Australia has a global reputation as a land full of danger, where seemingly everything is out to kill you. Crocodiles lurk in estuaries, large spiders hide in bathrooms, and we share our suburbs with some of the world’s most venomous snakes.
Snakes hold a particular fear and fascination for many people. The bite of an eastern brown snake can kill an adult in under an hour. And that’s just one of more than 150 venomous snakes inhabiting the island continent across land and sea. Australian snakes are well and truly overrepresented out of the world’s top 25 most venomous snakes.
Terrifying, right? Not quite. Australians are actually extremely lucky when it comes to snakes. Here are seven reasons why.
1) Our snakes bolt away from us
The best way to survive a snakebite is of course not to be bitten. Keeping your distance is the easiest way to avoid a bite.
But what if you’re walking through the bush and don’t see the snake? Luckily, most Australian snakes will rapidly slither away from us.
It could be much worse. Imagine if most of our snakes were like vipers or rattlesnakes, which hold their ground and can be easily trodden on. And imagine if our venomous snakes could sense our body heat, as pit vipers and rattlesnakes do with their heat-sensing pits. For Australians, simply staying still can keep you safe.
Pit vipers like this white-lipped pit viper (Trimeresurus insularis) from Indonesia can sense heat but can’t bolt away. Christina N. Zdenek
3) If you do get bitten, you’re very unlikely to lose a limb
Most snakebites in Australia are completely painless. This is in part due to the short fangs of our brown snakes (Pseudonaja spp.), who are responsible for most bites in Australia, but mainly because most Australian snakes have venom which works internally, rather than locally at the bite site. This means snakebites in Australia very rarely result in amputations.
By contrast, across sub-Saharan Africa it is sadly common, with almost 2400 amputations reported in Africa’s most populous country, Nigeria, every year. Unfortunately, the people most at risk of snakebite are the ones least able to afford the high treatment costs.
Brown snakes like this dugite (Pseudonaja affinis) have small fangs. Christina N. Zdenek & Chris Hay
4) We have great access to excellent antivenom and other treatments
For snakebites, antivenom is the only specific treatment. If you’re unlucky enough to be bitten by a highly venomous snake, getting the antivenom as quickly as possible is vital. Luckily, antivenoms work quickly, and ours are high quality.
Antivenom is often produced from purified horse antibodies. It’s well known antivenom can cause anaphylaxis, which occurs around 10% of the time in Australia. These reactions can be quickly reversed by adrenaline administered in a hospital.
You can get antivenom at 750 hospitals across Australia. For more remote regions, snakebite victims benefit from proven pressure-immobilisation which should be applied before the Royal Flying Doctors come to the rescue.
Many quality snake antivenoms are available in Australia. Christina N. Zdenek
5) We have the world’s only snake venom detection kits
Using the wrong antivenom can lead to the treatment failing. So how do doctors know which antivenom to administer? It’s not via snake identification by the victim because, more often than not, Australians get it wrong.
In 1979, Australia became the first country in the world to have a commercial snake venom detection kit to make antivenom choice more accurate. Even now, we’re the only ones with this option.
Every other country has to rely on more dangerous options. Either the victim brings the snake to hospital for a professional ID, or doctors have to rely on the patient’s symptoms and location where they were bitten to take an educated guess as to which antivenom will work.
As you’d expect, this can be a challenge. Why? Because there can be a great deal of overlap of symptoms caused by venom from unrelated species. Plus, picking the species responsible can take years of experience treating snakebite which many doctors do not have.
In Australia, there’s another option if the kit is unavailable: polyvalent antivenom, effective against all our most dangerous snakes.
Our nearest neighbour, Papua New Guinea, is a snakebite hotspot. But many people simply do not have the money to pay for the antivenom. In some areas, taipans kill more people than malaria due to the cost of treatment.
In Australia, treatment for a bite may cost around AUD$6,000, but this cost is covered by Medicare. In my lab, we’re working to make snakebite treatment more affordable by testing next-generation snakebite treatments.
7) Snake venom is actually saving lives
To top it all off, snake venom is saving lives. There are six therapeutic drugs on the global market derived from snake venoms, with another two in clinical trials.
Our many venomous snake species hold in their venom glands a mini drug library, a cornucopia for scientists to trawl through looking for promising new therapeutic drugs. In fact, a toxin from the venom of eastern brown snakes (P. textilis) is being tested as a drug used to reverse life-threatening bleeding complications.
Rather than fearing our venomous snakes, let’s try seeing them as they are.
They pose little risk to us. They flee from us. Their bites can usually be cured quickly. Their venom holds therapeutic promise. And they play a vital role in keeping down the numbers of introduced rats and mice.
So let’s take a moment to appreciate Australia’s wealth of beautiful snakes.
Christina N. Zdenek 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 children return to schools across the country, the outlook for teachers is bleak.
The spread of Omicron will make chronic staff shortages worse and has added to teachers’ responsibilities. They must now be COVID wardens, while supporting the many students whose mental health has suffered during the pandemic – not to mention teachers’ concerns for their own health.
Teachers said their workloads were “massive”. Their work-life balance was “less than ideal or non-existent”. They felt “overworked, burnt out and undervalued”.
Teachers are increasingly dissatisfied with the unreasonable demands created by their work conditions.
A typical week includes piles of marking, planning learning for an increasingly diverse student cohort and responding to parent emails and phone calls, which can take hours.
Administrative and compliance tasks also consume teachers’ time. They must collect, analyse and report on student performance data. They are expected to document all student misbehaviour, welfare and well-being concerns as they struggle to keep their classrooms safe, inclusive and enjoyable places to learn.
Then there are the endless meetings, staff briefings and professional development, while delivering an over-prescriptive and crowded curriculum so students meet national achievement standards.
One teacher in Perth told us:
“The expectations are impossible to live up to. We want to help our students and do all that is asked of us but often I face hostility and distrust from students and their parents or carers.
“After teaching for over 15 years this all has a cumulative effect. I’ve struggled with feelings of disillusionment and burn-out. Sometimes I think that my well-being goes unnoticed or is dismissed as unimportant.”
One of us wrote last year about the emotional labour of teachers who have to manage, suppress or feign their emotions as part of their work. They “put on a brave face” and ignore their emotions to get through the daily ups and downs of school life. But it can be exhausting.
Many teachers who have since contacted us are sick of pretending they are “doing OK”. They are deeply concerned that school administrators are pushing them to be unrealistically positive, despite evidence to a federal parliamentary inquiry that workloads and stresses are eroding teachers’ well-being across the country.
With tears in her eyes, one very experienced teacher in Canberra described a particularly violent student bullying incident at her school. The police were involved and many staff were traumatised.
However, her school’s leaders required her not to talk about the incident, despite the stress it caused. More than a year later, the staff have had no opportunity to debrief with one another about it.
The teacher said the leaders’ priority was protecting the school’s “brand”, rather than to help staff confront the obvious challenges they faced. They were expected to cultivate a “positive attitude” and “be quiet” about “any negativity”.
What is toxic positivity?
Toxic positivity has emerged as a significant force in the lives of teachers in Australia. Education administrators are reshaping workplace values and practices to maintain employees’ positivity, happiness and optimism in the face of irrefutable evidence that everything is not great.
Positivity in a workplace setting is not inherently toxic to our mental health. However, psychological researchers are calling out the dangers of being persistently optimistic when our experiences are clearly and objectively anything but positive.
This happens in schools when administrators urge teachers to look on the bright side or find the opportunities in challenging work conditions. In doing so, schools sideline the issue of workplace stress by policing negative comments and ignoring difficult issues raised by staff.
Administrators are consumed by the positive spin. They offer staff professional development facilitated by “wellness consultants” who teach self-care strategies, such as doing yoga, to maximise well-being and minimise negativity.
Is this sort of positivity ethical?
In a recent research article, we theorised about the ethics of positivity in education. We criticised the “positive movement”, typified by “happiness scientists” and self-help literature, which purports to make us all “lastingly happy”. We liken this pop psychology to the snake oil charlatans of the past.
We found that during a teacher’s university training positive emotions are seen as a highly productive way to build relationships with students. They are regarded as an important signal that a teacher is being ethical and professional.
Positive emotions can support teaching and learning practices and help teachers maintain their energy. However, we argue when relentless positivity takes hold in schools to deny negative experiences or stressors, there can be unethical and dangerous consequences for teachers. These include demoralisation and emotional fatigue, which contribute to teachers leaving the profession.
A culture of relentless positivity that offers strategies of ‘self-care’ such as yoga rather than acting on teachers’ real concerns can do more harm than good. Shutterstock
We need collective care for a shared problem
Teachers are experiencing what we term “collective emotional labour”. Forces such as the COVID pandemic and chronic staff shortages have put enormous pressure on teachers collectively. This means they need to work on their emotional well-being as a co-operative network, rather than as individuals.
Individual strategies of self-care to support workplace stress are exactly that, an individual concern. When it comes to teachers’ shared concerns, they need meaningful collective strategies of support and care.
School administrators and teachers should come together to put aside the platitudes of “keeping positive”. They need to find space and time to share and respond to their emotional concerns.
Teachers will then feel they are being heard and that their emotions are valid because their school culture is open, understanding and realistic about their experiences and stress. This is by no means the cure-all for the troubles of schools and the profession. But it is an essential starting place in these times of collective uncertainty and stress.
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.
The Morrison government will ensure COVID tests are tax deductible for workers and exempt from fringe benefits tax for businesses when purchased for work-related purposes.
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg will announce on Monday that the government will remove uncertainty around the tax treatment of these tests, including PCR tests and RATs.
This will require legislation which will be backdated to July last year.
He will also announce the Productivity Commission’s second five yearly productivity review will develop a map for reforms to improve productivity as the country comes out of COVID.
In a speech to the Australian Industry Group Frydenberg says Australia’s labour market is experiencing a “great reshuffle”, in contrast to the “great resignation” that has happened in the United States and other advanced economies.
“Treasury analysis shows that over one million workers started new jobs in the three months to November 2021. The rate at which people are taking up new jobs is now almost 10% higher than the pre-COVID average.
“In the last three months, a record number of around 300,000 workers say they left a job because they were looking for better job opportunities,” Frydenberg says in his speech, released ahead of delivery. The pick up in switching has been across all industries.
“Switching jobs allows workers to move up the job ladder for better pay,” with Treasury’s analysis based on single touch payroll data showing workers who moved jobs typically had pay increases of 8-10%.
“They also move to more productive firms, helping those firms grow.”
In the US 2.8 million fewer people are employed than pre-pandemic, with participation rates there and in the UK, Canada, Japan and Italy now lower than before COVID. In contrast, Australia’s participation rate is near its record high.
Frydenberg predicts that as the Omicron peak passes, “we will again see the economy surge ahead”.
He also says it is now time to “draw some clear lines in the sand”.
He acknowledges there will be problems with workforce shortages, supply chain disruptions and the return of higher inflation.
But “now is the time to start confidently moving back towards normalised economic settings.
“It is time to let businesses get back to business. Time to get people back safely to our CBDs, back moving freely around their communities.
“And it is time for the private sector, who have taken the baton, to continue to run hard,” Frydenberg says.
“The economy simply cannot be conditioned to the level of unprecedented support that has been required over the last two years.
“This level of government intervention must not become entrenched and become a permanent feature of our system. Continued support at crisis levels would do more economic harm than good.”
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.
An umbrella organisation representing Papuan students worldwide has been formed with a renewed commitment to strengthening their efforts to gain “quality education”.
Five country groups affiliated to the International Alliance of Papuan Students Associations Overseas (IAPSAO) met virtually yesterday to make a united stance on Papuan education, affirming their appeal last month for Indonesian President Joko Widodo to hear their concerns.
Opening the meeting, Dessy F. Itaar, president of the Papuan Student Association in Russia (IMAPA Russia), declared that the organisation was committed to achieving quality education for Papuans.
“That’s our main goal. Whatever happens, we will keep fighting until we get our rights,” she said.
The virtual meeting was a continuation of an earlier consultation on January 26 when the students expressed concern over policy changes that they believed would impact on education and Papuan students studying abroad.
Other Papuan student associations affiliated to IAPSAO besides the Russian-based one include the Papuan Students Association in the United States and Canada (IMAPA USA-Canada), the Papuan Students Association in Japan (IMAPA Japan), the Papuan Students Association in Germany (PMP Germany) and the Papuan Students Association in Oceania (PSAO).
Previously, student presidents united under the IAPSAO name were known as the Association of Papuan Students Abroad.
Renaming witnessed Witnessed during the virtual conference by “hundreds of Papuan students” from countries such as Australia, Canada, Germany, Japan, New Zealand, Russia, Germany, Indonesia and the United States, PSAO president Yan Piterson Wenda declared the renaming of the international organisation IAPSAO on behalf of the five presidents who were signatories.
Earlier, Itaar had stressed that although Papuan students were sent overseas to focus on their studies, it was important for the presidents to unite and speak out about the problems faced by fellow students.
“As presidents who represent every organisation that we lead, there is one moral burden that we carry — which is not thinking about ourselves, we must think about all members in each organisation,” she said.
Only Papuans know the struggle of Papuan inner souls, so Papuans should first help each other before other people help Papuans, Itaar said.
“The only people who can wake us up are Papuans.
When “our friends from the USA and New Zealand shared their struggles”, fellow Papuans from Japan, Russia and Germany agreed to support them.
“We Papuan children must get a quality education, whatever it is,” she said.
No political agenda “Meilani S. Ramandey, president of IMAPA Japan, said the working team demanding the rights of the current and future Papuan generations had no political agenda. It worked only for educational issues.
“As Papuan students, we stick to this principle, it is not affiliated with any kind of political agenda.”
The students want to know the status of their scholarship programme, which is run under the policies of Papua provincial Governor Lukas Enembe.
“This is important so that all of us do not misunderstand,” said Ramandey.
Reporting on a meeting last week between representatives of the Papuan Students Association in Oceania and the Indonesian Ambassador to New Zealand, Fientje Maritje Suebu, and the head of the Papua Province Human Resources Development Bureau (HRDB), Aryoko Rumaropen, and his staff, PSAO president Yan Piterson Wenda recalled that the bureau had no power to respond to demands by the students.
“The Head of HRDB appreciates the steps taken by the students. The HRDB is disappointed with the policies taken by the central government, so the Indonesian Embassy must respond to this problem,” Wenda said.
“Then, the HRDB said frankly that they had no money. That’s why now all of my friends can’t buy food and pay for accommodation and other needs.
“In principle, HRDB is with us and will forward our aspirations to the Governor. We are waiting for the embassy to proceed with our demands.”
Embassy responded well Dimison Kogoya, president of the Papuan Students Association in the United States and Canada, reported that the Indonesian Embassy in USA and Canada had responded well to the students’ letter.
“We have held a meeting and at the time of the meeting, we emphasised that our demands should be forwarded to the President,” said a computer science student at Johnson and Wales University in North Carolina.
President Reza Rumbiak of the Papuan Students Association in Germany said Papuan students who were studying in Germany remained in solidarity with students in the USA and New Zealand.
He said a letter had been received from the Indonesian Embassy in Berlin in response to the request by students for a dialogue with President Widodo – but the reply contained 18 points of rebuttal.
“The pressure on me as student president is very intense. But we in Germany support our brothers and sisters in the USA and New Zealand because our DNA as Papuans is communal,” said Rumbiak.
IAPSAO issued a four-point declaration to:
Make the International Alliance of Papuan Student Associations Overseas (IAPSAO) an umbrella organisation for all Papuan student organisations domiciled overseas;
Improve and maximise coordination and communication in efforts to protect, prevent, anticipate, and defend the educational rights of Papuan students overseas;
Affirm IASAO is an independent and academic forum; and
Make decisions in this forum based on mutual consensus.
While news from Tonga is still disrupted following the massive undersea eruption and tsunami on January 15, it’s clear the island nation has suffered significant damage to housing stock and infrastructure.
Once initial clean-up work is done, the focus then turns to rebuilding — specifically, how to rebuild in a way that makes that housing and infrastructure stronger, safer and more resilient than before the disaster.
The substantial reduction of disaster risk and losses in lives, livelihoods and health and in the economic, physical, social, cultural and environmental assets of persons, businesses, communities and countries.
Beyond the framework, however, we have the lessons learned from previous disasters and recovery efforts in the same region — notably what happened in Fiji after Cyclone Winston in 2016.
These lessons can be applied to the Tonga rebuild.
A devastated Nasau Village on Koro Island, Fiji, in the wake of Cyclone Winston. Image: UNICEF
Lessons from Cyclone Winston Winston was a category 5 cyclone, one of the most powerful storms ever recorded in the South Pacific. When it approached Fiji’s largest and most populated island, Viti Levu, winds reached 230 km/h, with gusts peaking at 325km/h.
Over 60 percent of the Fijian population was affected, with around 131,000 people left homeless. The cyclone destroyed, significantly damaged or partially damaged around 30,000 homes, or 22 percent of households, representing the greatest loss to Fiji’s housing stock from a single event.
Notably, some models of the traditional Fijian bure survived the cyclone with minor or no damage.
Our research team from New Zealand followed and recorded the housing recovery. What we found could benefit Tonga as it faces reconstruction of so much housing stock.
As in Tonga, power, infrastructure and communication systems in Fiji were extensively damaged. Given that “building back better” involves applying higher structural standards than existed previously, we looked for evidence that Fiji was rebuilding in a more resilient and sustainable way.
Fiji carefully recorded and analysed data, employing systematic reconnaissance surveys and damage assessments to identify building performance, structural vulnerabilities and failure mechanisms, as well as community needs.
These assessments were done well, to international standards.
Understandably, Fijians were also aware of the need to reduce risks to housing from future cyclones. After the immediate post-cyclone humanitarian response, housing was their main concern. This became a key focus for government agencies as a way of demonstrating the recovery was under way and that communities were at the heart of the process.
A traditional bure in Navala village, Viti Levu – some survived the cyclone well. Image: Author
Problems with rebuilding We studied two main initiatives: a government-funded rebuilding programme for houses (the “Help For Homes Initiative”) and the rebuilding programmes led by various international and local NGOs.
Help For Homes provided credit for construction materials to people who had lost homes, assuming recipients met certain criteria related to household income, damage and location.
Communities were free to choose the basic type of dwelling, its interior design, external features and materials. Information and instructions about building best practices and standards were provided, but technical or practical support was limited.
Overall, the initiative had mixed reviews. On the one hand, people had autonomy over their future homes; if things went to plan, they liked the outcome. On the other, lack of building skills led to some poor-quality construction, and limited resources (mainly materials) pushed costs up.
A lack of suitable alternative building material also created problems. Material choice, material substitution, resource costs, low community technical expertise and low building standard knowledge are all issues Tonga might also face.
Some homeowners were left without the material they needed, and in some cases with only a partially rebuilt home.
The NGO rebuilding programmes, by contrast, usually employed their skilled workers to build and supervise construction activities, often with the help of community labour. But again, reviews were mixed, especially when the communities didn’t have sufficient input into the rebuilding process.
While housing design was largely standardised for quick construction, the NGO houses tended to be technically strong and more resilient to future hazard events.
A timber house on elevated foundations, built to the owner’s design without technical support. Image: The Conversation/Author
The best of both worlds The main lesson was that high levels of community involvement and strong technical support were key to building resilient, future-proofed houses. For Tonga, the Fijian experience offers the opportunity to apply that lesson in four principal ways:
ensure the initial assessment process is thorough and up to international standards
recognise that housing stock overall needs to improve, and commit to higher construction standards
analyse local architecture and building practices for disaster-resistant features
combine the best of government-led and NGO building systems to maximise community involvement while ensuring good technical support and building expertise.
Overall, to have the best chance of rebuilding with the resilience to withstand future shocks, Tonga will benefit greatly from a three-way partnership between the government, NGOs and local communities.
The authors acknowledge the collaboration of Diocel Harold Aquino (Associate Professor of Civil Engineering, University of the Philippines) and Sateesh Kumar Pisini (Principal Lecturer in Civil Engineering, Fiji National University) in the preparation of this article.
New Zealand has recorded its highest number of community cases in one day, with 243 new cases reported today.
The previous highest number of cases reported in one day was 222 during the delta outbreak in November.
In a statement, the Health Ministry said the continued increase in cases today was “a reminder that, as expected, the omicron variant is spreading in our communities as we have seen in other countries”.
The ministry said getting a booster dose as soon as it was due was one of the best steps to take.
“Boosters lower your chances of getting very sick and being hospitalised. Being boosted also helps slow the spread of the virus. If you’re over 18 and your booster is due, please get it now.”
Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said today’s record numbers were expected and would continue to grow in the coming days and weeks
“I urge people not to panic but to plan for that,” he said.
‘Get your booster’ “The best thing you can do to prevent illness is to get vaccinated, and get your booster. Wear a mask when you’re around others, cough into your elbow and wash your hands regularly.”
It was a record day for boosters yesterday, with 66,864 booster doses given. There were also 876 first doses, 1780 second doses and 4440 paediatric doses given.
There are 10 people in hospital with covid-19, including one in ICU. Two are in Rotorua and one in Christchurch, with the rest in Auckland hospitals.
Today’s new community cases were in Northland (21), Auckland (165), Waikato (34), Rotorua (1), Bay of Plenty (8), Tairāwhiti (2), Hawke’s Bay (6), Nelson/Marlborough (3), Whanganui (1), and Wellington (2).
The 21 new cases in Northland include 14 cases in Kerikeri, two cases in Kaeo, one case in Kaikohe, three cases in Whangārei, and one case in Taipa Bay-Mangōnui.
Less than half of the 34 cases in Waikato today are linked to previously reported cases. Nineteen of the cases are in Hamilton, five in Ohaupo, two in Te Kuiti, two in Ngāruawāhia, one in Tirau, and the remaining with locations under investigation.
Both of the Wellington cases are under investigation for links to previous cases, but a JetStar flight between Wellington and Auckland on January 29 has been added as a location of interest. More details are available on the ministry’s location of interest page.
There were also 26 cases reported at the border today, with travellers arriving from Singapore, Australia, UK, India, Egypt, Lebanon, UAE and Ireland.
Early in the pandemic, the COVIDSafe app was designed as a tool to improve contact tracing. And a multimedia campaign promoted it as helping to find more COVID contacts faster.
Now, almost two years after its launch in April 2020, we publish in The Lancet Public Health our evaluation of the app’s effectiveness and usefulness in New South Wales.
We analysed data from all 619 COVID cases recorded in NSW above the age of 12 and their contacts between May and November 2020. We also interviewed contact tracers about whether they considered the app useful.
Our analysis showed the app did not add much value to the existing, conventional contact tracing system.
A total of 22% of cases were using the app. Most (61%) contacts the app registered as “close contacts” turned out not to be epidemiologically linked to a case. The app detected only 15% of true close contacts identified by conventional contact tracing.
In total, COVIDSafe detected only 17 additional true close contacts in NSW during the six-month evaluation period.
It caused substantial additional work for contact tracers and overall, did not make a meaningful contribution to the COVID response in NSW.
Interviewing new cases to identify, trace and isolate their close contacts is a crucial public health activity. But this is time-consuming and contact tracers can become rapidly overwhelmed when case numbers rise.
Digital contact tracing apps were enthusiastically embraced early in the COVID pandemic in many countries, including Australia.
Like many other tracing apps, COVIDSafe uses smartphones’ built-in Bluetooth function to exchange signals between phones.
The duration, frequency and transmission strength of these “digital handshakes” are used to determine whether two smartphone users have come into “close contact” with each other.
Low ability to detect and identify close contacts correctly
During our study period, less than a quarter of all cases were using the app. This is half the proportion of the Australian general public who did so.
Of those cases who used the app, many had not a single contact registered by the app. For others, contact tracers could not access the app data.
Contact tracers could use app data for 32 (5%) of the 619 cases over our study period. Of those cases, only 79 (39%) of the 205 contacts the app registered as “close contacts” could be verified as true close contacts. This suggests poor positive predictive value of the app.
Examples of false close contacts the app registered were:
neighbours in different flats in apartment buildings
office workers in adjacent rooms
customers in neighbouring restaurants
people waiting in separate cars at COVID drive-through testing clinics.
The vast majority (85%) of close contacts identified by conventional contact tracing were not detected by the app, indicating low sensitivity.
A few additional contacts detected
During the six months of our study, there were only 17 true close contacts identified by COVIDSafe who would have otherwise been missed – a tiny fraction of the more than 25,300 close contacts detected and followed up through conventional contact tracing in NSW during the same period.
None of these 17 contacts became positive. So COVIDSafe did not contribute to preventing any new exposures in NSW during our evaluation period.
Contact tracers did not find the app easy to use. Some said the app did not seem to work as reliably on all types of phones. The number of contacts on iPhones were substantially underestimated, while those from Android phones were overestimated.
Contact tracers also noted the app’s apparent inability to properly register contacts unless it was open. This might explain the large number of cases without any registered contacts in our study.
The process of cross-matching close contacts identified by the app with those identified through case interviews was seen as time-consuming, particularly as most contacts picked up by the app were not really close contacts.
Interviewed staff said this could easily overwhelm the contact tracing system had case numbers been higher, paradoxically leading to a reduction in usefulness of the app when it would be most needed.
Overall, contact tracers’ perceptions of the app ranged from “not impacting much” to being an additional step that increased workload without adding much value.
The app identified 17 contacts that would have been otherwise missed. AAP Image/Scott Barbour
Little added value at high costs
In our study, COVIDSafe did not make a meaningful contribution to the COVID response in NSW during 2020. Instead, the app created a high workload for no clear benefit.
This stands against the A$7.7 million it has cost to develop and run COVIDSafe until the end of April 2021, with an estimated $60,000-$75,000 per month in maintenance since.
The arrival of the highly transmissible Omicron variant in late 2021 in Australia, coinciding with the lifting of most public health restrictions, led to massive expansion in case numbers, forcing a series of major adjustments to contact tracing.
In most parts of Australia, contact tracing now has a very limited role in COVID control. Nevertheless, it is likely to remain a key public health intervention for infectious diseases in the future.
For digital contact tracing apps to be effective and useful, it will be important to involve contact tracers when designing the system, to road test the underlying technology in real-life settings, and to evaluate the app regularly after roll-out.
Dr Anthea Katelaris, a public health physician who worked at the Western Sydney Local Health District public health unit at the time of the study, co-authored the research mentioned in this article.
Florian Vogt receives a fellowship from the Australian Partnership for Preparedness Research on Infection Disease Emergencies (APPRISE) Centre of Research Excellence (CRE), funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) of Australia. The Kirby Institute, University of New South Wales received funding from the New South Wales Ministry of Health for his involvement in this research.
Bridget Haire has received funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council and NSW Health. She is a volunteer with the Australian Federation of AIDS Organisations..
John Kaldor’s university received funding from the New South Wales Ministry of Health to support members of his team to conduct this research. His university research position is funded through a National Health and Medical Research Council Fellowship.
Linda Selvey receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council.
News Corp Australia and Google have announced the creation of the Digital News Academy in partnership with the Melbourne Business School at the University of Melbourne. It will provide digital skills training for News Corp journalists and other media outlets.
Is this a good thing or a bad thing?
The academy won’t provide full degrees, just certificates and a chance to upgrade digital skills in a fast-changing media environment.
Many companies in various industries have partnered with universities to deliver what used to be in-house training programmes. Strengthening the links between industry and the academy has been welcomed in many sectors and certainly encouraged by governments for many years.
Why then are we as journalism academics concerned?
There are several reasons. The first and most obvious is the incursion of a high-profile and controversial media company into the higher education sector and the extent to which that is funded by a large disruptive digital search company.
Antagonism towards academia It is telling that the Digital News Academy will be housed in the University of Melbourne’s private arm, the Melbourne Business School, rather than its Centre for Advancing Journalism within the Arts faculty.
Australia’s largest commercial media company has long criticised university journalism education, and journalism academics, including each of the authors of this article and many of our colleagues.
So it comes as no surprise that News Corp has avoided journalism programmes.
News Corp Australasia’s executive chairman Michael Miller has said part of the academy’s role will be building a stronger Australia by keeping society informed through “strong and fearless news reporting and advocacy”.
Yet partnering with a journalism programme would have facilitated that. It might also have helped assuage News Corp critics, some of whom have been active online during the week with reminders about News Corp’s unethical conduct during the hacking scandal and its disregard for scientific evidence in its reporting on climate change.
University journalism courses teach ethics and critical thinking alongside practical skills such as new digital ways of fact checking, gathering information and telling stories.
Google Australia already offers free tutorials to journalism programmes about smart ways to use its search engine to find and check investigative stories.
University journalism programmes also distinguish between training and education; the former is predominantly about skills, the latter places those skills in context and teaches students how to think critically about the industry and environment in which they work.
By placing this course in a business school and not a liberal arts or humanities faculty, the venture gets the kudos of the University of Melbourne’s backing without the challenging academic culture News Corp dislikes.
News Corp and Google are corporate clients, paying the university for these courses, so the capacity for independent criticism of Australia’s most dominant newspaper company is eroded even further.
The Digital News Academy will be housed within the Melbourne Business School, rather than the University of Melbourne’s Centre for Advancing Journalism. Image: The Conversation/Shutterstock
What will the Digital News Academy do? All we know so far about the academic credibility of the Digital News Academy comes from its promotional announcement, in press releases reported in the Media section of The Australian (published by News Corp).
The publicity says the nine-month course will take 750 enrolments from journalists at News Corp Australia, Australian Community Media (the stable of 160 regional publications formerly owned by Fairfax) and smaller media partners.
A “governance committee” will select candidates (who nominate themselves or are put forward by their employers). These students will be expected to use the Google suite of tools as they collaborate online at the Melbourne Business School, to generate, build and sell stories to the course’s “Virtual Academy Newsroom”.
Each year there will be what is being billed as a major journalism conference and a US study tour for a select group of trainees.
There are no public details yet of the academic credentials of the certificate programme but the academy has drawn on a “panel of experts”, almost all of whom come from inside News Corp and Google.
Google gains influence It’s easy to see why Google was motivated to fund a News Corp training academy above and beyond what it is required to do as part of its bid to stop further intervention in its workings by the Australian government under the terms of the News Media Bargaining Code.
But there are some deeper questions about why a company that has such a stranglehold on the new digital economy is involved. By funding the academy Google may be undercutting full university degrees specialising in journalism.
Relying on Google to make up the shortfall in news organisations’ training budgets is a problem. It allows Google to shape curriculum while appearing to be a champion of the same journalism industry it has been accused of undermining.
As journalism academics we respect the need for specialised training and skills development. But journalism programmes should never be captured or constrained from being critical of the industry for which they prepare students.
They should continue to embed ethics in their courses. The aim, after all, is to improve journalism, for everybody’s benefit.
As it is often said, news is not just another business. While studying journalism often involves the study of business, business imperatives should not drive the study of journalism itself.
Dr Dodd has worked as a journalist at The Australian newspaper and has provided in-house legal and news writing training for News Corp. Dr Wake has provided in-house training for the ABC and for Australian Provincial Newspapers. She is the elected president of the Journalism Education and Research Association of Australia (JERAA). Professor Ricketson has worked on staff at The Australian, among other news outlets. He was a member of the Finkelstein inquiry into the media and media regulation which was sharply criticised in News Corp Australia publications. His appointment as the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance’s representative on the Press Council was also criticised by News Corp Australia. Full disclosures at The Conversation.
Air travellers were left stranded and fuming country-wide as airlines Air Niugini and PNG Air hit a rough patch in operations due to wet weather and a large number of their key staff falling sick and unable to be at work.
Flight cancellations were the order of the day yesterday at many airports with passenger backlogs and frustrations growing.
Air Niugini, especially, has had flight cancellations since last November.
The airline has issued an apology saying wet weather conditions and staff absenteeism had caused the situation.
In a media release, both airlines apologised for a number of flights in recent days which have been disrupted due to a much higher number of crew than usual falling sick, as well as the current bad weather conditions across the country impacting on the airlines’ operations.
Both airlines say they are doing everything they can to manage the situation, but will not compromise safety operations.
Stranded passengers had to rebook flights and spend extra money for accommodation and transport.
Backlog mostly tertiary students Most on the backlog of passengers are tertiary students and parents who have been asked to rebook flights for four to five days as of last Wednesday.
While the airlines have not publicly stated if staff were infected with covid-19, reliable sources from within companies have informed the Post-Courier that a majority of those sick and absent from work were infected with the virus.
They included aircraft engineers, high-end ground staff, pilots, cabin crews and protocol staff.
One of the stranded passengers from Lae, former EMTV senior journalist Scott Waide took to social media to comment on the crisis, which attracted a lot of responses and complaints from passengers who were in a similar situation.
They describing the customer service by the airlines as poor.
Waide was asked to rebook his flight more than once and finally made it into Port Moresby late yesterday evening.
An unfortunate incident happened at Nadzab Airport in Lae yesterday when an airline staff member allegedly insulted a female passenger.
Staff member ‘tears up’ boarding passes Josephine Kawage claimed the staff member tore up her and her child’s boarding passes.
Kawage said in a video recording that they had been stranded for four days and were finally put on the flight yesterday. However, the check-in officer was only able to produce two boarding passes for Kawage and her son.
She said that she was humiliated when she asked for the boarding passes for her other family members.
A disappointed husband, Captain Henry Nilkare from the North Coast Aviation, condemned the alleged actions of the airline staff member when he spoke to Post-Courier last night.
He said he would take the matter up with Air Niugini to have the officer penalised.
“I do work in the airline industry and understand the nature of his job at situations like this, but his actions were uncalled for and no passenger, or any woman with an infant, should be treated as such in front of many people,” he said.
“That is a bad image for Air Niugini and I do not wish to see this happen to any other passengers.
“If he can do this to my wife and child, who knows how many people he may have treated badly.”
Captain Nilkare said he would be flying to Lae himself to pick up his family today.
Melisha Yafoiis a PNG Post-Courier reporter. Republished with permission.
With the arrival of the omicron variant on our shores, it is hard to believe, judging by the media coverage — particularly on MIQ, that the Aotearoa New Zealand government has got anything right in its pandemic response.
One important feature that has been missed in the debate on New Zealand’s pandemic response to date, however, is our very low death rate. At under 60, it is 0.5 percent of the rate in the United Kingdom – approximately 10 per million, compared with more than 2000 per million in the United Kingdom.
This is a very important metric that has been given too little regard here and overseas. The number of people dying of covid-19 in the UK is well over 150,000. This figure is confirmed by the data on excess deaths estimated against the long-run average; the two numbers closely correspond.
In other words, the deaths wrought by covid are on a scale comparable with a major outbreak of warfare. And yet too many commentators and decision-makers have become inured to this death toll, concentrating instead on the performance of the health system and the enjoyment of individual freedoms.
If we had suffered the same rate of covid deaths as the UK has, that would make the number of deaths not 50-60 but 10,000, not far short of the number of New Zealanders dying in World War II (just under 12,000).
The scale of death — or the potential for death — therefore needs to feature more prominently in the coverage of the politics of the pandemic.
‘Let the bodies pile high’ For example, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is said to have stated that he would prefer to “let the bodies pile high” rather than pursue another lockdown.
True or not, that reported statement had almost no impact on his popularity compared to stories of his attending parties at Downing Street when the UK was under firm restrictions on gatherings.
This blind spot in the media coverage and cultural resonance of the pandemic came home to me when a columnist in the left-of-centre publication New Statesman pointed out that, pre-omicron, her friends in Australia didn’t know a single person with the virus, and yet their state and federal governments at that time were pursuing far stronger public health measures than were being applied the UK.
The same could have been said of New Zealand since the two countries have followed similar policies.
Yes, most Australians — and New Zealanders — pre-Omicron were unlikely to know anybody with the virus; but neither were they likely to know anybody who had died of it, which is in many respects a far more important metric both ethically and politically.
Arguably, New Zealand — like Australia — is a more communitarian country, with “two degrees of separation” and all that. Thus, it might matter that bit more to us whether or not our neighbour, friend, or relative dies of a pandemic disease.
In larger, more anonymous societies there is less proximity to death.
Pictures of morgues At present anyway, pictures of morgues piled high with the dead from the pandemic would be socially unacceptable in our culture. Added to this is the special place of Māori, who could suffer disproportionately with a premature opening of our borders.
This is something that Grounded Kiwis, the expatriate New Zealanders’ group pushing the legal case against the government, may have missed. If it forces the hand of the government to open our borders before we have been able to achieve acceptable levels of both vaccination and infection protection — such as masking, ventilation, distancing, and self-testing against the onslaught of omicron – then the consequences may also be an increase in the likely death rate in New Zealand.
For example, New South Wales at the peak of its omicron outbreak recorded rather more deaths in a single day than New Zealand had recorded over the near-two years of the pandemic, despite the supposedly milder and less impactful character of this variant.
Is that really what we want?
It is also as well to remember our responsibility to all vulnerable populations, including the elderly, Māori and Pasifika, and all those with relevant underlying health conditions. These groups have suffered disproportionately in the pandemic so far.
Few of us have experienced over a short time and in a proximate way significant numbers of deaths in our circles. Half a century ago, it was more common for people to die at home, often surrounded by family, but this has become much less so.
These days it is more likely to be professionally and medically managed, with much of our experience of death otherwise coming packaged via mass and social media.
The government — and New Zealanders — have done well to keep pandemic death at bay. This is not to justify draconian measures without considered trade-offs against wider societal costs and benefits.
But it is to argue for a more balanced discussion of our pandemic response, and to show greater respect for the more communitarian style of it.
Peter Davis is an elected member of the Auckland District Health Board, and emeritus professor in population health and social science at the University of Auckland. His article was first published at Stuff and is republished on Asia Pacific Report with permission.
Māori health providers in Aotearoa New Zealand are holding back on covid-19 vaccinations for children in the face of growing anti-vaxxer protest in the wider Whanganui region.
That is despite the area recording the second-lowest rate in the country of vaccinations for children aged 5 to 11 years.
Iwi collective Te Ranga Tupua says one of its mobile vaccination clinics was egged in the Whanganui suburb of Aramoho on Wednesday and anti-vaxxer activity has been ramping up since children became eligible for vaccination.
According to the Ministry of Health, as of Wednesday only 1600 (24 percent) of 6600 eligible children in the Whanganui District Health Board area have had their first shot.
The rate for tamariki Māori is even worse, with only 400 (15 percent) of Māori aged between 5 and 11 years getting their first vaccination.
The Whanganui District Health Board area includes parts of Rangitīkei and the Waimarino/Ruapehu district.
Te Ranga Tupua rapid response vaccination co-lead Elijah Pue said anti-vaxxers are now targeting the iwi collective’s mobile teams daily with the message “hands off our tamariki”.
Ramped up the rhetoric “The anti-vax community have ramped up the rhetoric. It is a health and safety issue for our staff and our frontline teams.”
The iwi collective did not want to bring in security, preferring instead to encourage kōrero, he said.
Te Ranga Tupua is midway through a 15-week effort to lift Māori vaccination rates in Whanganui, Rangitīkei, South Taranaki and the Waimarino.
Pue said the iwi collective was taking the time to engage with parents who had questions or were hesitant before it launched a region-wide child vaccination rollout on 14 February.
About 120 parents participated in an online information session with Covid-19 experts last week. Pue said Te Ranga Tupua would continue to take a cautious approach and had more information sessions for parents planned next week.
Iwi collective vaccination teams are engaging with parents who have questions before Te Ranga Tupua launches a region-wide child vaccination rollout, says vaccination co-lead Elijah Pue. Image: Moana Ellis/LDR
The Whanganui DHB vaccination uptake for both Māori and non-Māori children is the second lowest in the country, with only Northland recording lower numbers.
Spokesperson Louise Allsopp said the DHB was encouraging whānau to talk with their trusted healthcare providers to work through any concerns about vaccinating their 5 to 11-year-olds.
“We are also ensuring existing providers are supported to start vaccinating children when they are ready,” Allsopp said.
Right information for whānau “The key things are that people have the right information to make their decision for their whānau, then [that] vaccinations are available from the right people at the right time. There has been a focus from Māori providers on getting accurate information out there before they start vaccinating.”
The public health team was providing support to local school principals around Covid-19 protection measures, including wearing masks at school. The DHB was also supporting additional providers to start delivering covid-19 vaccinations for both adults and children, Allsopp said.
Covid-19 Māori health analyst Rāwiri Taonui said tamariki Māori vaccination numbers throughout the country were concerning and had to be lifted urgently before the omicron variant took hold.
“There’s an impression that omicron causes milder disease and that’s true but the scale of cases is so large that even a small percentage of severe illnesses is quite a serious situation.”
Taonui said MOH data showed 18 percent of tamariki Māori (5-11s) nationwide had their first vaccination compared to 33 percent for all ethnicities. But the gap was much wider due to an undercount of more than 12,000 in the index the MOH used to count vaccinations and the estimated number of tamariki Māori, he said.
“That gap is closer to 25 or 26 percent. A more accurate calculation of the tamariki vaccination is 16.1 percent for Māori compared to 40.9 percent for non-Māori/Pacific.”
