Exactly 100 years ago tomorrow, a bird that had been relegated to extinction made a comeback. The exquisitely beautiful paradise parrot was rediscovered by Cyril Jerrard, a grazier from Gayndah in Queensland’s Burnett district, on December 11 1921.
But its return was fleeting. Scattered pairs were seen around Gayndah until 1929. Some were seen around nearby Gin Gin in the 1930s. After that came only rumour and hope.
Lithograph of two male paradise parrots by HC Richter, from John Gould’s 1848 book The Birds of Australia. Mitchell Library
Today, the paradise parrot has the tragic status of extinct. It’s the only mainland Australian bird species known to have suffered that fate since colonisation.
On the 100th anniversary of the parrot’s rediscovery, we might revisit the event and consider why the bird’s resurrection was so brief. From that, we may gain insights into how to help the many species threatened with extinction today.
Our ‘avarice and thoughtlessness’
In 1924, a few years after rediscovering the paradise parrot, Jerrard identified the reasons for its decline. “Directly by our avarice and thoughtlessness,” he wrote, “and indirectly by our disturbance of the balance so nicely preserved by nature, we are undoubtedly accountable for the tragedy of this bird.”
Although a grazier, he acknowledged “the most fatal change of all” was wrought by the pastoral industry.
Jerrard’s collaborator in trying to save the bird, the journalist and birder Alec Chisholm, also nominated pastoralism – especially the burning of grasslands – as a main factor in the decline, along with trapping for the aviary trade and feral cats.
But while Jerrard and Chisholm could point out why the paradise parrot was sliding towards extinction, they were unable to do much about it. In books, newspapers and magazines, Chisholm publicised the parrot’s plight and pleaded for its preservation. His pleas didn’t exactly fall on deaf ears, but they were inadequate to counter a social ethos that privileged economic gain over avian loss.
The first ever photograph of a paradise parrot, taken by Cyril Jerrard, March 1922. National Library of Australia
Besides, ornithologists in the 1920s and 1930s had a lamentably limited repertoire of strategies to save endangered species.
On the latter issue, things have changed dramatically. We now have comprehensive scientific studies of the risks facing endangered species, and a vast array of remedial measures.
There are gaps in the science and imperfections in the conservation strategies, but there is a potential to rescue endangered species today that was lacking when the paradise parrot was rediscovered.
Lessons for the golden-shouldered parrot
Take, for example, the paradise parrot’s close relative, the golden-shouldered parrot of Cape York Peninsula. Currently listed by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature as endangered, it faces threats similar to those that annihilated its southern cousin last century.
In the heartland of golden-shouldered parrot territory, pastoralists Sue and Tom Shephard are devoted to preserving the parrots on their station, as was Jerrard 100 years ago. But unlike the Gayndah grazier, the Shephards have scientific backup.
From the pioneering studies of environmental scientists in the 1990s to more recent investigations, scientists working on Cape York Peninsula have scrutinised the species’ needs and advised on how to safeguard them. They place particular stress on fire management.
The birds eat seeds from several preferred grasses, which require specific fire regimes to thrive. The availability of seed affects the parrot’s breeding success. Fire also helps maintain the birds’ grassy woodland habitat and leaves fewer places for predators to hide.
But since European colonisation, fire regimes in Australia have changed dramatically across northern Australia. It has meant the golden-shouldered parrot has less food and is more vulnerable to predators.
We’re better equipped today to rescue species like the the golden-shouldered parrot than we were a century ago. Russell McGregor
Chisholm in the 1920s knew fire had something to do with the paradise parrot’s demise, but his writings on the topic were sketchy and vague. There was then no clear understanding of the fire ecology of this land, still less of the role of Indigenous fire regimes or willingness to learn from them.
Now, we have detailed calibrations of the type and intensity of fires needed to ensure breeding success for the golden-shouldered parrot and to minimise its loss to predators. Traditional owners of its territory, the Thaypan and Olkola peoples, collaborate with pastoralists and ecologists, linking traditional knowledge with Western science to reestablish fire regimes beneficial to the parrot.
Male (lower) and female (upper) paradise parrots on their termite mound nest, photographed by Cyril Jerrard, March 1922. National Library of Australia
While we’re better equipped today to rescue endangered species than was the case for the paradise parrot last century, that’s no cause for complacency.
Despite the superior conservation strategies and technologies now available, the drivers of extinction identified by Cyril Jerrard in the 1920s – our “avarice and thoughtlessness” – remain stubbornly persistent.
Prioritising bird welfare
If we’re to ensure the golden-shouldered parrot and other endangered species do not go the way of the paradise parrot, we need scientific strategies and technologies. But we need more than those. Sometimes, at least, we need to subordinate avarice to avian welfare.
For that, we need to connect, emotionally and ethically, with the birds around us. Birds must matter to us – not merely in an abstract or objectified fashion but as beings of intrinsic worth.
That’s what Chisholm was getting at in his 1922 book, Mateship with Birds, the concluding chapter of which was titled “The Paradise Parrot Tragedy”. In the lavish language then fashionable among nature writers, he urged readers to:
“dispute the dangerous idea that a thing of beauty is a joy for ever in a cage or cabinet; and disdain, too, the lopsided belief that the moving finger of Civilisation must move on over the bodies of ‘the loveliest and the best’ of Nature’s children”.
He and Jerrard lacked the tools and technologies to avert the paradise parrot’s tragedy, but not an appreciation of our moral responsibility to try to do so. We now have the tools and technologies, but our moral compass seems as fickle as ever.
Russell McGregor has received funding for the research underpinning this article from the State Library of New South Wales and the National Library of Australia.
Twenty years’ experience of casual conversion clauses in Australian universities’ employment agreements shows these have not reduced the number of casual staff they employ. No one should be surprised at how few offers of conversion to permanent employment have been made following changes to the National Employment Standards (NES) in March this year. Universities have reportedly offered fewer than 1 in 100 casual staff permanent status since then.
NES provisions require offers of continuing employment to staff members who meet several conditions. They must:
have been employed for the past 12 months
have worked a regular pattern of hours for six months
continue that pattern as a full-time or part-time employee. Grounds for non-conversion include the likelihood of a significant change to work requirements.
Academic conversion provisions include threshold and work pattern requirements similar to those in the NES. Some include other criteria such as:
being selected through an open (international) merit-based recruitment process
achieving specific performance standards
demonstrating potential for an academic career.
In part, this reflects a desire to protect the academic tenure system and the status of academic titles. Recruitment for continuing (tenured) teaching and research staff is based on open, merit-based competition. These academic staff serve a probationary period of three to five years.
Casual conversion could open “backdoor” access to a continuing academic role.
Some might see the low rates of casual conversion as reflecting a managerial desire to retain a lower-cost teaching workforce, underpinned by a drive to increase research output of continuing and fixed-term staff. However, it is likely few conversions occurred because:
threshold requirements could not be met as casual engagement for teaching is trimester/semester-based (13 or 16 weeks)
future teaching requirements are unpredictable, given recent decline in international students and changing student interests
there are underlying concerns about the impacts on the quality and capacity of the teaching and research workforce.
A non-conversion decision could be challenged in the Fair Work Commission. A successful challenge would pose a problem if universities wish to maintain academic recruitment standards and provisions.
How many staff are we talking about?
At the time of writing, no Higher Education Statistics data for 2020 casual staff are available. The most recent are for pre-pandemic 2019. Furthermore, headcount data are not published.
Thus, a true understanding of the number of academic casuals depends on knowing the ratio of full-time equivalent (FTE) staff to actual headcounts.
We used a conservative ratio of 1:3 to calculate the headcounts in the chart below.
However, it is likely the ratio is 1:7 based on data provided to the Senate Select Committee on Job Security. Using these ratios, between 48,000 and 110,000 people worked as casual academic staff in Australian universities in 2019.
In 2020, their numbers decreased significantly due to the COVID pandemic. One report suggests 10,000 casual jobs were lost by late 2020. More than half are likely to have been academic staff.
Casual academics are not a homogenous group. They can be broadly categorised as:
industry experts – professionals employed elsewhere who teach or supervise students in their discipline/area
faculty freelancers – work in multiple institutions, sometimes as consultants
returning academic staff – retired staff coming back on a casual basis
treadmill academics – qualified with research doctorates, aspiring to an academic appointment
apprentice academics – usually higher-degree candidates
In a NSW parliamentary inquiry in September 2020, the then University of Sydney vice-chancellor, Michael Spence, emphasised the diversity of the academic casual workforce. Based on his evidence, 30% of his university’s approximately 3,500 academic casual employees might be categorised as faculty freelancers and treadmill academics.
These staff are the ones most likely to be disadvantaged by current employment arrangements. Nationally, we conservatively estimate about 20% of all casual academic staff fall into these two categories.
Casual academic employees fall into several categories, but two in particular are likely to be disadvantaged by the current arrangements. Shutterstock
Put bluntly, arrangements for casual academic employment are messy. Universities struggle to fit modern teaching requirements into rigid 40-year-old industrial instruments. These were framed at a time when casuals were a small percentage of the workforce.
The diversity of tasks they perform suggests a “one size fits all approach” is not appropriate.
Conversion processes are not the solution. We suggest universities and the union work together to review national and international practice. This would involve:
a census of casual academic staff to determine how many there are, who they are and what they do
a review of the work they do to determine appropriate pay and contemporary forms of engagement for academic work
simplifying arrangements for annualised hours contracts
establishing guidelines or thresholds to be met for a staff member to work in a fixed term or continuing position that better reflect the pattern of teaching over the trimester/semester teaching year.
Such an approach requires vision, leadership and institutional and peer recognition of the valuable contribution of casual academic staff.
Teresa Tjia is an Honorary Fellow with the LH Martin at the University of Melbourne and is employed as the Dean of Students and Registrar at Federation University.
Elizabeth Baré and Janet Beard 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.
If you are worried about inequality you probably lament the end of death duties.
At first in Queensland and then in the rest of the country, Australia became one of the first nations in the world to abolish death duties in the late 1970s.
Surely an inheritance tax (that’s what a death duty is) would cut the size of inheritances, reducing the intergenerational transmission of inequality.
Actually no, according to a groundbreaking study released on Tuesday by the Productivity Commission.
The commission used datasets including tax returns and probate records to look at how much money is passed on in inheritances and gifts and where it goes.
The striking finding is that an awful lot is passed on.
In 2018 it was an astonishing A$120 billion, way in excess of the $80 billion the Australian government spent on health, and approaching the $170 billion it spent on social security and welfare.
An even more astounding finding is that these transfers actually reduced inequality.
I’ll say that again: “reduced inequality”.
One of the authors of the report, Commissioner Catherine de Fontenay, summarised the finding this way:
When measured against the amount of wealth they already own, those with less wealth get a much bigger boost from inheritances, on average about 50 times larger for the poorest 20% than the wealthiest 20%
It isn’t that the biggest inheritances don’t go to the already-wealthiest fifth of the population. Of course they do. This graph shows how big, in thousands of dollars.
Average wealth transfer by wealth quintile (in dollars)
Average equivalised wealth transfer received among all people in a three-year period, by initial equivalised wealth quintile. Productivity Commission
The extra thing the commission discovered was that as a proportion of the wealth they already have, inheritances lift the wealth of the bottom fifth of the population far, far more than that of people better off.
And this isn’t a peculiarly Australian phenomenon. The commission finds it is true in most advanced economies.
Average wealth transfer as share of initial wealth
Average equivalised wealth transfer in a three-year period as a share of average initial equivalised wealth by initial wealth quintile. Productivity Commission
So ought we to make sure inheritance taxes stay dead?
In 2010 the late Emmanuel Farhi and Ivan Werning examined optimal taxation in a setting where society cared about current and future generations.
They found that in such a situation, the best death duty would be negative – that we should subsidise inheritances to stop parents consuming too much and children getting too little.
What about a progressive inheritance tax?
One way to get the benefits of inheritances and still fight inequality would be to exempt from tax modest-size bequests and tax larger bequests even more.
This could be done by making inheritances of up to, say, $100,000 tax-free, and everything over that taxed (increasingly) heavily.
But there would be a big incentive to come in just under the cap.
Just as retirees moved to Queensland to avoid death duties (and appeared to adjust the timing of their deaths) retirees with a lot of wealth would find it worthwhile to give big gifts to their children ahead of their deaths – which would have to be caught by a gift duty.
The gift duty might have to take in deposits for houses and childcare and school fees (and to be equitable, perhaps childcare in kind provided by grandparents!).
And then you would get into really murky territory. People would want to exempt things such as homes, which could lead to even more upward pressure on home prices if more and more wealth got transferred in the form of homes.
It isn’t going to happen
In any event, in Australia, it isn’t going to happen.
Death duties are common around the world. Across the OECD, 24 countries have inheritance or estate taxes, among them the US, the UK, Korea and Germany.
Canada, New Zealand and Australia are among the smaller number of countries that had such taxes and then withdrew them.
The mere (incorrect) assertion that Labor would bring them back helped cost it the 2019 election.
A mobile billboard parked at locations around Canberra during the 2019 election. Sally Whyte
Labor no longer has the stomach for a tax on emissions that would actually work.
It most certainly doesn’t have the stomach for one that would make it harder for parents to pass on things to their children, probably worsen inequality, and complicate the tax system even further.
Richard Holden is President of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia.
Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel, friend of artist Jean Cocteau and lover of musician Igor Stravinsky, transformed women’s fashion across the world. Pablo Picasso said of her: “Chanel is the woman with the most sense in Europe”. Chanel’s fashion vision transformed both women’s appearances and definitions of luxury for the 20th century.
How did she pull this off, what is the continuing attraction, and how do we recognise her complex background, difficult choices and ongoing legacy?
With the opening of a new show, Gabrielle Chanel: Fashion Manifesto, at the National Gallery of Victoria, curated by Paris fashion museum the Galliera (supplemented with works drawn from the NGV’s collection), Chanel’s life and work are in the spotlight once more.
Who was Coco Chanel?
Coco Chanel was born in 1883 in Saumur, France, the illegitimate daughter of a street vendor, who struggled to raise her. She lived for a time with nuns, whose white linen and fine sewing influenced her later approach to good dressing.
Chanel began her life as a singer in cabarets, where she sang a tune that gave her the nickname “Coco”. She took up a series of lovers, not unusual for struggling women in that time, which gave her the capital to become a milliner, an occupation requiring modest investment and little space to set up.
In a foretaste of her later work with serial repetition, Chanel used basic templates, such as the boater or wide brimmed straw hats which she dressed very simply. Her work struck a modern note and was popularised by actresses.
Chanel opened boutiques at Deauville and Biarritz, fashionable seaside resorts where she observed and wore beach garments made of the wool jersey that she later made her own signature. She took up with wealthy English men who introduced her to hunting dress and the Scottish tweeds that she also transformed into day wear for women.
We associate Chanel with the little black dress of the 1920s, which could be made of wool jersey for day or silk and tulle for evening. A short, tubular garment, it took the world by storm. Vogue called it the “Ford signed Chanel” in 1926, referring to the mass produced and affordable car that also came in only one colour.
The emphasis on the little black dress has distorted Chanel’s output, which always extended to vibrant but tonal colours, and other materials such as lace and satin for evening.
The First World War brought with it the death of millions of young men, the disruption of succession in the great landed English estates, and the destruction of huge swathes of Europe. Cultural pessimism was common. Out went the lavish, historical styles associated with the robber barons and the Belle Époque.
France had the greatest casualties of WWI – nearly 2 million were dead. Chanel witnessed the collective mourning of thousands of French women dressed in black. She also saw the large numbers of women working in male occupations who suddenly wore uniforms with trousers, external pockets, overalls, and boiler suits.
The 1920s was a time of living for the moment and “experience culture”: sex, sport, travel, and fast-changing fashion. 1920s French women’s fashion was marked by a new engagement with the street and the notion of repetition. The Italian Futurists proposed cancelling fashion altogether. Chanel was ready for this change, even if her approach was more subtle.
In the 20th century the innovative silhouette and cut of clothes became the most important ambition for designers who wished to present new dress fashions. Cubist painters such as Picasso and Braque fractured the body. Their geometries were also adopted in clothing. Chanel both learned from and inspired the Paris modernist avant-gardes. The poet Colette remarked:
Chanel works with all ten fingers, with her nails, the side of her hand, her palm, pins and scissors, on the dress itself, a white mist with long pleats, spattered with flecks of crystal.
Chanel’s approach was modernist in that she was interested in the idea of a template for day-wear. In the late 1920s she made suits with unlined jackets revealing the selvedge (reinforced edge of the piece of fabric) and overstitching on the seaming.
Her monochrome palette which often used black, blue, red, beige and white was the opposite of the oriental sensuality of fashion design before the Great War. Her wide belts referred to both men’s wear and working wear, as did her famous striped matelots. From military dress she used the concept of the jacket’s lining extending to the revers, or lapel facings.
We associate Chanel with the ‘little black dress’ of the 1920s, which she helped popularise. Installation view of Gabrielle Chanel. Fashion Manifesto from 4 December 2021 to 25 April 2022 at NGV International, Melbourne. Photo: Tom Ross
Chanel once noted: “One wears clothes with the shoulders. A dress should hang from the shoulders”. Like her older contemporary Madeleine Vionnet, she created dresses that seemed diaphanous and sculptural simultaneously. Her use of pin tucks created dresses that clung so closely to the body they appeared almost nude.
Her 1920s dresses appear deceptively simple but include skirts pieced together with up to 20 panels. Although she usually cut on the straight grain, Chanel made clever use of fabrics with tensile qualities, such as lace, tulle, jersey, chiffon, georgette, crepe de chine and loosely woven tweeds, blurring the distinction between the flou (dress-making) and the tailleur (tailoring) by applying techniques from each process to the other.
Chanel did not depart from the lines of the body. The focus on the Chanel suit has deflected attention from her evening wear of the 1930s, which is notable for its hyper-feminine effects using lace and sequins and suggestions of the bustle skirts of the 1870s.
Chanel was interested in a playful and conceptual design approach, in which real gems might be intermingled with fakes, and a practical pocket-book bag, first introduced in 1927, could hold everything a woman required for the day. There was no need to flaunt money in materials and craft, but luxury could be expressed in subtle ways that only other women might recognise.
Yet, this was no “democratic” move in any sense of the word. Chanel’s modern luxury was for those “in the know” and it continued to cost a great deal.
Chanel was probably the person who contributed most to redefining luxury in the first half of the twentieth century.
We associate Chanel with the term chic, although this was not her invention. Théophile Gautier, the French journalist and literary critic, used the term in 1864, calling it “a dreadful and bizarre word of modern fabrication”.
With Chanel, chic came to mean an approach to style that was not simply dependent upon money, although money often helps. This explains her use of simple materials, muted colours, and rigid lines. She claimed that she was not interested in diamonds and pearls — many of hers were in fact fine fakes crafted by the jeweller Verdura.
Chanel’s concept of luxury had as its opposite, vulgarity. She was revolted by the approach to luxury connected with the vibrant Ballets Russes of the early 1910s and the associated fashions, perfumes, and household products retailed most notably by the fashion designer Paul Poiret:
The Ballets Russes were stage décor, not couture. I remember only too well saying to someone sitting beside me: “These colours are impossible. These women, I’m bloody well going to dress them in black”.
In the case of Chanel, clothes can been seen as dynamic forces that helped produce the “modern woman” – not the other way around, that is to say the women becoming modern and demanding fresh clothes.
Coco Chanel was among those at this time who argued that luxury was not necessarily physically embodied in artefacts: diamonds could therefore be replaced by imitation paste, silk or velvet by a wool jersey.
Chanel was partisan in a titanic struggle between the protectors of elite forms of luxury (today referred to as “metaluxury” or “über luxury”) and the growing middle class comforts and commodities of the time.
Although known as a couturière, Chanel made her fortune from the sale of Chanel Number 5, a very expensive perfume made with the rarest luxury ingredients from the south of France but with the novelty of adding synthetic ingredients.
The base was an Imperial Russian scent whose heaviness was alleviated by the new aldehydes which gave a sharp floral and ylang ylang kick. It was first released in 1922 in its medicinal looking bottle, stripped of all historical association.
Chanel Number 5 in its iconic, medicinal styled bottle. Sean Fennessy/ Gabrielle Chanel Fashion Manifesto
Chanel was not the sole author of these ideas regarding a luxurious simplicity. Clearly associated with wider aesthetic minimalism, they appear also in the popular writings of decorator Elsie de Wolfe, who wrote in 1913 that “the woman who wears paste jewels is not so conspicuously wrong as the woman who plasters herself with too many real jewels at the wrong time”.
Chanel’s redefinition of luxury was part of a wider French debate about twentieth century taste and manufactures. One of her great loves was the French illustrator and entrepreneur Paul Iribe, who designed the famous art deco rose motif.
