daiichi, but did nothing to prepare.
As was the case in 2020, fires in the exclusion zone could again result in uranium-derived radionuclides being transported to neighbouring countries.
The remnants of an abandoned building in the Chernobyl exclusion zone. Plants in the area remain contaminated from the 1986 nuclear disaster. Chris McGrath/Getty Images
Expecting the possible onset of a war-induced nuclear disaster, people and schools in Scandinavia and across Europe have begun purchasing iodine tablets. These pills are used to saturate people’s thyroid glands to prevent the absorption of radioactive iodine-131, which could be released if one of Ukraine’s nuclear reactors or nuclear waste storage facilities were to be damaged in the war.
However, as the case of Fukushima Daiichi highlights, even when there were documented warnings of potential environmental disturbances to the plant’s operations, Japanese officials continued to describe the disaster as “sōteigai” (beyond expectation).
As wind and rain carried uranium-derived radionuclides throughout Japan and around the world, these materials were continually described as “safe” to live alongside, drink and eat. As their measurable levels increased, so did the expectation that people simply needed to accept the new risks to their health.
Getting people to accept new threats to their health often involves the exertion of social power. In post-2011 Japan, those who questioned the safety of eating or feeding their children uranium-derived radionuclides were quickly characterised as “fuan” (anxious) or accused of spreading “fūhyōhigai” (harmful rumours).
We can see how the dominant story of nuclear safety needed to be maintained for nuclear energy to uphold its branding as peaceful and safe, even as materials from nuclear reactors spilled into people’s everyday lives.
The “sustainable” part of nuclear energy’s branding depends on abstract calculations which often only consider carbon emissions produced during a nuclear reactor’s operation. But nuclear power plants do not exist out of relationship with land and water. They require the mining, transport and enrichment of uranium, as well as the development of nuclear waste storage facilities which must last thousands of years.
It is impossible to label the technology as green or sustainable without taking into account the entire life cycle of a nuclear reactor and its infrastructures.
The United Nations recognises the importance of both social and environmental aspects of sustainability. This raises the question of whether nuclear energy’s carbon footprint is a reliable sustainability metric. Particularly because there are various other forms of pollution and harm that arise from nuclear technologies.
For example, a disproportionate amount of nuclear activity takes place on the lands of Indigenous people and in ways that perpetuate nuclear colonialism.
Uranium mining and nuclear waste disposal are essential aspects of both nuclear energy and nuclear weapons. The symbolic split between “peaceful” nuclear energy and “murderous” nuclear weapons is only possible if we ignore the material aspects of nuclear technologies (uranium mining, waste storage) and the experiences of Indigenous and other marginalised communities.
In the case of nuclear weapons, Indigenous lands (in the US, Australia and the Pacific, the Arctic and elsewhere) were the direct or indirect targets of most nuclear weapons testing. And uranium mining for both nuclear weapons and nuclear energy continues to harm Indigenous communities in Canada, Australia, the US, India and beyond.
Nuclear energy’s need for stability
In early March, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) director general Rafael Mariano Grossi told reporters that Russia’s takeover of Ukraine’s Chernobyl and Zaporizhzhia nuclear power complexes had left the IAEA “in completely uncharted waters”. His comment resembles Japanese officials’ portrayal of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster almost 11 years earlier.
Grossi outlined seven indispensable pillars necessary to ensure nuclear reactors, nuclear fuel storage pools and nuclear waste storage facilities remain safe and secure:
the physical integrity of the facilities must be maintained
all safety and security systems and equipment must be fully functional at all times
operating staff must be able to fulfil their safety and security duties and have the capacity to make decisions free of undue pressure
there must be secure off-site power supply from the grid for all nuclear sites
there must be uninterrupted logistical supply chains and transportation to and from the sites
there must be effective on-site and off-site radiation monitoring systems, emergency preparedness and response measures
there must be reliable communications with the regulator and others.
Grossi also said everyone (including Russia) had agreed to uphold these pillars. However, the IAEA later reported the Russian military breached pillars three and seven at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power complex. And pillars four and six were breached when the Chernobyl nuclear power complex lost off-site power and when its radiation monitoring systems stopped functioning.
As I witness the horrors of the war in Ukraine, I hope the IAEA will hold the Russian government to their word and use associated memorandums to prevent the release of more uranium-derived radionuclides into the environment.