Taonui was calling on the government to cut the wait time between first and second child vaccinations from eight weeks to three, and to prioritise the tamariki Māori vaccination rollout to avoid repeating the inequities of the national vaccination programme to date.
Targeting low-decile schools “This includes targeting low-decile schools with large Māori enrolments,” Taonui said.
“At the moment Māori cases are very low. But at some point there’s going to be a vector by which Omicron begins to make its way into our community and that is likely to come when our children go back to school and begin mixing with kids from other communities and take the virus home.”
The MOH had to release tamariki Māori data to the Whānau Ora Commissioning Agency and other Māori health providers to help them quickly locate children who had yet to be vaccinated, he said.
Delays in child vaccinations now would carry through to second vaccinations. With the current eight-week wait time between vaccinations, a child vaccinated today would not be fully protected until April – well after Omicron has taken hold in the country.
“That’s a real concern. We could get caught out really quite badly,” Taonui said.
“We are starting to see numbers overseas, for instance in the United States and amongst other indigenous groups, where there’s a lot of children getting ill and child hospitalisations are increasing.
“We’re already in a situation where by mid-January tamariki Māori were 53 percent of all under-12 infection and 63 percent of all hospitalisation. If we don’t get the tamariki vaccination rollout right, those numbers could become even worse.”
Local Democracy Reporting is Public Interest Journalism funded through NZ On Air. Published by Asia Pacific Report in collaboration.
Richard Colbeck had to face the music this week over attending the fifth test in his home state of Tasmania when he’d told the Senate COVID committee he was too busy working on the Omicron wave spreading through aged care to appear.
Explaining himself to the committee on Wednesday, Colbeck spelled out what he had been doing on aged care but also said: “I’m very careful to balance and acknowledge the different elements of my portfolio”.
The senator is minister for sport as well as minister for senior Australians and aged care services. His reference to balancing his duties raises the question: how is it that Colbeck has the sports job in the first place?
In a reshuffle in late 2020, Scott Morrison elevated aged care to cabinet under Heath Minister Greg Hunt, leaving Colbeck with the day-to-day duties in the portfolio.
But it seems inexplicable that Colbeck retained the sports post. He had struggled with his aged care work, especially when grilled at the Senate committee, and the sector had been a disaster area during 2020 with many hundreds of deaths in Victoria.
Even though health and aged care is the senior portfolio, aged care services should be a full time ministerial job, not one that has to be “balanced” with any other responsibilities.
We’ve seen in the COVID waves how the virus seeks out the weak points and most vulnerable individuals in the community, and residential aged care and those who live there are once again the most obvious examples.
With Australia having around 2000 deaths so far this year, as of Thursday there had been 512 deaths in residential aged care. This compares to 685 in 2020 and 282 last year.
Despite our overall death numbers being so high in recent weeks, the public in January did not seem particularly galvanised by them. The attention was on shortages of tests and supply chain problems. But as the crisis in aged care has worsened, attitudes are changing.
It’s not just deaths. It’s that Omicron hits this sector in multiple ways.
Staff shortages – because staff have the virus or are close contacts – dramatically affect patient care.
Understaffed facilities are being caught in a bind – between effectively locking down patients, away from families and other outsiders, to give them maximum protection from Omicron, or allowing them the company they desperately need, with the infection danger that brings.
The Australian Health Protection Principal Committee, which advises the national cabinet, has considered national guidance providing for residents to have an “essential visitor” even when there is an outbreak. The advice will be finalised within days.
The AHPPC accepts this increases the risk of transmission but says the impact of social isolation must also be taken into account.
Aged care is a federal government responsibility, and there is much questioning as to whether the time since the deadly 2020 wave has been used to reinforce the sector.
One of the aged care royal commissioners, Lynelle Briggs, this week criticised the lack of preparation.
“We shouldn’t be seeing the disproportionate impact on this group when we’ve known for two years they were particularly vulnerable to the disease,” Briggs told the ABC.
A core part of the problem goes to workforce issues, especially retention and pay. The government this week announced $800, paid in two instalments, for workers, in a bid to retain numbers.
But it will not come out and support a pay rise.
A wage care is in the Fair Work Commission and Labor leader Anthony Albanese has said the government should put a submission advocating a rise (although he won’t nominate what the increase should be).
Asked at the National Press Club why the government wouldn’t argue for an increase, Morrison defaulted to the extra cost that would bring. “We will let that process follow its course and we’ll of course have to absorb any decision that is taken there,” he said.
Obviously the cost would be substantial. But given the importance of aged care and the fact that a well staffed and paid workforce is critical to a well functioning sector, surely the government should be advocating a pay boost.
This is especially the case given how much government money has been splashed around generally in the pandemic.
The government has indicated it is open to using some defence personnel to help meet the aged care staff crisis but it is very reluctant to do so.
Defence Minister Peter Dutton said on Friday, “If that is what is required to fix this problem and to provide dignity to these people that is what we will do” . He pointed out, however, that the Defence Force had its own problem of staff in isolation.
Morrison sounded less than keen, saying “the Defence Forces is not a shadow workforce for the aged care sector”.
But Labor’s Mark Butler says: “A quarter of shifts not getting filled is simply not good enough. It is high time the Australian Defence Force was called in to help with this crisis.”
Butler said the ADF had “the broadest range of skills. They can really turn their hand to anything, whether it’s providing quite sophisticated nursing care and personal care or helping out with some of those daily tasks of providing meals and just providing residents with a bit of personal interaction.”
When parliament resumes next week, aged care will be at the centre of the 0pposition’s attack. The government arcs up about Labor “politicising” the issue, but political pressure is not just legitimate but a way to force action.
Albanese this week called for Colbeck’s resignation. Barring unforeseen circumstances, Colbeck is there until the election. But it’s a safe bet that if the Coalition is re-elected he will be moved on from the aged care area. Maybe he’d retain sport.
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.
News Corp Australia and Google have announced the creation of the Digital News Academy in partnership with the Melbourne Business School at the University of Melbourne. It will provide digital skills training for News Corp journalists and other media outlets.
Is this a good thing or a bad thing?
The academy won’t provide full degrees, just certificates and a chance to upgrade digital skills in a fast-changing media environment.
Many companies in various industries have partnered with universities to deliver what used to be in-house training programs. Strengthening the links between industry and the academy has been welcomed in many sectors and certainly encouraged by governments for many years.
Why then are we as journalism academics concerned?
There are several reasons. The first and most obvious is the incursion of a high-profile and controversial media company into the higher education sector and the extent to which that is funded by a large disruptive digital search company.
Antagonism towards academia
It is telling that the Digital News Academy will be housed in the University of Melbourne’s private arm, the Melbourne Business School, rather than its Centre for Advancing Journalism within the Arts faculty.
Australia’s largest commercial media company has long criticised university journalism education, and journalism academics, including each of the authors of this article and many of our colleagues. The company even once sent an incognito reporter into a University of Sydney lecture to uncover criticism of News Corp in the classroom. That reporter, Sharri Markson, is now investigations editor at The Australian and a member of “the panel of experts” that will oversee the Digital News Academy.
DNA.
So it comes as no surprise that News Corp has avoided journalism programs.
News Corp Australasia’s executive chairman, Michael Miller, has said part of the academy’s role will be building a stronger Australia by keeping society informed through “strong and fearless news reporting and advocacy”.
Yet partnering with a journalism program would have facilitated that. It might also have helped assuage News Corp critics, some of whom have been active online during the week with reminders about News Corp’s unethical conduct during the hacking scandal and its disregard for scientific evidence in its reporting on climate change.
University journalism courses teach ethics and critical thinking alongside practical skills such as new digital ways of fact checking, gathering information and telling stories. Google Australia already offers free tutorials to journalism programs about smart ways to use its search engine to find and check investigative stories.
University journalism programs also distinguish between training and education; the former is predominantly about skills, the latter places those skills in context and teaches students how to think critically about the industry and environment in which they work.
By placing this course in a business school and not a liberal arts or humanities faculty, the venture gets the kudos of the University of Melbourne’s backing without the challenging academic culture News Corp dislikes.
News Corp and Google are corporate clients, paying the university for these courses, so the capacity for independent criticism of Australia’s most dominant newspaper company is eroded even further.
The Digital News Academy will be housed within the Melbourne Business School, rather than the University of Melbourne’s Centre for Advancing Journalism. Shutterstock
What will the Digital News Academy do?
All we know so far about the academic credibility of the Digital News Academy comes from its promotional announcement, in press releases reported in the Media section of The Australian (published by News Corp).
The publicity says the nine-month course will take 750 enrolments from journalists at News Corp Australia, Australian Community Media (the stable of 160 regional publications formerly owned by Fairfax) and smaller media partners.
A “governance committee” will select candidates (who nominate themselves or are put forward by their employers). These students will be expected to use the Google suite of tools as they collaborate online at the Melbourne Business School, to generate, build and sell stories to the course’s “Virtual Academy Newsroom”.
Each year there will be what is being billed as a major journalism conference and a US study tour for a select group of trainees.
There are no public details yet of the academic credentials of the certificate program but the academy has drawn on a “panel of experts”, almost all of whom come from inside News Corp and Google.
Google gains influence
It’s easy to see why Google was motivated to fund a News Corp training academy above and beyond what it is required to do as part of its bid to stop further intervention in its workings by the Australian government under the terms of the News Media Bargaining Code.
But there are some deeper questions about why a company that has such a stranglehold on the new digital economy is involved. By funding the academy Google may be undercutting full university degrees specialising in journalism.
Relying on Google to make up the shortfall in news organisations’ training budgets is a problem. It allows Google to shape curriculum while appearing to be a champion of the same journalism industry it has been accused of undermining.
As journalism academics we respect the need for specialised training and skills development. But journalism programs should never be captured or constrained from being critical of the industry for which they prepare students. They should continue to embed ethics in their courses. The aim, after all, is to improve journalism, for everybody’s benefit.
As it is often said, news is not just another business. While studying journalism often involves the study of business, business imperatives should not drive the study of journalism itself.
Andrew Dodd worked as a journalist at The Australian newspaper and has provided in-house legal and news writing training for News Corp. He is currently employed as the director of the Centre for Advancing Journalism, which is mentioned in this article.
Alexandra Wake provided in-house training for the ABC and for Australian Provincial Newspapers. She is the elected President of the Journalism Education and Research Association of Australia and is the current programs manager for journalism at RMIT.
Matthew Ricketson has worked on staff at The Australian, among other news outlets. He was a member of the Finkelstein inquiry into the media and media regulation which was sharply criticised in News Corp Australia publications. His appointment as the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance’s representative on the Press Council was also criticised by News Corp Australia.
If you’re paying off a mortgage – or aspiring to – imagine if you didn’t have to worry so much about rising interest rates.
That’s already the reality for US home buyers. Unlike in Australia, most mortgages in the US have a fixed-interest rate, locked in for 30 years.
Instead of having to wait and see if their central bank (the Federal Reserve) raises rates each month, a US 30-year fixed mortgage at 2% will still have the same monthly repayment – even after a rate rise.
In contrast, when the Reserve Bank of Australia lifts rates it has huge implications for household budgets, because most borrowers still have variable-rate mortgages.
Every time the cash rate increases and banks inevitably pass through that increase, our mortgage payments go up too – adding thousands of dollars to average annual repayments.
This is one reason why RBA governor Philip Lowe has been so cautious about following the US Federal Reserve’s strong signal about lifting interest rates.
So why don’t Australian lenders offer 30-year fixed-rate mortgages too, like their US counterparts?
Every extra 1% can cost thousands
Here in Australia, an extra 1% on a A$600,000 mortgage means $6,000 a year more in interest payments. And these are post-tax dollars. So if you earn $100,000 and hence pay an average tax rate of 25%, that’s like taking a roughly $8,000 pay cut. Ouch.
A 3% rise in official rates over two to three years is not impossible. On a $600,000 mortgage that would mean an extra $18,000 a year in interest payments.
The RBA knows this, of course. It looks at Australian household debt of more than 120% of GDP and knows raising rates too aggressively risks putting a significant number of Australian households into financial distress.
In one sense this is good news. It means the RBA has large-calibre ammunition to fire in pursuit of its monetary policy goals (to keep unemployment low and inflation between 2% and 3%).
But it would be better if the Australian mortgage market involved less risk for consumers.
There is no reason why Australian lenders couldn’t offer 30-year fixed-rate mortgages. After all, there’s an active government bond market with maturities from one year to 30 years. This provides a benchmark to price mortgages.
Two fixes for more affordable mortgages
Fixed-rate mortgages have become much more popular in Australia in the past few years: the proportion of new mortgages that were fixed jumped from about 15% in June 2019 to more than 45% by September 2021.
But even those loans are typically fixed for only three years – sometimes as short as one year, sometimes as long as five years. After that, the rate reverts to the variable rate.
Longer fixed-rate loans would insulate Australian borrowers from big swings in interest rates. In the US you can refinance a 30-year fixed mortgage if long-term rates drop. So you benefit if rates go down but are protected if they go up.
Another idea to improve loan contract terms for borrowers – long advocated by University of Melbourne economist Kevin Davis – is the so-called “tracker mortgage”. These contracts limit borrowers to paying a certain “spread” over a benchmark interest rate.
Such offerings depend in large part on competition in the banking sector. The US has lots of competition in banking. Australia has very little.
When costs go up, two groups can bear that cost: customers or shareholders.
In Australia when bank funding costs go up, customers bear pretty much all of the cost, and shareholders zero. That’s the best evidence you’ll ever get of true market power.
Threading the needle
The Reserve Bank is well positioned to drive the official unemployment rate down from 4.2% to the lowest levels in 50 years while keeping inflation under control. It knows when it does increase interest rates this will transmit very directly to the real economy.
The challenge for Lowe is to use his interest-rate firepower in true Goldilocks fashion: not too little but not too much. That will be the great central banking challenge of the next several years.
If we could restructure the Australian mortgage market to better protect borrowers from swings in interest rates, the job of future RBA governors need not involve such a delicate balancing act.
Richard Holden is President of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kevin Taylor, Lecturer Indigenous health, cultural studies and Indigenous Education Development Specialist, The University of Western Australia
Since the Closing the Gap targets were first introduced in 2008, the number of Indigenous university enrolments have more than doubled. The numbers grew from 9,490 students in 2008 to 19,935 students in 2018. During this period, bachelor award course completion grew by 110.6%, from 860 degrees to 1,811.
Indigenous support centres embedded within universities around the country have played a vital role in supporting this growth of Indigenous students.
Students can feel supported on their learning journey and gain support from other students experiencing similar challenges, while being in an environment that understands the obligations of culture, family and community.
Indigenous students who come to study at university already face a number of disadvantages in education.
For many they are first person in their family to attend university, which can bring a sense of pressure and responsibility from community.
This journey for students can be quite isolating and stressful. Particularly when a lack of understanding by family and community leads to forms of lateral violence – violence towards one’s peers.
This is an experience commonly shared among Indigenous students at university and is one of the reasons it’s important to have culturally safe spaces that support them while studying.
In addition to cultural and family obligations, other challenges include financial struggles of full-time study, lack of requisite academic skills and unfamiliarity of place while being disconnected from country.
How culturally safe spaces can help
Indigenous centres are culturally safe places instrumental in student success. They often provide a range of supports to students from scholarships, workplace learning, tutoring, counselling and accommodation. It’s an environment reserved for Indigenous students that helps build confidence and academic ability.
International research has indicated creating a supportive institutional space for Aboriginal students can build confidence and self belief in their study abilities, which is a strong motivator for ongoing engagement and active learning.
Embeddedd within some Indigenous centres are educational programs and outreach opportunities that encourage high school students to pursue university as an option and provide alternative entry pathways for future students. One study found a number of Aboriginal students sought out a particular post secondary institution because of the Aboriginal education program on offer. Participants said the small class sizes, peer support networks and positive support from authority figures were some of the reasons behind their choice.
Indigenous centres have the capability of working in alignment with other schools across the university to further support students.
In another case study, the Kulbardi centre at Murdoch University aimed to increased its visibility across the university with the intent of schools reaching out to the centre to support students in need. This was a success and resulted in schools reaching out to the centre to support them in designing culturally appropriate curriculum, cultural competency training and reaching out to student success coordinators about how they could best support their Individual Indigenous students.
Though Indigenous centres provide a wealth of knowledge and experience in ensuring the success of Indigenous students. It is important to note a “whole-of-university” approach is important in achieving this. This can be done through utilising university resources to further assist First Nations students in their success at university. It needs to be acknowledged Indigenous student success is everyone’s responsibility, not just the Indigenous Centre’s. This is vital for significant change to occur, in not only increasing the number of First Nations students at university, but to support their successes.
In late 2020 following the COVID outbreak, the University of Western Australia welcomed the new School of Indigenous Studies which would be the new home to Indigenous students on campus.
Bilya Marlee (meaning river of the swan in local Noongar language, as it’s built on the swan river) is currently home to over 250 Indigenous students who come from all over the country, including rural and regional Western Australia.
The building was culturally designed by Indigenous Elder Dr Richard Walley, with input from staff and students. Upon consultation, Dr Walley used a cultural blueprint to inform the design process which included connection to place and its surroundings. This includes the connection to plants and animals of the area and their significance to that place.
By creating a physical environment that connects to culture, the building hopes to enhance the feeling of support and safety for students while studying. The building aims to make students feel like they are studying on country and in a place that supports their cultural identity while navigating a foreign education system.
Consultation with cultural experts such as Dr Walley is a way universities can explore opportunities to address challenges faced by Indigenous students at university.
Kevin Taylor 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.
Adolescents aged 16-17 are now eligible to receive their Pfizer vaccine booster, following the recommendation earlier this week from the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI).
This move has been prompted by the rise of Omicron and reduced immunity after two vaccine doses.
It’s also the next step in the likely future expansion of booster doses to younger adolescents.
ATAGI’s recommendation to extend Pfizer booster doses to 16-17 year olds this week follows regulatory approval from the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) in late January.
This means an estimated 370,000 Australians aged 16-17 are eligible to receive their Pfizer booster vaccine from three months after their second dose.
Presently, the Pfizer vaccine is the only one registered as a booster for this age group.
Those under 16 when they received their second dose but have since turned 16 are also eligible.
Those 16-17 year olds who are severely immunocompromised – for instance, with weakened immune systems due to cancer treatment – are recommended to have three primary doses, and three months later, have their booster (fourth) dose.
The more transmissible Omicron variant can still infect people who have already been infected with SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID), or who have had two vaccine doses.
For the vast majority of older adolescents, these so-called breakthrough infections are mild and very unlikely to lead to hospitalisation.
Data from New South Wales during the Omicron period (November 26, 2021 to January 15, 2022) shows of 71,786 PCR-confirmed cases in adolescents (aged 10-19 years) only 191 cases (under 1%) required hospitalisation.
Then there’s the issue of waning immunity following the initial two doses.
However, a Pfizer booster dose quickly improves protection against Omicron. Vaccine effectiveness increases to 54-76% within two to four weeks after a booster.
It is important to note that studies of the effectiveness of booster doses specifically in adolescents aged 16-17 against Omicron are not yet available. However, this is likely to be comparable to that for young adults.
The booster dose has several aims. It not only reduces the chances of getting infected in the first place, it reduces the severity of infection in an individual if they do. This means people are less likely to have to take time off school or work.
Adolescents are also a very mobile social group and there may be a potential benefit of a booster vaccine in reducing community transmission. If a booster vaccine reduces your chances of infection it follows it could then reduce community transmission. But more research is needed to confirm if this occurs for Omicron.
Safety data from the United States indicates Pfizer booster doses in adolescents have a similar profile to that seen after a Pfizer second dose.
Early data on booster doses from Australia’s active safety surveillance system also supports the safety of a Pfizer booster dose in adults. In over 600,000 surveys, the most common reported reactions include pain, redness and swelling at the injection site, tiredness, headache and muscle aches.
We also know that both Pfizer (and Moderna) COVID-19 vaccines have rarely been associated with myocarditis, a treatable inflammation of the heart.
In studies in the US, the estimated myocarditis rate in young males aged 16-17 after the second Pfizer dose was 6.9 per 100,000 doses.
Australian data from the TGA show estimated rates of likely myocarditis in males aged 12-17 years of 10.9 per 100,000 doses after the second dose of Pfizer vaccine.
As the booster vaccine program rolls out to 16-17 year olds, the TGA and state/territory health departments will closely monitor any adverse events.
The US now recommends booster doses for everyone aged 12 and older, from five months after the second dose.