Iribe also ran a pro-nationalist magazine called The Witness (le Témoin) between 1933-35. Only red, white and blue ink, the colours of the French tri-couleur, was used in the printing. Iribe promoted the idea that France was the pre-eminent centre of luxury and criticised modern German and American design and also Jewish business. Iribe depicted Chanel as Marianne – saviour of the French, on one of the covers of The Witness.
Iribe was also behind an intriguing publication, the Defence of Luxury (1932), a printed manifesto that attacked aesthetic modernism, maintaining that France remained the centre of luxury despite the rise of other societies, particularly North America and Germany.
The Défense also had anti-Semitic and anti-cosmopolitan overtones, suggesting an international conspiracy was attempting to drive away the old value system that had created France as the pinnacle of luxury taste and style. Aristocracy and a “pure” French race were required, Iribe argued, in order for luxury manufacturing to continue.
Chanel’s designs, nonetheless, in their focus on craftsmanship, taste, and elite luxury (they were extremely expensive), were both a reaction to the state of affairs Iribe posited and also a confirmation Paris remained the centre of luxury.
Chanel’s own anti-Semitism, not uncommon for high-society elites of the time, came to stand as a shadow over the subtlety of her designs later in life, as did her relationship with high ranking Nazis, including her lover, during the Occupation of Paris.
Many claims, some disputed, have been made about Chanel’s level of collaboration with the Nazis, but she clearly benefited from her highly placed and opportunistic access to powerful people in France and England.
Chanel worked against the Wertheimer family who risked having their businesses Aryanised (sold to non-Jewish owners), partly because she resented the great profits they made from her house due to their earlier stock control. Following the war, enquiries were made into Chanel’s relationship with the Nazis and with the possible support of Winston Churchill (whose English aristocratic friend had been her lover) she retreated to Lausanne in Switzerland.
Chanel relaxing in her book-lined studio above her Paris salon April 21,1954. AP Photos
Chanel’s comeback
Returning to work in 1954, Chanel surprised everyone with the famous two piece Chanel suit, worn with a co-ordinating blouse. The irony of the template is that it could be modified with trims and details in order to maintain a sense of something fashionable and timeless (out of fashion) simultaneously. The cost of these simple looking clothes is indicated in a 1965 order for Marlene Dietrich: a white day suit cost US$6000, perhaps US$55,000 today.
The controlled and modernist Chanel chromatic was a striking foil to much 1960s fashion, particularly colourful and more revealing styles for women. Chanel herself once said that she would not be surprised if women might start showing their “ass” in the future; the sight of belly buttons and midriffs was enough to horrify her in the 1960s and 1970s.
Chanel would have been very puzzled by our contemporary bust ops and “facework”: she once said: “I can think of nothing more ageing than trying to make oneself look younger”.
Chanel died in 1971 aged 87. Let’s conclude by giving her the last word, in the grumpy attitude typical of many of her pronouncements of the 1960s:
I have dressed the whole world and, today, it goes about naked.
Peter McNeil is leading a visit to the Chanel exhibition in Melbourne with Renaissance Tours.
A week after Anthony Albanese announced his climate blueprint, Labor has every reason to believe the most difficult policy it will launch for the coming election has parachuted to a safe landing.
The government has brought out the predictable attacks, but there is no sign of a knock-out hit. Anyway, going too hard is risky, when moderate Liberals are facing campaigns from community independents focused on climate policy.
Labor’s 43% medium-term emissions reduction target isn’t scarily ambitious; the modelling is holding its own in the debate among the wonks; and the backing of business and high state targets undercut the Coalition’s arguments.
Moreover, opposition energy spokesman Chris Bowen is more than a match for his opposite number, Angus Taylor.
After Labor’s disastrous 2019 experience, when he was shadow treasurer, Bowen copped a good share of blame, including from some caucus colleagues. He has a lot to prove this time. His early performances on the climate policy have been strong and feisty.
Of course it’s first days for the policy, which has its vulnerabilities, and it will go down differently in various electorates. But avoiding a crash landing was no small thing – that could have soured Labor’s year end, overshadowing Scott Morrison’s troubles.
Now Albanese is finishing 2021 in as good a place as he could have hoped.
Let’s say immediately that doesn’t mean Labor can be confident of an election win. It only means it looks seriously competitive.
Largely this is thanks to two factors: the traps Albanese has avoided – he has not allowed the opposition to be wedged – and the government’s falling into nearly every possible hole, many of which it has dug itself.
As well, keeping policies back (partly tactical, partly forced by COVID) has preserved a relatively blank canvas for Labor to write on in the election run-up.
Elections at their core are two-horse contests dominated by the leaders. Albanese will never sparkle but he has recently improved his performance and spruced up the way he presents.
At Sunday’s Sydney rally, with new glasses and a sharp suit, he looked more race-fit than all year. Yes, all that is superficial and personal, but in these image-conscious days, such things matter at the margin. They are small signs of effort.
Morrison might wish he could improve his image by attending to the superficial. He has some fundamental problems that are very difficult for him and his strategists to overcome in the next few months.
By his own actions and words, Morrison has trashed much of his credibility, allowing Labor to portray him as a “liar”, which it now does day in and day out.
Beyond that, the Coalition has been mired in scandal, controversy and sheer untidiness. This currently ranges from minister Alan Tudge being investigated over an alleged violent incident to the much-publicised, clumsy but unsuccessful courting of former NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian to run for Warringah.
Next week’s budget update might provide the government with a dash of Christmas cheer, but it won’t eclipse its shocking end to the parliamentary year.
While Morrison and his team have handed the opposition plenty of opportunities in the past months, Albanese’s challenges in the months ahead are formidable.
The Labor leader remains relatively unknown to many people. Imprinting him (favourably) on voters’ consciousness between now and the poll won’t be easy.
He’s not a big, distinctive, compelling personality. Nor is he a fresh face – he was deputy prime minister a long time ago, not that most voters will remember.
He tells his “log cabin” story – being brought up by a single mum in straitened circumstances – but in a self-centred age, how many people listen or care? The best two things going for him at a personal level are that people don’t dislike him, and that they have become dubious about Morrison (to say nothing of Barnaby Joyce).
Albanese needs to stymie the government’s attempts to portray him as weak, or a potential patsy of the Greens – and to do this while avoiding sounding shrill or desperate.
As well as projecting himself, Albanese will need to stay firmly on message and keep that message tight (rather than waffly as is his wont). He’s been disciplined to date, but campaigning for months is exhausting and mistakes can be magnified a hundred-fold.
Labor will also be vulnerable to “scares” and other negative tactics against it. These can be potent, even devastating. Think Labor’s Mediscare in 2016. Think Clive Palmer’s advertising in 2019 (and he’s still around, with money to burn).
In the age of social media, “scares” are particularly dangerous and insidious, and hard to counter.
For example, Labor may successfully neutralise attacks on its climate policy in the national campaign, but in certain areas (in the Hunter, central Queensland) it could be undermined by scares delivered via social media and by impossible-to-track-down players. We saw this with the scare run in 2019 that Labor would bring in a death tax.
If Morrison holds out for a May election preceded by a budget, Albanese will have to deal with the campaign field being rearranged weeks out from the finish line.
Although bringing down a budget just before the start of the formal campaign might carry some risk for the government (it didn’t work well in 2016, but did in 2019), it would position the battle squarely on the Coalition’s strong ground of the economy and force the opposition into quick reactions.
Albanese would deliver the traditional budget reply, which would have to contain at least one big-ticket item and be pitched just right.
One hurdle confronting Albanese in his quest to persuade voters to swing could be their inertia, a lack of impetus for change, especially if the economic outlook is encouraging. Then there is the unpredictability of COVID’s course in early 2022.
With 2021 drawing to its end, the government is worried about how damaged Morrison is, while Labor is nervous that he remains a ruthless, relentless opponent. No one is putting great store in the polls that show Labor ahead on a two-party basis, although not massively so. The fashionable speculation among the commentariat is about the possibility of a hung parliament.
As for the electorate, people are exhausted after two years of COVID. For many, the last thing they want to do is engage with the fractious, accusatory discourse of politicians.
At some point, however, they must make choices. Morrison and Albanese are campaigning as though those choices are tomorrow, but many voters will hang off until the last moment. As people do with so much in the age of COVID.
Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Cyra Patel, Senior Research Officer, National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance; PhD candidate, Australian National University
If it’s been six months since you got the second COVID vaccine dose, it’s time to book in for your booster shot. This will provide additional protection against COVID, including the new Omicron variant.
While the evidence is still emerging, preliminary data suggests a Pfizer booster might give the same protection against Omicron as double-dose vaccination did for the original strain.
Why get a booster?
When you get your first dose of COVID vaccine, your body produces an immune response against a part of the virus called the spike protein. If you’re exposed to the SARS-CoV-2 virus, your immune system can recognise and fight the virus quickly.
The immune response to a single dose of COVID vaccine is generally short-lived. So a second dose is needed to have a stronger and longer-lasting response.
Over time, the amount of antibodies in your body decreases – this is referred to as waning immunity.
If the immune response wanes below the level needed for protection against COVID – the “protective threshold” – your immune system may not be able to prevent infection when exposed to the virus.
Vaccine doses given some time after the initial course help boost the level of antibodies above the protective threshold.
On a positive note, protection against serious COVID illness, including hospitalisation or death, does not seem to be reduced to the same extent, only by about 8 percentage points.
This is likely because other components of the immune response (T cells and immune memory cells) stay in the body for longer than antibodies and prevent serious illness.
Waning protection is more of a concern among elderly and immunocompromised people because they tend to have weaker immune responses to vaccines compared with young, healthy people.
Although protection against COVID infection from two doses was slightly lower against Delta than the original strain, a booster dose restores protection to the same level.
In Israel, people who received a booster dose (five or more months after completing vaccination) had infection rates ten times lower than in people who had only received the initial two-dose course.
The two mRNA COVID vaccines available in Australia – Pfizer and Moderna – are so far approved for use as a booster dose.
A recent clinical trial showed several COVID vaccines, including all three currently available in Australia (Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca), and the Novavax and Janssen vaccines, produce strong immune responses after a course of either Pfizer or AstraZeneca vaccines.
Based on what we know so far about immune responses to COVID vaccines, any of these vaccines given as a booster should be effective in reducing your risk of infection, regardless of which vaccine you initially received.
The highest immune responses were seen with mRNA vaccines, but it’s too early to tell whether these provide better protection against COVID infections when used as a booster, or how quickly immune responses will wane compared with the other vaccines.
When is the best time to get my booster dose?
Booster doses are timed to boost your antibody levels before they get below the protective threshold. The difficulty with COVID is we don’t yet know what the protective immune threshold is.
So the timing also involves other factors such as how much disease is in the community and vaccine availability. Some countries, such as the United Kingdom, have recommended getting a booster dose as soon as three months after the initial course.
The UK has much higher daily cases of COVID, and face the potential for increased Omicron cases in winter, when hospitals are often at capacity due to other common respiratory viruses including influenza. In that context, early boosters are like an insurance policy to prevent an overwhelming winter peak.
However, a shorter interval may mean the boost to the immune response is not as high or long lasting. A longer interval between the first and second dose of COVID vaccine is more effective.
Given the COVID virus is circulating at much lower rates in Australia than other countries and vaccine coverage is generally high, a booster dose six months after the initial course seems reasonable.
With this vaccination schedule, most adults in Australia will be eligible for their booster before winter 2022.
Will the booster protect me against Omicron?
We’re still learning how the new Omicron variant, with so many mutations, may change our existing immunity (from past infection or vaccination) to be less effective.
Early laboratory studies show two doses of the Pfizer vaccine provide some immunity against Omicron, but not as much as against previous strains. This means we’re likely to see more infections in fully vaccinated people.
However a booster dose appears to improve the immune response to a level similar to that observed against previous strains in fully vaccinated people, and is expected to provide good protection against serious illness.
As more data on the effectiveness of boosters emerges, and if Omicron cases increase rapidly, the recommended timing of booster doses may also change.
While we wait for more data to confirm the vaccines provide good protection against hospitalisation and death, we can take some comfort knowing early data indicate this variant may even be less severe than previous ones.
In the future, booster doses may be adapted for emerging variants, much like influenza vaccines are modified each year depending on what new strains are circulating.
The benefits of new vaccine technologies like mRNA is the time required to manufacture new variant vaccines is only about 100 days. So if a vaccine-resistant variant does arise, we might not need to wait too long for an updated vaccine.
Cyra Patel is an employee at the National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance (NCIRS). NCIRS receives service contract funding from the Australian Government Departments of Health, NSW and other state government Departments of Health.
Robert Booy consults to all vaccination companies in Australia and works one day a week for Vaxxas. He has received funding from NHMRC and ARC in relation to vaccine research.
Jean Li-Kim-Moy 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.
Novak Djokovic told the media last week “you will know very soon” if he is going to play in the Australian Open in January, for a chance to win a tenth title. He is on the list of entrants to the tournament, but he has not yet clarified whether he will participate and under what conditions.
With the tournament set to begin in just over a month, speculation has been running wild regarding Djokovic’s vaccination status (he has declined to say publicly), as well as whether special medical exemptions could be provided to unvaccinated players to compete in Melbourne.
Tennis Australia has mandated all players must be vaccinated to play or provide a medical exemption. It has strongly denied any “loopholes” would be available to players seeking an exemption.
The Victorian Sports Minister Martin Pakula has reiterated the government’s top priority was the safety of the “Victorian community”.
Yet, Djokovic’s unclear vaccination status – and his preeminent position in the sport – has (again) raised questions about vaccine mandates.
Djovokic’s father, Srdjan Djokovic, has called the mandates a form of blackmail and suggested his son will not play under these conditions.
Djokovic himself claims to favour freedom of choice, but his reluctance to be clear with Tennis Australia and the public obscures what should be a simple issue. His vaccination status shouldn’t matter – he should still be able to play.
Special rules for elite athletes?
Throughout the COVID pandemic, Tennis Australia and other sporting organisations have led the way in organising large-scale events in a safe and responsible way without them becoming COVID super-spreaders.
We should trust the organisations to work closely with the Commonwealth and state governments to develop COVID protocols that will allow sports to continue and keep locals safe. These should be bespoke rather than general, and could include a range of strategies other than vaccine mandates, such as masking, quarantines, social distancing, and COVID bubbles.
If Djokovic is unvaccinated, his entry into Australia would seemingly be against Commonwealth policy. But the government already makes exceptions for elite athletes in many ways.
This might rankle with everyday people – a separate and seemingly less rigorous border policy for athletes – but athletes have always had different rules when it comes to overseas travel and work.
These special rules have continued during the pandemic. Freedom for athletes to travel has been a cornerstone principle for many sporting organisations, such as the International Olympic Committee. For example, the IOC is currently working with the Chinese government to allow travel for unvaccinated athletes for the 2022 Winter Olympics (with a 21-day quarantine), even though China’s borders have been closed to most other travellers.
Extensiveresearch has been done by sporting organisations on how to host events like this safely.
A proven track record
In Australia, who needs to be reminded athletes have already enjoyed special rules that made their travel possible when everyone else was locked down?
In 2020, AFL and NRL players – and in some cases, their families – travelled widely into states with border lockdowns. Australian athletes have also been the beneficiaries of special hotel quarantine provisions, priority access to vaccinations, and forewarnings from government officials about border closures.
Actors, business executives, and politicians have similarly had less onerous border and travel restrictions than ordinary Australians. These industries bring in valuable dollars, but they also serve important public functions, including providing entertainment and leadership.
The US Open did not mandate vaccines for players this year. Players were instead tested when they arrived in the US and then every four days, and they were ordered into isolation if they returned a positive result. (Fans, however, were required to be vaccinated.)
Recently, Football Australia successfully navigated a COVID scare when a Matilda tested positive after returning to Sydney for a friendly match against Brazil. The protocols put in place – including isolating the positive player immediately – prevented any further spread and the Matildas hosted two successful games.
Without special exemptions for athletes, our sporting organisations would take a major financial hit.
The NBA went ahead with its playoffs in 2020 with a COVID bubble (and without crowds), as did the Tokyo Olympics in 2021. Cancelling both would have costbillions of dollars.
The NBA playoff bubble cost some US$190 million to organise, but the NBA recouped US$1.5 billion in revenue that would have been lost. Ashley Landis/AP
To be sure, COVID bubbles cost money, but they are justified due to the long-term financial benefits these events can bring. For instance, Tennis Australia reported A$100 million in losses from June 2020 to September 2021 due to cost of hosting the 2021 Australian Open.
However, in the past decade, the Australian Open has contributed more than A$2.7 billion to the Victorian economy.
The 2022 Australian Open will be the first Grand Slam to require player vaccinations. Tournament director Craig Tiley’s position is understandable. Hemmed in by the need to protect his employees from the threat of infection, as well as his desire to work with the Victorian government, the Australian Open and Tennis Australia seem less receptive to risk than other sporting organisations.
However, the fact remains that COVID is already here. It is unlikely to be spread much further due to any sporting competition and we need to consider new ways of living with it, and each other, in the coming year.
Keith Rathbone 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 Simon Coghlan, Senior Research Fellow in Digital Ethics, Centre for AI and Digital Ethics, School of Computing and Information Systems, The University of Melbourne
Kriegman et al./PNAS
In 2020, scientists made global headlines by creating “xenobots” – tiny “programmable” living things made of several thousand frog stem cells.
These pioneer xenobots could move around in fluids, and scientists claimed they could be useful for monitoring radioactivity, pollutants, drugs or diseases. Early xenobots survived for up to ten days.
A second wave of xenobots, created in early 2021, showed unexpected new properties. These included self-healing and longer life. They also showed a capacity to cooperate in swarms, for example by massing into groups.
Last week, the same team of biology, robotics and computer scientists unveiled a new kind of xenobot. Like previous xenobots, they were created using artificial intelligence to virtually test billions of prototypes, sidestepping the lengthy trial-and-error process in the lab. But the latest xenobots have a crucial difference: this time, they can self-replicate.
Hang on, what? They can self-replicate?!
The new xenobots are a bit like Pac-Man – as they swim around they can gobble up other frog stem cells and assemble new xenobots just like themselves. They can sustain this process for several generations.
But they don’t reproduce in a traditional biological sense. Instead, they fashion the groups of frog cells into the right shape, using their “mouths”. Ironically, the recently extinct Australian gastric-brooding frog uniquely gave birth to babies through its mouth.
The latest advance brings scientists a step closer to creating organisms that can self-replicate indefinitely. Is this as much of a Pandora’s Box as it sounds?
Conceptually, human-designed self-replication is not new. In 1966, the influential mathematician John Von Neumann discussed “self-reproducing automata”.
Famously, Eric Drexler, the US engineer credited with founding the field of “nanotechnology”, referred to the potential of “grey goo” in his 1986 book Engines of Creation. He envisaged nanobots that replicated incessantly and devoured their surroundings, transforming everything into a sludge made of themselves.
Although Drexler subsequently regretted coining the term, his thought experiment has frequently been used to warn about the risks of developing new biological matter.
In 2002, without the help of AI, an artificial polio virus created from tailor-made DNA sequences became capable of self-replication. Although the synthetic virus was confined to a lab, it was able to infect and kill mice.
Possibilities and benefits
The researchers who created the new xenobots say their main value is in demonstrating advances in biology, AI and robotics.
Future robots made from organic materials might be more eco-friendly, because they could be designed to decompose rather than persist. They might help address health problems in humans, animals and the environment. They might contribute to regenerative medicine or cancer therapy.
Xenobots could also inspire art and new perspectives on life. Strangely, xenobot “offspring” are made in their parents’ image, but are not made of or from them. As such, they replicate without truly reproducing in the biological sense.
Perhaps there are alien life forms that assemble their “children” from objects in the world around them, rather than from their own bodies?
What are the risks?
It might be natural to have instinctive reservations about xenobot research. One xenobot researcher said there is a “moral imperative” to study these self-replicating systems, yet the research team also recognises legal and ethical concerns with their work.
Centuries ago, English philosopher Francis Bacon raised the idea that some research is too dangerous to do. While we don’t believe that’s the case for current xenobots, it may be so for future developments.
The interdisciplinary nature of these advances, including AI, robotics and biology, makes them hard to regulate. But it is still important to consider potentially dangerous uses.
There is a useful precedent here. In 2017, the US national academies of science and medicine published a joint report on the burgeoning science of human genome editing.
It outlined conditions under which scientists should be allowed to edit human genes in ways that allow the changes to be passed on to subsequent generations. It advised this work should be limited to “compelling purposes of treating or preventing serious disease or disability”, and even then only with stringent oversight.