I also hope we will use this opportunity to take a critical look at nuclear energy’s branding. Particularly how upholding the “peaceful, safe and sustainable” brand can require overlooking the material consequences of nuclear technologies, as well as the material contingencies nuclear reactors, nuclear waste storage facilities, uranium mines and other nuclear infrastructures face in an increasingly unstable world.
Karly Burch 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.
The summer of 2021-22 will be remembered for the extraordinarily destructive flooding across eastern Australia. At the same time, however, western Tasmania was experiencing extreme drought, with some areas receiving their lowest rainfall on record.
This drought fits an observed drying trend across the state, which will worsen due to climate change. This is very bad news for the ancient wilderness in the state’s World Heritage Area, where the lineage of some tree species stretch back 150 million years to the supercontinent Gondwana.
The drying trend has seen a steady increase in bushfires ignited by lightning, imperilling the survival of Tasmania’s Gondwanan legacy, and raising profound fire management challenges. Indeed, climate change means we’re on a learning curve, and the usual practices of managing fire are no longer necessarily fit for purpose.
There is increasing scientific recognition of the risk of the Gondanwan ecosystem collapsing from climate change driven fires. A new draft fire management plan outlines key steps to ensure these iconic forests survive for decades to come – and it must receive dedicated funding.
Tasmania’s drought
Western Tasmania is one of Australia’s wettest regions, where average annual rainfall can exceed 3 metres. Cool temperatures, year-round rainfall, and complex topography have created fire refugia – landscapes naturally protected from fire. This is why western Tasmania is home to a suite of so-called “living fossils”, such as Huon pines and pencil pines.
Pencil pine is one of Tasmania’s tree species with Gondwanan lineage. Shutterstock
The survival of these relic species hangs in a delicate balance. They occur in small patches surrounded by large areas of highly flammable Australian vegetation, such as eucalypts, tea-tree and, within in the World Heritage site, the ubiquitous buttongrass moorland.
The cool moist climate, combined with the skilful, intentional application of fire by Aboriginal people, have conserved ancient, unique trees for millennia. However, the changes in fire patterns following colonialism have caused some Gondwanan refugia to collapse.
Western Tasmania’s current drought is its worst in 40 years, despite the presence of La Niña – a natural climate phenomenon that brings cool, wet weather to parts of Australia. It has also been one Tasmania’s hottest summers on record.
Fortunately, the past summer has seen only a few bushfires ignited by lightning. Nonetheless, one of these fires was near the last remaining stand of unlogged Huon pine forest.
To understand the level of risk to Tasmania’s World Heritage Area, we can look to bushfires in 2016 and 2019 when massive dry lightning storms ignited fires in remote wilderness areas, threatening ecologically irreplaceable areas such as the Walls of Jerusalem and Mt Anne.
The Walls of Jerusalem is an alpine park in northwest Tasmania. Shutterstock
And let’s not forget, the largest fire in the 2019-20 bushfire crisis, which threatened many Blue Mountains towns, was ignited by a lightning strike in a remote and rugged area.
Likewise, the devastating 2003 Canberra bushfires was caused by lightning strikes in Kosciuszko and Namadgi National Parks.
There can be no doubt effective management of Tasmania’s wilderness will provide protection for nearby towns.
So what does sustainable fire management look like?
It’s widely accepted among Australian fire management agencies and conservation groups that aerial firefighting is key to controlling remote bushfires. But there are significant downsides to this approach.
The two most important are the very high costs of using aircraft, and the environmental impacts of firefighting chemicals. Some firefighting chemicals can, for instance, change soil chemistry so it favours weed invasion.
Tasmania’s Wilderness World Heritage Area needs a sustainable fire management approach which, crucially, employs and involves Aboriginal people. This would not only benefit the environment, but also enable Aboriginal people in Tasmania to reconnect with important cultural sites.
A sustainable approach is one that reduces the number of large bushfires while also intentionally applies fire to ecosystems and threatened species that require regular burning. For example, the critically endangered orange bellied parrot needs regularly burned buttongrass moorland as part of its habitat.
For this to work, we need to create carefully designed fuel breaks across the landscape – strips of land with less vegetation available to burn, which slows bushfires.