It is likely Australia will also see a recommendation for booster doses in younger adolescents (12-15 year olds) and potentially younger children (5-11 year olds) in the future.
However, for now, our focus is on rolling out the two primary doses in 12-15 year olds before considering any booster doses in this age group.
In the meantime, Australia will be closely monitoring data from the US and other countries before expanding the booster program to younger children. This will include:
safety data, with a focus on the risk of myocarditis
looking at the best interval between primary and booster doses
effectiveness data, with a focus on breakthrough infections and their severity.
Pfizer, or other vaccine manufacturers, would need to seek regulatory approval for boosters in younger age groups, and provide safety and effectiveness data.
Australia would also closely watch for the emergence of any new viral variants when considering the need to expand the booster program.
Nicholas Wood has received funding from the NHMRC for a Career Development Fellowship. He holds a Churchill Fellowship awarded in 2019.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Vasso Apostolopoulos, Professor of Immunology and Associate Provost, Research Partnerships, Victoria University
While Australia’s booster program of COVID vaccines is just getting going, governments overseas are evaluating the need for a fourth dose program.
Earlier this year, Israel began offering a fourth dose of the Pfizer mRNA vaccine to people who are immunocompromised, older people, and front line health workers. Israeli medical experts have since suggested fourth doses for everyone over 18. A number of other countries are deploying or considering a fourth dose program. Meanwhile, the UK have ruled it out for the time being.
In Australia, a fourth dose for significantly immunocompromised people – such as those with certain cancers – was approved by ATAGI in early January and is being evaluated for other high-risk populations by the government.
While there is evidence a fourth dose would help protect our most vulnerable, it may not be the answer for the broader Australian community.
Does a fourth dose work?
Preliminary data from Israel suggests a fourth dose for people over 60 offers up to two times more protection against infection, and three times more against severe disease compared to those who have received a third dose at least fourth months prior.
Evidence is not yet available to show the safety of a fourth dose. But given the decrease in adverse events from the third dose, compared to the second, it is likely the extra vaccine will be equally as well – or better – tolerated.
Given a fourth dose looks likely to provide extra protection and be safe, there is certainly a place for the extra vaccination – particularly for those at greatest risk of exposure and severe illness.
In immunocompromised people, the original two doses do not provide enough protection for many. Administering a third dose helped 50% of people who didn’t respond to the first two doses generate an immune response – but this still leaves a large number of people unprotected.
This scenario is partially mirrored in older adults, who have both worse outcomes if they get COVID, and smaller, shorter immune responses to vaccination.
This has sadly been made clear by the lives lost to COVID in Australian aged care facilities. Given these groups make up a disproportionate number of both COVID fatalities and cases, the argument for a fourth dose for older Australians is clear.
The question of whether to vaccinate the bulk of healthy Australians is a more complex one. While some will frame the issue around the risk of vaccine side-effects, this is not the central concern.
Adding a universal widely distributed fourth dose will save lives and prevent burden on the medical system – but this needs to be weighed against practicality and cost.
In healthy people, three doses of a COVID vaccine gives good protection against symptomatic infection and severe illness. This is consistent against all variants of COVID, including the now prevalent Omicron.
The benefit of an additional dose for healthy Australians, may be outweighed by the cost of acquiring and administering an additional 20 million or more doses.
As the Omicron variant has highlighted, we might be better advised to improve access to vaccines in poorer parts of the world, where widespread transmission can seed new variants that can then spread back to wealthier nations like Australia.
Another issue facing immunologists, is the diminishing return on investment of the current vaccines in the face of new variants. Omicron has mutated to a point where it has significant differences from the coronavirus of 2019 (on which the current vaccines are derived). This means the current vaccines are less effective and provide a smaller increase in protection against Omicron infection, though still signficant protection against severe illness.
Rather than further doses of the same formulations, variant-specific vaccines currently in development could offer more tailored protection.
While some voices deride the need for a fourth, fifth or even 20th dose, this is the reality we have faced for years in preventative medicine. New flu vaccines are engineered each year to counter the rapid mutation of viruses. Thankfully, the invention of the mRNA vaccine platform means we can do this faster, more effectively, and more safely than ever before. So, no matter the specific variant, severity or transmission of coronaviruses, we will continue to be able to protect our community.
The way forward all hinges on future information not yet known. We still can’t say with confidence how long immunity from a third dose will last, particularly in the face of new variants. If another variant arises that is more dangerous, or widespread, then maybe the cost/benefit ratio of additional vaccine doses will change for Australians.
However, it is already clear a fourth dose in vulnerable groups will provide worthwhile benefits and protect the most vulnerable members of society – even if we don’t need more widespread vaccination. But we should remain alert and informed. If the battleground changes, those who can must all be prepared to roll up their sleeves and do what is necessary as a community.
Vasso Apostolopoulos COVID-19 research has received internal funding from Victoria University place-based Planetary Health research grant and from philanthropic donations.
Jack Feehan et Maja Husaric 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 poste universitaire.
While news from Tonga is still disrupted following the massive undersea eruption and tsunami on January 15, it’s clear the island nation has suffered significant damage to housing stock and infrastructure.
Once initial clean-up work is done, the focus then turns to rebuilding – specifically, how to rebuild in a way that makes that housing and infrastructure stronger, safer and more resilient than before the disaster.
The substantial reduction of disaster risk and losses in lives, livelihoods and health and in the economic, physical, social, cultural and environmental assets of persons, businesses, communities and countries.
Beyond the framework, however, we have the lessons learned from previous disasters and recovery efforts in the same region – notably what happened in Fiji after Cyclone Winston in 2016. These lessons can be applied to the Tonga rebuild.
Lessons from Cyclone Winston
Winston was a category 5 cyclone, one of the most powerful storms ever recorded in the South Pacfic. When it approached Fiji’s largest and most populated island, Viti Levu, winds reached 230 kilometres per hour, with gusts peaking at 325km/h.
Over 60% of the Fijian population was affected, with around 131,000 people left homeless. The cyclone destroyed, significantly damaged or partially damaged around 30,000 homes, or 22% of households, representing the greatest loss to Fiji’s housing stock from a single event.
Notably, some models of the traditional Fijian bure survived the cyclone with minor or no damage.
Our research team from New Zealand followed and recorded the housing recovery. What we found could benefit Tonga as it faces reconstruction of so much housing stock.
As in Tonga, power, infrastructure and communication systems in Fiji were extensively damaged. Given that “building back better” involves applying higher structural standards than existed previously, we looked for evidence that Fiji was rebuilding in a more resilient and sustainable way.
Fiji carefully recorded and analysed data, employing systematic reconnaissance surveys and damage assessments to identify building performance, structural vulnerabilities and failure mechanisms, as well as community needs. These assessments were done well, to international standards.
Understandably, Fijians were also aware of the need to reduce risks to housing from future cyclones. After the immediate post-cyclone humanitarian response, housing was their main concern. This became a key focus for government agencies as a way of demonstrating the recovery was under way and that communities were at the heart of the process.
A traditional bure in Navala village, Viti Levu – some survived the cyclone well. Author provided
Problems with rebuilding
We studied two main initiatives: a government-funded rebuilding program for houses (the “Help For Homes Initiative”) and the rebuilding programs led by various international and local NGOs.
Help For Homes provided credit for construction materials to people who had lost homes, assuming recipients met certain criteria related to household income, damage and location.
Communities were free to choose the basic type of dwelling, its interior design, external features and materials. Information and instructions about building best practices and standards were provided, but technical or practical support was limited.
Overall, the initiative had mixed reviews. On the one hand, people had autonomy over their future homes; if things went to plan, they liked the outcome. On the other, lack of building skills led to some poor-quality construction, and limited resources (mainly materials) pushed costs up.
A lack of suitable alternative building material also created problems. Material choice, material substitution, resource costs, low community technical expertise and low building standard knowledge are all issues Tonga might also face.
Some homeowners were left without the material they needed, and in some cases with only a partially rebuilt home.
The NGO rebuilding programs, by contrast, usually employed their skilled workers to build and supervise construction activities, often with the help of community labour. But again, reviews were mixed, especially when the communities didn’t have sufficient input into the rebuilding process.
While housing design was largely standardised for quick construction, the NGO houses tended to be technically strong and more resilient to future hazard events.
A timber house on elevated foundations, built to the owner’s design without technical support. Author provided
The best of both worlds
The main lesson was that high levels of community involvement and strong technical support were key to building resilient, future-proofed houses. For Tonga, the Fijian experience offers the opportunity to apply that lesson in four principal ways:
ensure the initial assessment process is thorough and up to international standards
recognise that housing stock overall needs to improve, and commit to higher construction standards
analyse local architecture and building practices for disaster-resistant features
combine the best of government-led and NGO building systems to maximise community involvement while ensuring good technical support and building expertise.
Overall, to have the best chance of rebuilding with the resilience to withstand future shocks, Tonga will benefit greatly from a three-way partnership between the government, NGOs and local communities.
The authors acknowledge the collaboration of Diocel Harold Aquino (Associate Professor of Civil Engineering, University of the Philippines) and
Sateesh Kumar Pisini (Principal Lecturer in Civil Engineering, Fiji National University) in the preparation of this article.
Suzanne Wilkinson receives funding from the New Zealand National Science Challenge: Resilience to Nature’s Challenges to research post-disaster recovery.
Regan Potangaroa receives funding from the New Zealand National Science Challenge: Resilience to Nature’s Challenges to research post-disaster recovery. He is a shelter delegate with the NZ Red Cross and an Associate Trainer with the International humanitarian training group RedR Australia.
Mohamed Elkharboutly 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.
Can black holes become white holes? – Remy, age 9, Wangaratta, Victoria
Hi Remy! Thank you for this great question. The short answer, unfortunately, is no.
White holes are really just something scientists have imagined — they could exist, but we’ve never seen one, or even seen clues that one may exist. For now, they are an idea.
To put it simply, you can imagine a white hole as being a black hole in reverse. So if time was running backwards, black holes would look like white holes. But time doesn’t run in reverse in our universe.
To understand more, let’s start by thinking about how black holes work.
What’s a black hole?
When you drop a tennis ball, it falls to the ground due to what we call gravity. The Earth is very heavy, so it pulls the tennis ball down.
If Earth had more material inside, making it even heavier, gravity would pull on the ball more strongly. The pull would also be stronger if we stood on the surface of a shrunken Earth, which remained as heavy as it is.
Now, imagine we’re deep space explorers and we’ve found something out in space that is both extremely heavy and very small. It pulls very strongly on anything that comes close to it, so we keep our spacecraft a safe distance away.
This mysterious object would pull so powerfully that nothing inside could escape to the outside. A spaceship with the biggest rocket boosters couldn’t escape. Even a laser beam, fired straight out at the speed of light, would not make it to the outside.
Now imagine we stick around in our spaceship (at a safe distance) and make a movie of this black hole.
As we watch it, we’d never see anything escape the black hole. We would instead see the black hole eat anything that came too close. We get lucky: as we watch, the black hole swallows an entire star!
Our movie, titled “Black hole eats a star” gets a million views online. But now imagine if we played it in reverse. In the backwards movie, we’d see a very heavy, very small object just sitting there – and then, all of a sudden, spit out an entire star!
The object we’re looking at now, which spits everything out and eats nothing, would be called a white hole.
Are there white holes?
We have good evidence from our telescopes that black holes really do exist.
However, we’ve never seen a white hole (which is a shame, because they would be really awesome). The reason astronomers think about white holes at all is because of Albert Einstein – a great scientist who is no longer alive, but if you’ve ever seen him you may remember his crazy hair.
Much of what we know about gravity, and the way it works, is thanks to the amazing work of the scientist Albert Einstein. WikiCommons
Einstein came up with an excellent idea about gravity, the invisible force that keeps our feet on the ground. His theory describes how black holes work, with their huge gravitational pull.
Einstein’s idea also says white holes are possible. So could our universe actually make a white hole? And could a black hole become a white hole? Probably not. Something can be “possible” as an idea, but also extremely unlikely in real life.
White holes are unlikely because they are an “in reverse” kind of thing. Think of breakfast in reverse: your egg unscrambles itself and jumps out of the pan, back into the shell. It’s possible, but it would mean time had turned itself around and started running backwards.
As best we can see and measure, time in our universe only flows in one direction: forward. So for now, white holes are just an interesting possibility.
It’s fun to see an egg being cooked in reverse in a movie, but it’s not possible to see in real life.
Luke Barnes 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.
The remarkably successful pro-Palestinian boycott by artists of the recent Sydney Festival was a vibrant example of engaged citizens taking foreign policy into their own hands.
Perhaps 35% of the festival’s participants withdrew, objecting to Israel’s A$20,000 sponsorship of a dance created by an Israeli choreographer and performed by the Sydney Dance Company. Over 1,000 artists also signed a letter supporting the boycott.
Caught like a deer in headlights, the festival organisers belatedly acknowledged the moral objections of artists by pledging to review their policy on donations by foreign governments, but refused to return Israel’s money. The Sydney Dance Company still danced, to rapturous reviews.
Surprisingly weak objections
Opponents of the boycott have mounted some surprisingly weak objections.
They say it censors art for political reasons.
Artists themselves chose not to perform, persuaded, in the free marketplace of ideas, by boycott campaigners. Artists who still wished to perform were free to do so, and audiences were free to attend. There were no union-style pickets. This was a relatively “smart” boycott.
As the European Court of Human Rights unanimously found in 2020, advocacy of boycotting Israel is protected free speech – the opposite of censorship.
Democracies only function if citizens are free to voice their opinions, hoping to convince others. It is absurd for government ministers to condemn such advocacy as censorship. It also patronises artists as unqualified to make up their own minds.
Opponents say it politicises art. Yet political critique has long been a function of art and artists. Art is not just elevator music. The same arguments are often made not to politicise sport. Yet Australia is willing to diplomatically boycott the Beijing Winter Olympics.
Critics argue Israel is anti-Semitically singled out for a boycott when other states have worse human rights records. But it is not the responsibility of campaigners for Palestine to crusade for victims in every other bad country.
It is to their credit they have mobilised an effective boycott, which campaigners elsewhere might learn from. It is not anti-Semitic to criticise Israel for violating international law or to take peaceful action to urge it to stop.
Opponents claim Israel is a democracy. But democracies violate rights too and should not be immune from sanctions.
In any case, Israel is not a democracy for five million Palestinians living under Israeli military control. Most of them have been unable to vote in Israeli elections for over 50 years – even though Israeli settlers in Palestine enjoy the vote.
Opponents warn Hamas has endorsed the boycott, as if invoking the spectre of terrorism automatically discredits it. Hamas supports COVID vaccines too, which hardly makes them a bad thing. Smearing boycotters by association with Hamas is pitifully cheap.
Critics claim struggling artists need to perform because their incomes plummeted during COVID. Again, the artists know best whether they are willing to forgo income to stand up for human rights.
The questions which should be asked of a boycott
There are three genuine questions that should be asked of any boycott. Are the offender’s violations serious enough to justify it? Is the collateral damage to innocents, if any, proportionate? Could the boycott potentially improve the wrongdoer’s behaviour?
First, Israeli violations of international law have been exhaustively documented. It denies Palestinians their rights to self-determination and statehood, has committed war crimes and human rights violations and denies justice to victims.
Its sponsorship of illegal Israeli settlements proves its agenda is to colonise Palestine, not free it or bring it peace. It has constantly defied the international community, including the Security Council and the International Court of Justice.
Palestinian violations do not excuse Israel’s violations. That other countries may be worse does not diminish the case of a boycott of Israel, but draws attention to the need to boycott others as well.
Secondly, the boycott has caused limited collateral damage. It targeted Israeli support for a blameless Israeli dance performed by blameless Sydney dancers and inconvenienced audiences. The calculus of the boycott is these are small sacrifices if stigmatising cooperation with Israel may pressure it to change.
Thirdly, a boycott inflicts pointless vengeance if it has no prospect of success. Critics cry shunning a tiny amount of Israeli money for a harmless dance in faraway Sydney will hardly bring peace to the Middle East.
Yet Israel is hyper-sensitive about its perception by western allies. The spread of sympathy to the Palestinian cause among the Australian community has rattled Israel’s cage and increases its international isolation.
A case of conscience
Citizen boycotts are growing precisely because western governments like Australia and the US have so spectacularly failed to hold Israel to account for systematic violations. We should not only apply our new Magnitsky Act human rights sanctions to adversaries like Russia or China, but also to our “friends” when they badly misbehave.
China will not stop its repression of Uighurs just because Australia doesn’t send officials to watch the Olympics, but we boycott anyway, to stigmatise terrible behaviour. Who knows what might happen when the butterfly of citizen boycotts flaps its wings in the desert of Middle Eastern politics? There is so little to lose and so much to gain.
Australians must exercise their own conscience about different types of boycotts. But the case for boycotts is plausible and should be taken seriously – not sledged by specious or misleading criticisms.
Men write nearly nine in ten sports articles that appear in Australian media, a report on female voices in the media found last year. The report also found women were only quoted in 31% of the most prominent sports stories that are published, and about 31% of sports stories focused on a female subject.
These statistics show that despite an increase in the visibility of a few female sports reporters during the past decade, media coverage of women’s sport is still not fully reflecting its excellence, depth and achievements.
Yet there was a time when this wasn’t the case, when a diverse group of female sports reporters played a critical role in covering women’s sport.
This was perhaps best exemplified in the newspaper coverage of the first test cricket series between the Australian and English women’s team in 1934-35 in Australia, and the subsequent Australian women’s tour of England in 1937.
As I discuss in my new podcast, The Maiden Summer, the series featured coverage by a range of Australian female sports journalists whose reporting helped support the growing public interest in the tests.
Pioneers in sports media
Patricia Jarrett was a talented swimmer and junior athletics champion in Victoria when she became the first female sports writer at Keith Murdoch’s The Herald in 1933.
The Herald’s in-house staff publication introduced Jarrett as “[…] our outstanding woman athlete.” At the time, there was only one other woman on the newspaper’s editorial staff.
English women’s cricket player practising in the nets during the 1934-35 tour. Wikimedia Commons
Jarrett then accompanied the 1934-35 Australian women’s cricket team around the country, and became the first woman to cover an overseas cricket tour when she travelled to England in 1937.
These breakthroughs provoked little resistance within newsrooms. Jarrett recalled in a National Library of Australia interview in 1984 there was only one reaction to her being sent on the 1937 tour, when a female friend remarked, “Fancy The Herald sending a woman to England to cover a cricket match.”
But Jarrett explained when she asked Murdoch if she could cover the tour, he readily agreed “…and off I went on this slow boat”.
The arrival of the Australian Women’s Weekly in 1933 also provided an important platform for a discussion about women’s sport. The former cricketer, administrator and national selector Ruth Preddey had a weekly column in the new magazine that canvassed a range of sporting issues, particularly those affecting women’s cricket.
A dramatic moment from the second Ashes test at Sydney during the 1934-35 England tour of Australia. WikiCommons
Jarrett and Preddey were soon joined by many others in Australian sports media:
the Hansen sisters, Pat and Carley, who played hockey and cricket, wrote about women’s sport in Sydney and Brisbane newspapers
Lois Quarrell, who created the Women in Sport page in The Adelaide Advertiser in 1936 and continued to cover women’s sport in the 1940s and 1950s
Gwen Varley, who pioneered the coverage of women’s sport, particularly grassroots sport, during the early years of ABC Radio in Sydney and then at 3AW in Melbourne
Kath Commins, a talented cricketer and tennis player, who joined The Sydney Morning Herald in the 1934 after telling an executive there was a gap in the newspaper’s coverage she could fill – women’s sport.
Early advocates for women’s sport
What many of these women had in common was a deep involvement in sport administration. This meant they were not just absorbed by the contests of sport, but also its development and promotion. They became early advocates for women’s sport through their writing and broadcasting.
Biography of Patricia Jarrett, published in 1996. Melbourne University Press
There were two important factors that feed in to this blossoming of women’s sport reporting in the 1930s.
In cricket, in particular, there was a strong public interest in the game, especially following the 1932-33 men’s Ashes series that was riven by the Bodyline controversy – the use of short and targeted fast bowling by England to curb the run-scoring of Don Bradman. English women’s captain Betty Archdale was still being asked about “Bodyline” when her team arrived in Fremantle in 1934.
Second, women’s cricket was in the midst of the next stage of its evolution – the game was more organised at a state level and there was an equivalent growth in interest. Women’s club cricket in Melbourne would frequently draw several thousand spectators, mainly men, to suburban grounds.
A slow decline after the war
This interest in women’s sport and the growth in female reporting was interrupted by the second world war.