Both the United States and United Kingdom now allow human gene editing under specific circumstances. But creating new organisms that could perpetuate themselves was far beyond the scope of these reports.
Looking into the future
Although xenobots are not currently made from human embryos or stem cells, it is conceivable they could be. Their creation raises similar questions about creating and modifying ongoing life forms that require regulation.
At present, xenobots do not live long and only replicate for a few generations. Still, as the researchers say, living matter can behave in unforeseen ways, and these will not necessarily be benign.
We should also consider potential impacts on the non-human world. Human, animal and environmental health are intimately linked, and organisms introduced by humans can wreak inadvertent havoc on ecosystems.
What limits should we place on science to avoid a real-life “grey goo” scenario? It’s too early to be completely prescriptive. But regulators, scientists and society should carefully weigh up the risks and rewards.
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.
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
Shutterstock
Not many more sleeps until Christmas, and all those long lunches and get-togethers with family and friends.
If you’re hosting a gathering and want to avoid a super-spreader event, it’s worth having a discussion with your guests to set some rules to minimise the risk of COVID transmission.
For example, should you only ask vaccinated family members and friends to attend? Or require a negative rapid antigen test before arrival?
As an expert in infection control and prevention, I can offer some information to help you to decide.
How COVID spreads
Three ways SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) can spread are:
through respiratory droplets exhaled through breathing, talking, laughing, coughing and sneezing. These droplets tend to fall to the ground relatively quickly, due to their larger size, which can limit the distance they spread. Physical distancing of 1.5-2 metres reduces the risk of spread this way, as does wearing masks
through smaller respiratory aerosols that can hang in the air for longer periods and potentially travel longer distances. Masks and good ventilation are key strategies to avoid infection here
touching virus-contaminated surfaces and then touching your food or face. This isn’t as much of a risk as we first thought early in the pandemic but it’s still possible.
8 tips to reduce transmission risk
1. Hand hygiene
The easiest way to avoid transferring virus from your hands to your food or face is to ensure you wash or sanitise your hands regularly, particularly before touching food.
Ensure you provide ample hand sanitiser and hand soap for guests.
People can have respiratory symptoms for various non-COVID reasons, for example asthma and hay fever.
Let your guests know before arriving that you want them to practice respiratory etiquette.
This means coughing or sneezing into their elbow rather than their hand, or into a tissue, followed by sanitising hands afterwards.
3. Don’t show up if you have symptoms
Make clear you expect guests shouldn’t attend if experiencing signs and symptoms of COVID.
These include sore throat, cough, fever, and loss of sense of taste and smell.
Keep a record of who came to the event, in case contact tracing is required.
4. Gather outdoors
Weather and circumstances permitting, have your event outdoors. This greatly reduces the risk of transmission, as the breeze can disperse infectious particles.
Evidence suggests transmission is almost 19 times more likely indoors than outdoors.
Ultraviolet B in amounts found naturally in sunlight also rapidly inactivates the virus on surfaces, as it damages the viral genetic material making it harder for the virus to replicate.
Eating outdoors will reduce the risk of COVID transmission. Shutterstock
5. Ventilation
If you must hold your event indoors, ensure the best possible ventilation by opening doors and windows.
Also consider portable air filters with HEPA filtration, which can remove infectious particles from the air. Some studies do show a benefit from HEPA filtration.
However, the effectiveness of machines on sale for home use varies. So do your research on the most effective devices.
You might want to consider separating people at high risk from infection from others in space or time.
For example, relatives and friends that are at high risk (the elderly and anyone on chemotherapy or treatments that suppress the immune system) might sit at a greater distance from everyone else who may be getting out and about more and might have an infection that isn’t yet symptomatic.
You might also choose to separate visitors by time. For example, you may have your elderly grandparents visit for lunch, and then have other friends and family for dinner.
7. Ask guests to be fully vaccinated
If your guests are fully vaccinated, it will be safer for everyone.
First, someone who is fully vaccinated is less likely to contract COVID because the vaccine can help their body produce neutralising antibodies. These are proteins that bind to the spike protein of the virus, stopping it from binding to the receptor on cells that allows the virus to enter the cell.
Fully vaccinated people are less likely to contract COVID, and less likely to pass it on.
Second, the vaccine triggers other responses from our immune system that help to reduce the overall viral load. So even if a vaccinated person gets infected, they’re likely to have lower amounts of virus in their nose, mouth and throat over the course of their illness and shed less virus for a shorter period of time.
That makes it less likely they’ll infect someone else.
You might also want to consider rapid antigen self-testing to reduce the risk for everyone.
You could ask all guests to take one, and receive a negative result, before coming to your event. These don’t guarantee there will be no infections, but do provide an added layer of protection.
A Melbourne bookshop worker shoved down an escalator. Another scalded by a cup of hot coffee thrown at them. A trolley thrown at yet another.
These are three of the more shocking incidents in what Australian retailers and unions say is an epidemic of abuse and aggression directed towards retail staff.
The Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association says 59% of frontline retail workers have experienced some form of abuse in 2021. The Australian Retailers Association says thousands of incidents reported to it include “many acts of significant violence”.
We shouldn’t assume this is all down to people angry about rules to do with masks, QR codes and vaccination checks. Abuse of retail staff has been a problem for years.
But there have been enough incidents to show resistance to pandemic rules is a big part of it, with the retailers’ association saying aggression has been particularly bad in Victoria, where the government has threatened to exclude the unvaccinated from non-essential shops and other venues till 2023.
But why get angry with low-paid retail workers? They’re not responsible for rules in their stores, much less in their state.
The reasons are likely complex, but two interlocking contributors seem clear.
Angry and even violent rhetoric has been normalised in the echo chambers of online platforms. So too have confrontations with shop staff by “digital soldiers” looking to publicise their cause, and themselves, on social media channels.
For most the rhetoric doesn’t move beyond bluster. But for some it inspires real-world aggression, with retail workers too often copping the brunt of it.
Remember “Bunnings Karen”? She was the woman who in July 2020 went viral globally after she filmed herself confronting staff over wearing a mask as a condition of entry.
She threatened to have them “sued personally for discriminating against me as a woman”.
“You’re discriminating against me”: a video filmed and uploaded to the internet by the woman widely dubbed ‘Bunnings Karen’.
There have been hundreds of thousands of views of various versions of that video. Although much of the “mainstream” commentary ridiculed her, within anti-lockdown and conspiracy-minded chat groups there was also admiration for her courage – and perhaps even more admiration for how much the attention she gained. There have been plenty of emulators since.
The idea of the “attention economy” was first formulated by US economist and computer scientist Herbert Simon in a 1971 paper discussing the downsides of an information-rich world.
A wealth of information, Simon said, meant a scarcity of what information consumes – the attention of its recipients:
Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.
That is, time is finite, and when you give your attention to one thing you can’t give it to something else.
While this economic lens is by no means a complete explanation for what drives social media, it is useful for understanding core “selling points” of the very American-sounding “freedom movement”.
If you watch mainstream television and movies, you have less time for social media. So social media activists/influencers have a vested interest in telling you the mainsteam media is lying to you, and telling you you’re special, because you’re “awake”.
Why Karens (and Darrens) get the attention
But how to keep your attention? A lesson easily learned from commercial media is that people are drawn to watch conflict and drama – especially where they aren’t a participant. This is the reason we rubberneck at car accidents, where the drama is obvious.
Drama plus conflict is even more riveting. One way to do this on social media is to stoke an “us against them” mentality, joining an existing battle.
The narrative of a heroic “out group” fighting for freedom against an evil oppresser is a shorthand most of us understand immediately.
In fact, research published in June by University of Cambridge psychologist Steve Rathje and colleagues found
out-group language is the strongest predictor of social media engagement across all relevant predictors measured, suggesting that social media may be creating perverse incentives for content expressing out-group animosity.
Doing their Kardashian
In a sense the social media influencers who are the default leaders of this vaccination “resistance movement” are simply keeping up with Kim Kardashian.
A popular meme among those opposed to masks, lockdowns, vaccine mandates and government generally. CC BY
Like the Kardashians, they have found a way to make content and attract attention by creating theatre out of their everyday existence. In the case of a minority of anti-vaccination protesters, this includes going to the shops to record a confrontation with staff.
Combined with rhetoric about the majority of people being compliant “sheep” complicit in ushering in tyranny by following the rules, it’s a potent mix.
This anger with their fellow citizens never gets beyond talk for most. But it still normalises the idea that it’s acceptable, indeed heroic, to take online invective into the real world.
That’s a hard question. We may need specific penalties to deter those who exploit and endanger others for the purpose of attracting online attention.
The one piece of advice I can give you is that you can’t fight ire with ire. Take a cue from the staff who dealt with Bunnings Karen. Be firm, but remain calm and reasonable. De-escalate as much as possible.
Particularly if your harasser is brandishing a mobile phone. The last thing you want to do is help them create content.
Nathalie Collins 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 Euan Ritchie, Professor in Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, Centre for Integrative Ecology, School of Life & Environmental Sciences, Deakin University
This article is part of the “Who would win?” series, where wildlife experts dream up hypothetical battles between predators (all in the name of science).
Imagine two of the world’s most iconic canids – a dingo and a wolf – head to head in a fight. Who would win?
Before we examine the combatants in more detail, we need to answer an important question first, which wolf and which dingo? Taxonomy – the way we describe, name and classify Earth’s biodiversity – remains contentious for both animals.
As for wolves, there are North American (“Grey”), Mexican, Eurasian, Himalayan, Asiatic, Indian and Tibetan, Red, African golden, Ethiopian and even “ghost wolves” – yes, ghost wolves! Ghost wolves are species we can recognise from the past using genetic information, but they no longer survive and no fossils are known to exist.
And then there are “wolves” that aren’t wolves at all: the fox-like maned wolf in South America, and the gargantuan, now-extinct dire wolf.
The maned wolf is a canine from South America, but is neither a wolf nor a fox. Shutterstock
For the purposes of this battle, let’s assume it’s between a grey wolf and an alpine dingo.
Why do dogs, dingoes and wolves fight?
For wild canids, fights occur for many reasons, within and between species when they overlap. Wolves and dingoes fight for mates, to attain dominance within packs, and to establish and maintain their territories.
So, let’s get to know each opponent a little better.
Grey wolves are what we call hyper-carnivores, feeding predominantly on other animals, in many cases large prey such as deer, elk, moose and bison.
Dingoes are omnivores with a broad, varied diet. They eat everything from fruits, to invertebrates, to small and large vertebrates – think lizards, birds, wombats, wallabies, possums, kangaroos, and feral animals like goats and deer. Dingoes will also scavenge food and carcasses.
Aside from humans, it’s thought the grey wolf was once the world’s most widespread mammal, where it, and its subspecies, occurred across much of Europe, Asia, and North and Central America. But, like with dingoes, humans have caused substantial population and range decline of wolves.
The battle: terrain is crucial
The terrain of the arena for our combatants would be crucial. Dingoes and wolves are capable of moving at great speeds, sustained for long periods of time, especially in open country. Both can reach top speeds in the range of 50-60 kilometres per hour!
Aside from humans, the grey wolf may once have been the world’s most widespread mammal. Milo Weiler/Unsplash, CC BY
However, dingoes arguably have the advantage in tight spots, in terms of their much smaller size, greater agility and flexibility, and climbing abilities. Dingoes typically weigh between 15 and 20 kilograms, while grey wolves are usually in the range of 30-65kg, and up to around 80kg for some males.
Dingoes have been recorded vertically jumping 2 metres and climbing fences, making them quite cat-like in many respects. So, if the battle occurs among many obstacles and on steep terrain, this will give dingoes an edge.
Dingoes are perfectly adapted to Australia’s conditions. Shutterstock
But if the fight is in the open, the much heavier, taller, and longer wolves will be too much for dingoes. They also pack a heavier bite quotient (bite force relative to body mass) of 136 as compared to the dingo’s 108.
Having said that, wolves are much taller than dingoes, around 65-80 centimetres and 45-60cm at their shoulders, respectively. So it’s possible a wily dingo could dash under the legs of a tall wolf and launch an attack on the vulnerable underbelly.
What about pack vs pack?
The final factor to consider is whether the fight is simply one dingo vs one wolf. Both can occur as individuals or in packs.
Grey wolves can be in packs with 20 or more individuals. Eva Blue/Unsplash, CC BY
Dingoes are typically found alone, in pairs or in small packs of a few individuals, but occasionally can be found in much larger, less socially cohesive groups of ten or more when food resources are plentiful.
Wolves, on the other hand, are often found in groups of between five and ten, but much larger packs of 20 or more can also occur.
I spoke to Lyn Watson, who runs the Dingo Discovery and Research Centre. She says dingoes are “flight, rather than fight, canids”. This is wise behaviour, as dingoes are small in number and size and can’t rely on a large pack, like wolves sometimes can, to substitute them should they become injured in a fight.
She goes on to say that from her 30 years of observations, female dingoes are particularly deadly.
While dingoes are small, bonded pairs will fight in a coordinated way. Males fight in traditional neck and throat grabs, or “elbow”, but their bonded other has a completely different mode – and it’s deadly.
The female will stay at the periphery then dart into the soft parts of the combatant that is threatening her mate. She aims to maim – and does so, targeting the most “sensitive” of areas, enough said!
So if it’s pack vs pack, wolves will be far too strong. But if a single wolf was unlucky enough to come across a pack of dingoes, the tide could turn strongly in favour of dingoes.
Female dingoes aim to maim when they fight. Angus Emmott
Learning to live together
Even though wolves and dingoes fight in the wild, despite common perceptions, they generally pose a very small risk to people, especially if we adhere to advice such as not feeding them.
Domestic and feral dogs pose a far greater risk to us. It’s estimated that around the world, dogs bite and injure tens of millions of people annually. In the US alone, it’s thought around 4.5 million people are bitten by dogs each year.
Of course, in reality wolves and dingoes will never fight each other in the wild. The greatest threat they both face is the ongoing destruction of their habitats and widespread direct persecution from humans (trapping, poisoning, shooting, and exclusion from areas), often aimed at protecting livestock.
Like other apex predators, dingoes and wolves have critical roles in our ecosystems and, in many cases, have deep cultural significance for Indigenous people. We must find more ethical and sustainable ways to share our world.
Euan Ritchie receives funding from the Australian Research Council, Australian Government Bushfire Recovery program, Australian Geographic, Parks Victoria, Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning, WWF, and the Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC. Euan Ritchie is a Director (Media Working Group) of the Ecological Society of Australia, and a member of the Australian Mammal Society.
A late legal bid to postpone Sunday’s independence referendum in New Caledonia has reportedly failed.
A leading anti-independence leader and president of New Caledonia’s Southern Province, Sonia Backes, said the highest French administrative court had rejected an urgent submission to defer the third and final independence referendum until next year.
The submission was filed by 146 voters and three organisations, arguing that campaigning has been hampered by the covid-19 pandemic.
They said it was therefore “unthinkable” to proceed with such an important plebiscite.
In a post on social media, Backes said the vote would go ahead.
For weeks pro-independence parties have unsuccessfully lobbied Paris to delay the vote and they now say they will neither take part in the vote nor recognise its result.
France, which deems the pandemic to be under control, last week flew in almost 250 magistrates and judicial officials to oversee Sunday’s vote.
It also flew in about 2000 extra police, including riot squads, to provide security for the referendum.
A pro-independence delegation from New Caledonia has left for New York to raise its opposition to the referendum with the United Nations.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Malaita province in Solomon Islands is planning to poll people on self-determination.
It comes two weeks after a Malaitan-led protest against the national government in Honiara degenerated into a violent riot.
The Malaita Premier, Daniel Suidani, said he was seeking the help of the United Nations in the referendum, which he hoped to have completed by the end of January.
Suidani said the UN was involved in drawing up the Townsville Peace Agreement in 2000, which was an attempt to resolve prolonged ethnic violence on Guadalcanal.
He said nothing had come from that agreement’s commitment to self-determination.
“The issue of independence or maybe a referendum is quite important because we need to find out whether that idea is still in the minds of the people of Malaita. That is why I am announcing this referendum to be carried out as soon as possible,” he said.
Earlier this week, Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare defeated a motion of no confidence in him by 32 votes to 15 with two abstentions.
It was moved by opposition leader Matthew Wale after major political unrest in the capital last month saw three days of rioting, looting and burning of businesses and properties in Honiara.
Sogavare said he would defend the principles of democracy and the rule of law no matter the cost.
In his first public statement since the vote, Sogavare said the Solomon Islands was a democratic country with a democratically-elected government and he did not resign because that would only bring the wrong message to future generations.
Where is the legislation? The government is also being criticised for only passing one new law this year.
Opposition MP and member for East ‘Are’are Peter Kenilorea Jr said the only law the government had passed in Parliament this year was an amendment to the Telecommunications Act.
He said the government could not use the covid-19 pandemic as an excuse for not doing its job.
“Just this year Fiji passed 34 Acts. They had community transmission. They worked,” he said.
“Papua New Guinea had 15, and 43 last year. We cannot just leave our jobs just because of covid-19. We don’t even have community transmission.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
A pro-independence delegation from New Caledonia has left for New York to raise its opposition to the independence referendum due this Sunday with the United Nations.
New Caledonia has been on the UN decolonisation list since 1986.
Because of the pandemic, the pro-independence parties say they will neither take part in the vote, nor recognise its result.
France has refused to postpone the vote despite repeated pleas by pro-independence parties to defer it.
New Caledonia’s public broadcaster said the Congress President, Roch Wamytan, left Noumea at the weekend after the pro-independence parties said they would not respect the referendum outcome.
Wamytan was a signatory for a pro-independence party of the 1998 Noumea Accord which provided for three referendums by 2022.
The pro-independence parties wanted the third referendum to be held next year, but Paris decided to hold it this month.
In last year’s second referendum, just over 53 percent voted against independence.
Can still be called off, says Melenchon French presidential candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon says it is not too late to postpone the December 12 referendum.
Melenchon said that by refusing to defer it to next year, President Emmanuel Macron risks breaking New Caledonia’s equilibrium and recreating the conditions of its conflict now kept in check with the Noumea Accord.
He said endangering the peace in New Caledonia could be an election strategy for Macron to appear as a law-and-order candidate.
Melenchon has urged him to put postponing the referendum on Wednesday’s government agenda.
France, which deems the pandemic to be under control, has flown in almost 2000 extra police, including riot squads, to provide security for the referendum.
The call to postpone the vote is being backed by civil society figures internationally.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Journalist and publisher Maria Ressa has called on tech and social media giants to practise “enlightened self-interest” amid a global call for platforms to step up in the fight against disinformation.
“The world that you’ve created has already shown that we must change it. I continue to appeal for enlightened self-interest,” said Ressa, chief executive and founder of Rappler, in an online lecture for the Facebook and the Big Lie series.
Ressa, a veteran journalist and Nobel Peace laureate who will be receiving the award this Friday, has been studying, reporting on, and sounding the alarm against the use of social media platforms as a means to spread lies and hate.
Platforms like Facebook, said Ressa, give the same weight on posts, whether it is a lie or a fact, in a bid to increase user engagement.
While it has meant more revenue for the platforms, it also means that posts that spark emotion — whether or not they are based on fact — gain the most traction online.
Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen had earlier revealed that the algorithm for instances, puts weight on “angry” reactions more than regular likes.
‘Moderate the greed’ “In the Philippines, we say ‘moderate the greed.’ [These platforms] are part of our future, that’s why we’re partners,” she explained.
The stakes are even higher in countries like the Philippines, which will be electing a new president in May 2022.
“Why we must fight disinformation. It weakens, and ultimately subverts, democracy, by undermining the factual basis of reality, by denying the standards of truth.”
“We cannot not do anything because we in the Philippines have elections on May 9. If we do not have integrity of facts, we won’t have integrity of elections,” warned Ressa.
Platforms, after all, are anything but clueless and helpless.
Facebook, for instance, put more weight on “news ecosystem quality” or NEQ after employees found that election-related information were spreading on the platform in the days following the US elections in 2021.
The NEQ, according to The New York Times, is a “secret internal ranking it assigns to news publishers based on signals about the quality of their journalism.”
The lies asserted that the elections were rigged and that Donald Trump, then US president, was the true winner.
The ‘big lie’ persists he “big lie,” as it has since been called, persists to this day.
Ressa said she woud be asking Facebook “behind the scenes and in front,” via Rappler’s partnerships, to turn up the NEQ locally.
Increasing the weight of the NEQ, at least in the US, meant that for a while, mainstream media accounts — The New York Times, CNN, and NPR — were more prominent on the Facebook feed than hyperpartisan pages.
“The foundational problem is that facts and lies are treated equally, which is what has poisoned the information ecosystem,” added Ressa.
Duterte, who won the 2016 elections by a wide margin in a plurality, is among the first national candidates to effectively use social media in a Philippine election.