There are downsides to aerial firefighting, such as releasing toxic chemicals into the environment. Shutterstock
Naturally, such planned burning must consider biodiversity, ensuring fire sensitive plants that can’t bounce back – such as pencil pines and alpine vegetation – are protected. At the same time, we must continue to burn native plants that depend on fire to regenerate.
Protecting biodiversity can be achieved through carefully implementing a practice called “mosaic” burning. This is where small areas are regularly burnt to create a patchwork of habitats so wildlife has a diversity of resources and places to shelter in.
Ultimately, well-designed landscape management will give managers confidence to let some fires run free, rather than attempting costly aerial firefighting campaigns.
By contrast, areas with internationally important natural and cultural values should be the focus of fire protection efforts when bushfires do occur, such as the innovative use of sprinklers to protect the shores of Lake Rhona.
More fire in our future
The above fire management approaches are outlined in the current draft fire management plan for the World Heritage Area. Realising its objectives will require dedicated, recurrent funding, without which the plan’s goals will remain aspirational.
What’s more, any fire management evaluation going forward must be publicly transparent to see continual improvement. It will also ensure there’s a broader community understanding of the need to make difficult decisions to adapt to climate change-driven bushfires.
The 2019-20 bushfire crisis that shocked the world has been overwritten by many other subsequent crises, such as the pandemic, flooding, and geopolitical turmoil.
Indeed, the soggy summer in eastern Australia has no doubt engendered a widespread belief bushfires have gone away. They haven’t. The luxuriate growth from the La Niña is priming landscapes across eastern Australia to burn again.
We must keep focus on adapting to bushfires that are being turbo charged by climate change. With serious investment to protect Tasmania’s precious environment, the rest of Australia – and indeed other flammable wildernesses elsewhere in the world – can too learn how to sustainably manage increasingly devastating bushfires.
David Bowman receives funding from The Australian Research Council, the Tasmanian Government Department Department of Primary Industries, Parks, Water and Environment, the NSW Office of Heritage and Environment, Australia’s Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, and the Natural Disaster Risk Reduction Grants Program.
Jenny Styger was the fire management officer for the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area, and wrote the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area Draft Fire Management Plan.
You’re driving slowly along a street, looking for a place to park. You come across a long stretch of parallel parking. But to your frustration, the spaces left by other people’s parking efforts are not quite long enough for you to fit. The search continues.
Drawn from our own frustrating experiences with parking, we decided to answer the question once and for all – what’s the best way to parallel park your car? Our research has found a simple answer.
You should always park at one end of a parking space, leaving as big a space as possible at the other end. It doesn’t matter which end – just remember to leave yourself room to get out. While this might sound obvious, a quick look at the street outside your home will show many drivers think parking in the middle of the space is best – or just don’t give it much thought at all.
Optimising how we park our cars in cities matters, because free parking spaces are, by their nature, a limited resource. We’ve taken to our cars with a vengeance as the world slowly reemerges from lockdowns. Mobility data shows our cities are coming back to life, with our travel behaviours changing in turn.
Even though many of us are still working from home, those of us commuting are reluctant to return to public transport. You’ll have already noticed the result based on traffic. The number of cars on the roads of Australian cities has already met or gone past pre-COVID numbers, and so too the parking demand.
Apple Mobility data shows activity has resumed in Sydney, with driving recovering more strongly than public transit or walking. covid19.apple.com/mobility
How can we all park better?
Everyone is familiar with marked spaces, where painted lines show you where to park. These help manage our frustrations with unreliable parking, but they are bad for density because every space needs to be able to accommodate a large car.
In our research, we focused on unmarked parallel parking, such as that found on most residential streets. That’s because here we can control exactly where we position our cars.
We tested four strategies drivers can follow in these types of parks:
always park as far back as possible
park at either end of the space
park in the middle of the space
randomly park anywhere in the available space.
We simulated what would happen in the common situation where demand exceeds supply, in which there is always a car waiting to park, with a driver who is prepared to wait until someone else leaves.
Hunting for a car park can be a frustrating experience. Shutterstock
The worst strategy for maximising car parks? Parking in the middle of the space. You might find this useful if, say, you wanted to discourage people from parking directly outside your house. Parking in the middle of the available space makes it harder to cram more cars in.