Although there was still some vibrancy in post-war women’s cricket, the number of women sports reporters declined, partly because returned servicemen went back to newsrooms, and partly because some of the trailblazing female reporters from the 1930s had moved on.
Jarrett, for example, had been an accredited war correspondent within Australia, which reflected her desire to write about issues other than sport. She later recalled,
It was when I came back from that [1937] tour that I thought there had to be more for me in journalism than sportswriting […] I saw the opportunities for other writing.
My preliminary research shows publications had supported this group of pioneers at the time because there was a readership for women’s sport. Newspapers, in particular, were also healthy businesses back then. Advertising was strong and there were large editorial departments and plenty of pages to fill – unlike the current commercial pressures facing the Australian press.
Nevertheless, there is only one sobering conclusion to be drawn – we have gone backwards since then.
Integral to appreciating the contribution of these women’s sports reporters in the 1930s is an understanding of how important they were in supporting women’s sport and driving interest, patronage and attendance at games.
This is a clear sign what happened once before needs to happen again – we need more women reporting on sport, especially at a time when the interest in women’s sport has rarely been greater.
Nick Richardson 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.
Men write nearly nine in ten sports articles that appear in Australian media, a report on female voices in the media found last year. The report also found women were only quoted in 31% of the most prominent sports stories that are published, and about 31% of sports stories focused on a female subject.
These statistics show that despite an increase in the visibility of a few female sports reporters during the past decade, media coverage of women’s sport is still not fully reflecting its excellence, depth and achievements.
Yet there was a time when this wasn’t the case, when a diverse group of female sports reporters played a critical role in covering women’s sport.
This was perhaps best exemplified in the newspaper coverage of the first test cricket series between the Australian and English women’s team in 1934-35 in Australia, and the subsequent Australian women’s tour of England in 1937.
As I discuss in my new podcast, The Maiden Summer, the series featured coverage by a range of Australian female sports journalists whose reporting helped support the growing public interest in the tests.
Pioneers in sports media
Patricia Jarrett was a talented swimmer and junior athletics champion in Victoria when she became the first female sports writer at Keith Murdoch’s The Herald in 1933.
The Herald’s in-house staff publication introduced Jarrett as “[…] our outstanding woman athlete.” At the time, there was only one other woman on the newspaper’s editorial staff.
English women’s cricket player practising in the nets during the 1934-35 tour. Wikimedia Commons
Jarrett then accompanied the 1934-35 Australian women’s cricket team around the country, and became the first woman to cover an overseas cricket tour when she travelled to England in 1937.
These breakthroughs provoked little resistance within newsrooms. Jarrett recalled in a National Library of Australia interview in 1984 there was only one reaction to her being sent on the 1937 tour, when a female friend remarked, “Fancy The Herald sending a woman to England to cover a cricket match.”
But Jarrett explained when she asked Murdoch if she could cover the tour, he readily agreed “…and off I went on this slow boat”.
The arrival of the Australian Women’s Weekly in 1933 also provided an important platform for a discussion about women’s sport. The former cricketer, administrator and national selector Ruth Preddey had a weekly column in the new magazine that canvassed a range of sporting issues, particularly those affecting women’s cricket.
A dramatic moment from the second Ashes test at Sydney during the 1934-35 England tour of Australia. WikiCommons
Jarrett and Preddey were soon joined by many others in Australian sports media:
the Hansen sisters, Pat and Carley, who played hockey and cricket, wrote about women’s sport in Sydney and Brisbane newspapers
Lois Quarrell, who created the Women in Sport page in The Adelaide Advertiser in 1936 and continued to cover women’s sport in the 1940s and 1950s
Gwen Varley, who pioneered the coverage of women’s sport, particularly grassroots sport, during the early years of ABC Radio in Sydney and then at 3AW in Melbourne
Kath Commins, a talented cricketer and tennis player, who joined The Sydney Morning Herald in the 1934 after telling an executive there was a gap in the newspaper’s coverage she could fill – women’s sport.
Early advocates for women’s sport
What many of these women had in common was a deep involvement in sport administration. This meant they were not just absorbed by the contests of sport, but also its development and promotion. They became early advocates for women’s sport through their writing and broadcasting.
Biography of Patricia Jarrett, published in 1996. Melbourne University Press
There were two important factors that feed in to this blossoming of women’s sport reporting in the 1930s.
In cricket, in particular, there was a strong public interest in the game, especially following the 1932-33 men’s Ashes series that was riven by the Bodyline controversy – the use of short and targeted fast bowling by England to curb the run-scoring of Don Bradman. English women’s captain Betty Archdale was still being asked about “Bodyline” when her team arrived in Fremantle in 1934.
Second, women’s cricket was in the midst of the next stage of its evolution – the game was more organised at a state level and there was an equivalent growth in interest. Women’s club cricket in Melbourne would frequently draw several thousand spectators, mainly men, to suburban grounds.
A slow decline after the war
This interest in women’s sport and the growth in female reporting was interrupted by the second world war.
Although there was still some vibrancy in post-war women’s cricket, the number of women sports reporters declined, partly because returned servicemen went back to newsrooms, and partly because some of the trailblazing female reporters from the 1930s had moved on.
Jarrett, for example, had been an accredited war correspondent within Australia, which reflected her desire to write about issues other than sport. She later recalled,
It was when I came back from that [1937] tour that I thought there had to be more for me in journalism than sportswriting […] I saw the opportunities for other writing.
My preliminary research shows publications had supported this group of pioneers at the time because there was a readership for women’s sport. Newspapers, in particular, were also healthy businesses back then. Advertising was strong and there were large editorial departments and plenty of pages to fill – unlike the current commercial pressures facing the Australian press.
Nevertheless, there is only one sobering conclusion to be drawn – we have gone backwards since then.
Integral to appreciating the contribution of these women’s sports reporters in the 1930s is an understanding of how important they were in supporting women’s sport and driving interest, patronage and attendance at games.
This is a clear sign what happened once before needs to happen again – we need more women reporting on sport, especially at a time when the interest in women’s sport has rarely been greater.
Nick Richardson 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
Anxiety about kids’ safety is leading many parents not to send their child to preschool or childcare. Absence rates in some large providers of early childhood education and care were reportedly as high as 43% by late January compared to about 10% in November and December.
Most kids across the country went back to school this week with various plans in place in different states to monitor and contain COVID infections. Together with mitigation measures such as masks and effective ventilation, schools in New South Wales, Victoria and the ACT, for instance, are providing free rapid antigen tests to families so students and staff can be tested several times a week to monitor any infections.
While provision of RATs for preschool and childcare staff and similar testing plans are in place in NSW, Victoria and South Australia, this is not the case for the children in their care. This may be because RATs aren’t as effective in detecting infections in children as in adults. A study of the sensitivity of RATs in children found the tests failed to accurately detect infection in 36% of infected children. If the child was infected but had no symptoms, RATs failed to detect this in 44% of cases.
Other mitigation measures in place at schools are more difficult to implement in early learning settings. No vaccine is available for preschool and childcare-aged children and masks are not recommended for children under two years old.
There is a national framework for managing COVID in schools and childcare settings. Early childhood services and schools must respond on the basis of public health advice and with support from public health authorities where required.
However, at the moment plans to prevent transmission in childcare settings are being left to states and territories, and the approaches are at times fragmented. A national set of strategies supported by evidence is required to ensure the best outcomes for children, childcare workers and families.
What are the risks of childcare?
COVID remains a mild disease for most infants and children. The majority of positive COVID cases still occur in older age groups.
Despite this, because of the sheer number of overall Omicron infections, some areas in the northern hemisphere have had an almost eight-fold increase in hospitalisations of children aged 0-4. This is higher than the population generally, probably because small children are unvaccinated.
It is also winter there, which increases transmission risk for everyone because viral particles stay viable for longer in the cold, and transmission occurs much more frequently indoors.
COVID is still a mild disease for most infants and toddlers. Shutterstock
Australian infants and children have a very low risk of dying from COVID. Only four deaths associated with COVID have been recorded in Australian children under the age of 10 since the first case of COVID was reported. This is compared to 12 in the 20-29 group, 41 for 30-39 and 353 for those aged 60-69.
However, having a chronic condition may increase your child’s risk of serious outcomes from COVID. You may wish to seek medical advice on whether to send them to childcare or keep them at home.
What about the risks to teachers?
A Scottish study found school teachers were not at a higher risk of contracting COVID-19 than the general population.
There is very little published on the risk to teachers in childcare. However, data collected in childcare in the middle of 2021, during the Delta outbreak in NSW, showed that of the secondary cases (someone being infected by a primary case) most SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID) transmission in childcare occurred between staff (16.9%), or staff infected children (8.1%), rather than the other way around.
Omicron is much more transmissable than Delta, but given the very high volume of cases in the commmunity, teachers are likely at no greater risk of contracting COVID at work than they are anywhere else.
States and territories doing different things
All states and territories require preschool and childcare staff to be vaccinated. But there are slight variations when it comes to other migitation measures.
For instance, in Queensland, staff are required to wear masks while standing or moving about indoors, but may remove their mask when seated or if able to maintain a 1.5 metre distance from others while teaching or interacting with children. But in NSW, all staff and visitors in early childhood and education services are required to wear masks while indoors with no exceptions.
Kids should be kept outside as much as possible. Shutterstock
While most states are deploying air purifiers to schools, there is no such policy for early education and care settings. It is less simple for the government to send free purifiers to childcare centres due to their different ownership arrangements and the sheer number of them.
But air purifiers are an important way to ensure children and staff in early childhood and care settings are protected, especially considering other mitigation measures employed by schools are not in place. A national plan needs to address how to ensure each centre has one.
regular cleaning of surfaces, and particularly of objects infants and small children put in their mouths, may help reduce transmission
children should be encouraged to regularly wash hands, particularly before touching food.
One of the most important strategies to reduce transmission is good ventilation, as infectious particles build up in the air when infected people are indoors, so:
The wreck of the SS Gothenburg.Queensland Museum Network
The Great Barrier Reef is incredible, with turquoise water, stunning reefs and white sandy cays. Yet its name infers something quite different – a barrier: treacherous, dynamic and dangerous to navigate.
For millennia, people navigated and traded across the northern coast of Australia and the Coral Sea.
When early European seafarers came face-to-face with the world’s largest coral reef system, it was not the beauty they saw, but a nearly unnavigable structure that could easily sink their ships.
Throughout the past 230 years, over 1,200 vessels met their end on the reef – but only 114 have been found.
Each site holds the potential for a wealth of archaeological and historic heritage, as well as tales of disaster, death and lessons learnt about the reef. Preservation, future management and care of these sites is essential.
Our shipwrecks should be visited and enjoyed by the public, yet we should also strive to protect them for the future. We can never replace these sites – once gone they are lost forever. Here are four particularly infamous shipwrecks on the Great Barrier Reef.
HMS Pandora Sinking, by Oswald Brett. Queensland Museum Network
The tale of HMS Pandora is the lesser known – yet perhaps more disastrous – sequel to the infamous maritime tale of the “Mutiny on the Bounty”.
Pandora was the Royal Navy ship sent to hunt down the Bounty mutineers in 1791. After months of searching the south pacific and finding only 14 of the mutineers, Captain Edwards turned for home via passage through the Torres Strait.
The 24-gun frigate ran aground onto the reef, eventually sinking in 30 metres of water. One mutineer and 35 crew lost their lives, and the survivors made a phenomenal journey in long boats to Indonesia (then Java).
Archaeologists excavating a ceramic oil jar from the Pandora shipwreck. Queensland Museum Network
The ship was lost to history until divers searching for the site found it buried beneath sand and well-preserved in 1977. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, archaeological excavations provided a wealth of information about life on-board a naval ship in the 18th century.
Artefacts from the wreck include an enormous six-pounder cannon, ceramics, belt buckles, ivory instruments and even delicate organics like rope and cloth.
To date, Pandora is the earliest known shipwreck on the Great Barrier Reef.
SS Gothenburg (1875)
Perhaps one of the most horrific shipwrecks to occur on the Great Barrier Reef is SS Gothenburg.
Built in the UK in 1854, the 60 metre long steam ship operated as a regular passenger service between Australia and New Zealand, and later between Adelaide and Darwin. Gothenburg’s fateful last voyage was a trip from Darwin to Melbourne carrying 37 crew and 98 passengers, including some of Darwin’s elite citizens, as well as 93 kilograms of gold valued at £40,000 (A$1,000,000 today).
An illustration of SS Gothenburg. Australasian Sketcher with Pen and Pencil (Melbourne, Vic. : 1873 – 1889), Saturday 20 March 1875
Gothenburg encountered cyclonic weather and struck reef southeast of Townsville. The crew attempted to reverse the vessel off the reef, which ultimately damaged the hull further. Worsening weather pushed the steamer further onto the reef, sweeping people into the ocean.
Although one lifeboat made it out, help arrived too late and only 22 people survived. Grisly details arose of bodies seen still clinging to the staircase as salvage divers investigated the wreck to recover the gold.
Gothenburg was found in 1971 by divers sitting in 9 to 16 metres of water and identified in 1978. Maritime archaeologists continue to learn from Gothenburg: the wreck provides insight into life onboard a steam ship in Australia and management of iron steamships in reef environments.
Foam (1893)
Artists interpretation of what Foam may have looked like. Queensland Museum Network
In 1893, a wooden topsail schooner ran aground on Myrmidon Reef east of Townsville. The shipwreck remained undiscovered in six metres of water until identified as Foam in 1982.
Diver ensures artefacts are carefully raised from the Foam Shipwreck. Queensland Museum Network
Foam is the only known wreck on the Great Barrier Reef of a Queensland vessel engaged in the labour trade at the time of its demise. Its discovery helped shed light on the recruitment and transport of indentured labourers from the South Sea Islands, known as blackbirding.
Among the artefacts collected from the wreck were many ceramic armbands used for trade.
Maritime archaeologists now know these armbands were European copies of the shell armbands traditionally used by South Sea Islanders as indicators of status or for trade: the Europeans were introducing counterfeit copies into the Islanders’ exchange systems.
Foam continues to reveal information about the labour trade and influences at the time.
One of the ceramic armbands (MA3279) in the state collection. Queensland Museum Network
SS Yongala disappeared without a trace in March 1911, likely having encountered an unexpected cyclone. Known as “Australia’s Titanic”, all 122 people on board disappeared without a trace. The location of the 100 meter long steamship remained a mystery until discovered lying in 30 meters of water off Alva Beach in the 1950s.
Today, the haunting grave site has become a unique oasis.
Divers around the bow of the Yongala shipwreck. Maddy McAllister
Yongala is one of the most intact historic shipwrecks in Australian waters and ongoing research is exploring how it has become the habitat for a remarkably diverse range of marine life (particularly coral). The wreck is ranked as one of the top ten best wreck dives worldwide.
Maddy McAllister is the Senior Curator of Maritime Archaeology at James Cook University and the Queensland Museum Network. She is affiliated with the Australasian Institute for Maritime Archaeology.
New Zealand Parliament Buildings, Wellington, New Zealand.
Editor’s Note: Here below is a list of the main issues currently under discussion in New Zealand and links to media coverage. You can sign up to NZ Politics Daily as well as New Zealand Political Roundup columns for free here.
As for most of the second half of 2021, the small principalities and territories (and former territories) of the European colonial powers show up highly in these charts of covid casualty countries. One of the great untold stories of Covid19 has been the impact of SARS-Cov2 (and the generally affluent travellers who carried it) upon these often fragile polities. Our political obsession with ourselves, the countries most like ourselves, and the very populous countries of the world, has made this tragedy – especially in the Caribbean Islands – all the more tragic due to our lack of acknowledgement of them. (We will next encounter a number of these depleted countries in the Birmingham Commonwealth Games, this year.)
We note that some other little countries (and quite big countries too) don’t make these charts, due to underreporting. One really big country that has fallen under the radar is Pakistan, with an estimated 800,000 covid deaths (ourworldindata; Economist estimates), nearly thirty times its reported toll.
It is important to note that estimates – such as the one above for Pakistan – are ‘excess deaths’ arising from all aspects of the pandemic, including people who died as a result of the social, economic and epidemiological effects of the anti-covid restrictions.
These excess deaths can be labelled as deaths FROM covid. The government-reported covid mortality statistics measure people who died WITH covid. The data for people dying with covid is commonly used as a proxy for people dying OF covid. (Some people dying with covid – and increasingly so during the highly infectious but relatively mild Omicron variant – are people who would have died anyway.)
Only countries with more than 400,000 people
Chart by Keith Rankin.Chart by Keith Rankin.
An important feature of the latest death statistics is the return of South America, a region in which much of the immunisation immunity of 2021 will have waned substantially.
Otherwise, Eastern Europe’s substantially unnoticed tragedy continues; including the covid tragedy in Russia (estimated 1.1 million deaths from Covid19) and Ukraine (estimated 200,000 deaths in a country of 40 million people).
Of particular interest to the New Zealand establishment and New Zealand media – in our western liberal democracy (albeit, like others, an increasingly frayed democracy) – is the covid experience of other liberal democracies our size or bigger. A number of these countries appear on this second pair of charts, including Australia and Canada. Indeed, most western liberal democracies appear on one or both of these charts. (Indeed, I think that New Zealand and Ireland are the only such countries not to feature.)
The last chart, which sequences countries by cases, includes most of West Europe’s social democracies. (Iceland is too small for this chart, but is on the very first chart, above.) By and large these data are a result of high rapid-antigen testing revealing that just about everyone has been exposed to covid; though few who were not already sick have become sick from Omicron. The two most prominent of these countries – Denmark and Israel – are both massively vaccinated, and, as a result, have hospitals that are underwhelmed by covid. (Facemasks have achieved nothing; vaccinations have been critical.) Denmark is abandoning all restrictions – including mask-wearing – while reported case numbers are at their peak.
My sense is that most of these countries are currently experiencing their final significant outbreak of Covid19.
The two countries which are on the ‘deaths chart’ but not on the ‘cases chart’ are United States and Canada. These two countries are particularly notable in that their high death numbers are clearly much more than a statistical artefact. The very cold winter may be a factor. So will lower vaccination rates in the United States. So will be the high continued numbers of Delta cases in the US – including my brother-in-law who got very sick from Delta in January. (New Zealand still has Delta cases, but most of those sufferers will be under the belief that they have the less-severe Omicron; Delta was ‘so last year’!)
Re Canada, I have this comment from my contact in Winnipeg, after having shovelled a metre of snow from her back yard: “Our new [Manitoba] Premier Stefanson has decided ‘the government can’t protect everyone’ so she has discontinued rapid testing for the majority of ill citizens and says that ‘if you’re sick you probably have covid, so stay home’. Therefore, there are no actual counts of active cases. Some news reports earlier this month estimated (based on modelling) the active cases at ‘over 40% of the population of the province’, but we have no way of knowing.”
What will happen in New Zealand is highly uncertain; we can say the same for Western Australia. One possibility is that New Zealand will get a ‘perfect storm’ of covid in the winter months – June to August – when our lack of immunity due to natural exposure (to covid and to previously endemic ‘cold’ coronaviruses) could become apparent. (We had an RSV ‘cold’ epidemic last winter, and have never been told the toll of that.) If we pay attention to last November’s deadly second Delta outbreak in Europe – and, seemingly, nobody does pay attention to that any more – we see that the driving force was waning immunity from both natural exposures and vaccinations. It was that late Delta outbreak that brought to our attention the need to boost our erstwhile high ‘full’ vaccination status.
Fortunately, if the perfect storm scenario does take place, it will most likely be the less severe Omicron variant. Nevertheless, we can expect Covid19 death rates comparable to those Canada is facing at present.
***
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.
Do you love spending time in nature? Or are you a city slicker, happier in the concrete jungle than the great outdoors? Back in 1986, the US biologist EO Wilson proposed that humans have an innate connection with the natural world, an idea known as biophilia.
Almost every aspect of our lives depends on nature, from food and shelter to fuel and clothing. Yet some of us are much more “into” spending time in nature than others.
To try to understand why, we studied more than 1,100 pairs of twins to find out how much of our connection to nature might depend on our DNA. We found almost half the variation in people’s connection to nature can be put down to genetics.
Perhaps our affinity for nature is inherited. Or perhaps we get it from environmental factors – such as beautiful forests – in the places we live. Or again it might come from our cultural milieu such as the books we read or the TV programs we watch.
Finding answers to these questions might help us work out how to get some nature back into people’s lives.
Studying twins
We studied more than 1,100 pairs of twins to understand the origin of affinity for nature, and report the results in a study published today in PLoS Biology. It turns out identical twins are much more similar to each other in the strength of their connection to nature than non-identical twins.