Social media hasn’t just changed how regular citizens act and candidates campaign, it has also changed sitting leaders’ tactics.
“Leaders in the past that would take over, their first challenge is always how to unite people. Now, with social media because of the incentive schemes, we’re seeing leaders awarded if they divide,” said Ressa.
More manipulation tools “Illiberal governments have gotten more tools to manipulate people,” she added. Rappler investigations later found that pro-Duterte networks used fake accounts to spread lies and disinformation well into his term as president.
Rappler started out as a Facebook page in mid-2011 and has since grown to be among the leading news sites in the Philippines. The news organisation faces at least seven active pending cases before different courts in the Philippines.
These are on top of online attacks over its reporting on the Duterte administration, including its bloody “war on drugs” and allegations of corruption among the President’s allies.
Ressa and a former researcher were convicted in June 2020 for a cyber libel law that hadn’t even been legislated when the article first came out.
Ressa is the first Filipino individual awardee of the Nobel Peace Prize and is the only woman in this year’s roster of laureates.
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.
Much has been written about why Indigenous recognition is important. Such recognition would be a legal change to address the dispossession of Indigenous peoples from their lands and rights, and the widescale damage to Indigenous lives and culture.
At the top of the recognition agenda is a national First Nations Voice to Parliament. This would be an advisory body made up of Indigenous Australians that would interact with parliament and review bills affecting Indigenous people.
Currently, the reform enjoys support from both the federal government and opposition, though exactly how to achieve this reform remains a point of contention.
If the Voice goes ahead, one big question is whether the change should be made via the Constitution – and the level of public support for such a change.
Our research suggests support for legal reform on Indigenous issues is not only high, it’s also durable. Public attitudes have shifted to such an extent in the last 40 years, there is little reason to think a constitutionally enshrined Voice wouldn’t pass a referendum if it was held today.
Governments believe public support for change is weak
The views of both the Turnbull and Morrison governments have been that the Voice to Parliament needn’t be enshrined in the Constitution.
However, this view goes against the advice of experts, who strongly favour enshrinement to give the Voice stability – especially to prevent its disbandment, as happened with past Indigenous governing bodies. The Voice may also need constitutional status to have a genuine impact on law-making.
It’s never easy to change the Constitution. It requires a referendum, with 50% of voters and 50% of the states voting “yes”. Of the 44 referendums since 1901, only eight have been successful.
Recent governments have argued public support for constitutional enshrinement is too weak to lead to success in a referendum.
But here’s what the polling says
The government’s pessimism here is belied by recent polls suggesting very high support for Indigenous recognition.
In the Australian Election Study surveys conducted by the Australian National University, around three-quarters of voters were prepared to support a change to the Constitution to recognise Indigenous Australians in both 2016 and 2019.
However, recent polls tell just part of the story. Our study of several decades of Australian Election Study polling shows not just transient support for Indigenous recognition, but something potentially deeper.
There has been a gradual firming up of positive attitudes towards legal reform for Indigenous people overall. Because of this, support for a constitutional change is unlikely to collapse in the course of a referendum campaign.
In surveys over 40 years, the results tell a remarkably consistent story. Though it would have been unthinkable in the 1980s, the clear trend since then is towards more favourable attitudes on Indigenous issues.
In the early period of the surveys in the 1980s, only one in five voters thought support for Indigenous Australians – whether it was land rights or assistance from government – had “not gone far enough” (see graph below).
In 1987, voters who thought that land rights had “gone too far” outnumbered those who thought they had “not gone far enough” by almost five to one.
By 2019, however, those believing support for First Nations people had “gone too far” and those believing it had “not gone far enough” were almost equal. This shows a considerable decline in voter hostility towards Indigenous affairs.
Notably, the consistent upward trend is also “secular”, meaning it is unrelated to whichever party is in government and the policies they promote. The long-term change in public opinion seems to rest instead with long-term social and economic changes and a gradual liberalising of attitudes in the country.
Since the 1960s, attitudes towards a wide range of social issues have become more liberal in almost all established democracies. Numerous studies show dramatic changes on issues associated with equality, such as women’s rights, same-sex marriage and abortion.
The causes of these long-term changes in attitudes are often traced to shifting value systems creating a more tolerant and egalitarian society. Underlying this fundamental shift are unprecedented increases in economic prosperity, physical security and educational opportunities.
We assessed several factors in our study. One possibility is younger generations are more likely to vote “yes” to constitutional reform than older generations. Older generations tend to prioritise physical security and economic well-being as opposed to equality and personal fulfilment.
Our data show, however, that factors such as age were not necessarily significant. There were other explanations for the shift in people’s attitudes that were stronger.
Especially significant was whether a person has pursued higher education – a category that, since the 1960s, includes many more Australians than before. Australia has been a world leader in the expansion of higher education. In 2018, just over half of 25- to 34-year-olds had a tertiary education.
A greater proportion of people are now better educated, meaning they have received training in the cognitive skills needed to evaluate complex political issues and come to a more considered personal view on Indigenous issues.
Lessons for referendum design
Importantly, education does not take place in schools alone. Some referendum processes do more than others to inform voters through things like online tutorials, televised (including reality-style) programs and “voting advice applications” (like smartvote). This may counter some of the lack of knowledge among voters.
Citizens’ assemblies are another possible tool. These involve recruiting randomly selected citizens as decision-makers and thoroughly informing them on the issues so they can take the lead in writing referendum ballots and information materials.
Our results suggest cautious optimism should replace cynicism about the prospects of constitutional recognition. Unprecedented rises in educational attainment may have brought Australian voters at least part way towards a more nuanced and open-minded understanding of Indigenous affairs.
Referendum education programs in the lead-up to the vote itself may take Australians even farther along this path.
Ron Levy has received funding from the Australian Research Council.
Ian McAllister receives funding from the Australian Research Council
The rise of Omicron, the latest SARS-CoV-2 variant of concern, reminds us how quickly things can change during the pandemic.
Only a few weeks ago, we were hearing about a range of potential new COVID-19 antiviral drugs and antibody treatments. Now researchers are asking if such drugs will still work to treat Omicron, with its multiple new mutations. We’ll be hearing more about this in coming weeks.
However, another approach to treating COVID is to “treat the host”. Rather than target the virus itself, this involves treating the body’s overwhelming response to the virus. This approach is less susceptible to new viral variants.
And for this, we have some progress with, at first glance, an unlikely group of drugs to treat COVID-19 – antidepressants. These include fluoxetine (for example, Prozac) and the related drug fluvoxamine (for example, Luvox). It’s early days yet. But here’s what we know so far.
The antidepressants under investigation are SSRIs or selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. These commonly prescribed mood-altering drugs block “reuptake” of the naturally occurring chemical messenger, serotonin, by nerve cells in the brain; some antidepressants stop serotonin being broken down. These mechanisms leave more serotonin available to pass messages between nearby nerve cells.
There are two ways SSRIs could have an effect on COVID-19.
First, human biology is frugal
Biological “frugality” sets the scene. It takes a lot of effort for the body to make a single important molecule and a huge undertaking if you need hundreds of them. So, biology directs important molecules to multi-task.
For example, we all make serotonin by introducing a few changes to the chemical structure of the essential amino acid tryptophan, commonly present in food.
Serotonin is then tasked with being:
a messenger in the brain
a molecule to cause contraction in the gut
an inducer of platelet clotting, and
a modulator of how blood vessels work, including how they constrict and how they interact with the immune system.
The virus responsible for COVID-19 drives a devastating hyperinflammation in serious disease. This involves many of the systems serotonin strongly regulates – inflammation, platelet clotting and proper functioning of blood vessels.
So there’s a potential link between drugs that influence serotonin, and COVID-19.
Drugs often act as a “key” to open certain locks in the body. However, in some cases, the “key” is not that specific and can surprise us by opening additional, unrelated locks.
This may also explain why a mood-altering drug may be effective in serious infection. As we’ll see later, it may open the lock to influence inflammation.
Sometimes drugs act as ‘keys’ that open different, unrelated locks. Shutterstock
There have been a number of clinical trials showing favourable COVID-19 outcomes for people taking SSRIs.
In a preliminary study, outpatients with COVID-19 symptoms treated with fluvoxamine were less likely to deteriorate over 15 days compared with those taking the placebo.
Another study found patients hospitalised for COVID-19 who took antidepressants – including the SSRI fluoxetine, and non-SSRI antidepressants – within 48 hours of admission were less likely to be intubated or die than those who didn’t take an antidepressant.
The latest evidence comes from a major independent study published online in late October. This found people diagnosed with COVID-19 who took fluvoxamine reduced their chance of symptoms deteriorating or needing to go to hospital, compared to those who took the placebo.
Although few studies have directly compared fluvoxamine with fluoxetine to treat COVID-19, the bulk of the best quality evidence suggests to date suggests fluvoxamine may have the greatest promise.
However, there are a number of studies on broader effects of other SSRIs including fluoxetine.
It is likely our frugal biology is at work, in particular the influence of serotonin on platelets and blood clotting.
SSRIs may be reducing the incidence or size of blood clots, heart attacks and strokes we’d usually see in severe COVID-19.
SSRIs could also switch on anti-inflammatory pathways in the body, independent of any serotonin effect. Different SSRIs have different capacities to do this, which may explain why some SSRIs seem to have a greater effect on COVID-19 than others.
For instance, fluvoxamine is a more powerful key to unlock the sigma-1 receptor, which has a significant role in controlling inflammation. Fluvoxamine may also increase melatonin, which has anti-inflammatory effects.
What we still want to find out
Despite promising clinical trials, in particular for fluvoxamine, researchers still want to know:
is this a class effect? In other words, would all SSRIs work? Although fluvoxamine is widely available, it is not on the World Health Organization’s list of essential medicines, whereas fluoxetine is. So we need to know if these drugs are interchangeable within the class of SSRIs, or even with antidepressants more broadly
we still don’t know the precise mechanism behind why these drugs seem to work. But how much more data would we need before we start treating these patients in hospital?
could fluvoxamine work for vaccinated people? Or is the potential mainly for those unvaccinated, and more likely to have severe disease?
we need further information on possible side-effects of using SSRIs in COVID-19 patients, particularly if we are using doses different to the standard antidepressant dose. However, since SSRIs are existing and commonly used drugs, we already know a lot about how they work in the body, and any possible adverse reactions.
That said, based on the results to date with fluvoxamine in particular, we consider it needs to be added to the list of candidate COVID-19 drugs for further testing and evaluation.
Omicron may not be the last variant of concern. And by “treating the host” with existing drugs – SSRIs being just one example – we can offer patients options that are not at the mercy of future, unknown variants.
SSRIs can be dangerous if used in a dose that is too high for a particular person. These drugs should only be prescribed by your doctor. The drugs also have a number of potential drug interactions, increasing the risk of serotonin syndrome, which can be life-threatening.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
During last month’s COP26 summit, climate change was a ubiquitous story. News hooks abounded, from unpacking the flurry of non-binding pledges to reporting on the failure of rich nations to honour demands of countries at the frontline, criticising the summit as the “most exclusionary COP ever”.
Even in today’s crowded information landscape, mainstream news media continue to play an important role in shaping how we understand and act on climate change.
This chart shows coverage of climate change (across newspapers, radio and TV) across 59 countries in seven regions around the world. Media and Climate Change Observatory, CC BY-ND
Based on research interviews with climate reporters, I argue the main stories are about climate breakdown and climate justice, and entire newsrooms, not just science and environment specialists, need to step up to demonstrate that understanding.
This needs to be reflected in the quantity and quality of climate coverage, well beyond the brief window of COP summits.
Climate change is every story
My research, which focused on interviews with journalists who consistently cover climate change, highlights how climate reporting directly challenges journalism’s traditional tendency to divide the world into rounds.
As Kennedy Warne, founder and former editor of New Zealand Geographic, puts it:
The exclusive deployment of science journalists to the climate beat has had the unfortunate problem or effect of scientising the whole thing, when it’s really a human life, human hopes, human dreams, human inter-generational responsibility type of issue.
While specialist expertise does matter, the lion’s share of climate coverage can no longer be left to a handful of science and environment reporters.
When it comes to ensuring climate stories get regular coverage across newsrooms of large media outlets, Stuff is taking a laudable lead. In early 2020, it established a climate desk with a climate editor and reporter. The climate desk journalists, Eloise Gibson and Olivia Wannan, set about embedding climate reporting within the organisation’s outputs.
Newsroom is an example of a smaller organisation in which climate coverage is also a priority and mainstay, with diverse and regular reporting within its climate emergency section.
Specialist reporters matter
Specialist climate reporters can build up a base of knowledge in a complex domain. But the journalists I interviewed were clear that media outlets don’t have to have a climate desk to produce more and better climate coverage.
On the science side, explaining the ecosystems and human implications from melting glaciers or freshwater policy is crucial.
In politics, reporters need to continue holding governments accountable to their promises, as many did recently in highlighting the dubious accounting in Aotearoa’s latest emissions reduction pledge.
Reporters are responsible for connecting the consequences of rising emissions for people’s lives.
Stuff’s Charlie Mitchell describes a 2017 story about the impacts of coastal erosion on mostly low-income residents of the West Coast coal-mining town of Granity.
It sticks out for me because climate change can be quite abstract and hard to communicate in some ways. But in that story, it was very real, it was very tangible.
Alex Braae, a former reporter at The Spinoff, picks out a different kind of local story about a meeting on carbon farming in the economically run-down King Country town of Taumarunui. It detailed the concerns of local farmers about planting productive farmland with carbon-absorbing pines at the cost of local jobs and community cohesion.
It took into account the fact that we might know exactly what the scientific solutions to climate change are, but we don’t necessarily know how to turn scientific changes into social and political policy that won’t leave people behind.
Covering climate responsibly
The journalists I interviewed highlighted that in order to cover climate responsibly, they aim to:
● Provide accurate and contextualised stories
● strive for fair and diversified representation
● strive for regular and fresh coverage
● maintain emotional awareness
● make coverage interesting and relevant
● remain responsive to audience needs and feedback.
Accuracy is a tenet of responsible journalism. Another principle is balance, but journalists were clear that mainstream editors have understood the dangers of false balance for about a decade now. While climate denial is no longer platformed in a misguided effort to balance a story, this should apply to opinion columns as well.
Stories need to be based on evidence, which can come from Western science or other long-established knowledge systems like mātauranga Māori.
The low-lying South Pacific island nation of Tuvalu, home for about 11,000 people, has been classified as extremely vulnerable to climate change by the UN Development Programme. Mario Tama/Getty Images
The journalists I interviewed said it was important to them to make a conscious effort to seek out and fairly convey a wide range of perspectives.
Those already marginalised or in vulnerable situations face disproportionate impacts and multiplied inequities.
Jamie Tahana, previously at RNZ Pacific and now RNZ Te Ao Māori, emphasises that being able to tie frontline perspectives into political and scientific climate discussion brings them to life, reminding us that decisions made at political summits like COPs amount to decisions about Pacific Islanders’ lives and livelihoods.
Connecting with audiences
When Rebekah White, editor at New Zealand Geographic, imagines climate reporting in a decade, she isn’t optimistic about lessening the class divide between mainstream media’s primary audiences and those most affected.
I suspect that it’s going to be much the same as today. A bunch of journalists trying to make something that predominantly affects under-privileged people relevant to the middle-class people who are the main consumers of their media.
Still, climate connects with our daily lives and our choices all the time, whether we acknowledge it or not. Stories about air pollution, house insurance, banking, living in poverty, e-scooters or the best vegan restaurants all have climate angles.
A 2019 Stuff survey garnered 15,248 responses and showed audiences were keen for more accessible and relatable climate coverage.
They asked for more coverage of the impacts of their lifestyle and political choices, reporting that holds politicians and industry to account and more emphasis on the farming sector, especially about how it is adapting.
They were also keen on more forecasting of future climate impacts, as well as hopeful and solutions-based stories.
COVID-19 need not be a deterrent to climate coverage. Globally, around two in three people think climate change is an emergency, even during the pandemic.
Canadian analysis shows while COVID-19 can compete with climate stories within a finite pool of audience attention, it also opens up opportunities to link the two. And a US study shows that while the amount of climate coverage dropped off during the early months of the pandemic, page views on climate stories didn’t.
Off the back of the momentum generated by COP26, it’s incumbent on all of Aotearoa’s newsrooms to ensure climate remains on the news agenda.
Áine Kelly-Costello 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.
Severely burned forest following the devastating fire season of 2019 and 2020T Fairman
Eucalypt forests are well known for bouncing back after fire, and the green shoots that emerge from eucalypts stems as they begin their first steps to recovery provide some of the most iconic images of the Australian bush.
Resprouting allows trees to survive and quickly start photosynthesising again, which keeps carbon “alive” and stored in the tree. On the other hand, if a tree dies and slowly rots, the carbon stored in the tree is released into the atmosphere as a source of greenhouse gas emissions.
But our new research finds more frequent, severe bushfires and a hotter, drier climate may limit eucalypt forests’ ability to resprout and reliably lock up carbon. This could seriously undermine our efforts to mitigate climate change.
Our findings paint a cautionary tale of a little known challenge posed by climate change, and gives us yet another reason to urgently and drastically cut global emissions.
Eucalypt forest recovery up to four years after severe bushfire north of Heyfield. T Fairman
We need forests to fight climate change
At the international climate summit in Glasgow last month, more than 100 nations pledged to end and reverse deforestation. This put a much-needed spotlight on the importance of the world’s forests in storing carbon to mitigate climate change.
Victoria’s national parks alone store almost 1 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent. For perspective, that’s roughly a decade’s worth of Victoria’s net CO₂ emissions in 2019 (91.3 million tonnes).
Extensive wildfires that have burned in Victoria between 2000 and 2020 have overlapped, resulting in large areas of forest being burned by multiple severe fires in that period. Geary et al, 2021
While resprouting eucalypts can be resilient to periodic fires, we know surprisingly little about how they’ll respond to increasingly common severe fires, particularly when combined with factors like drought.
Understanding why is an area of active research, but reasons could include damaged resprouting buds (as their protective bark is thinned by successive fires), or the depletion of the trees’ energy reserves.
Snow gum forest killed and burned by three successive severe fires in ten years in the Alpine National Park. T Fairman
Forests burned by two fires stored half the carbon
If resprouting after fire begins to fail, what might this mean for carbon stores in widespread fire-tolerant eucalypt forests?
In our new paper, we tackled this question by measuring carbon stored in Victoria’s dry eucalypt forests. We targeted areas that had been burned once or twice by severe bushfire within just six years. In these places, severe fires usually occur decades apart.
In general, we found climate change impacts resprouting forests on two fronts:
as conditions get warmer and drier, these forests will store less carbon due to reduced growth
as severe fires become more frequent, forests will store less carbon, with more trees dying and becoming dead wood.
Our study forest type in West Gippsland, and the effects of one and two severe fires within six years. In the frequently burned site, nearly all trees had their epicormic buds killed and all resprouting occurred from the base of the trees. T Fairman
First, we found carbon stores were lower in the drier and hotter parts of the landscape than the cooler and wetter parts. This makes sense – as any gardener knows, plants grow much better where water is plentiful and it’s not too hot.
When frequent fire was added to the mix, forest carbon storage reduced even further. At warmer and drier sites, a forest burned by two severe fires had about half as much carbon as a forest burned by a single severe fire.
More trees were killed with more frequent fire, which means what was once “living carbon” becomes “dead carbon” – which will rot and be a source of emissions. In fact, after two fires, less than half of the forest carbon was stored in living trees.
Victoria’s high country, recovering from multiple fires in the last 20 years. T Fairman
What do we do about it?
Given how widespread this forest type is in southern Australia, we need a better understanding of how it responds to frequent fires to accurately account for changes in their carbon stocks.
We could also learn from and adapt management approaches in the dry forests of North America, where the new concept of “pyro-silviculture” is being explored.
Pyro-silviculture can include targeted thinning to reduce the density of trees in forests, which can lower their susceptibility to drought, and encourage the growth of large trees. It can also involve controlled burns to reduce the severity of future fires.
With the next, inevitable fire season on Australia’s horizon, such approaches are essential tools in our management kit, ensuring we can build better resilience in forest ecosystems and stabilise these crucial stocks of carbon.
Tom Fairman has received funding from Australian Research Council and has previously worked in forest management and research for the Victorian Government.