We found parking randomly in a space can produce slightly better outcomes. Many drivers use this strategy subconsciously.
But overall, the best strategy for fitting as many cars into scarce street parking is to park at either end of the space. It doesn’t matter which end you park at, and it doesn’t even matter if you choose the same end as your neighbours. Under this scenario, we could fit the most cars onto any street.
The four parking strategies we tested. Time progresses from bottom to top, with cars leaving and being replaced. Cars are represented by coloured rectangles, with the width of the rectangle the length of the car, and the height of the rectangle how long it was parked for. White represents a gap along the kerb. Author provided
We also analysed what happens when there’s only a small distance between driveways or intersections. If you live in a street with shorter kerbs, parking at either end of the spot becomes even more beneficial.
How significant is this technique? In many residential areas, you can almost double the number of cars able to fit on the road by parking at the front or back of the available spaces.
Issues with parking
Parking is a scarce resource that we need to manage carefully to encourage other modes of transport, such as public and active transport. Storing cars on valuable land is also a poor use of real estate. If autonomous cars arrive, we might see a future in which cars drive themselves off to remote car parks and free up all of the highly accessible land currently used for street parking.
If we wanted to reduce the demand for parking, we would have to encourage more people to return to public transport through measures such as lowering fares, or increasing the cost of parking or fuel. We could also build extra car parks next to train stations or bus bays.
But given these measures are unlikely to happen in the near future, we need to make the most of the parking we have.
Until then, the management of on-street parking will remain a vexed issue, particularly in our most congested cities. In Sydney, for instance, local residents and commuters vie with visitors for the right to park in a given street.
As the amount of on-street parking is more or less fixed, we should make the most of the space we’ve got. Next time you come across an unmarked parallel park, try parking at the front or back of the space.
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.
There were some extraordinary films released in 2021: Ninja Thyberg’s Pleasure, an electric neon romp through the porn world, Ildikó Enyedi’s period epic, The Story of My Wife, Paul Verhoeven’s nun-film, Benedetta.
It should come as no surprise that this is not reflected in the Oscar nominees for Best Picture.
Dune: Best Picture?
A pulpy science-fiction narrative, not that far removed from an L. Ron Hubbard work, it seems strange to suggest that Dune is 2021’s “Best Picture”. It isn’t – but it is my choice for the Oscar, out of a ho-hum bunch of nominees.
Denis Villeneuve’s latest film is certainly the most cinematic of the selection, and it works exceptionally well at a formal level. It’s a striking, hypnotic work – and totally coherent (unlike the previous Lynch/Smithee version!) – a realisation of Herbert’s world both surreal and appropriately full of dread.
The whole thing is anchored by the excellent production design of Patrice Vermette: desert planet Arakis seems ominously sparse, its weathered concrete monoliths straight from a deranged modernist’s dream. The sound design is also first rate (as is Hans Zimmer’s score, perfect as usual), and the combination of the surreal images and intense sounds creates a wholly immersive cinematic experience.
Timothée Chalamet in Dune (2021), a striking, hypnotic and cinematic choice – the top pick among the nominated films. IMDB
Villeneuve effectively converts Herbert’s convoluted narrative of the power machinations of the Atreides, Harkonnen, etc. into a staggeringly clear – and relatively short, these days, for this kind of thing – genre film.
Angsty heartthrob Timothée Chalamet, as main character Paul Atreides, has neither the presence or chops to carry an epic fantasy film like this, and, thankfully, he doesn’t have to – Josh Brolin and Jason Mamoa are suitably brutal, Oscar Isaac brings an air of stately gravity to the role of Duke Leto Atreides, father of Paul (though they look pretty close in age!), and Rebecca Ferguson, as Lady Jessica Atreides, does the mother-witch thing with a humane and slightly off-kilter bent, reminding one of a more benevolent Lady Macbeth.
Villeneuve is a powerhouse director, one of the more interesting working in mainstream film today, and Dune plays well as a trashy fantasy film. That being said, it is only Part I of two, so we’ll see how the second part holds up now most of the compelling characters have been killed.
The Power of the Dog: Worst Picture?
At the opposite end of the list is another genre film, Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog. Made for Netflix, Campion’s Western has received wide acclaim and has been film of the year on multiple lists. It’s hard to see why.