Statistical analysis of the results showed 46% of the variation in connection to nature, as measured on a psychological scale, can be explained by genetic factors. Even the amount of time we spend in our own backyards and visiting local parks seems to have a strong genetic basis.
Studies of twins show 46% of the variation in connection to nature as measured on a psychological scale can be explained by genetic factors. Shutterstock
Why the strong genetic influence on our love for nature? Well, one can imagine a strong affinity with nature conferring a significant survival advantage for early humans. This might have led to the formation of complex networks of genes that govern how we relate to nature, and how we behave in it.
Despite the clear role of genetics, our results show other factors actually shape most of our affinity to nature. These might include childhood holiday destinations, the examples set by our parents, friends and other family members, educational experiences, and whether we live in a biodiverse area.
This is good news, because many of these things are under our own control.
Nature and health
Nature–based health interventions such as green gyms or environmental volunteering can improve physical, mental and social health and well-being. Nature-play initiatives such as the Green Passport for Queensland kids can give children powerful experiences of nature that could benefit their health over the long term.
A deeper question, and one we don’t yet have a clear answer to, is whether spending time in nature fosters our sense of environmental concern, and in turn, support for nature conservation.
The US ecologist James Miller has argued interactions with nature are crucial in sparking support for protecting nature. Yet an Australian study led by environmentalist Jessica Pinder showed conservation concern among Australian undergraduates was more strongly associated with social and cultural experiences in childhood than with the amount of time a person spends in nature. Clearly, there is much more to learn in this area.
Ultimately, we now know despite a genetic basis for our affinity to nature, much of it also depends on other factors that are decidedly under our own control. So make a resolution today to rekindle your connection to the great outdoors!
Richard Fuller receives funding from the Australian Research Council.
Brenda Lin receives funding from the Commonwealth and State governments. She is affiliated with CSIRO, which sponsors The Conversation. She is also a STEM Ambassador with Science & Technology Australia.
Danielle Shanahan is affiliated with Zealandia’s Centre for People and Nature, and Victoria University of Wellington.
Kevin J. Gaston receives funding from UKRI.
Chia-chen Chang, L. Roman Carrasco, and Rachel Oh 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.
Eight years since the Russian annexation of Crimea, Ukraine is facing another threat from its eastern neighbour. Russia has amassed an estimated 130,000 troops and military equipment along its borders in recent weeks.
Ukraine is literally surrounded by Russian troops: along its northern border with Belarus, in Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine (Donetsk and Luhansk), in Crimea to the south, and in Transnistria, the Russian-occupied part of Moldova to the west.
Despite these disturbing developments, Russia continues to deny any planned aggression towards Ukraine. Russia is not only the second-largest natural gas producer in the world – it is also extremely good as gaslighting.
A convoy of Russian armoured vehicles moving along a highway in Crimea. AP
Russia’s ‘reflexive control’ strategy
As the official Russian rhetoric goes, Ukraine and Russia are “one people” belonging to the same historical and spiritual space.
However, this claim is a historical fabrication. It is strategically deployed to de-legitimise Ukraine’s claims to nationhood – and by extension, sovereignty – and bring it back into Russia’s orbit of influence.
The significant military buildup on Ukraine’s border is part of a larger coordinated geopolitical offensive called “reflexive control”.
Reflexive control involves a wide variety of hybrid warfare tactics, such as deception, distraction, deterrence and provocation. We’ve seen these tactics playing out in the rising number of cyber attacks on Ukraine’s government servers and energy grid, to the Russian state-sponsored disinformation campaigns aimed at sowing distrust and discord in the country.
In many cases, these disinformation campaigns have originated online with the help of the Internet Research Agency, a troll factory in Russia.
Reflexive control also involves the potential for so-called false-flag operations – terrorist acts allegedly committed by Ukraine on Russian territory or involving Russian citizens. These types of incidents can be used to justify a military incursion into a sovereign state.
A history of interference and disinformation
The roots of Russian interventions in Ukraine go much deeper than its illegal annexation of Crimea and occupation of large parts of Donetsk and Luhansk in 2014, and its actions on the border today. In fact, Ukraine has been subjected to Russian interference since becoming an independent state in 1991.
This influence has manifested in myriad ways, from economic and political coercion to cultural conformism. This includes weaponising Ukraine’s energy dependency on Russia, a near-complete russification of Ukraine’s media, attempts to install pro-Kremlin governments, and even high-profile assassinations of journalists and political activists.
Ukraine has seen two major waves of popular protests against rising Russian influence. The first was the Orange Revolution of 2004 following Russian attempts to rig Ukraine’s presidential election to try to ensure the pro-Russian candidate, Viktor Yanukovych, won.
Then-opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko addressing a crowd in Kyiv during the Orange Revolution in 2004. Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP
Another protest broke out in 2013 after Yanukovych, then president, refused to sign a political association agreement with the European Union, opting instead to join a customs union with Russia. This was known as the Revolution of Dignity, or the Maidan Revolution.
In both cases, Russian official rhetoric used these revolutions as evidence of Ukraine being subverted by the West. This effectively de-legitimised their true causes and the public sentiment around them.
One of the most prominent Russian narratives was that Ukraine was a “failed state” – a country governed by chaos, swarming with radicals and fascists, and on the brink of a civil war. Conveniently, this vilification also served as a cautionary tale to prevent any pro-democratic protests from erupting in Russia.
The Maidan Revolution eventually succeeded in Yanukovych being removed from office. But Russia took advantage of the transition of power by sending uniformed men with no insignia to covertly take over government buildings in Crimea. It was the most significant breach of territorial integrity in Europe since the second world war.
A secession referendum was then held in Crimea that was the exact kind of “democracy” the Ukrainian people have fought so hard to overthrow.
It does not take a mathematical genius to question the validity of a near-unanimous vote to secede (96.77%) in a region comprised of only 60% ethnic Russians, many of whom had Ukrainian citizenship and did not support the secession.
Russian-orchestrated “insurgency” in the east
Russia’s next move was to orchestrate an insurgency in eastern Ukraine stoked initially by Russian special operations units and paramilitary groups.
I have written extensively on how a handful of citizens in the eastern Ukrainian city of Mariupol were able to successfully counter a so-called “insurgency” after seeing their city suddenly flooded by strangers who spoke an unfamiliar dialect of Russian, had a hard time paying in Ukrainian currency and repeatedly asked locals for directions.
These strangers – locals called them “political tourists” – were sent to Mariupol from the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don to instigate pro-Russian demonstrations. Similar operations took place throughout 2014 in many other Ukrainian cities.
In hindsight, Ukrainian activists were perhaps the only reason the Russian army couldn’t advance further into the country eight years ago. They quickly identified these patterns across the country and organised against the interlopers.
Yet, as is often the case with gaslighting, the burden of proof is on the victim – many in the West still repeat Russia’s “civil war” narrative to this day.
In the face of such an existential threat, Ukraine has experienced profound social, political and cultural transformations.
Over the past eight years of occupation, hundreds of grassroots volunteer initiatives have stepped up to help the country recover from the humanitarian crisis stemming from the long-running conflict and counteract a full-scale military invasion.
This type of civil society activism is the cornerstone of democracies around the world. There is still a long way to go in Ukraine, but these emerging foundations can now be observed in nearly every aspect of public life.
Ukrainians do not want democracy because they are being “subverted” by the West, as Russia claims. Ukrainians want democracy because it paves the way from an imperial Russian borderland to a sovereign statehood.
Allowing Russia to thwart these aspirations and re-invade Ukraine sets a dangerous precedent for other sovereign states trying to break away from their violent and traumatic past.
Olga Boichak is affiliated with Ukraine Democracy Initiative – an international nonpartisan network of researchers, field experts, civic activists, journalists, and policy-makers working on the topic of democratic transformations in Ukraine.
The requirement to show proof of two doses of a COVID vaccine to do things such as eat out, go to the pub and visit sporting events is still in place across parts of the country including Victoria, Queensland and Western Australia.
Part of the rationale for such mandates is to limit transmission of the virus, and therefore also protect vulnerable people who may be at risk of severe disease.
But the arrival of the Omicron variant has changed the COVID landscape in Australia. Emerging evidence suggests two doses of COVID vaccine provides little protection against infection against the highly-infectious Omicron variant – though they’re still effective against severe disease.
So we asked five experts, is it time to rethink vaccine mandates for dining, fitness and events?
New Zealand’s critical shortage of specialist nurses made headlines again this week, but it’s not the country’s only pressing medical need.
The Association of Salaried Medical Specialists (ASMS) has estimated almost 3,000 more GPs and specialist doctors, and 12,000 more nurses, are needed to match Australia’s per-capita staffing levels.
The predicted impact of Omicron adds to the urgency, but since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic there have been regular reports of a medical workforce in crisis, with longer waiting times and patients being turned away.
Border closures and immigration restrictions have only made the doctor shortage worse. We need to ask, therefore, why many foreign-trained doctors currently living in New Zealand are still not allowed to work.
Brain drain and brain gain
Doctors have always moved around. It’s been an important aspect of the medical profession for centuries, as a way of learning new skills and knowledge. According to a 2019 Medical Council workforce survey, around 40% of New Zealand-trained physicians from the 2005 cohort were living overseas after ten years.
To compensate for this “brain drain”, which leads to roughly one in six New Zealand-trained doctors working overseas, doctors from other countries are encouraged to immigrate. New Zealand’s health system depends on this migrant “brain gain”.
To make matters worse, not all of those who stay are able to work as doctors in their adopted country.
Long pathways to practising
The reason lies in the way New Zealand licenses foreign doctors depending on where they trained. Those with training and experience in “comparable health systems” can generally practise as soon as they receive a job offer.
That comparability is measured by indicators such as life expectancy and doctors-per-capita in other countries. It’s hardly surprising that only wealthier countries are on the list.
Doctors who can’t claim comparability must first complete a medical knowledge exam from either Australia, the UK, US or Canada, pass an English test and then pass the New Zealand Registration Examination (NZREX).
This process can cost more than NZ$10,000 and takes years – especially since COVID-19 has meant half of the exam offerings were cancelled in 2020 and 2021, adding to wait times.
Once a doctor has passed the exams and met the required standard, they must still complete two years of supervised work before being licensed.
This is where the catch comes: first-year supervised positions are limited, prioritised for New Zealand medical graduates and rarely offered to foreign-trained doctors.
Most doctors from comparable health systems, on the other hand, don’t need to take the NZREX or complete two years of supervised work. By not competing with New Zealand medical graduates to be licensed, they don’t experience the same bottlenecks.
Of the foreign doctors who passed the NZREX between 2016 and 2021, just over half now have provisional registration and can work. This leaves 94 who have passed the exam in the past five years but are still not licensed to practise medicine.
For those who passed the exam earlier, the results are valid for only five years. If they haven’t been able to secure a supervised position in that time, they are back to square one.
A wasted workforce
The government has an ongoing recruitment campaign to lure overseas doctors. The Medical Council is also looking for ways to simplify the pathway for doctors from comparable health systems.
Despite the obvious need, qualified immigrant doctors have reportedly been denied work opportunities at understaffed hospitals during the pandemic.
It is difficult not to see an apparent assumption that a doctor’s competency as a physician is associated with the country they are from. This is not an unusual phenomenon – migrant physicians from non-Western backgrounds often experience barriers to registration and licensing in their destination countries.
But in New Zealand the disadvantage some foreign doctors face also extends to the licensing pathways. To be registered, those from non-Western countries must demonstrate clinical skills, including showing Māori cultural competency, while those from “comparable health systems” don’t.
One might ask, if cultural competency is important in the context of New Zealand’s inequitable health outcomes, why shouldn’t all foreign doctors be required to demonstrate this before being licensed?
With so many foreign-trained doctors in New Zealand unable to work, even after passing their licensing exams, we argue the problem is less about brain drains or brain gains. Rather, it reflects a “brain waste” for both the doctors themselves and for Aotearoa New Zealand, as Omicron threatens to stretch a system already in crisis.
Sharon McLennan received funding from the Royal Society of New Zealand’s Marsden Fund.
Johanna Thomas-Maude 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 only species of Australian bird which remains unphotographed. This is one of the most accurate illustrations of the species. John Keulemans published in Gregory Mathews ‘The Birds of Australia’ 1911, Author provided
In humid savanna on Cape York Peninsula, February 5, 1922, a man was on the hunt with a local Indigenous guide. They had just heard their quarry calling among the tall grass – a low “oomm, oomm, oomm” – before it burst into view with a flurry of wingbeats. A loud shotgun blast, and the bird dropped to the ground.
The bird was a buff-breasted button-quail, and the collector was Australian field naturalist William Rae McLennan. Later that evening he would have skinned and stuffed the bird, turning it into a museum specimen, before describing the encounter in his diary.
This skin was the last of the species ever collected. A century later, we have still yet to confirm any sightings of this mysterious, native bird.
I’ve spent four years searching for the buff-breasted button-quail, walking hundreds of kilometres and spending months scouring practically every locality where the species had ever been reported. All I’ve been able to find is its more common cousin: the painted button-quail.
Still, my ongoing research has brought us a step closer to solving this mystery and I remain hopeful the bird is still in existence. If it is, it urgently needs our help.
The tall Messmate savanna (Eucalyptus tetrodonta) just north of Coen in Cape York Peninsula. The site where McLennan collected the last buff-breasted button-quail in 1922. Patrick Webster
Searching for a lost species
McLennan’s diary from that wet season of 1921-1922 has remained the only detailed descriptions of the buff-breasted button-quail’s ecology. Some 60 years later in 1985, it was “rediscovered” just west of Cairns, and this launched dozens of new sightings by birdwatchers and several research projects over the next few decades.
Unfortunately, none of these reports or research endeavours produced anything more than brief sightings of the bird, typically only split-second views as it flew off from under their feet. No photos, no specimens, nor any other verifiable evidence has been produced.
For my doctoral project on the species, I joined the RARES research group at the University of Queensland in 2018. Our research team aimed to find a population, study its ecology, determine what threatening processes had led to its rarity, and learn how it could be conserved.
There were a few times in far north Queensland’s wet-season – supposedly the best time of year to see buff-breasted button-quail – when I saw birds fitting its widely accepted description: they were large, with sandy rufous (reddish brown) back and rumps, and contrasting dark primary feathers.
But whenever I thought I saw one on the ground, it turned out to be a painted button-quail. These differ by having a bright red eye and a grey breast.
One of the many painted button-quail found over the course of the project. This male was found 150km north of their currently recognised distribution. Patrick Webster
Indeed, my research team and I became increasingly apprehensive about the status of the buff-breasted button-quail, and began questioning the features used to separate them from painted button-quail. This prompted a thorough investigation of all historical reports, and the reliability of characteristics used to identify the two birds in the field.
Has the bird been misidentified?
To determine how best to separate these two species in the field, I examined over 100 button-quail skins in museum collections worldwide. I also caught and photographed painted button-quail throughout north Queensland. What I discovered was intriguing.
Several supposedly key characteristics of the buff-breasted button-quail either did not exist, or were actually features of the painted button-quail.
For instance, it was commonly reported that buff-breasted button-quail were much bigger than painted button-quail. My study of museum specimens, which is not yet published, showed the two are actually the same size.
I also discovered a previously undocumented colour variation in the plumage of painted button-quail. At the start of the wet season when they begin breeding, the female’s typical grey plumage is replaced by a much brighter rufous plumage. This brighter plumage is very similar to the sandy rufous colour expected of a buff-breasted button-quail.
The variation in plumage of female painted button-quail. Left, the bright rufous plumage found in the wet season. Right, the dull grey plumage found in the dry season. Patrick Webster
This apparently breeding-related change in plumage was completely unknown, and its seasonal timing coincided with an increase in reports of the buff-breasted button-quail.
In short, with no hard evidence of the buff-breasted button-quail’s existence for 100 years, many of the most recent sightings of the species could actually have been the much more common painted button-quail.
This means the buff-breasted button-quail is likely far rarer than we could ever have ever feared.
What does its future hold?
When McLennan collected the last buff-breasted button-quail skin, the Tasmanian tiger roamed Tasmania’s forests, and the paradise parrot was still nesting in termite mounds in south east Queensland.
We realised too late that these unique species were in decline. Have we made the same mistake with the buff-breasted button-quail?
We already knew the bird was rare, but was our confidence in the species’ status misplaced, propped up by misidentifications of a more common species?
Aside from a clutch of eggs collected in 1924, there has been no incontrovertible proof the species continues to exist. Our extensive searches at sites where it was once found have failed.
One of the museum specimens of buff-breasted button-quail collected by William McLennan during his expedition in 1921/22. Patrick Webster
We also know the bird communities of Cape York have been changing at a rapid rate, mostly due to the impact of changed fire patterns and cattle grazing. Other iconic Cape York species – such as the golden-shouldered parrot and red goshawk – have also declined over the past decades.
It seems likely the buff-breasted button-quail has suffered the same fate. It may not be extinct, but our research suggests it may only be hanging on by a thread, at best.
This 100-year anniversary is an opportunity to recognise the bird’s dire situation. Our new findings should prompt the federal and Queensland governments to act.
First, they should invoke the precautionary principle, which is to improve conservation actions for the species in light of its uncertain status. They should also immediately up-list the species to critically endangered, as right now it’s listed only as endangered.
Second, they should urgently provide the resources needed to re-evaluate the species’ conservation needs, as the status quo is not working.
We hope these efforts will prove the species is still in existence – perhaps living in a previously unsurveyed part of Cape York – and not another one that has disappeared on our watch.
Patrick Webster receives funding from the Australian Government, National Environmental Science Program.
The huge storms many Australians have experienced recently have damaged or toppled old trees which had withstood the vagaries of our weather for the past century or more.
This is what we can expect as our climate changes, with storm events more frequent, wind speeds stronger and rainfall heavier. These all contribute to trees falling or dropping large branches.
But there’s something you might not think of as linked to climate change. As storms intensify in our new climate, we’re likely to see more lightning strikes. And that means our tallest trees will be hit more often.
Is lightning always lethal to trees?
Most of us are used to the rules we were told about lightning and trees from childhood. Don’t shelter under a tree during a thunder storm. Lightning never strikes in the same place twice.
How do these rules apply from the perspective of a tree? Old trees are often the tallest thing around. When lightning strikes, they are more likely to be struck. You’d think a lightning strike would be game over for most trees. In fact, the effects can vary enormously.
The lightning strike pictured hit a tree in Sydney’s Royal Botanic Gardens. Channel 7
The damage done depends on the tree species, whether it was sheet or forked lightning, how wet it was and where the lightning hits the earth and dissipates.
Strikes can be up to a million volts, generating temperatures up to 20,000℃. For a tree unlucky enough to be hit by one of these events, it’s all over. The sap inside the tree instantly turns to steam, which can cause it to literally explode, or lose great strips of wood and bark. It would be an excellent idea not to be under a tree when this happens.
Trees are not very good conductors of electricity. If the trunk of the tree is very wet from rain, the lightning will course through the water and dust on the trunk down to the earth, causing little damage to the tree itself. You can sometimes see the sooty residue left on parts of the tree after a strike like this. You may well notice the tree will appear to be undamaged and continue to grow well.
Sometimes, lightning will strike one side of a tree. Such a strike often kills the tree’s living tissues in a strip running along a large branch, vertically down the trunk to the ground, or even ending a metre or two above the ground. You’ll notice the lightning scar on trees like these, as it’s very visible. The wood behind the scar often decays over time, leaving a hollow behind. Trees can often recover from strikes like this, if the scar and decay are not too great.
Unlucky trees can explode from a strong lightning hit. Shutterstock
There is a splendid variegated elm growing at Melbourne University’s Burnley Campus which was struck by lightning almost 30 years ago. Many of us thought it would die, but it defied the odds. Over the following years, I observed the long, narrow lightning scar deepening as the wood decayed. As more years passed, its trunk broadened and the scar eventually grew over. If you go past today, you will see no evidence of wounds or scars. But you and I know a secret – its trunk is hollow but strong.
Lightning can cause unexpected tree deaths well after the strike
For some trees when there is a small or no lightning scar, the tree appears to be fine only to die suddenly between two and 12 months later. This may be due to the strike causing a serious disruption to the tree’s metabolism or because it’s been unable to fend off fungal disease or insect pests after being weakened by the strike.
If the lightning goes to the earth through the roots, there may well be no symptoms of a strike visible above ground. Underground, it can be a different story, with potentially catastrophic damage to the root system. If the whole root system is damaged, the tree can die quickly, or fail over time as the roots decay. If only some roots have been killed, the tree may decline slowly for no obvious reason.