Craig Nitschke has received funding from the Australian Research Council, Department of Environment, Water, and Planning through the Integrated Forest Ecosystem Research Program, Parks Victoria, Melbourne Water, VicForests, Eucalypt Australia, and Australian Alps Liaison Office
Lauren Bennett has received funding from the Australian Research Council, Forest and Wood Products Australia Limited, and the Victorian Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning through the Integrated Forest Ecosystem Research program.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Marshman, Honorary Principal Fellow, Melbourne Centre for the Study of Higher Education, The University of Melbourne
Shutterstock
Two years into the pandemic, what impacts have COVID-19 really had on Australian university finances and staffing in 2020 and in 2021? Our recently published research shows the impacts varied greatly across the sector. However, staff cuts appear to have been disproportionate to overall financial losses.
About 10% of the university workforce (in full-time equivalent terms) lost their jobs. Although that broadly matches the loss of fees and charges income in 2020, overall revenue fell by only 5%.
The impacts of the pandemic on revenue have been generally less than predicted. About half of Australia’s public universities suffered medium to high financial impacts. Eight universities increased or had essentially the same total income in 2020 as in 2019.
Looking ahead, anticipated increases in other revenue provide a healthy buffer against any further fall in international student revenue.
COVID halted a decade of growth
From 2010 to 2019, domestic student enrolments grew by 27% and overseas student enrolments by 56%. Total annual revenue from continuing operations increased by 65% to nearly A$37 billion in 2019.
As a share of revenue, government financial assistance, including student HECS payments, decreased from 56% to 49%. Revenue from fees and charges grew from 23% to 32%.
By the end of 2019, universities’ total equity was $61.5 billion. Many universities, but not all, had a strong buffer to manage the financial challenges of the pandemic.
In mid-2020, amid first-wave lockdowns and border closures, several commentators predicted the impact on international student enrolments would be worse than the actual 2020 outcome. We predicted a 2020 fee loss of up to $3.5 billion. It turned out to be $1.16 billion – a 10% reduction in fee income.
In February 2021, Universities Australia announced universities had lost $1.8 billion in revenue for 2020 and faced a $2 billion loss in 2021.
In August 2021, federal Education Minister Alan Tudge said the sector had begun the year in a relatively strong financial position, with an overall operating surplus of about 2%. He said international student enrolments had fallen by only 5% in 2020 and by 12% by mid-2021 against the record levels of 2019.
Staffing typically accounts for 57% of university spending. Universities Australia reported in February 2021 at least 17,300 university jobs had been lost. By September 2021 the Australia Institute’s Centre for Future Work calculated one in five tertiary education jobs had been lost – including 35,000 at public universities.
The outcomes in 2020 are now well documented. However, mixed messages about revenue losses in 2021 and beyond make for a confusing picture. Based on our research, we offer six conclusions.
1. The impact of the pandemic on higher education finances in 2020 was significant but not catastrophic.
For 2020, total revenues fell by 5% or $1.82 billion to $36 billion.
Fees and charges revenue (mostly international student fees) fell by 10% or $1.2 billion.
The loss of investment revenue ($1.3 billion) in 2020 was similar.
Increased government grants and other revenue partly offset these losses.
2. The impacts on individual universities were highly variable.
Eight universities increased or had essentially the same total income in 2020 as in 2019. They include the three South Australian public universities, four regional universities and ACU as a multistate university. Charles Darwin University reported a sector-high revenue increase of 7.5%.
Ten universities reported revenue losses exceeding 8%. Four were regional, two were in the Group of Eight and three were in Victoria, the state most affected by lockdowns in 2020. ANU reported a sector-high revenue loss of 17.4%.
Among the larger universities, Monash was a standout. It had only a 1.6% revenue loss and a 2.9% increase in fees and charges revenue despite lower international student enrolments.
We conclude the pandemic had a high financial impact on ten universities and a medium impact on another ten.
3. International student enrolments – and hence fees and charges revenue – appear to be declining much faster in 2021 than for 2020.
As at September 2021, the Commonwealth’s Provider Registration and International Student Management System (PRISMS) database shows:
commencing international student enrolments fell by 24% compared to 2020 and by 41% compared to 2019
for all international enrolments, numbers fell by 13% compared to 2020 and by 17% compared to 2019.
The initial 4% fall in PRISMS enrolments in 2020 corresponded to a 10% decline in total fees and charges revenue. It appears reasonable, then, to assume the 13% decline in PRISMS enrolments for 2021 might equate to a 20-30% reduction.
4. Anticipated increases in other revenue in 2021 will provide a healthy buffer against further falls in international student revenue.
University revenue from government grants, student HECS payments and other income increased by 3% in 2020. We expect the Job-Ready Graduates Package and other sources will enable universities to increase revenue from these sources by at least 5%, or $1.1 billion, in 2021.
The Commonwealth also allocated an extra $1 billion in research funding in 2021.
As financial markets have improved significantly since December 2020, investment revenue can be expected (barring another major disruption) to return at least to 2019 levels of $1.3 billion.
These three items combined represent an increase of $3.4 billion.
International fee revenue would need to fall by at least 30% in 2021 to outweigh these gains.
We conclude that 28 of 37 public universities could sustain greater fee losses in 2021 than in 2020 and still have higher total incomes.
5. If borders reopen and international students return for semester one in 2022, revenue losses will probably bottom out in 2021 and 2022.
Universities are expected to be highly flexible in enrolling international students during 2022. This suggests commencing student numbers will progressively offset the numbers who have completed courses.
Any additional losses in fees and charges revenue in 2022 are likely to be modest and offset by revenue from increasing domestic enrolments.
Responses to new COVID-19 variants remain a significant risk in assessing likely revenue impacts.
The outlooks for individual universities vary greatly. In part, these depend on pandemic impacts on international student markets across various countries. It is unlikely there will be a standard pattern of re-engagement.
If reopened borders mean international students return in early 2022, revenue losses will probably bottom out in 2021 and 2022. Shutterstock
6. The impact on staffing levels appears to have been disproportionate, with workers employed on casual and fixed-term contracts the worst affected.
Before the pandemic, the number of university employees totalled 137,575 full-time equivalent (FTE) positions. In FTE terms, some 95,500 were full-time staff, 17,205 fractional full-time and 24,873 casual.
We extrapolated the numbers of jobs lost by December 2020 based on annual reporting by the seven Victorian universities (the only ones to provide such data). These data suggest 20,000 jobs (equating to 7,000 FTE) had been lost across the sector by the end of 2020.
The Centre for Future Work, using ABS data, later calculated public university job losses had risen to 35,000. Extrapolating the Victorian data, this would amount to around 14,000 FTE positions or 10% of the workforce on a FTE basis. The difference between positions lost and the full-time equivalent number suggests casual, fixed-term and part-time staff suffered the greatest impact.
Given recent announcements of further job losses, these estimates may be conservative.
A loss of 10% of the FTE workforce broadly matches the loss of fees and charges income in 2020, though overall revenue fell by only 5%. If university finances do bottom out in 2021, the overall impact of the pandemic has amounted to a fall in annual revenues of around 5%. In this case, university staff appear to have contributed disproportionately to bridging the gap between revenue and expenditure.
It also suggests that, should revenues and the international student market rebuild, either universities will face significant workforce recruitment challenges or they entered the pandemic with significantly oversized workforces.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Rakugo is among Japan’s more humble performing arts: a solo performer, dressed in traditional kimono, sits on a plush cushion and narrates stories lasting twenty or thirty minutes, assuming the roles of every character. A simple folding fan and handkerchief stand in for anything from a writing brush to a roasted sweet potato.
While rakugo has been described as “sit-down comedy”, it’s far from an Eastern analogue of what we know as stand-up comedy. It is an orally transmitted art with a much longer history. With two distinct traditions based in Osaka and Tokyo, rakugo as we know it dates back about 150 years, but precursors go back centuries.
Today more artists than ever (around 850) call rakugo their occupation. Respected as knowledgeable conveyors of history and cultural heritage, many are also on radio and TV. But it has always been a traditionally male art form. The first woman, Tsuyu no Miyako, joined the profession in 1974, and still today women make up only 7% of rakugo artists.
Women began to gain a quiet presence in the art form in the 1980s.
In the 2000s, there was a surge in new rakugo performers, notably women. This was partly thanks to books, movies and TV shows spotlighting rakugo, some, such as Life’s Like a Comedy and Rakugo musume featuring women undertaking arduous apprenticeships to a happy end.
These no doubt enticed some of the young adults weighing their options as Japan’s “lost decades” – or decades of economic stagnation – idled on.
When she was in her early 20s, Nishii Fumi saw a famous rakugo artist on TV and went to see him in a live show. She knew nothing of rakugo at the time, but kept going to shows until she determined she wanted to be the one making audiences laugh.
After veteran rakugo artist Katsura Yoneji agreed to take on Fumi as an apprentice at 24 in 2011, he followed convention by giving her a stage name: Katsura Niyō. For her, rakugo seemed like the perfect job: it would allow her to play the clown full-time.
“I was always a joker when I was small and aspired to bring that into my adult life”, she told me this weekend.
But Niyō understood women behaving improperly isn’t something that Japanese society looks highly upon: “Men act like fools all the time, and get applauded for it, but not women”.
She viewed rakugo as a road to freedom, to be herself. Yet, though a handful of women had been on stage for decades prior to her beginning, she wasn’t blind to the fact women were rarely viewed as true artists.
Niyō asked to work with Yoneji because she wanted to do “real rakugo”. The art form’s first professional woman, Miyako, had formed a growing school of female pupils, but Niyō didn’t want to be identified as a woman storyteller. She wanted to be seen as a rakugo artist, full stop.
She faced numerous hardships during her training. Everyone training in rakugo must memorise long stories, but Niyō also faced the perceived “awkwardness” of a woman playing in a man’s domain. Some were awfully explicit with their view that women have no place in rakugo, but Niyō refused to give up.
Rakugo artists establish authenticity and advance their careers in various ways, including winning televised contests and receiving honours from local and national government.
Early on, Niyō began entering contests to challenge herself and assert her legitimacy. Last year she was a finalist at the influential NHK Newcomer Rakugo Awards, and this year, with the traditional story Long-Nosed Goblin Hunting (Tengu sashi), she took the Grand Prize over 106 other professionals from Osaka and Tokyo.
She is the first woman to win the award in its 50 year history.
The new face of rakugo
Niyō is now upheld by NHK as the “new hope for the rakugo world”.
Her perfect score at the contest seen as nothing short of monumental, drawing even The New York Times to interview her over several days, to Niyō’s surprise (and honour). The Hanjōtei, Osaka’s premier rakugo hall, will honour her with a full week of shows from January 31.
Niyō’s success is noteworthy for other reasons. Unlike some women who came before her (whom she thanks for opening doors), she insists on performing rakugo without modifying repertoire pieces or changing male characters to female. “It made me pretty happy that I could win top prize doing that” she told me.
Niyō has been told time and again women don’t have what it takes to perform traditional rakugo, but this only convicted her further. Having received such an esteemed prize, there’s no question she has changed some narrow minds.
Off stage she’s relishing the fact she could do something to face down gender bias. And to her detractors, she has one thing to say: “Did you see what I just did? Eat that!”
M.W. Shores 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.
Greens leader Adam Bandt is hopeful his party could have 12 senators in the next parliament.
Only three of the party’s nine senators are up for re-election (in Victoria, Western Australia and Tasmania). So, assuming they hold their seats, with possible wins in South Australia, Queensland and NSW there is the opportunity to bring the total to a dozen, he says.
Bandt says that in 2019, 10% of Australians voted for the Greens and “that is a very strong show of support and one that I hope will grow and that will help put us in a strong position after the next election.”
Given there’s currently a lot of speculation about the possibility of a hung parliament, Bandt says the Greens have “got a real chance of being in balance of power in both houses of parliament.”
With the government talking up a scare about a Labor-Green alliance in government – which Labor says it would not enter – Bandt says if there was a “power sharing” parliament the Greens would seek to work with Labor. But “we would approach that situation with strong principles, but an open mind as to how best to ensure that we have a stable, effective and progressive government to replace the current terrible Morrison government”.
“There will be principles that we have and policies that we want to see enacted. We want to tax the billionaires, get dental and mental health care into Medicare and act on coal and gas. They will be the priorities for us.”
“I think people want to see politicians and parties work together, especially on something so important as the climate. We in the Greens are willing to do that.”
On this core issue for their party, the Greens are firm that “we need to do what the science requires, and it is clear now that after Glasgow, where the world reaffirmed the commitment to limit global heating to 1.5 degrees, there’s no room for coal, oil and gas in that future.
The Greens want Australia’s coal-fired power stations and coal exports phased out by 2030.
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.
Yuma Taru
The spiral of life – the tongue of the cloth
(yan pal ana hmali) – a mutual dialogue 2021
Ramie suspended from metal threads / 500 x 250cm (diam.); installed dimensions variable / Commissioned for APT10Courtesy: The artist and Taiwan Indigenous Peoples Cultural Development Centre
Review: Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Queensland Art Gallery and Gallery of Modern Art
The Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art has earned its rightful place in Australia’s cultural calendar for the ambitious scope of its artistic programming, highlighting the diversity and range of artistic practices across the Asia Pacific region. This 10th triennial, ATP10, features 150 artists and collectives from 30 countries.
The curatorial gambit characterising the triennial since its inception in 1993 has always been highly complex: how to give representation to the region’s complexity, without homogenising or flattening cultural differences?
To answer this question, I would point to two interconnected concerns or themes that distinguish APT10: an emphasis on First Nations’ perspectives and a gentle excavation of underexamined or invisible histories.
Cross-cultural conversations
The extraordinary Yolngu/Macassan Project draws attention to the richness of the cultural, social, and spiritual connections between the Macassan sailors from southern Sulawesi in Indonesia and the Yolngu people of north-eastern Arnhem Land.
For hundreds of years, this pre-colonial relationship was based on the Macassan trading tamarind in exchange for sea cucumbers (trepang), until the practice was banned in the early 1900s. The project includes a Yolngu-crafted Macassan sail, bark paintings and pottery shards and underscores the enduring influence of the Macassan’s visits on the Yolngu people.
Nawurapu Wunungmurra, Dhalwangu/Narrkala people Australia 1952–2018. Macassan pot 2016. Ceramic with earth pigments and polyvinyl acetate 40 x 43cm. Courtesy: Buku-Larrnggay Mulka Centre, Yirrkala
Co-curated by Abdi Karya and Diane Moon, the richness of the Yolngu/Macassan Project accentuates the crucial educational role played by APT10: by investing in research and collaboration, meaningful cross-cultural conversations are reignited and brought to the attention of broader audiences.
Another important curatorial collaboration is Between Earth and Sky: Indigenous Art from Taiwan. Co-curated by Paiwan artist Etan Pavavalung and Makatao curator Manray Hsu, eight Indigenous artists from Taiwan work across mediums to retrieve cultural techniques and criticise the corrosive effects of colonisation.
Between Earth and Sky: Indigenous Contemporary Art from Taiwan (APT10 installation view). 4 Dec 21 – 25 April 22. Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane
For over two decades, Yuma Taru has driven the revival of Atayal weaving and dyeing. Seeking guidance from her grandmother and Tribal Elders, Taru established a collective of local women dedicated to preserving traditional weaving practices and techniques.
The spiral of life – the tongue of the cloth (yan pala na hmali) – a mutual dialogue (2021) is a textile-based installation hung from the ceiling and gives visible representation to the Atayal oral language.
According to the Atayal Elders, words must be akin to the cloth’s softness, so thoughts can be conveyed without injury or damage to the listener.
Ideas of scale
Themes of migration and displacement are taken up by Suva-born, Melbourne raised Salote Tawale. Tawale has exploited the scale of GOMA’s dramatic central gallery space by installing a large bamboo raft No location (2021).
Salote Tawale, Fiji | Australia b.1976. No Location 2021. Composite digital image. Image courtesy of the artist
The raft was inspired by a traditional Fijian watercraft, bilibili, Tawale remembers seeing in the Fiji Museum in Suva as a child. The vessel becomes a metaphor for moving between cultures and the threat of sea-level rise activated by climate change.
Sitting adjacent is Kuwaiti-Puerto Rican artist Alia Farid’s large-scale installation In Lieu of What Was (2019). Kuwait’s water consumption is amongst the highest in the world, however, it has no rivers and so Kuwait relies on desalination plants and the importation of water.
Farid’s sand-coloured sculptures stand desolately in the gallery space. It is as if they have been excavated from the future as archival “relics” from when the Gulf region still had access to water.
The impressiveness of scale is also at play in Balinese artist I Made Djirna’s installation Kita (2021). Like strings of enormous beads, hundreds of pumice stones hang from the ceiling, evoking an immersive jungle-like experience.
With its textured and layered cascading pumice stones (traces of the island’s volcanic activity), coconut husks and terracotta masks, the spectator’s attention is focused on the installation’s physical and material presence.
I Made Djirna, Indonesia b.1957. Kita 2021 (work in development, artist studio, Kedewatan, Bali) Strings of pumice stone, carved stone and coconut shells. Site-specific installation. Commissioned for APT10. Courtesy: The artist
Curiosity and care
Cambodian artist Svay Sareth spent his childhood in a refugee camp on the Thai-Cambodia border during the devastating war-ravaged years of the Khmer Rouge regime (1975-79). Sareth has taken up durational performance as a metaphor for Cambodia’s traumatic and violent history.
In the video work Mon Boulet (2011), Sareth wheeled an enormous 80-kilogram metal ball for approximately 250 kilometres. He had no provisions, prompting chance encounters and interactions for obtaining food, water, and shelter with many people over the course of his six-day journey.
An adjacent cinema series Under the Radar highlights film making from across Asia and the Pacific. Combined with a comprehensive children’s program, APT10 promises to provide a range of experiences drawn from both within and around the region over the summer months ahead.
While the global pandemic grinds on in the background, APT10 feels fresh, forward looking and optimistic. After almost two years of closed and restricted borders, the exhibition delivers a poignant reminder: we are all globally interdependent, however, our local differences demand both our curiosity and care.
APT10 is showing at QAGOMA until April 25 2022.
Chari Larsson 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.
Thanks to technological advances, citizen science has experienced unprecedented global growth over the past decade. It’s enabled millions of people to get involved in science, whether by gathering data, sharing health information or helping to map galaxies.
And just because you live in a city, it doesn’t mean you can’t observe, learn about and contribute to scientific understanding of the natural world. Sometimes, it just means looking a little closer.
However, our recent study revealed in Australia, the number and diversity of urban ecology citizen science projects is relatively low.
This is despite cities being important places of conservation and discovery. There’s enormous value in citizen science projects that encourage urbanites to learn about what is often, quite literally, on their doorsteps.
Urban citizen scientists are a valuable, untapped resource in Australia. Shutterstock
Cities are important for conservation
Recent COVID-19 restrictions mean many of us became more intimately connected to the environment around us. But there is still an overriding perception of urban areas as wastelands devoid of rich and diverse species.
It’s true that for many centuries, vegetation in urban areas has been removed to make way for buildings, roads and other human structures. In many cases, this had led to a more homogeneous composition of species and, in Australia’s case, a seeming predominance of introduced plant and animal species.
However, recent literature has shown cities remain vital habitats for many native species. This includes threatened species such as the fringed spider orchid, found only in Greater Melbourne.
Recent research found 39 nationally threatened species live only in Australian cities and towns, including the western swamp tortoise in Perth and the angle-stemmed myrtle in Brisbane.
It’s important to preserve native vegetation remnants in towns and cities, as well as traditional urban green spaces like parks, cemeteries and backyards.
But it’s just as important to understand which species call these areas home and why. That’s where citizen science can play a big role.
The angle-stemmed myrtle is found only in Brisbane. Logan City Council
What we found
We set out to examine the extent to which urban ecology projects in Australia harnessed the resources of citizen scientists. We did this by analysing the projects listed in the Citizen Science Project Finder, hosted by the Atlas of Living Australia.
Of 458 active citizen science projects, only 19 (or 5.3%) were focused on urban environments. Given the number of urban residents in Australia, this constitutes a significant under-representation of projects tailored for these people.
Most of the 19 projects focused on four major cities – Sydney, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide – while other major cities were notably omitted.
Eight projects focused on broad census approaches – essentially ad hoc observations focused on birds or all flora and fauna in a region.
Documenting the presence of various species in urban areas is important. But there’s potential for citizen scientists to help answer more targeted research questions.
For example, grey-headed flying foxes have been documented re-colonising habitat in Melbourne they were once absent from. As cities continue to grow, knowing which species can persist and which have been pushed out is incredibly valuable – and citizen scientists can help in this task.
Also, many of the 19 projects did not provide an easy way to participate, such as easy links to platforms to record and upload data. We were also unable to find scientific papers where results from any of the 19 projects had been published.
Publications would further strengthen the validity of a citizen science approach in urban environments and add another way to measure success.
Grey-headed flying foxes have recolonised parts of Melbourne. Shutterstock
Citizens are good for science
More than 70% of Australians live in a major city. This offers a large pool of potential participants in citizen science projects.