Campion has made some good films in the past – The Piano is a deliciously silly bodice ripper in the clothing of a serious film, and deserved its accolades (naked Harvey Keitel alone would warrant the acclaim!). The Power of the Dog, in contrast, is strained and tiresome, a long epic without an interesting story, meaningful panoramic cinematography (though I watched it on a TV screen, maybe it would have appeared spectacular in the cinema) or anything significant and original to say about its topic of interest: the American West and the Western genre.
Benedict Cumberbatch in The Power of the Dog (2021). IMDB
Its one point – revealing the homoerotic impulses often underpinning the masculine bravado of Western cowboy narratives – has been made numerous times before, with Westerns, American and otherwise, frequently making a similar statement since at least the 1940s, in films that are more dynamic, look better, and don’t suffer from the air of self-importance surrounding this one.
Jesse Plemons is a good actor, but he’s wasted in a fairly thankless part; Kirsten Dunst seems lost, struggling to convince us as a hapless alcoholic woman trapped in a thankless man’s world; and Benedict Cumberbatch, in the lead part, gives a typically commanding but unnuanced performance, playing Phil Burbank with stagy gusto.
While Australian Kody Smit-McPhee is fine as Peter Gordon, the point is that all of the characters are caricatures – unoriginal inversions of genre archetypes – and, in a serious film in which not much happens – that is, in a film that is supposed to be buoyed by emotional authenticity and emotional realism – this is fatal.
That being said, it will not surprise me if this wins the Oscar for Best Picture.
And… the rest
Campion’s film is the weakest of the nominees; there are some others that are quite good.
Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza is a madcap LA teen romp, a 1970’s picaresque nostalgia film featuring stellar newcomers Alana Haim and Cooper Hoffman in the lead roles.
It’s long and unwieldy, and would not be to everyone’s taste, but has the advantage of actually capturing an original, albeit fractured and fractious, vision of the world. Unlike some of P.T. Anderson’s other recent films, it is surprisingly good-natured.
Alana Haim in Licorice Pizza (2021). IMDB
Nightmare Alley, directed by Guillermo del Toro, also offers solid genre fare. It’s a remake of Edmund Goulding’s (considerably better) film-noir of the same name from 1947, and follows the rise and fall of Stanton Carlisle, a mentalist who begins his trade in the circus before becoming a popular nightclub act. Like most of del Toro’s films, it is dripping in period and genre nostalgia, but this adds to, rather than detracts from, the colour, here.
Don’t Look Up is the global warming equivalent of Barry Levinson’s 1990s satire, Wag the Dog, and, like Wag the Dog, it is, at times, a little too clever for its own good.
It comes across as irritatingly pontificating in places, with Jonah Hill’s characterisation as a Presidential son (a la Trump’s family) heavy-handedly hammering home its point. But – like all of Adam Mackay’s films – it’s well made and funny, a media-literate romp satirising (or maybe just demonstrating) life in the social media age.
The rest of the nominees are watchable if unspectacular films, including the Irish nostalgia film Belfast, the coming of age drama CODA, King Richard a biopic about the struggle of the Williams family to make it in the tennis world, Drive My Car a beautifully shot version of the eponymous Murakami story, and Spielberg’s latest, an un-engaging remake of West Side Story.
Which movie will win? Dune? The Power of the Dog? King Richard? In any case, I can guarantee it won’t be the best picture of 2021.
Ari Mattes 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.
Political observers hang out for when the prime minister will announce the election date, marking the start of the “campaign”.
This year, it hardly seems to matter, and not just because we know the election now must be on one of three dates – May 7, 14, or 21. It’s as much because the “campaign” is already with us – indeed, it has been for months.
Day in, day out, Scott Morrison and Anthony Albanese are tramping around the country, making announcements of promises, big or small. Morrison has tossed out multi billions in recent weeks for defence, a dam, vaccine production and a good deal else.
It’s become a blur whether the commitments are fresh or re-burnished, the money new or from some existing pot. Long-term timetables further muddy things.
Promises for specific seats may be in a special category, but you have to wonder how much of this continuous campaigning voters are taking in.
They may be left with general impressions, but many people’s attention would be minimal, or delayed until closer to when they have to mark their ballots. Or at least until next week’s budget, when they will look for some cost of living relief.