Some trees do seem more susceptible to lightning than others. I’ve seen a number of pines and other conifers die after a strike, for instance, while many eucalypts and oaks recover and remain healthy. It is possible to install a lightning protection system on a tree, but they’re costly and rarely installed in Australia.
If you know a tree has been struck by lightning, you would be wise to keep an eye on it. Often, the serious damage is not immediately obvious and will only be revealed in the weeks and months ahead. For some trees, the full impact only becomes clear in the following spring when they fail to recover or resume normal growth. An inspection by a qualified arborist would be a good investment.
You may well need an arborist to help with a related climate change driven threat to trees. That’s wind. In places like Victoria, trees cope with the prevailing winds from the west or north west by developing stronger root and branching systems. But now we’re seeing strong winds and severe storms coming from different directions.
If the wind comes from an unusual direction, a tree can be damaged or fall despite its age and past experience. The storm which pillaged Victoria’s Dandenong Ranges last year toppled many old, strong trees and led to long-lasting power outages because the winds came from a different direction. An arborist can check if your trees have been weakened by these new threats.
Wild storms saw thousands of trees fall in the Dandenong Ranges last year. Shutterstock
Lightning really does strike twice
When you think about the rules we were taught about lightning as children, you can see why the main one exists. You do not want to be near a tree during a thunderstorm.
Some rules aren’t quite accurate. The tallest and oldest tree in an area would be very likely to have been hit by lightning, and not just once but often. So yes, lightning can strike twice in the same place.
In fact, lightning is likely to strike in exactly the same place – the top of the tallest tree – every few years until the tree is no longer the tallest around, as other trees grow up and around it. Even for old trees, there is safety in numbers.
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.
Can we grieve not for a person but for an institution? Should we be angry over possibilities destroyed, young talents denied a chance to flourish? Is there any point in lamenting greed, short-sightedness, the brutality of power?
As I write this, in September 2021, Australian higher education is in a deeper hole than it has been since the 1950s, when the creaky collection of universities inherited from colonial times, under severe stress, was rescued by the Menzies government. I worked in that rebuilt sector as student, teacher and researcher for about 50 years. Then I retired and wrote a book called, with a mixture of irony and hope, The Good University.
In the past couple of years I’ve watched the COVID-19 pandemic place huge new demands on university workers – my colleagues and friends – who had already come under heavy stress. This is a brief reflection on what has happened and why, and how we might do better.
The history matters
We’ve only had a national public university system for two generations; the sector has been through mighty changes in a short span. At first, Australian universities were separately funded by the colonial and state governments that set them up.
Building a national system made sense under the agenda of modernisation, industrialisation and nation-building that was more or less shared by Liberal and Labor parties in the postwar decades. High-school enrolments boomed in the 1950s and undergraduate enrolments followed, spurring governments to launch new universities as well as expand the older ones. National co-ordinating bodies were established.
At the same time there was a spurt in higher degree studies, giving Australia, for the first time, a capacity to produce its own research workforce. This was, potentially, a revolutionary change for the economy and society – a potential never realised.
Universities in the 1950s and 1960s were not comfortable places. They were run by an oligarchy of male professors who were linked, especially in faculties of law, medicine and engineering, with professional establishments outside. The odour of the British Empire still hung around academic life. Curricula were monocultural, despite the mass immigration of Australia’s postwar decades and the presence of Indigenous cultures.
There’s research showing that many of the students were quite alienated from these institutions. The majority were enrolled in bread-and-butter “pass” degrees; they listened to lectures and sat for exams but got little attention from academic staff. Only a minority were in honours streams with a more challenging agenda.
Through the 1960s, students increasingly became politicised in groups that opposed the war in Vietnam, supported Aboriginal causes and demanded democratic reform of the universities themselves.
When the Whitlam government took over the entire funding of universities in the 1970s and abolished fees, the stage was set for further expansion. New suburban and regional universities were launched, and the combination of rapid growth and new institutions made space for experiments in curriculum and teaching methods. New fields such as urban studies, environmental studies, women’s studies, information science and molecular biology opened up.
The opening of Deakin University was part of the 1970s expansion and diversification of the university system. Bob T/Wikipedia, CC BY
Both the students and the university workforce became more diverse. Yet universities remained privileged institutions, gateways to the elite professions. Most vocational education was the business of TAFE (Technical and Further Education) colleges and the Australian equivalent of polytechnics, the CAEs (Colleges of Advanced Education).
By the mid-1980s, as the political system shifted towards a free-market agenda, a new kind of pressure was exerted on education. At the end of the decade, Labor’s education minister, John Dawkins, introduced dramatic changes for universities. Fees were restored, the CAEs were folded into the university system in a chaotic free-for-all of amalgamations and takeovers, co-ordinating and consultative bodies were ditched, and university administrators were encouraged to become corporate-style managers and entrepreneurs.
To do him justice, Dawkins wanted to widen access to universities. Basically, he instigated a fresh expansion of the system by beginning to privatise it. Though a less obvious privatisation than the outright sale of Qantas and the Commonwealth Bank, this would have huge consequences in the long run.
University enrolments did grow, while the proportion of public funding in universities fell. Fees rose steadily, and student debt – more or less hidden by the deferred payments of HECS and then HELP – grew.
Some universities became heavily dependent on fees from overseas students. University managers’ salaries and bonuses rose steeply, losing any connection with university workers’ pay packets. (By 2019, Australian vice-chancellors’ average package was a million dollars a year, very high by global standards.)
The system began to split, with a cabal of older universities declaring themselves an elite – the “Group of Eight”, derisively known as the Sandstones. Universities were gradually redefined as market-oriented, competing firms rather than co-operating parts of a public service.
More and more executives and directors from for-profit companies were appointed to university councils, bringing their business connections and their business ideology. University managers centralised decision-making in their own hands, imposing “performance” demands on staff who had previously been trusted to do their work as professionals.
Managers increasingly saw their younger workforce not as the teachers, researchers and operations staff of the future but as a budget cost needing to be reined in. The result has been a massive casualisation of the teaching workforce, outsourcing of more and more general and professional staff, and a growing distrust between the university workforce and its managers.
This was the situation when I wrote The Good University, in the years after a long industrial struggle at the University of Sydney – an enterprise-bargaining affair in which management tried hard to degrade our conditions of employment. Meditating on the picket line, I thought that university workers had been on the back foot too long, responding to every policy disaster from Canberra or aggression from management. To shift the terms of debate required serious rethinking of what these institutions were.
I tried to re-examine the work that universities did, their social role, their history (much more varied and interesting than most people know), and what alternatives to the dominant model could be found for curriculum, control and social purpose. I thought we needed, above all, fresh ideas about the kind of university that would be good to work in, good to study in and worth fighting for.
Well, the book had been out for a year, and I was in the United States on a tour to publicise and discuss it, when the COVID-19 pandemic arrived. I scrambled home on one of the last scheduled Qantas flights and went straight into self-isolation.
Nothing could isolate the universities from the pandemic. In Australia as overseas, campuses were closed as lockdowns of regions and cities began. University staff worked very hard to shift courses online, and that intricate work is still under way nearly two years later. Students too had to change their routines and methods, learning to work from home, learning to study in isolation and needing their own access to the internet.
These changes happened worldwide, but the crash was particularly brutal in Australia. The national government, so slow to organise a vaccination program, rushed to close the borders – that was its primary response to the pandemic, eerily matching its response to asylum seekers.
Border closures suddenly cut off the flow of overseas students, who before 2020 had been paying about half the total fee income received by Australian universities. This plunged many institutions into financial trauma – one reason for their heavy job losses, now estimated at 40,000 across the higher education sector.
I doubt that the Morrison government worried about this effect. When the JobKeeper scheme was introduced in the first half of 2020, subsidising businesses to keep their workers employed during the pandemic, the government carefully excluded universities.
In June the same year it revealed its ideas about higher education in a document called the Job-Ready Graduates Package. It’s the most miserable excuse for a higher education policy in the 80 years that such documents have been written in Australia. In the name of vague “national priorities”, the Job-ready Graduates Package arbitrarily doubled fees for arts and humanities degrees, cut overall support for areas (such as nursing and education) that it claimed to encourage, introduced perverse trade-offs likely to reduce support for research and, in the background, cut government support for the whole sector.
What is going on here? In general terms, both the Coalition and Labor have been reducing the capacities of the public sector for a generation; this is another step in the same direction.
More specifically, there is a culture-wars agenda. The reactionary wing of the Coalition, in step with the Murdoch media, doesn’t like humanities and social sciences, basically because they encourage critical thinking (called “cultural Marxism” in recent right-wing rhetoric). Accordingly, the policy makes humanities and social sciences more difficult to access and burdens those who do with heavier debt.
Perhaps most importantly there’s an attitude that flows from overall economic strategy. When the Menzies government expanded higher education, the new funding made sense within the state-guided industrial development strategy of the time. That development strategy was abandoned in the neoliberal wave of the 1980s in favour of deregulation, “opening” of the Australian economy and a search for comparative advantage in global markets.
The industries with big comparative advantages in the short term were mining coal, mining iron ore, mining other kinds of rocks, running sheep and cattle, and growing wheat. These are industries with low demand for highly educated workers and little demand for a research capacity in Australia, since their technology is imported. In the logic of free-market fundamentalism, Australia hardly needs universities at all.
It might be politically embarrassing to close them down, but it’s easy to see why in 2020 the Coalition government would refuse JobKeeper subsidies and leave universities and university workers to sink or swim in the pandemic. It’s not clear that the Labor leadership would have done anything very different.
Public still believes in the public university
Yet there is considerable popular support for higher education. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, universities and colleges around the world were teaching 200 million students, representing a vast increase in recent decades. Domestic demand for university places has held up in Australia, despite the pandemic.
Managers and governments might treat universities as competitive firms, but the public still tends to see them as a public service. Universities do well in surveys of public trust in various institutions.
Universities could have a more secure position in the economy, the culture and public policy. To reach this new position would take more than a public-relations effort. It would need a serious reconstruction of the way universities work as organisations and the way they serve their public.
It’s highly unlikely that Universities Australia, the organisation that claims to be “the voice of Australia’s universities”, would support reconstruction: it represents the managers who benefit from the current regime. But managers aren’t the only people on campus. There are multiple groups and different interests.
The National Tertiary Education Union, which represents the bulk of university staff, has been discussing alternatives for the sector and paying more attention to casualisation. Student organisations, too, could support a different future.
Let’s consider just one aspect of the work done in universities. The commonest image of university teaching is a lecture. Holding forth to students sitting in neat rows is what professors and lecturers are supposed to do, even if the podium is replaced with a screen. But that’s not the heart of higher education.
University teaching builds a relationship between groups of students who have adult intellectual capacities, and the complex structure of research-based knowledge. It does not simply train young people for current jobs; it educates graduates who can think for themselves from a base of solid knowledge and relevant method.
The process needs co-operation across the university workforce, a supportive environment and an intricate, two-way learning process between teachers and students. That can’t be commanded from above nor automated from outside. Universities work from below, and that is their strength. There is democratic potential in the nature of the work itself.
The good university isn’t a lost cause
There has been “crisis” talk about universities for a generation. I was sceptical of it, but I have to say that the language of crisis makes more sense now. The riotous growth of managerial power, the level of distrust between management and the workforce, the stresses on university workers, their increasingly precarious employment, government hostility or indifference, plus the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic – that’s a more toxic combination than I have ever seen before.
But, classically, a “crisis” is not just a threatening situation. It’s a turning point, which may be for the worse or for the better.
For the better – how? There’s a need for imagination, creating new models of university life and work. There’s a need for internal reform, for industrial democracy. There’s a need for policy work, for more stable funding and more secure jobs. There’s certainly a need for more rational co-operation among universities. There’s a need for more effective support from universities’ multiple constituencies. And underlying all of these, there’s a need to organise – among university workers, among students and their families, and beyond.
Coming back to the questions I raised at the start, yes, there is reason to grieve for what’s been done to institutions that were flourishing, though flawed. And there’s reason for anger at what’s been done to a whole generation of university workers. This wasn’t necessary, and it isn’t necessary now.
It won’t be easy to turn the situation around, but it can happen. Good universities are possible, if we are determined to make them.
Raewyn Connell is a life member of the National Tertiary Education Union. She is a graduate of the University of Melbourne and the University of Sydney, and in the past has worked at Flinders University of South Australia and Macquarie University in Sydney, as well as several universities overseas.
If you’re paying off a mortgage – or aspiring to – imagine if you didn’t have to worry so much about rising interest rates.
That’s already the reality for US home buyers. Unlike in Australia, most mortgages in the US have a fixed-interest rate, locked in for 30 years.
Instead of having to wait and see if their central bank (the Federal Reserve) raises rates each month, a US 30-year fixed mortgage at 2% will still have the same monthly repayment – even after a rate rise.
In contrast, when the Reserve Bank of Australia lifts rates it has huge implications for household budgets, because most borrowers still have variable-rate mortgages.
Every time the cash rate increases and banks inevitably pass through that increase, our mortgage payments go up too – adding thousands of dollars to average annual repayments.
This is one reason why RBA governor Philip Lowe has been so cautious about following the US Federal Reserve’s strong signal about lifting interest rates.
So why don’t Australian lenders offer 30-year fixed-rate mortgages too, like their US counterparts?
Every extra 1% can cost thousands
Here in Australia, an extra 1% on a A$600,000 mortgage means $6,000 a year more in interest payments. And these are post-tax dollars. So if you earn $100,000 and hence pay an average tax rate of 25%, that’s like taking a roughly $8,000 pay cut. Ouch.
A 3% rise in official rates over two to three years is not impossible. On a $600,000 mortgage that would mean an extra $18,000 a year in interest payments.
The RBA knows this, of course. It looks at Australian household debt of more than 120% of GDP and knows raising rates too aggressively risks putting a significant number of Australian households into financial distress.
In one sense this is good news. It means the RBA has large-calibre ammunition to fire in pursuit of its monetary policy goals (to keep unemployment low and inflation between 2% and 3%).
But it would be better if the Australian mortgage market involved less risk for consumers.
There is no reason why Australian lenders couldn’t offer 30-year fixed-rate mortgages. After all, there’s an active government bond market with maturities from one year to 30 years. This provides a benchmark to price mortgages.
Two fixes for more affordable mortgages
Fixed-rate mortgages have become much more popular in Australia in the past few years: the proportion of new mortgages that were fixed jumped from about 15% in June 2019 to more than 45% by September 2021.
But even those loans are typically fixed for only three years – sometimes as short as one year, sometimes as long as five years. After that, the rate reverts to the variable rate.
Longer fixed-rate loans would insulate Australian borrowers from big swings in interest rates. In the US you can refinance a 30-year fixed mortgage if long-term rates drop. So you benefit if rates go down but are protected if they go up.
Another idea to improve loan contract terms for borrowers – long advocated by University of Melbourne economist Kevin Davis – is the so-called “tracker mortgage”. These contracts limit borrowers to paying a certain “spread” over a benchmark interest rate.
Such offerings depend in large part on competition in the banking sector. The US has lots of competition in banking. Australia has very little.
When costs go up, two groups can bear that cost: customers or shareholders.
In Australia when bank funding costs go up, customers bear pretty much all of the cost, and shareholders zero. That’s the best evidence you’ll ever get of true market power.
Threading the needle
The Reserve Bank is well positioned to drive the official unemployment rate down from 4.2% to the lowest levels in 50 years while keeping inflation under control. It knows when it does increase interest rates this will transmit very directly to the real economy.
The challenge for Lowe is to use his interest-rate firepower in true Goldilocks fashion: not too little but not too much. That will be the great central banking challenge of the next several years.
If we could restructure the Australian mortgage market to better protect borrowers from swings in interest rates, the job of future RBA governors need not involve such a delicate balancing act.
Richard Holden is President of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia.
The 2020s is the age of the reboot. Without a doubt, one of the most anticipated has been the revival of the iconic TV show Sex and The City, with the 10-episode mini-series And Just Like That.
And Just Like That comes 11 years after the second Sex and the City film, and 17 years after the final season of the HBO television series. The new series picks up where we left off with the characters navigating love and relationships in New York City. In other ways, there is much that has changed as certain characters (spoiler alert) are not present and others are dearly departed. In either case, returning to the Sex and the City world provides a kind of emotional nutrition.
While there might be some sense of nostalgia in the return to Sex and the City it’s only a small, surface part of what drives us back to this show.
To understand why anyone would risk the legacy of Sex and the City with such a perilous return, we need to understand the impact of the original in the first place.
And Just Like That returns to Carrie, Miranda and Charlotte ( and NOT Samantha) as they navigate the journey from the complicated reality of life and friendship in their 30s to the even more complicated reality of life and friendship in their 50s. IMDB
Sex and postfeminism
Frank, unapologetic, and female-oriented: Sex and the City was the first of its kind. A television show that took “real” conversations and put them on the screen —warts and all, so to speak.
When Miranda needed advice on her date’s preoccupation with “butt-licking”, the girls were there to talk it out. When Charlotte’s date fell asleep during love-making, the group rallied together for support.
As feminist scholar Jane Gerhard explains, it’s not just the sex that’s exciting–it’s the talking about the sex. In her research, Gerhard writes:
“In season four, when Carrie has a gigantic orgasm with a guy who has an Attention Deficit Disorder, part of the pleasure of that orgasm comes from talking about it to her friends.”
In Sex and the City, it’s not just the sex that’s exciting and revolutionary – it’s the talking about the sex. HBO
But its popularity wasn’t just about the sex and its attendant conversations, it was the fact it represented the new incarnation of women’s politics — postfeminism.
Postfeminism is hard to define. At its heart, postfeminism doesn’t do away with feminism – it is a phenomenon in which women’s emergent power sits side-by-side by the contradictions and entanglements of capitalism and patriarchy.
Postfeminism is complicated. Sex is complicated. Yet somehow, Sex and the City took both of these forms and simplified them in witticisms and pithy puns that enabled people of all genders to reflect, question, argue, and best of all, laugh at ourselves. It asked the classic postfeminist questions like, “can women have sex like men?” and it explored how much women must sacrifice for their careers.
In many ways, Sex and the City encapsulated late 90s gender politics and contemporary sexual relationships.
Admittedly, the show didn’t always get it “right” and looking back with our current views it may even seem outdated and naïve at times, but what it certainly did do is start the conversation.
The show constantly pushed boundaries. There was of course Carrie’s kiss with Alanis Morrissette in the episode Boy, Girl, Boy Girl, and who could forget Samantha’s affair with the legendary Sônia Braga in season four.
But there were also major flaws. Even at the time, Sex and the City was overtly white-centric and heteronormative. When Samantha announced her lesbian affair it was treated more as a sideshow oddity (especially by Carrie, Charlotte, and Miranda) than a genuine expression of a complex sexual identity.
Unfortunately, with the rebooted And Just Like That, the politics might be updated but the dialogue is far too forced. It’s as if the writers, in their desperate bid to update the show’s politics and erase the naivety of the past, lost the very important art of “show don’t tell”.
Instead of leading us through stories that would highlight the critical changes in our culture around sex, gender, ageing and political sensitivities, And Just Like That gives us clunky, overt, obvious, and frankly weirdly cringe situations that have little if any of the artful craft of screen writing.
Turning to technicolour
Even so, And Just Like That retains some of the original sparkle of its predecessor, intertwining both fashion and friendships as they trend, fade, and sometimes return. For many viewers, watching the first episode of Sex and The City was a bit like watching that moment in The Wizard of Oz when Dorothy opens the cabin door and everything turns to technicolour– complete with the glamour, the glitter and the beautiful shoes.
However, the original show’s fashion was both fabulous and sometimes even accessible to the average viewer. Where once, in the original Sex and the City, there were characters (especially Carrie) who could pull off the most funky outfit from a vintage store, and style it up with just a touch of Balenciaga, in the new And Just Like That, the fashion is so far out of the normal person’s reach that it mocks instead of inspires.
The contrast between the two shows is highlighted by their representations of New York City – often referred to as the “fifth character” of Sex and the City. Sure, its version of Manhattan was always a complete phantasmagoria, but it left in some grittiness. NYC in And Just Like That is instead glossy, super-slick and mostly set in million dollar apartments. What we gained in cleanliness we’ve lost in character.
Sex and the City was known for its fashion and style – And Just Like That continues the trend, but with no pretence at accessibility for normal budgets. IMDB
Return to Oz
We wanted — perhaps felt we needed — a return to the fantasy world of Sex and the City. We wanted to “talk things out” once more. The fantasy continues — it’s just no longer matched by the warmth and uniqueness that made us fall in love with it in the first place.
Like returning to Oz, it’s an interesting and sometimes darker journey, but it may not be what you were expecting.