And cities are home to people from a variety of cultures, backgrounds, ages and mobilities. There is increasing acknowledgement that science is enhanced by increasing the diversity of people involved. So a greater number of urban citizen science projects would be good for science.
What’s more, urban projects can provide data from places not typically accessible to professional scientists such as backyards and school grounds. They also allow for the collection of observation-rich and continuous data, which is rare even in professional settings.
And of course, citizen science projects benefit the participants themselves – encouraging people to get outdoors, get active and connect more deeply with nature.
Citizen science can provide data from places professional researchers can’t always access, such as schools. Australian Museum
A tool for measuring change
Increasing citizen science in cities could help to shift an overriding narrative that cities are not important places for biodiversity. This may in turn afford greater concentrated effort towards conserving remaining urban green spaces.
Citizen science could help answer key ecological questions about urban environments. For example, research last year showed how citizen scientists helped document species seeking refuge in urban areas following Australia’s horrific 2019-20 bushfires. Expanding such an approach could lead to a better understanding of how cities function as biodiversity refuges.
And a greater focus on citizen science in cities would also enable residents to engage in their surroundings, share their knowledge and help inform the management of the environment around them.
Erin Roger is a Projects Manager for the Atlas of Living Australia based in CSIRO Sydney. Erin is also the former Chair of the Australian Citizen Science Association
Alice Motion is an Associate Professor at the School of Chemistry at the University of Sydney. She receives funding from a Westpac Research Fellowship and a NSW Education Grant. She is Deputy Director (Outreach and Training) for the Sydney Nano Institute, Co-Chair of the Charles Perkins Centre Citizen Science Node and a member of the Australian Citizen Science Association Management Committee in her role as host representative.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard Baka, Adjunct Fellow, Olympic Scholar and Co-Director of the Olympic Research Network, Institute for Health and Sport, Victoria University
AAP/AP/Koki Kataoka
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has announced a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics in Beijing in February. This means that while athletes will still compete in the games, no officials will represent Australia at the event.
The move follows the United States’ announcement earlier this week of a diplomatic boycott. New Zealand has also said it will not send officials to the winter games, and other countries are expected to follow suit.
Morrison said the Australian boycott was due to China’s treatment of the mostly-Muslim Uighurs in the far western province of Xinjiang. In explaining the decision, he said
people have been very aware that we have been raising a number of issues
that have not been received well in China, and there’s been a
disagreement between us on those matters.
A “diplomatic boycott” is a new phenomenon – even the term itself appears to be a new invention. Traditionally, when it comes to the Olympic Games, countries either opted for a full boycott – which meant they did not attend in any capacity – or they participated.
So a diplomatic boycott appears to offer those countries engaging in it the best of both worlds: they still allow their athletes to compete (a full boycott would likely be very poorly received in their home countries), but they also register their dissatisfaction with China’s human rights record in the process.
It is something of a slap in the face to China, and the initial reaction from Beijing has been hostile, referring to the US’s stance as “posturing” and arguing the country hadn’t been invited in the first place.
The Olympics movement has long had difficulty managing China’s human rights record alongside the country’s hosting of games. China lost the bid for the 2000 games to Sydney in a close vote largely because of its human rights record, but it won the 2008 summer games on the promise it would improve.
In hindsight, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) should have pushed the issue harder. But they wanted to stay allied with China, and chose not to.
So is a diplomatic boycott even worthwhile?
Some officials, including the IOC’s Dick Pound, believe it will achieve little, and I tend to agree. But it’s a face-saving measure for everybody – a way of expressing discontent without actually withdrawing from the competition, and punishing the athletes in the process.
Usually, Olympics are not particularly significant diplomatic occasions in any event – they are more like a big party than a major international meeting. While officials are usually wined and dined by the host country, COVID restrictions mean that will not be happening in Beijing in 2022 to the usual extent, so officials are not missing much, and Morrison is probably saving Australian taxpayers some money.
Threats or talk of Olympics boycotts have long been louder than actual boycotts – once a live option at the height of the Cold War, they are no longer in fashion.
Australia’s most notable dalliance with an Olympic boycott was at the Moscow games in 1980. President Jimmy Carter announced the US would boycott the summer games in response to the Soviet Union’s 1979 invasion of Afghanistan.
Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser wanted to follow suit, but the Australian Olympic Committee – which operates independently of government – decided Australia would still compete. In response, Fraser withdrew funding from the AOC.
A few Australian athletes decided not to go to the games, and those who did marched under the Olympic flag in the opening ceremony instead of the Australian flag.
But years later, Fraser conceded an attempted boycott was the wrong move, saying it was a “divisive” idea that had a terrible affect on the athletes.
The US-Soviet Union tit-for-tat boycotts endured for some years. The Russians didn’t go to the Los Angeles games in 1984. But since then, boycotts have fallen out of fashion, in acknowledgement, perhaps, that they achieve little and punish only the athletes.
Will the athletes be affected by the diplomatic boycott?
It is very unlikely there will be any repercussions for athletes in all of this. The Chinese will be happy the athletes are competing, and while the politicians will express their discontent with each other, it’s unlikely to have any real impact on competitors.
That is, of course, unless there are noticeable protests by the athletes themselves at the games. The IOC recently changed its policy to allow mild protest at the games – but not during events or awards ceremonies. If this happened, Chinese officials, the IOC or national Olympic committees would likely take action.
Richard Baka 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.
Australia will impose a diplomatic boycott on the February Winter Olympics in China. But the Australian team will still take part.
The government’s move follows the United States’ lead, triggered by China’s human rights breaches.
Announcing the decision on Wednesday, Scott Morrison said: “People have been very aware that we have been raising a number of issues that have not been received well in China and there’s been a disagreement between us on those matters.
“The human rights abuses in Xinjiang and many other issues that Australia has consistently raised – we have been very pleased and very happy to talk to the Chinese government about these issues and there’s been no obstacle to that occurring on our side.
“But the Chinese government has consistently not accepted those opportunities for us to meet about these issues.
“So it is not surprising, therefore, that Australian government officials would […] not be going to China for those Games.”
But Australian athletes would be competing, he stressed. “Australia’s a great sporting nation and I very much separate the issues of sport and these other political issues. They’re issues between two governments.”
The Prime Minister’s Office confirmed the boycott would include non-attendance by officials from the Australian embassy.
The government’s position differs from that of the Fraser government which urged a full boycott of the 1980 Olympics in Moscow, in protest against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. This followed the stand by then US president Jimmy Carter.
The Fraser government’s stand led to a split with the then Australian Olympic Federation which voted by a narrow margin to send a team, although some athletes did not go.
The chief executive officer of the Australian Olympic Committee, Matt Carroll the AOC was “heartened” by Morrison’s support for the Australian team.
“Human rights are extremely important, but the considered view of diplomats is that keeping channels of communication open is far more impactful than shutting them down, ” Carroll added.
The AOC is expecting to send about 40 athletes to the Beijing Games.
Labor said in a statement from shadow foreign minister Penny Wong and sports spokesman Don Farrell that it supported the decision not to send officials and dignitaries.
“We hold deep concerns about ongoing human rights abuses in China, including towards Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities, and about athlete safety given questions about the treatment of tennis player Peng Shuai.
“This decision, alongside other countries’ diplomatic boycotts, sends a strong signal that these are not the behaviours of a responsible global power.
“Our athletes have trained hard for years towards this opportunity and didn’t choose where the Winter Olympics are being held. It is appropriate that they are not the ones asked to make a sacrifice.
“The Australian government must ensure our team is supported by Embassy staff on the ground,” Labor said.
Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: Council on Hemispheric Affairs – Analysis-Reportage
By Joe Emersberger
Both Ecuador and Nicaragua elected a president and national assembly this year. Ecuador’s elections took place in February, with the second round of its presidential election in April. Nicaragua’s took place on November 7. Just by scanning headlines in Western media, as most readers do, it’s easy to tell which was a U.S. ally and which was an official enemy.
(By “enemy,” I mean a government that poses no threat to the U.S., but still gets hit with crippling sanctions, or worse, that it endures as best it can.)
A search of the Nexis news database for the word “crackdown” in articles about Ecuador and Nicaragua in newspapers in the U.S., Canada, and the UK for a five-month period before the election in each country reveals a significant contrast between reporting on Nicaragua and Ecuador. In the case of Ecuador, not a single headline alleged any kind of crackdown on opposition to the government. In the case of Nicaragua, 55 headlines alleged an unjustifiable crackdown. Some examples:
“Nicaragua’s Democracy Hangs by Thread as Crackdown Deepens” (New York Times, 6/6/21)
“Human Rights Groups Have Eyes on Growing Crackdown; UN, Other Organizations Fear Upcoming Elections Won’t Be Fair and Free” (Toronto Star, 6/27/21)
“Nicaragua Arrests Seventh Presidential Contender in November 7 vote” (Independent, 7/24/21)
“We Are in This Nightmare’: Nicaragua Continues Its Brazen Crackdown” (Guardian, 8/12/21)
“‘Everyone Is on the List’: Fear Grips Nicaragua as It Veers to Dictatorship” (New York Times, 9/5/21)
“Nicaraguan Business Leaders Arrested in Ortega’s Pre-Election Crackdown” (Guardian, 10/22/21)
“An Election in Nicaragua That Could Further Dim Democracy; Daniel Ortega Runs for His Fourth Consecutive Term as President of Nicaragua Virtually Uncontested, Having Imprisoned All His Political Rivals” (Christian Science Monitor, 11/4/21)
There was actually a crackdown in Nicaragua, but it was a defensible crackdown on persons receiving (and laundering) money from the U.S., a foreign power that has victimized Nicaragua for over a century. If one disregards that history, it’s easy, especially from afar, to take a libertarian position that the crackdown was unjustified. That was clearly the western media’s approach.
A U.S. crackdown since 1912
Remarkably, Daniel Ortega is the only president Nicaragua has had since 1912 who has not owed his position to murderous U.S. support. From 1912 until 1933, U.S. occupation troops ran the country directly, and structured the Nicaraguan military to ensure that brutal pro-US dictatorships (primarily of the Somoza family) would govern for decades afterwards.
Ortega first became president in 1979, after his Sandinista political movement overthrew the US-backed Somoza dictatorship in an armed revolution. Ortega was elected in 1984 (the first free and fair elections Nicaragua ever had–Extra!, 10-11/87), despite the country having to contend with US-backed terrorists known as the Contras, and with ruinous sanctions the U.S. imposed on the country throughout the 1980s (FAIR.org,8/23/18).
By 1990, the Contra war had claimed 30,000 lives and, combined with U.S. sanctions, left the economy devastated. U.S. allies, backed by seditious media outlets in Nicaragua like La Prensa, secured Ortega’s defeat at the polls that year. The real winner was U.S. President George H.W. Bush. Allegations that Putin’s Russia influenced the 2016 election in the United States by hacking the DNC’s emails are a joke compared to what the U.S. undeniably achieved in 1990 in Nicaragua: The U.S. used terrorism and economic blackmail against an entire country to achieve an “electoral” victory in 1990.
In its coverage of the 2021 election, Reuters (11/5/21) referred to the 1990 triumph of U.S. aggression in Nicaragua by saying that Ortega’s “defeat left a deep mark on the leftist leader. Battling 16 years to regain the presidency, his opponents say he is now determined to retain power at any cost.” The article’s headline was “Ortega and Murillo, the Presidential Couple With an Iron Grip on Nicaragua.” (Rosario Murillo, Ortega’s spouse, is also his vice president.)
Ironically, the article actually mentioned some facts that expose the iron grip the U.S. has usually had on Nicaragua for over a century–referring to Somoza, for example, as “the last dictator of a US-backed family dynasty established in the 1930s.” But the article did not link that history to the grave threat the U.S. poses to Nicaragua today. That’s something it could easily have done by quoting independent critics of U.S. foreign policy who would have made that connection.
Ortega’s electoral record
Ortega regained the presidency in the 2006 elections, one of many left-leaning Latin American presidents (like Rafael Correa in Ecuador) who won elections in this century, after a disastrous neoliberal era under right-wing governments. By 2017, impressive economic gains by the Ortega government made it the most popular in the Americas among 18 surveyed by Latinobarómetro, a Chile-based pollster funded by Western governments, including the US. The 67% approval rate for the Nicaraguan government in that poll was actually higher than the 47% of eligible voters who handed Ortega his 2016 re-election electoral victory (72% of the vote on a 66% turnout).
By December 2020, Latinobarómetro found Ortega’s government enjoyed 42% approval (in a report that repeatedly called Nicaragua a “dictatorship”)–still above average in the region, despite the US-backed coup attempt in 2018, subsequent U.S. sanctions and threats, as well as the pandemic. That points to a substantial hardcore base of support for Ortega–and poll numbers (again, from a hostile pollster funded by hostile governments) that are not out of line with the 46% of the eligible vote Ortega won on November 7 (in an election with 65% turnout). It’s worth stressing that Ortega is the historic leader of the movement that overthrew the Somoza family, a fact that by itself makes the existence of a hardcore Sandinista base easy to credit.
In mid-October, less than a month before the 2021 election, Nicaragua’s right-wing media hyped a poll by CID Gallup claiming that Ortega’s support had dropped to 19%, but the same poll suggested turnout in the election (in which there was allegedly no opposition) would be between 51% and 68%. It claimed 51% were very likely to vote and another 17% somewhat likely. In the wake of Ortega’s win, that contradictory finding in the CID Gallup poll (evidence that it was badly skewed in favor of anti-Sandinistas) was ignored to allege massive abstention of about 80%.
As usual, pollsters, independent election observers and independent journalists on the ground who refuted Western media claims about the election were simply ignored, in some cases suspended from social media, and in one instance subjected to vulgar abuse by a prominent U.S. pundit.
Coup attempt of 2018
In 2018, Ortega’s unpopular US-backed opponents clearly applied the lesson of 1990: Violence and sabotage backed by a superpower and its propagandists may eventually produce an “electoral” victory. Violent protests aimed at driving Ortega from office were launched in 2018 from mid-April until late July.
La Prensa–an anti-Sandinista paper that has been funded by the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy, which ex-Contra spokesperson Edgar Chammoro described as a CIA “propaganda asset” (Extra!, 10–11/87)–predictably supported the 2018 coup attempt, claiming in June of that year that 70% of Nicaragua’s roads were blocked by protesters. Imagine how violent and well-armed U.S. protesters would need to be to block a large majority of the country’s roads for months. In 2011, 700 Occupy Wall Street protesters were immediately arrested for blocking traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge for a few hours. In fact, careful assessments of the 2018 coup attempt in Nicaragua, that relied heavily on anti-Sandinista sources, showed that the opposition was responsible for about as many deaths as the government and its supporters.
The coup attempt was defeated, but it gave the U.S. a “human rights” pretext to vilify and sanction Nicaragua’s government. Independent journalist John Perry, a Nicaraguan resident, recently noted in FAIR.org (11/3/21) that hundreds of people involved in the coup attempt actually benefited from an amnesty law passed in 2019. But Washington demands total impunity–no jail time and full political rights–for all the criminals it supports. Ben Norton explained the consequences of pressure the U.S., OAS and prominent human rights NGOs applied for the release of alleged poltical prisoners: “Droves of criminals with lengthy rap sheets have been freed, and one has already murdered a pregnant 22-year-old woman”.
In other cases, charges against Ortega’s opponents stemmed from the “passage of a ‘foreign agents’ law designed to track foreign funding of organizations operating in the country,” as the Associated Press (9/2/21) put it. AP neglected to clarify that the law is aimed at disrupting the free flow of U.S. government funds to political groups that indisputably tried to overthrow Ortega in 2018 (COHA, 6/8/21). The wire service obscured these key facts by using vague language and by presenting facts as mere allegations made by Ortega, who “has claimed that organizations receiving funding from abroad were part of a broader conspiracy to remove him from office in 2018.”
Further highlighting that Ortega’s opponents and its U.S. sponsors feel entitled to overthrow the government, the “foreign agents” law indirectly led to charges against children of Violeta Chamorro, the ex-president who in 1990 scored an“electoral” victory over Ortega that was a product of US-backed terrorism. The Chamorro Foundation received millions in USAID funding until it shut itself down in protest at the “foriegn agents” law. Ortega’s government then charged its director Cristiana María Chamorro Barríos with money laundering based on the allegation that she did not properly account for where all that money went.
No opposition in DC
On November 3, as Ortega and the Sandinistas were days away from an electoral victory, the U.S. House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to intensify sanctions on Nicaragua’s government. Reuters (11/3/21) reported that the “House of Representatives passed the bill 387–35 with strong bipartisan support, following a similar vote by the Senate this week.” At the same time, U.S.-based social media corporations cracked down on pro-Sandinista accounts. In other words, U.S. state and private power united in attacking Nicaragua’s government while hypocritically alleging that Ortega had no real opposition.
Perry noted that among the participants on November 7 were “two opposition parties that formed governments between 1990 and 2007, and still have significant support.” But the larger point is that Ortega’s most dangerous opposition resides in Washington, and it has always tormented Nicaragua with complete impunity.
A popular government defending itself against a violent US-backed opposition was depicted by Western media as instigating an unprovoked crackdown on defenders of democracy–ignoring the US’s grim record of successfully crushing Nicaraguan democracy since 1912.
Betrayal in Ecuador
That’s not the treatment the media dished out to the former president of Ecuador, Lenin Moreno, during elections this year.
The crackdown in Ecuador that merited no accusatory headlines was driven by a stunning betrayal of Ecuadorian voters in 2017. That year, then-Vice President Lenín Moreno ran as a staunch loyalist to left wing incumbent President Rafael Correa, who held office from 2007 to 2017. But after defeating right-wing banker Guillermo Lasso at the polls, Moreno proceeded to implement Lasso’s political platform for the next four years.
Western media outlets were delighted with Moreno’s cynicism (FAIR.org, 2/4/18, Counterpunch.org, 2/9/18). Voters were not so delighted, however, and by 2020 his approval rating fell to 9%, according to Latinobarómetro.
To pull off his betrayal of the political movement that got him elected, Moreno jailed, exiled and banned Correa loyalists from running in elections throughout his years in office (CounterPunch.org, 12/21/18, 10/15/19, 12/3/19; FAIR.org, 2/16/21). Moreno’s pretext was that Correa (whom he had always praised extravagantly) was actually corrupt, and had left the country heavily indebted. The lie about Ecuador’s debt was especially easy to refute, but Western media happily spread it anyway (FAIR.org10/23/19).
Moreno’s harassment of WikiLeaks‘ Julian Assange (whom Correa had protected for years after he sought asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London) also failed to damage Moreno’s credibility with Western media (FAIR.org, 11/3/18). Moreno eventually handed Assange over to UK police (FAIR.org, 4/12/19), thereby helping the U.S. crack down on press freedom around the world.
Banned for ‘psychic influence’
This year, Lasso ran against Andrés Arauz, a pragmatic leftist who tried to register Correa as his running mate. Lasso’s win in the fairly close runoff election owed an enormous debt to the persecution of Correa loyalists that Moreno had perpetrated for years (MRonline.org,5/6/21).
Shortly before the election, Correa was banned from running for vice president, thanks to a farcical judgment (sped through judicial appeals in record time, despite the pandemic, to beat the electoral calendar) that found him guilty of “psychic influence” over officials who had taken bribes. Correa was therefore not just banned from running: He’d also be jailed if he returned to Ecuador.
Absurd rulings like this were possible because Moreno trampled all over judicial independence while in office. In 2018, a body that Moreno handpicked fired and appointed replacements to the Judicial Council and the entire Constitutional Court. (Counterpunch, 10/12/2018) The same handpicked body (the CPCCS-T in its Spanish acronym) also appointed a new attorney general and a new electoral council. [1]
Correa’s former vice president (Jorge Glas) has been jailed since 2017 on similarly trumped-up grounds. Prominent Correa allies like Ricardo Patiño and Gabriela Rivadeneira remain in exile. Electoral authorities even banned the use of Correa’s image in campaign ads by his loyalists.
Several months before the election, a Moreno cabinet secretary openly bragged about the crackdown in a TV interview (FAIR.org2/16/21), saying that it was a “big risk being a Correaist candidate, because the justice system will have its eyes on those who have not yet fled or been convicted.”
A key to Moreno’s crackdown was that Ecuador’s state media and big private TV were united in vilifying Correa and his loyalists. Weeks before the runoff election in April, Moreno’s attorney general appeared before the media with her Colombian counterpart to bolster absurd accusations that Arauz had been funded by the Colombian rebel group ELN. Ten days later, the U.S. State Department singled out Ecuador’s attorney general as one of its “anti corruption champions.” (Incidentally, Arauz has just come under investigation again in retaliation for explaining exactly how Pandora Papers revelations prove that Lasso’s entire 2021 campaign was illegal.)