Anyway, just for today let’s leave this cacophony of rhetoric from the leaders in their hi-vis uniforms, and jump ahead to what the political landscape might be like after May.
First, let’s assume a Labor win, with the new government having a majority.
Shadow Treasurer Jim Chalmers said this week Labor would bring down a fresh budget before year’s end. From what we know of the economic and fiscal outlook to be outlined in Tuesday’s budget, the newly-minted treasurer would be working in a favourable setting.
How much of Josh Frydenberg’s budget an Albanese government might unpick will become clearer before the election, but there would also be surprises in the Chalmers one. Labor has said it would look at where there’s presently waste, allowing for funds to be reallocated, which would inevitably mean some losers.
Before that budget, PM Albanese would convene a jobs summit, including business, unions, all levels of government, and community representatives.
This would be broadly modelled on Bob Hawke’s economic summit of 1983; it is part of Albanese’s mantra that he would govern in the Hawke “consensus” style. The summit would be as important for its symbolism as its outcomes.
Summits need to be carefully handled. Hawke’s 1985 tax summit, promised before the 1984 election, ended in an imbroglio. Kevin Rudd’s 2008 “Australia 2020” summit over-promised and under-delivered.
Albanese has also flagged he wants to tackle reforming the federation, saying “we need a clearer delineation of who is responsible for what”. If he is really serious about such a “clearer delineation” – and he’s not provided details – achieving it would be a big task that has eluded governments before.
After Labor’s South Australian win, Albanese would have the advantage of Labor being in power in four of the five mainland states (with the possibility of its winning in NSW next year). Not that having federal and state governments of the same hue automatically guarantees smooth relations.
On the legislative front, the new Labor government would be putting into law its 2050 net zero target – as well as preparing for Australia to take a higher profile at the next UN climate change conference, in Egypt in November.
It would also be working on its model for a national integrity commission, to which it has firmly committed.
On the other side, the Liberals and Nationals would be shattered but not surprised by their loss, and mired in the usual recriminations that follow defeat. How quickly the new opposition was able to regroup could depend on the size of the Labor win (and hence the chance of making it a one term government).
The battle for Liberal leader would likely be a face off between Frydenberg and Peter Dutton, who are both showing their paces for the future as key frontline players in the struggle to keep the Morrison government in office.
The centrist Frydenberg would be favoured by the moderates in the Liberal party and (from this distance out) the frontrunner. Dutton would be the conservatives’ candidate.
As opposition leader, Frydenberg’s treasury background would give him an advantage in taking the economic debate up to Labor. Dutton would probably follow the Tony Abbott model, using bare knuckle tactics to try to tear down the Albanese government.
Flip the coin and assume the Coalition winning with a majority: the Morrison agenda is sketchy, a version of more of the same. Morrison would be unlikely to transform into the ambitious reformer, regardless of the wishes of some in the business community and in the Liberals’ base.
His approach would likely continue to be a managerial one. As one Liberal man says, “He’s not a policy guy. He’s not a conviction politician. His objective is remaining in power.”
Also, Morrison would have the constraints of his majority almost certainly being extremely narrow.
Not in the short term, but after a year or so, speculation would turn to the leadership. There would be pressure for a transition, a realisation the government could not go around again with Morrison.
After another election defeat, following (once again) high expectations of victory, Labor morale would be rock bottom. The new leader would face a massive job in rebuilding.
Those potentially with an eye to opposition leadership would include Jim Chalmers, Tanya Plibersek, Richard Marles, Chris Bowen, and Tony Burke. Possibly Bill Shorten.
Of this list, only Plibersek is from the left. The field would quickly whittle itself down, probably leaving only two – perhaps Chalmers versus Plibersek. Assuming a contest, the leader would be chosen by a combination of caucus and rank and file ballots on a 50-50 basis.
The third potential election outcome is a hung parliament. And that takes us into the realm of maximum uncertainty.
The present crossbenchers are coy about how they’d play the situation. There is general wariness on the crossbench about the sort of formal agreements we saw in the Gillard days.
Regardless of whether Morrison or Albanese ended up PM in the hung parliament, the crossbenchers – with most of the existing ones being likely returned and possibly at least one new face in their ranks – would be extracting action on issues they cared about.
A hung parliament can bring out the best or the worst features of the parliamentary system, or a combination of both.
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.