Laura Glitsos 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.
Censoring of Facebook in Papua New Guinea can be addressed by three mandated government agencies, says Chief Censor Jim Abani.
He was responding to the Post-Courier on how his office was dealing with indecent content posted on Facebook in view of a controversy over a video of an alleged child molester.
“FB censoring is to be addressed by three agencies with relevant responsibilities that are mandated to carry out policies and regulations,” Abani said.
He added: “In the event that pictures and sexual references and connotations are published then the censor will say its objectionable publication.”
Abani said the Cyber Crime Code Act defined penalties for cyber harassment and cyber bullying.
“NICTA (National Information and Communications Technology Authority) may look into electronic devices used to commit crime or offence while Censorship Office will vet or screen the content of materials and determine whether it’s explicit, or not explicit and allowed for public consumption.”
He said police under the Summary Offences Act are equally responsible to censor illicit material posted online.
“Indecent publication published is in the amended Summary Offences Act.”
No comment on specific case Abani could not comment on the specific video of the alleged 16-year-old child molester, saying that his officers were still working on gathering information.
However, he added that the approved 2021-2025 National Censorship Policy called for partnership and a collaborative approach from each responsible agency.
Abani said a new trend in the digital space had meant the Censorship Office to build its capacity to monitor and control apart from developing the recently launched policy it had been currently doing by reviewing the Censorship Act 1989.
The office was also working on signing an agreement with an internet gateway service provider.
Phoebe Gwangilois a PNG Post-Courier reporter. Republished with permission.
Scott Morrison’s language was sharp, bordering on bullying. Asked on Wednesday about the preselection shambles in the NSW Liberal Party, his message was that recalcitrant party members should leave things to the professionals.
“It’s time for those who […] don’t do this [politics] for a living, to really allow those who really need to get on for the sake of the Australian people,” he told 2GB.
He found the “childish games” in his home state party “very frustrating”, said people should “forget their factional rubbish”, and threatened intervention by the Liberal federal executive to sort them out.
It was a revealing insight into Morrison’s penchant for control. In fact, leading players in the “childish games” have been his own numbers man, Immigration Minister Alex Hawke, and his political adviser, Yaron Finkelstein. They act on behalf of the PM, who is a former director of the state party.
Morrison’s centre right faction, wedged between the right and the left, is in a minority in the NSW division. It has been seeking to increase its clout via preselections. But it has run into heavy resistance, because the state division recently fought a long battle to enable ordinary party members to exercise their right to choose candidates.
As a result of the shemozzle, there’s presently a standoff over whether Hawke, Environment Minister Sussan Ley and backbencher Trent Zimmerman should face preselection ballots or just be automatically endorsed.
The issue of principle is whether the party should let the rank and file have plebiscites, reserving the option of overturning any egregious decisions, or deny rank-and-file participation in the first place.
A proposal put by state president Philip Ruddock this week to have the executive rubber stamp the three was overwhelmingly defeated, with left and right aligned against the Morrison group.
Infighting and delays have also left key battleground seats without candidates as the May election bears down – including Hughes, Warringah, Dobell and Parramatta. An attempt by Morrison to get a Pentacostal woman preacher as the Dobell candidate blew up.
Morrison also failed to attract Gladys Berejiklian to run for Warringah. If he had prevailed it would have been beyond embarrassing when the text messages that had her describing him as a “horrible, horrible person” came out this week.
Senior NSW Liberals accuse Hawke, Morrison’s representative on the state executive, of holding up preselections for many months by making himself unavailable to participate in the group that vets preselection candidates. In effect, this has run down the clock, which renders rank-and-file ballot more difficult.
Morrison raised the question of intervention with the federal executive in November.
A powerful player on the federal executive is Nick Minchin, a former Senate leader in the Howard government and, like Morrison, a one-time state director (in South Australia). Minchin told the meeting intervention would be most unwise.
Minchin is both astute and tough. He was involved in the drafting of the rules for federal intervention some years ago, and they have many hurdles. If Morrison now tried to get full intervention he mightn’t succeed. Probably the best he would achieve would be some sort of exhortation from the federal executive.
The ugly entrails of the NSW Liberals may be arcane to ordinary voters struggling with the pandemic crisis and all its consequences. But they say a good deal about the PM, his political style and his present position.
Morrison’s activism reflects his personality, his experience from his state director days, and the fact that for various reasons, including bitter hatreds and structural problems, the NSW organisation is leaderless.
His faction’s push on preselections is against democracy in the party. It has also operated, as it’s turned out, against Morrison’s own interests, because it has left the Liberals badly prepared in a state where, on present calculations, they need to win – not just retain – seats to stay in government.
At the last election, Morrison’s meddling in preselections did not end well. He saved Craig Kelly, who later defected, became a vocal anti-vaxxer and is now the nominal leader of Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party.
He made the captain’s pick of Warren Mundine, one-time national president of the Labor Party, as the candidate in Gilmore, a seat the Liberals should have won but didn’t.
The NSW imbroglio will have to be resolved quickly. Morrison risks coming coming out either with a bleeding nose or a very antsy party rank and file.
It’s not the only no-win situation the PM faces imminently. He has to decide the ministerial future of Education Minister Alan Tudge, presumably by the time parliament meets on Tuesday for what is expected to be a bruising fortnight for the government.
Tudge’s former lover Rachelle Miller has accused him of violence towards her – kicking her out of bed – when she worked for him. He denied the claim but stood aside from his ministerial duties while an inquiry was conducted.
We don’t know the investigation’s finding but Miller last week, speaking to the ABC, predicted the report of Vivienne Thom would “say what we all know it is going to say, which is that the outcome is inconclusive”.
Unless Tudge is fully exonerated his restoration to his position would be controversial.
And for Morrison the timing is dreadful. On Wednesday Grace Tame, former Australian of the Year, and Brittany Higgins, whose allegation of being raped in a minister’s office fuelled a massive debate about the culture at Parliament House, will appear at the National Press Club.
They are likely to be brutal in their assessment of Morrison and his government.
Tame’s stony face at a pre-Australia Day function at The Lodge last week received blanket coverage. Next week’s joint appearance will be a major media event.
Morrison struggles with women’s issues – one Liberal says, “it’s like me with the foxtrot, he never knows where to put his feet” – and there is little sign he will get any better. This has turned into irretrievable ground for him.
What we don’t know is the extent to which these issues, and Morrison’s reaction to them, will drive the votes of a significant number of women.
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.
News emerged overnight of the potential theft of more than US$326 million of Ethereum tokens from a blockchain bridge (which connects two blockchains so cryptocurrency can be exchanged between them).
It’s no surprise. Crypto crime has been on the rise – especially since the pandemic began. How are these crimes committed? And what can you do to stay ahead of scammers?
Direct theft vs scams
There are two main ways criminals obtain cryptocurrency: stealing it directly, or using a scheme to trick people into handing it over.
In 2021, crypto criminals directly stole a record US$3.2 billion (A$4.48 billion) worth of cryptocurrency, according to Chainalysis. That’s a fivefold increase from 2020. But schemes continue to overshadow outright theft, enabling scammers to lure US$7.8 billion worth of cryptocurrency from unsuspecting victims.
Crypto crime is a fast-growing enterprise. The rise of the crypto economy and decentralised finance (or DeFi), coupled with record cryptocurrency prices in 2021, has provided criminals with lucrative opportunities.
Australian data confirm the global trends. The Australian Consumer and Competition Commission reported more than A$26 million was lost to scams involving cryptocurrency in 2020 from 1,985 reports. In December, federal police told the ABC crypto scam losses for 2021 exceeded A$100 million. That’s despite many incidents likely left unreported, often due to embarrassment by victims.
Theft from exchanges
Most consumers obtain cryptocurrency from an exchange. This involves opening an account and depositing currency, such as Australian dollars, before converting it to a chosen cryptocurrency.
Typically the cryptocurrency is held in a “custodial wallet”. That means it’s assigned to the consumer’s account, but the private keys that control the cryptocurrency are held by the exchange. In other words, the exchange stores the cryptocurrency on the consumer’s behalf.
But just as a bank doesn’t hold all of its deposits in cash, an exchange will only hold enough cryptocurrency in “hot” wallets (connected to the internet) to facilitate customer transactions. For security, the remainder is held in “cold” wallets (not connected to the internet).
Unlike a bank, however, the government does not have a financial claims scheme to guarantee cryptocurrency deposits if the exchange goes bust.
The recent BitMart hack is a cautionary tale. On December 4, the exchange announced it had “identified a large-scale security breach” resulting in the theft of about US$150 million pls put AUD in brackets after any foreign dollar amount in crypto assets from hot wallets.
BitMart temporarily suspended withdrawals and later promised it would use its “own funding to cover the incident and compensate affected users”. It’s unclear when this will happen, with the CNBC reporting in January that customers were still unable to access their cryptocurrency. BitMart wasn’t the first exchange to be hacked, and it won’t be the last.
Similarly, consumers may be left with losses if an exchange fails for commercial reasons, rather than theft. Australians were left stranded in December when liquidators were appointed over Melbourne-based exchange myCryptoWallet.
One way consumers can protect themselves from exchange theft, or insolvency, is to transfer their cryptocurrency from the exchange to a software wallet (a secure application installed on a computer or smartphone) or a hardware wallet (a hardware device that can be disconnected from the computer and internet).
The cryptocurrency will then be under your direct control. But be warned, if you lose your private keys, you lose your cryptocurrency.
Drawing on the ACCC’s latest edition of the Little Black Book of Scams, the following types of scam are commonly observed in the cryptocurrency space, where the scammer is not personally known to the target:
Email phishing
The scammer sends unsolicited emails asking for personal login details, which can be used to steal cryptocurrency. Alternatively, they may offer “prizes” or “rewards” in exchange for a deposit.
Investment scams
The scammer creates a website that resembles a legitimate investment trading platform. It may be a fraudulent copy of a real business, or a completely bogus one. They may even post fake advertisements on social media platforms, with fake celebrity endorsements. In the latest news, billionaire mining magnate Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest has launched criminal proceedings against Meta (previously Facebook) for allowing scam ads using his image.
More sophisticated operations will have multiple scammers emailing and calling victims to give the impression of being a legitimate organisation. After cryptocurrency deposits are made, victims may be able to “trade” on the fake platform but can’t withdraw their supposed earnings. Delay tactics include asking for further deposits to be made for fees or taxes.
Romance scams
The scammer creates a fake profile and matches with victims on a dating app or website. They may then ask for funds to help them with a personal crisis, such as needing a surgery. Or they may say they’re trading cryptocurrency and encourage the target to get involved, leading the victim into an investment scam, as described above.
If a victim doesn’t already have a cryptocurrency exchange account, scammers may also coach them on how to open one. Some will mislead victims into installing remote access software on their computer, granting the scammer direct access to their internet banking or exchange account.
Practical challenges
There are practical legal challenges in the crypto crime environment. While reporting scams can be helpful in providing data and intelligence for regulators and law enforcement, it’s unlikely to result in the recovery of funds.
Taking civil legal action may be possible, too, but identifying perpetrators is difficult. Since cryptocurrency is by its very nature global and decentralised, payments are often made to parties outside of Australia.
So prevention is easier than a cure. The main way to avoid being scammed is to ensure you know exactly who you’re dealing with, transact through a reputable exchange and ensure all the channels you go through are verified. If an offer sounds too good to be true, it almost certainly is.
Regulation on the horizon
In Australia, cryptocurrency exchanges must be registered with AUSTRAC, in compliance with anti-money laundering and counter-terror financing obligations. But there are currently no other licensing requirements (such as capital requirements or cybersecurity, for example).
Last year, the Senate Select Committee into Australia as a Technology and Financial Centre recommended a more comprehensive licensing framework. The Australian government agreed with the recommendation, and the federal treasury department is due to begin consulting on what this will look like.
Mandatory measures to curb cryptocurrency crime at the exchange level will likely be high on the agenda.
Aaron M. Lane works for the RMIT University Blockchain Innovation Hub and holds honorary research positions at the UCL Centre for Blockchain Technologies and the University of Divinity. Aaron is a member of the Digital Commerce Committee of the Law Council of Australia. Aaron is also Special Counsel at law firm Duxton Hill where he advises on matters involving cryptocurrency.
Reserve Bank Governor Philip Lowe has painted an optimistic view of where the Australian economy is heading after a turbulent 2021.
Just how crazy last year was is highlighted by the differences between the bank’s forecasts at the start of last year and what has actually happened.
Despite the Delta and Omicron waves of COVID, which were unexpected and knocked things around, economic growth has been much higher and unemployment much lower than expected in February 2021.
The bank expected economic growth of 3.5% and might have got 5%. It expected unemployment of 6% and got 4.2%.
It has been a superb economic performance, offset by a higher than expected inflation with a headline rate of 3.5%.
While this looks as if we might be on the road to the high inflation seen in the rest of the developed world (in the US inflation is 7%), at a touch under 2.7% Australia’s so-called underlying rate of inflation is much lower than in the US, UK or New Zealand. It also happens to be in the middle of the bank’s 2-3% target band.
This might be because inflation has been well below the Reserve Bank’s target band for the past half decade.
Underlying inflation
Annual, average of trimmed mean and weighted median. ABS
Addressing the National Press Club on Wednesday, Philip Lowe said he expects Australia’s gross domestic product to continue growing at a rapid rate in the year ahead, around 4.5%. He also sees unemployment to continue falling – down to as little as 3.75% by the end of this year.
He expects underlying inflation to peak at just over 3%, before returning to the 2-3% target band.
Better than before
What explains this optimistic outlook? In many ways, the economy of 2022 resembles a return to normality.
Experts expect the Omicron wave to continue to diminish and the rollout of vaccine boosters and new anti-viral drugs to push COVID into Australia’s rear-view mirror.
This means Australia slowly returning to its pre-pandemic state with open borders and no lockdowns and restrictions.
Things shouldn’t be dismal, like before. Shutterstock
It would also mean returning to the sub-par economic growth of 2-2.5% we had before COVID, were it not for two things.
One is what the crisis did in forcing the government to end its budget surplus fetish and spend to support the economy.
The other is what it did in persuading the Reserve Bank to rekindle its pursuit of full employment.
Before the pandemic, the bank worried excessively about the risks low interest rates posed to financial stability. Today, it rightly prioritises supporting the labour market.
These twin developments mean the 2022 economy is being supported by two coordinated boosters.
Combined, monetary (interest rate) stimulus and fiscal (budget spending) stimulus has pushed the unemployment rate well below 5% and will continue pushing it down over the months to come.
Dr Lowe finished his speech turning to monetary policy and how it might unfurl over the year to come.
The bank has finished its use of unconventional monetary policies – bond-buying measures such as “yield curve control” and “quantitative easing”. But it remains committed to keeping its cash rate at the current low of 0.1% for a while yet.
So why keep interest rates low?
Why keep interest rates so low if the outlook is so positive? The governor put forward two reasons.
One is that, while the bank has an optimistic outlook for 2022, there is still a great deal of uncertainty around what the year will bring.
The bank wants to make sure these gains are locked in before it takes its foot off the accelerator. The costs of overheating the economy are relatively minor compared to what would happen if it hit the brakes too early and a new variant of COVID tipped the economy back into a recession.
The second is that wage growth remains very weak. The economy won’t be on a stable upward trajectory until wage growth picks up from its historic lows.
Although the bank expects wage growth to lift, it believes it will be a while yet before it climbs above the minimum of 3% needed to keep inflation within the target band.
Australia’s economy survived 2021 better than most expected. On Wednesday, Dr Lowe gave us good reasons to believe that this year it will do better still. And he has committed the bank to supporting households and businesses to try and ensure it does. He wants to deliver on his great expectations.
Isaac Gross 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.
Review: Australians & Hollywood, National Film and Sound Archive
Visitors are greeted in the foyer of the National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA) by a life-size wax figure of the actor Eric Bana, on loan from Madame Tussaud’s, poised and ready for selfies.
Three ferocious steering wheels from Mad Max: Fury Road are provided by George Miller. Exquisite can-can costumes from Moulin Rouge are part of the Bazmark (the production company led by Baz Luhrmann and Catherine Martin) memorabilia housed by the NFSA.
Australians & Hollywood, the new exhibition at the archive, brings together objects from inside and outside the collections. The focus on Australia’s relationship with Hollywood is rich and timely. Curator Tara Marynowsky foregrounds the transnational dimensions of Australia’s film industry, drawing on the idea of Hollywood as a dispersed global phenomenon.
The subtitle of the exhibition, “a tale of craft, talent and ambition”, is an apt characterisation of her approach. The three concepts come to the fore in various locations and experiences throughout the space.
Craft
One of the most pleasurable aspects of the exhibition is its focus on craft.
Not surprisingly, this is prominent in the section titled “George Miller and His Universe”.
Miller rose to international prominence as the director of the Mad Max film franchise, and the exhibition highlights the eclectic scavenging undertaken by costume designer Norma Moriceau for her work on Mad Max 2 (1981) and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985).
Mad Max’s design aesthetic came from a process of ‘eclectic scavenging’. NFSA
The juxtaposition of this work with her design of Paul Hogan’s vest, hat and knife from Crocodile Dundee (1986) is a reminder of her influence over some of Australia’s most iconic and enduring cinematic imagery.
A variety of digitally rendered concept books and storyboards are dispersed throughout the exhibition space. The storyboards for Mad Max and Crocodile Dundee are joined by several stunning concept books put together under Catherine Martin’s design leadership for Bazmark productions, for films like Romeo + Juliet (1996) and Moulin Rouge (2001).
Through these early design works, we get the opportunity to explore a variety of approaches different creative teams bring to this process, from scruffy hand-drawn sketches to extensive collages envisioning individual shots as well as whole cinematic universes.
I found the emphasis on the concept of ambition quite intriguing, particularly in terms of how this notion manifests in the section on the production company Blue-Tongue Films and their 2010 hit Animal Kingdom.
Animal Kingdom helped launch the Hollywood careers of filmmaker David Michôd and actors Ben Mendelsohn and Jacki Weaver.
Interviews are peppered through the space. NFSA
A quote on the wall from Mendelsohn declares that, if he had been able to tell his younger self he woudld one day be in a Star Wars movie, he could have saved himself a lot of angst. In an audio interview, we hear of his undignified couch surfing days in Los Angeles.
An interview with Nicole Kidman in another corner of the exhibition dwells on similar stories about her early days slumming it in LA, surviving on the generosity of fellow Aussies.
Ambition, as this exhibition tells it, is frequently associated with resilience, grit and mateship.
Talent
While the Blue-Tongue and Bazmark sections emphasise collaboration, the focus of the exhibition is primarily on individuals, cleverly utilised as a tool through which facets of the industry are brought to the fore.
The emphasis on celebrating Australian talent and success is brought to life most explicitly in relation to the Academy Awards.
The work of Baz Luhrmann’s production company, Bazmark, takes centre stage. NFSA
Producer Emile Sherman’s Oscar for best film, awarded to The King’s Speech (2010) is there, encased in glass. And there are numerous curated clips of interviews and thank you speeches from Australian actors and filmmakers in red carpet attire clutching trophies.
We’re left in no doubt about the recognition Hollywood has given Australian talent since the 1970s. Photographs peppered throughout the exhibition showcase the Hollywood careers of filmmakers like Miller, Phillip Noyce, Peter Weir, Sherman and Cate Shortland as well as actors like Cate Blanchett, Kidman, Bana and Weaver.
It is certainly a challenge to attempt to tackle the variety and complexity of the Australian industry’s relations with Hollywood, especially within this small, single exhibition space. And there is no doubt that this exhibition packs in an engaging variety of interesting objects and resources.
But while it looks at Australian talent being exported to Hollywood, it attends more briefly to the phenomenon of Hollywood productions on Australian soil.
Costumes from Sapphires, an international co-production telling an Aboriginal story. NFSA
There is some on-set photography from some of these productions including a number of Miller and Bazmark films as well as Thor: Ragnarok (2017), but there is little focus on the production studios and post-production facilities and teams that have contributed to these kinds of films over the decades.
Similarly, the exhibition showcases the success of Australia’s First Nations practitioners like Warwick Thornton and Rachel Perkins, but only briefly references the weaving of Indigenous culture into the Hollywood blockbuster Thor: Ragnarok.
Certainly, there is much to enjoy. We get multiple opportunities to peer behind-the-scenes, whether it’s getting up close and personal with iconic costumes and props or listening to actors reflect on their artistic and personal journeys. It is a delightful and engaging representation of our rich and diverse audiovisual heritage.
Australians & Hollywood is at the National Film and Sound Archive, Canberra, until July 17.
Megan Carrigy 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.