As Moreno’s term ended, the New York Times (2/7/21) portrayed this cynical authoritarian as a “highly unpopular” but sincere reformer–a man who merely punished corruption, and who genuinely worried that “leaders with too tight a grip on power are unhealthy for democracies.”
Correa and his political movement had become dominant in Ecuador for a decade by winning elections and implementing successful policies that broke with neoliberalism. A ten year break from neoliberalism was a threat to democracy that warranted a crackdown in the eyes of the New York Times, not over a century (and counting) of a lethal U.S. assault on Nicaragua’s sovereignty.
Concealing Western hypocrisy is essential to helping the world’s most powerful state behave like a global dictator, and Western media reliably provide that assistance.
Research assistance: Jasmine Watson
[Main photo credit: by Becca Mohally Renk, from JHC-CDCA]
NOTE
[1] The National Assembly had 20 days to choose seven standing and seven alternates from a shortlist of 21 names Moreno gave them. Any posts left vacant by the National Assembly would be automatically filled from Moreno’s list taking into account in the order in which Moreno listed them;ee “Lenín Moreno presentó los 21 nombres de las ternas para el Cpccs transitorio,” El Comercio, February 19, 2018
Terrorism has been one of Australia’s most significant threats to national security since the September 11 terrorist attacks. But this is set to change.
Australia’s domestic spy agency ASIO anticipates espionage – spying – will supplant terrorism as Australia’s principal security threat over the next five years. They do not explicitly say why, but note this is “based on current trends” and that “espionage attempts by multiple countries remain unacceptably high”.
Espionage can harm our independence, economy and national security. For example, stealing trade secrets would give a foreign country an advantage on the international market, which would undermine Australian businesses. Or stealing information about military weapons would give our enemies the chance to develop their own technology to obstruct our use of these assets.
But what exactly is the nature of this espionage threat? And are our laws enough to protect us?
the theft of Australian information or capabilities for passage to another country, which undermines Australia’s national interest or advantages a foreign country.
Unlike the world wars or Cold War, foreign spies today do not just want to steal military or intelligence information. They seek any kind of sensitive or valuable information or things, including proprietary and commercial information, new technologies, and information about our relations with other countries.
ASIO head Mike Burgess has warned of a growing espionage threat. Mick Tsikas/AAP
Foreign spies steal this information by developing relationships with people working in sectors such as government, academia, business, science and technology.
They also engage in cyber espionage – today’s spies can steal large amounts of data in seconds. They can also do this anonymously and from outside Australia. The cyber espionage threat has been amplified by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has seen a drastic increase in the use and availability of cybertechnologies.
Espionage attempts are by no means a rare occurrence. ASIO warns they occur every day, in every Australian state and territory. And they are not just by China. A wide range of countries are attempting espionage against Australia.
The threat is real, sophisticated and wide-ranging. And ASIO warns that it will increase during times of “heightened tension”, like during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Australia’s espionage laws
To combat the growing threat of espionage, in 2018 the federal government introduced a complex scheme of 27 different espionage offences. These include a suite of underlying offences, plus a preparatory offence and a solicitation offence.
Foreign spies – and those who assist them – face life in prison if they break one of these serious national security laws.
All of Australia’s espionage crimes apply to people within Australia. They also apply to people in other countries too. This means they can capture spies who engage in cyber espionage from beyond Australia’s borders.
The underlying espionage offences
The underlying espionage offences criminalise dealing with information on behalf of, or to communicate to, a “foreign principal”, which includes foreign governments as well as entities they control, such as foreign intelligence agencies.
Here, “information” means any information or thing. This means the laws apply no matter what kind of information is taken, from classified government information and sensitive samples of new products (like vaccines) to seemingly innocuous information about Australia’s relations with other countries. They also apply no matter how that information is taken – it could be in person or via cybertechnologies.
Some of the offences require the person to have intended to (or been reckless as to whether) they would prejudice Australia’s national security or advantage the national security of a foreign country. Here, “national security” means traditional defence and intelligence matters. It also extends to Australia’s political and economic relations with other countries. So, the underlying offences would capture those who take information on behalf of another country and seek to harm our security, economy, or international relations – exactly what foreign spies do.
The preparatory offence
The aim of counterespionage is not to wait until espionage has happened, but to prevent espionage from occurring in the first place. With this in mind, the 2018 espionage reforms introduced a novel “preparatory offence”, which was modelled on similar terrorism offences.
The preparatory offence criminalises any act done to prepare or plan for espionage. It captures conduct far before the commission of any espionage offence, such as purchasing a laptop or googling the type of encryption used by the Australian Defence Force.
Googling certain terms could amount to planning for espionage, in the eyes of the law. www.shutterstock.com
To amount to espionage, though, a person doing these kinds of things would need to intend to commit espionage at some time in the future.
Where foreign spies or their associates are concerned, this offence might be easier to prove than the underlying offences. It also gives law enforcement the power to intervene before the spies take anything.
The solicitation offence
The espionage offences take aim at the earliest stages of espionage in another way. The “solicitation offence” makes it a crime to do any act, intending to obtain someone else to commit espionage. The offence can be committed even if the other person never engages in espionage.
The solicitation offence would apply to foreign spies who try to develop relationships with Australians to get them to hand over valuable information.
Are our laws enough?
Australia’s revamped espionage laws are broad enough to capture modern – including cyber – espionage. But they are not enough to protect us from espionage.
One problem with the laws is that people who commit cyber espionage from outside Australia must be extradited here to face prosecution. This could be a significant impediment to prosecutions, especially where the spy is in a country that does not have an extradition treaty with Australia (or the treaty is not yet in force), such as China or Pakistan.
Another problem is identifying who the spy is, and therefore who to charge. This is a big issue where a person engages in cyber espionage because they can use things like anonymous proxy servers to hide their identity.
These problems mean that our espionage laws may not be as effective as they could be, and other measures may be necessary to prevent espionage from occurring in the first place. These measures include robust and effective cyber security – not just for government agencies, but in our homes and workplaces too. They also include public awareness campaigns about the nature of modern espionage. Every Australian must know what to look out for so that they do not inadvertently hand valuable information over to a spy.
Our espionage laws serve as a warning that broader does not necessarily mean better.
In addition to their questionable effectiveness, the breadth of the laws means they can capture entirely innocent conduct too, like social networking, media reporting, and academic research.
So, in attempting to capture spies, the laws may also catch innocent Australians.
Sarah Kendall 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.
At least 15 Indian states have been badly affected, including the capital city of Delhi that reported a five-year high in the number of cases.
Data from the federal health ministry suggests more than 100,000 dengue infections and 90 deaths were reported in the country from January to October.
Federal teams have been rushed to nine of the worst-affected states to assist them in controlling the outbreak. Health systems in India have been struggling to treat patients with dengue. Bed shortages have been reported across severalstates.
Dengue infections occur cyclically, peaking every alternate year. Last year there were fewer than 45,000 cases.
This time, the challenge is compounded by patients with both COVID and dengue. Since the initial presentation of dengue and COVID infections are similar, they can be misdiagnosed, leading to catastrophic, including fatal, consequences.
Dengue causes a wide spectrum of disease, ranging from asymptomatic infection to severe flu-like symptoms. Severe dengue infection, though less common, can be accompanied by any number of complications including severe bleeding, organ impairment and plasma leakage from the blood into surrounding tissue.
The risk of death is higher if severe dengue is not managed properly. Some 90% of those with severe dengue needing hospitalisation are children below five years of age; 2-3% of children in this age group infected die from dengue.
How do you catch dengue?
Dengue is an urban-centric disease spread by the Aedes mosquitoes that bite during the day.
The Aedes mosquito breeds in stagnant artificial collections of water which abound in homes and other urban areas in India. A teaspoon of stagnant water is enough for thousands of Aedes mosquitoes to breed. This mosquito is a lazy one. It does not travel beyond 300-500 meters and therefore, most breeding spots are close to residential premises or within homes.
The dengue virus belongs to the Flaviviridae family, with four closely related but distinct strains – DENV-1, DENV-2, DENV-3, and DENV-4. The incubation period for the virus is between four and ten days after the mosquito bite, and symptoms last two to seven days. This year, DENV-2, marked by early onset of symptoms and rapid progression of illness, has been found to be responsible for the rise in the number of cases.
Peak numbers for dengue are recorded in the post-monsoon period in India. This year, early signs of a particularly bad outbreak were reported in the northern state Uttar Pradesh. Reports of a “mystery fever” that caused several deaths among children surfaced in late August. Dengue fever was found to be the main cause.
The dengue situation in India
Dengue is among the top ten diseases prioritised by the World Health Organization for the period 2019 to 2024. This is because incidence of this viral disease has increased over 30-fold in the last five decades.
However it’s thought this is a huge underestimate of the number of cases worldwide. It’s estimated the real figure could be as high as 400 million, since many are undiagnosed.
A nationally representative, community-based survey in India showed close to half of the population (48.7%) has been exposed to dengue infection in India at some point in their life. The highest numbers are in the southern states (76·9%), followed by the western (62·3%), and northern (60·3%) states.
Given the makeup of these states, these statistics show urbanisation is one of the main drivers for rising dengue incidence in India. No urban part of India is now untouched by the disease.
Can we stop the virus?
The disease caused to humans has no specific treatment. However, several interventions have been successfully used to reduce this type of mosquito breeding. These include indoor and outdoor residual spraying of walls, the use of attractive toxic sugar baits to trap female mosquitoes and larvae-killing agents like gambusia fish. Personal protection measures like screens for windows, and mosquito repellent creams are also important deterrents.
Results of a trial conducted by Monash University on the efficacy of infecting mosquitoes with a bacteria called Wolbachia show the technique reduced the incidence of dengue by 77%. The Wolbachia bacteria competes with other viruses in the mosquito’s system, such as dengue, zika, chikungunya or yellow fever. This makes it harder for these viruses to reproduce inside the mosquitoes.
Male mosquitoes infected with the bacterium are released in areas where the disease is endemic. They breed with the wild female mosquitoes. Over time, the percentage of mosquitoes with Wolbachia increases, meaning fewer mosquitoes which are able to transmit harmful viruses to humans.
The process of infecting, breeding and then releasing mosquitoes in the community has not yet been cleared for use in India. But experimental studies are taking place to study its effects in certain regions. It could be a useful intervention for India.
Isn’t there a vaccine for dengue?
There is a dengue vaccine on the market but its use is very limited. For those who have never had dengue it can make infection more severe, so it is only recommended for people who have previously had dengue and live in regions where the virus is endemic.
Work on a new vaccine that could be effective against all four strains of the virus in the same vaccine is currently being undertaken in India and elsewhere. Trials are to commence soon.
Community measures are also imperative in curbing dengue transmission. This includes removing all sources of stagnant water around your home – from flower pots, air coolers and old tyres lying around, at least once a week. Reducing the burden of dengue is something we all must take part in.
GVS Murthy 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.
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.
The pig-nosed turtle, an endangered freshwater turtle native to the Northern Territory and southern New Guinea, is unique in many respects. Unlike most freshwater turtles, it is almost completely adapted to life in water. It has paddle-like flippers similar to sea turtles, a snorkel-like “pig-nose” to help it breathe while staying submerged, and eggs that will only hatch when exposed to the waters of the wet season.
It is also the last surviving species of a group of tropical turtles called the carettochelyids, which once lived throughout the northern hemisphere. Scientists thought pig-nosed turtles only arrived at Australia within the past few millennia, as no pig-nosed turtle fossils had ever been found here – or so we thought.
Artist’s impression of the pig-nosed turtle swimming in an ancient river. Jaime Bran
A 5-million-year-old fossil from Museums Victoria’s collections has now completely rewritten this story. Discovered at Beaumaris, 20km southeast of Melbourne, this fossil lay unidentified in Melbourne Museum’s collection for almost 100 years until our team came across it.
We identified the fossil as a small section of the front of a pig-nosed turtle’s shell, as we report today in the journal Papers in Palaeontology. Although the fossil is just a fragment, we were lucky that it was from a very diagnostic area of the shell.
The 5-million-year-old pig-nosed turtle fossil, in life position on the shell of a modern pig-nosed turtle. Erich Fitzgerald
The fossil shows that carettochelyid turtles have been living in Australia for millions of years. But what was a pig-nosed turtle doing in Beaumaris 5 million years ago, thousands of kilometres from their modern range?
Well, in the past, Melbourne’s weather was a lot warmer and wetter that it is now. It was more akin to the tropical conditions in which these turtles live today.
In fact, this isn’t the first prehistoric tropical species discovered here: monk seals, which today live in Hawaii and the Mediterranean, and dugongs also once lived in what is now Beaumaris.
Millions of years ago, Australia’s eastern seaboard was a tropical turtle hotspot. The warmer and wetter environment would have been perfect for supporting a greater diversity of turtles in the past. This is in stark contrast to modern times; today, Australia is mostly home to the side-necked turtles.
Tropical turtles would have had to cross thousands of kilometres of ocean to get here. But this is not unusual – small animals often cross the sea by hitching a ride on vegetation rafts.
Distribution of Australia’s freshwater turtles today, and the location of the pig-nosed turtle fossil. Star shows where the new fossil was found at Beaumaris. Author provided, turtle silhouette by Aline M. Ghilardi
So where are these turtles now? Why is the modern pig-nosed turtle the last remaining species of the carettochelyids? Well, just like today, animals in the past were threatened by climate change. When Australasia’s climate became cooler and drier after the ice ages, all the tropical turtles went extinct, except for the pig-nosed turtle in the Northern Territory and New Guinea.
Australia wasn’t always dry and sunburnt. Millions of years ago, it was a tropical paradise filled with bizarre animals. Dorothy Dunphy/Riversleigh by Archer, Hand & Godthelp/Reed Books
This also suggests that the modern pig-nosed turtle, already endangered, is under threat from human-driven climate change. These turtles are very sensitive to their environment, and without rain their eggs cannot hatch.
This is true of a lot of Australia’s native animals and plants. In reptile species such as turtles and crocodiles, sex can be determined by the temperature at which eggs are incubated. This is yet another factor that could put these species at risk as the climate changes.
Many amazing fossils have been found on the beach under the red cliffs of Beaumaris. Erich Fitzgerald
The treasure trove of fossils from Beaumaris shows just how important Australia’s previously tropical environment was for ancient animals. Southern Australia used to be home to many tropical species that now have much more restricted ranges.
Just last year, the discovery of tropical monk seals fossils from Beaumaris completely changed how scientists thought seals evolved. This shows just how much we still have to learn about Australia’s prehistoric past, when it was so different from the sunburnt country we know today.
James Patrick Rule receives funding from an Australian Research Council Discovery Project (DP180101797). Museums Victoria receives support for research on The Lost World of Bayside from Bayside City Council, Community Bank Sandringham, Beaumaris Motor Yacht Squadron, Bayside Earth Sciences Society, Sandringham Foreshore Association and generous community donations to Museums Victoria.
William Parker receives funding from an Australian Government RTP Stipend and a Museums Victoria – Monash University Robert Blackwood Scholarship.
They’re also concerned about the potential impact of the new Omicron variant.
A summer surge would put even more pressure on health workers who, as our research shows, are already experiencing high levels of distress.
While the bulk of the responsibility for addressing the well-being of clinical staff falls on health services and governments, we can all do our bit to prevent a mass health worker exodus.
What did our study find?
Health workers often experience high levels of stress as a result of working long hours or shift work, providing emotional support to patients and their families, and patient deaths. The pandemic has increased this stress.
We surveyed almost 3,700 health workers including nurses, midwives, doctors and allied health staff such as social workers, physiotherapists and occupational therapists in Australia and Denmark.
Their main concerns were contracting the virus, putting family members at risk and caring for infected patients.
We also found:
three-quarters of health workers agreed with the statement “people close to me have been concerned about my health”
almost one-quarter of respondents avoided telling people they worked at a health service. Several reported receiving a negative reaction when they wore their uniform in public
pregnant staff were concerned about the potential impact of COVID on themselves and their baby
wearing personal protective equipment (PPE) was challenging and resulted in headaches and dehydration
health workers had difficulties managing their paid work and family responsibilities, including supporting children with remote learning.
Employees who thought their health service had responded appropriately to the pandemic and provided sufficient staff support had better mental health than those who didn’t.
This suggests investing resources in support initiatives helps protect health worker well-being, and health services to assist and retain staff.
Without adequate support, the safe, high-quality care we rely on could be eroded by a mass job exodus, rising rates of absenteeism, and reduced quality of patient care.
Health workers have had difficulties managing paid work and family responsibilities. Shutterstock
What can we do to help?
We all have a role to play in protecting the well-being of this crucial workforce and ensuring the sustainability of health services.
Government and health services urgently need to:
1) implement best practice mental health and well-being initiatives for health workers. A range of initiatives have been implemented during the pandemic, but if they don’t meet the needs of health workers, they’re unlikely to be used or successful. New models of support need to be co-designed with health workers and tested so we know what works
2) build an ongoing system to monitor health worker mental health and well-being. Most data collected about health worker well-being during the pandemic is from single-site studies of a fixed point in time. Large, ongoing studies can help us track health worker well-being and any changes over time, including the long-term impact of the pandemic
3) encourage health workers to access support when needed.
5) using 000 and hospital emergency departments only for medical emergencies. If the situation isn’t urgent contact your GP, local pharmacist or Health Direct on 1800 022 222 (or Nurse-On-Call in Victoria on 1300 60 60 24)
Sara Holton has received funding from several sources including the NHMRC and the ARC
Bodil Rasmussen has received funding from NHMRC and MRFF.
Karen Wynter and Kate Huggins do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Carbon capture and storage (CCS) has been touted, again and again, as one of the critical technologies that could help Australia reach its climate targets, and features heavily in the federal government’s plan for net-zero emissions by 2050.
CCS is generally when emissions are captured at the source, such as from a coal-fired power station, trucked to a remote location and stored underground.
But critics say investing in carbon capture and storage (CCS) means betting on technology that’s not yet proven to work at scale. Indeed, technology-wise, the design of effective carbon-capturing materials, both solid and liquid, has historically been a challenging task.
So could it ever be a viable solution to the fossil fuel industry’s carbon dioxide emissions?
Emerging overseas research shows “liquid marbles” – tiny droplets coated with nanoparticles – could possibly address current challenges in materials used to capture carbon. And our modelling research, published yesterday, brings us a big step closer to making this futuristic technology a reality.
An ongoing problem, more specifically, is the effectiveness of materials used to capture the CO₂, such as absorbents. One example is called “amine scrubbing”, a method used since 1930 to separate, for instance, CO₂ from natural gas and hydrogen.
This technology can be almost invisible to the naked eye, with some marbles under 1 millimetre in diameter. The liquid it holds – most commonly water or alcohol – is on the scale of microlitres (a microlitre is one thousandth of a millilitre).
The marbles have an outer layer of nanoparticles that form a flexible and porous shell, preventing the liquid within from leaking out. Thanks to this armour, they can behave like flexible, stretchable and soft solids, with a liquid core.
What do marbles have to do with CCS?
Liquid marbles have many unique abilities: they can float, they roll smoothly, and they can be stacked on top of each other.
Other desirable properties include resistance to contamination, low-friction and flexible manipulation, making them appealing for applications such as gas capture, drug delivery and even as miniature bio-reactors.
In the context of CO₂ capture, their ability to selectively interact with gases, liquids and solids is most crucial. A key advantage of using liquid marbles is their size and shape, because thousands of spherical particles only millimetres in the size can directly be installed in large reactors.
Gas from the reactor hits the marbles, where it clings to the nanoparticle outer shell (in a process called “adsorption”). The gas then reacts with the liquid within, separating the CO₂ and capturing it inside the marble. Later, we can take out this CO₂ and store it underground, and then recycle the liquid for future processing.
This process can be a more time and cost-efficient way of capturing CO₂ due to, for example, the liquid (and potentially solid) recycling, as well as the marbles’ high mechanical strength, reactivity, sorption rates and long-term stability.
So what’s stopping us?
Despite recent progress, many properties of liquid marbles remain elusive. What’s more, the only way to test liquid marbles is currently through physical experiments conducted in a laboratory.
Physical experiments have their limitations, such as the difficulty to measure the surface tension and surface area, which are important indicators of the marble’s reactivity and stability.
A liquid marble, with lines indicating the trajectory of its internal flow. Nam-Trung Nguyen, Author provided
In this context, our new computational modelling can improve our understanding of these properties, and can help overcome the use of costly and time-intensive experiment-only procedures.
Another challenge is developing practical, rigorous and large-scale approaches to manipulate liquid marble arrays within the reactor. Further computational modelling we’re currently working on will aim to analyse the three-dimensional changes in the shapes and dynamics of liquid marbles, with better convenience and accuracy.
This will open up new horizons for a myriad of engineering applications, including CO₂ capture.
Beyond carbon capture
Research on liquid marbles started off as just an inquisitive topic around 20 years ago and, since then, ongoing research has made it a sought-after platform with applications beyond carbon capture.
This cutting-edge technology could not only change how we solve climate problems, but environmental and medical problems, too.
Magnetic liquid marbles, for example, have demonstrated their potential in biomedical procedures, such as drug delivery, due to their ability to be opened and closed using magnets outside the body. Other applications of liquid marbles include gas sensing, acidity sensing and pollution detection.
With more modelling and experiments, the next logical step would be to scale up this technology for mainstream use.
Charith Rathnayaka is affiliated with QUT (Queensland University of Technology) as an Adjunct Lecturer.
Emilie Sauret receives funding from the Australian Research Council (FT200100446).
Nam-Trung Nguyen receives funding from Australian Research Council DP170100277 and DP180100055.
Yuantong Gu has received funding from the Australian Research Council.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sheila Fitzpatrick, Professor of History at the Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences, Australian Catholic University
Imagine that in 2023, in the fourth year of a pandemic that has exacerbated tensions and damaged the economy, after months of wrangling over internal borders and a sharp rise in the prestige of state premiers vis-à-vis the prime minister, the premiers of New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia meet secretly and declare that the Commonwealth of Australia has effectively ceased to exist and the states will henceforth be independent nations.
(Western Australia, let us imagine, has already proclaimed its independent sovereignty, with Tasmania and Queensland not far behind.) While the US Ambassador has prior warning of the premiers’ move, the Australian Prime Minister does not. Within a few weeks, the PM has been forced to resign and the Australian flag is lowered for the last time in Canberra.
This isn’t exactly what happened in the Soviet Union as a result of the Belovezh Accords, signed by the leaders of three Soviet republics at a state dacha in Belorussia on 8 December 1991, but close enough.
It’s been 30 years since the Soviet Union dissolved in the wake of a bungled reform effort by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, elected General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party in 1985.
The Soviet crisis of 1991
The Soviet Union, created by the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, consisted of 16 constituent republics, named for their majority nationality (Russian, Ukrainian, Georgian and so on).
Despite some notorious episodes of repression, such as the deportation of Chechens from the Caucasus during World War II), ethnic discrimination was generally discouraged.
For all the vaunted centralisation of the Soviet system – run from Moscow by the Politburo of the country’s sole political party, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, with branches down from republic to workplaces – Moscow in practice delegated substantial powers to its appointed republican leaders. Moscow had the power to fire, of course, but since the 1970s, it had been sparingly used.
The Soviet crisis of 1991 was brought on not by a pandemic but by Gorbachev’s “revolution from above’”, which promised democratic openness (glasnost) and economic restructuring (perestroika) to stimulate initiative and make the top-down system more flexible.
Unfortunately, Gorbachev left the economy as the last priority and started with democratisation, which had the effect of stirring up waves of criticism that undermined authority and trust, and things quickly became shambolic.
By mid 1991, with the glue of the Communist Party coming unstuck, most of the republican leaders had stopped listening to Moscow and changed their title from first party secretary to republican president.
The Baltic states and Armenia had already claimed sovereignty when the three presidents of Russia, Ukraine and Belorussia met in the Belovezh forest (Gorbachev not invited) and voted for independence and an end to the Union. On 25 December, Gorbachev resigned the Soviet presidency, and the Soviet flag over the Kremlin came down.
Decline of an ‘empire’
Only the three Baltic states, a late incorporation into the Soviet Union never fully accepted by the population, had well-developed popular independence movements, so there was urgent catching up to be done in the new successor states. Popular nationalism had to be stoked and national histories written, usually in terms of colonial oppression under Soviet (Russian) rule.
Western historians, who had not previously called the Soviet Union an “empire”, rushed to adjust their terminology: if a multinational state fell apart into national segments, what else could it be than a revolt of the colonies against imperial rule?
The term wasn’t even wholly inaccurate: Russia had been the largest and most populous republic, Moscow was the Union’s capital, and Russian its lingua franca.
At some times in Soviet history, the flow of resources (“economic exploitation”) had mainly been from periphery to centre, though latterly more often the opposite.
If the Soviet Union was an empire, however, it was an odd one. Leaving aside its revolutionary founders’ anti-imperial ideology, there was the fact that, fearing undue Russian dominance, they had given the Russian Republic fewer powers and prerogatives than other republics, and generally discouraged Russian nationalism.
Until Soviet career politician Boris Yeltsin fell afoul of Gorbachev and built up a power base in the Moscow party, the Russian republic had never played a significant role in Soviet high politics.
But when Yeltsin was elected president of the Russian Republic, Moscow became home to two presidents, which was clearly one too many. Gorbachev lost the contest, and the collapse of the Soviet Union was an almost unintended byproduct.
The march of the republics out of the Soviet Union was not a result of popular unrest (the Baltics being something of a special case) but of decisions taken by the republics’ (Soviet) bosses, with Yeltsin, president of the putative “imperial” nation, leading the way.
Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk (second from left seated), Chairman of the Supreme Council of the Republic of Belarus Stanislav Shushkevich (third from left seated) and Russian President Boris Yeltsin (second from right seated) during the signing ceremony to eliminate the USSR and establish the Commonwealth of Independent States. RIA Novosti, CC BY
Shock and chagrin
If my imagined scenario ever took place in Australia, Australians would be plunged into a state of shock, surprise and confusion. That is exactly what happened to Soviet citizens, who until 1991 had assumed that, for better or worse, the USSR was an immutable fact of life.
Shock was the key word of 1990s Russia, accompanied by chagrin at losing superpower status and world respect. As Vladimir Putin said, anyone who didn’t regret the passing of the Soviet Union “had no heart” (though he added that those who sought to resurrect it “had no brain”), and sure enough, for years Russian opinion polls confirmed this.
The Soviet Union, its military and security services intact to the end, had seemed so armoured against change, so boringly solid. To give Putin the last word, “Who could have imagined that it would simply collapse?”
Sheila Fitzpatrick’s book The Shortest History of the Soviet Union will be published by Black, Inc in March
Sheila Fitzpatrick 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.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Matthew Hobbs, Senior Lecturer in Public Health and Co-Director of the GeoHealth Laboratory, University of Canterbury
David Hallett/Getty Images
As New Zealand gets ready for the festive season under the new traffic light system, the emergence of the Omicron variant is a reminder this pandemic is far from over.
The new variant of concern is already fuelling a new wave of infections in South Africa and there is some evidence hospitalisations are increasing.
Data from the South African COVID-19 monitoring consortium show the impact of the Omicron variant. SACMC Epidemic Explorer, CC BY-ND
Omicron has already arrived in Australia and the question now is whether it will get to New Zealand during the summer holiday season and potentially affect plans for border openings.
New Zealand is currently planning to start opening its borders and allowing quarantee-free entry from early 2022, first to fully vaccinated New Zealand citizens arriving from Australia after January 16, and then for New Zealanders arriving from all other countries after mid-February. There’s already some discussion about whether this plan may have to be reviewed.
Omicron contains 32 mutations in the spike protein alone. These are mutations that may make the virus more transmissible and better at evading immunity. There is also some evidence to suggest it poses a higher risk of reinfection.
Other anecdotal evidence suggests more children are being hospitalised with moderate to severe symptoms with Omicron.
However, it is still too early to draw any firm conclusions. Data over the next few weeks will help determine the variant’s full impact.
Perhaps most importantly, Delta also taught us that when new variants emerge, they do not stay in one place for very long.
So, how prepared is New Zealand?
In the short term, New Zealand is well placed to deal with Omicron. Our strong border controls, testing and rapid genome sequencing mean that when Omicron arrives at our border, we can respond quickly and prevent community incursion.
It is unlikely it will be our unwanted guest this Christmas. Despite this, significant challenges lie ahead in the long term, including vaccination inequity and disruptions to routine healthcare.
Percentage of the double vaccinated
Click the button in the top right corner to expand the interactive map – then swipe down for Māori vaccination rates and up for the overall population to compare.
iFrames are not supported on this page.
In several regions, including Auckland and Canterbury, 90% of the eligible population are now fully vaccinated. High vaccination rates may blunt the extent of future potential waves of infection, but significant inequities in vaccination levels remain.
We know that vaccinated people transmit COVID-19 less than unvaccinated people, but only 70% of Māori have received both doses.
So far, New Zealand has been luckier than other countries where concerns are growing about disruptions to routine healthcare. Delays may leave patients with treatable conditions suffering illnesses that can become fatal.
Although unlikely, should Omicron breach our border like Delta did, it will have to be tackled against the backdrop of trying to manage the current Delta outbreak.
Child vaccinations are set to start at the end of January. However, low vaccination levels are often in areas where health provision and hospitals are a long way away. This will need to be incorporated into the rollout strategy to ensure equitable childhood vaccination rates.
Looking forward to Christmas and beyond
The Auckland border will lift on December 15 and many are bracing themselves for a COVID summer. Calls for staycations have emerged as popular summer holiday spots such as Matai Bay close and iwi are asking people to stay away from some destinations.
Our analysis by regional tourism areas in the map below supports this. It shows most regional tourism areas have low vaccination rates, especially for Māori and Pacific peoples.
Click the button in the top right corner to expand the interactive map – then swipe down for Māori and Pacific peoples vaccination rates and up to compare to overall population.
iFrames are not supported on this page.
As New Zealand heads into the holiday season, public health measures such as mask wearing, physical distancing, hand hygiene, contact tracing, case isolation and vaccination will remain essential.
Mandating the COVID tracer app increased the number of scans while less than 1% of paid staff at St John’s ambulance service left due to the vaccine mandate.
While some countries, including New Zealand, have had domestic success at controlling COVID-19, wealthy countries around the world continue to hoard vaccines. This ultimately gives the virus more opportunities to replicate and mutate.
Omicron should act as a wake-up call to ensure worldwide equitable vaccine delivery before even more concerning variants emerge.
Matthew Hobbs receives funding from New Zealand Health Research Council, A Better Start National Science Challenge, Cure Kids and IStar for this research.
Lukas Marek has previously received funding from the Ministry of Health.
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg will announce on Wednesday a comprehensive reform of regulations governing the payments system, to bring it up to date with innovations such as digital wallets and cryptocurrency.
The government says without the changes – the biggest in 25 years – Australians businesses and consumers could increasingly be making transactions in spaces beyond the full reach of Australian law, where rules were determined by foreign governments and multinationals.
It points out that in three decades payment methods have gone from cash to cheques, cheques to credit cards, credit cards to debit cards and now to “tap and go” via digital wallets on phones or watches.
Around a decade ago, cryptocurrency was a concept. Currently, there are more than 220 million participants in the worldwide crypto market, including many in Australia.
The planned reforms will centralise oversight of the payment system by ensuring government plays a greater leadership role. The treasurer will be given more power to intervene in certain circumstances.
Consumer protection will be strengthened, and more competition and innovation will be promoted.
The reform program will be in two phases. There will be consultations in the first half of next year on those that are most urgent and easy to implement. Consultations on the rest will be done by the end of the year.
The government says the present one-size-fits-all licensing framework for payment service providers will be replaced graduated, risk-based regulatory requirements.
There will be consideration of the feasibility of a retail central bank digital currency, and an examination of “de-banking” (where a bank declines to offer a service to a business or individual).
Frydenberg says the comprehensive payments and crypto asset reform program would “firmly place Australia among a handful of lead countries in the world.
“It is how we will capitalise on the opportunity for Australia to lead the world in this emerging and fast-growing area which has almost endless potential applications across the economy,” he says.
“For businesses, these reforms will address the ambiguity that can exist about the regulatory and tax treatment of crypto assets and new payment methods.
“In doing so, it will drive even more consumer interest, facilitate even more new entrants and enable even more innovation to take place.
“For consumers, these changes will establish a regulatory framework to underpin their growing use of crypto assets and clarify the treatment of new payment methods.”
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.
As well as Michelle Grattan’s usual interviews with experts and politicians about the news of the day, Politics with Michelle Grattan now includes “Word from The Hill”, where all things political will be discussed with members of The Conversation’s politics team.
This week they discuss Labor’s newly announced climate policy which includes a target of 43% emissions reduction. They discuss how this plan differs from the Coalitions target and the support it has from key business groups.
They also canvass the push for former NSW Premier Gladys Berejilikan to run for the federal election in a bid to win the seat of Warringah back from Independent Zali Steggal. This move, if it goes ahead, is controversial as there is still an ongoing ICAC investigation into her conduct.
The United States has announced that they will hold a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics, with speculation that the Morrison Government will follow the lead of the US. This boycott is over human rights in China. This is a diplomatic gesture rather than a full boycott, as the athletes would still attend.
Michelle Grattan no recibe salario, ni ejerce labores de consultoría, ni posee acciones, ni recibe financiación de ninguna compañía u organización que pueda obtener beneficio de este artículo, y ha declarado carecer de vínculos relevantes más allá del cargo académico citado.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Madeline Gleeson, Senior Research Fellow, Andrew & Renata Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law, UNSW
Late last month, at least 27 people drowned after their inflatable dinghy capsized while trying to cross the English Channel to the UK. The International Organization for Migration has called it the biggest single loss of life in the channel since data collection began in 2014.
The sense of urgency mounting around this issue does not sweep aside the need for reasoned and rational policymaking. In Australia, we have seen the damage caused by hurried and ill-conceived asylum policies. It is deeply disturbing to see the UK barrel down the same path.
Protesters outside Downing Street in London calling on the government to scrap the Nationalities and Borders Bill. Aaron Chown/PA
Flawed assumptions about Australia’s system
Much of the UK’s proposed “solution” to channel crossings borrows from Australia’s efforts to “stop the boats” and deter people in need of protection from seeking (or finding) it here.
The UK proposal to “offshore” asylum seekers by sending them to Albania or some other country is modelled on Australia’s experience sending asylum seekers to the Pacific nations of Nauru and Papua New Guinea.
Given all we now know about the ramifications of offshore processing, it is astonishing the UK is seeking to replicate it. Offshore processing has been an unmitigated policy failure here.
A group of Conservative MPs, including David Davis, have rightly challenged the humanity, feasibility and cost of the UK adopting Australian-style offshore processing. They have tabled an amendment which would see offshore processing struck from the bill.
One MP claimed that when offshore processing was introduced in Australia, the number of asylum seekers arriving by boat “fell off a cliff straightaway”.
Many of us watch these developments from afar with bewilderment. The UK government appears to be taking at face value claims by the Australian government that offshore processing was a success in stopping boat arrivals.
These claims do not stack up to scrutiny. They belie the government’s own data and are not supported by any independent source.
A makeshift migrant camp in Calais, France, across the English Channel from the UK. Rafael Yaghobzadeh/AP
Misleading evidence about Australia’s program
In September, George Brandis, the Australian high commissioner to the UK, gave what we believe to be [inaccurate and misleading evidence](https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2021-09-23/debates/7ca593db-c83d-48c0-98ff-300ed88e15ce/NationalityAndBordersBill(ThirdSitting) about offshore processing to the UK parliamentary committee tasked with considering the bill.
My colleagues at the Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law and I submitted to parliament a point-by-point rebuttal to this evidence, addressing just some of the errors and misrepresentations.
One of the most serious issues was the conflation of two very different policies – boat turnbacks and the offshore processing system.
“Offshore processing” involved sending asylum seekers from Australia to Nauru and PNG to have their claims processed there. Australia stopped transferring new arrivals offshore in 2014.
By contrast, the policy of boat turnbacks is ongoing, and has largely achieved its goal of deterring the arrival of people by sea. Since late 2013, the policy has involved intercepting asylum seekers at sea and sending them straight back to their countries of departure, without allowing them to apply for asylum. The humanitarian consequences of the turnback policy can be dire, especially for those returned to persecution and serious human rights abuses. It is also contrary to international law.
Brandis wrongly claimed that offshore processing and boat turnbacks were introduced at the same time. This gave the false impression that they are inseparable elements of a single approach to boat arrivals, the effectiveness of which can only be assessed holistically.
In fact, offshore processing was introduced in August 2012, a full year before boat turnbacks. During that year, boat arrivals continued to increase. In fact, more asylum seekers arrived in Australia by sea than at any other time in history.
Indeed, just three months after the offshore processing policy was announced, the government was already forced to admit that more people had arrived by boat than could ever be accommodated offshore.
The fact that offshore processing did not stop people travelling by boat to Australia should be sufficient to put an end to debate in the UK. But there are other reasons this Australian “model” should not be adopted elsewhere.
First, extreme cruelty is an inherent and unavoidable part of the system.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees and Médecins Sans Frontières have found the rates of mental illness of asylum seekers and refugees in Nauru and PNG to be among the highest recorded in any surveyed population, and some of the worst they had ever encountered.
Paediatricians reported children transferred to Nauru were among the most traumatised they had ever seen.
In fact, the Australian government was eventually forced to evacuate all families back to Australia when previously healthy children developed a rare psychiatric condition known as traumatic withdrawal syndrome, or “resignation syndrome”. In the most serious stage of this condition, children enter an unconscious or comatose state.
No liberal democracy should entertain the possibility of inflicting such cruelty and suffering on human beings, let alone do it.
The Australian experience also shows that it is extraordinarily expensive to implement offshore processing.
The UK is also hanging its hat on a policy which may be ruled unlawful and never get off the ground.
In Australia, offshore processing has faced a constant barrage of legal challenges, many of which have forced the government to alter its policies or pay out large sums in damages.
In the UK, where human rights law limits government power, the legal obstacles will be even bigger.
The prospect of sending asylum seekers “offshore” might sound like a convenient solution in theory. But the reality of this policy in Australia has proven it to be difficult, ineffective, expensive, cruel and controversial.
Madeline has previously provided oral and written evidence to the UK House of Commons on the proposal to introduce offshore processing.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Hawkins, Senior Lecturer, Canberra School of Politics, Economics and Society and NATSEM, University of Canberra
Australian economics has lost one of its most internationally renowned scholars with the passing of Geoffrey Harcourt AC at the age of 90. He was also one of its most prolific.
He wrote more than 30 books and 400 articles.
The award of Companion in the Order of Australia in 2018 cites his
eminent service to higher education as an academic economist and author, particularly in the fields of post-Keynesian economics, capital theory and economic thought.
He was a distinguished fellow of the Economic Society of Australia in 1996 among numerous other honours.
Lewis Miller’s painting of Geoffrey Harcourt, submitted for the Archibald Prize, 2019.
An historian of ideas
Geoff gained his first class honours degree at the University of Melbourne. It was there he made a life-long commitment to work toward alleviating poverty and against social and racial discrimination.
As he later wrote, “I became an economist because I hated injustice, unemployment and poverty”.
He then moved to Cambridge where he got his PhD. He was supervised by economics greats Nicky Kaldor and Ronald Henderson. He taught for many years at the University of Adelaide.
He was not just an ivory tower academic. He worked with some colleagues on the very practical 1974 “Adelaide Plan”, which proposed disallowing tax deductions for wage increases above a certain level as a means of reining rampant inflation.
Another part of the plan was trading off wage increases for personal income tax cuts. It was not adopted, but later found an echo in the prices-wages accords of the Hawke government.
He declined an offer by Jim Cairns, briefly treasurer in the Whitlam government, to be appointed Governor of the Reserve Bank.
When Whitlam was dismissed, Geoff’s son (the economist Tim Harcourt) recalled his father speaking at a protest rally just as he had at anti-Vietnam war rallies a few years earlier.
In 1979, during the term of the Fraser Coalition government, he drafted an economic policy programme for a future Labor government. He later joked that Hawke followed it for “at least a good half-hour”.
A Cambridge man
While always Australian, he was also very much a Cambridge man. He visited there to lecture in 1964-1966, 1972-1973 and 1980. He moved there on a more permanent basis from 1982 to 1998.
He was president of Jesus College for most of the period 1988 to 1992. He was on the University Council for eight years.
Some of his best-known work revolved around Cambridge. He wrote on the “Cambridge controversies”. This refers to an argument about the nature of capital between economists from the University of Cambridge and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
He co-wrote the definitive intellectual biography of famous Cambridge economist Joan Robinson. (Geoff, like many others, thought she should have been the first woman to win the Economics Nobel Prize.)
Recollections
Geoff described himself as an “all-rounder” with a range of research interests. He is probably best remembered for his work on what is now termed “post-Keynesian economics”.
Geoff Harcourt and family.
Both authors of this hastily-written obituary remember Geoff with great affection.
Harry Bloch, the incoming co-editor of History of Economics Review, remembered Geoff as “the beating heart of the history of economic thought in Australia”.
The review will feature a tribute to Geoff in due course.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
