Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Fatemeh Aminpour, Associate Lecturer, School of Built Environment, UNSW

Children account for a large proportion of new infections in Australia’s current COVID-19 outbreaks. This has raised concerns about their safe return to school.

As schools in New South Wales and Victoria resume face-to-face learning, children under 12 will be more vulnerable to COVID-19 infection since vaccination of this age group hasn’t started in Australia (although they are less likely to get seriously ill). Face masks are not mandatory for these students either, but are mandatory for secondary school students in Victoria and in NSW.

Therefore, physical distancing and use of outdoor spaces for school activities top the list of recommendations to keep children safe from COVID-19.

Read more:
From vaccination to ventilation: 5 ways to keep kids safe from COVID when schools reopen

However, physical distancing, even outdoors, can be hardly practised if the school is overcrowded. Overcrowding is common in Australian schools, which are increasingly accommodating more students. This issue has been recognised as a significant barrier to children’s free activities, especially during recess and when they are on the move.

In NSW, for example, the required open space per student is 10 square metres and nearly all schools meet this standard. While this seems to allow a fair amount of room for physical distancing, children may nevertheless believe their schools are overcrowded and don’t offer enough room for play.

Read more:
Let them play! Kids need freedom from play restrictions to develop

Why does this happen? Do children use school grounds in ways that we don’t anticipate?

My PhD study conducted in three public primary schools in Sydney reveals children’s use and perception of school environments differ from what adult designers intended. Children dislike and avoid some of the school ground spaces designed by adults.

Large parts of school grounds, including covered outdoor learning areas, are covered with low-quality asphalt on which children are not allowed to run and cannot sit comfortably.

The “no running on concrete” rule restricts children’s intense physical activity to areas covered with grass or synthetic rubber. The problem is these areas are often not big enough for the numbers of children who want to use them, resulting in crowding.

Adding to the problem is the “out of bounds” rule, which bars children from using areas that are out of sight of staff. These areas are often around the edges of school grounds because staff tend to supervise children from the central parts of the school. Out-of-bounds areas are underused yet could provide extra space for children’s physical, social and dramatic play.

So, how can school design and planning help overcome the crowding that makes physical distancing difficult?

1. Provide quality material for ground surfaces

By replacing asphalt with better quality surface materials, children’s activities can be spread out across more of the school grounds, easing crowding. This will reduce the impact on children’s physical activity of the “no running on concrete” rule.

In a recent study, we found natural grass is children’s favourite surface for activities like running or performing gymnastics. It doesn’t become too hot in the sun, isn’t slippery and doesn’t hurt if they fall.

2. Increase opportunities for nature play

Besides the known benefits of nature play for children’s well-being, natural settings usually attract smaller groups that may result in less crowding. This contrasts with spaces such as sports fields where large numbers often play together.

My recent research shows children prefer trees with wide canopies, accessible branches, upraised roots and/or soft trunks because they offer sensory stimulation and opportunities for co-operative play.

Read more:
Children learn science in nature play long before they get to school classrooms and labs

3. Recognise the value of neglected areas

Out-of-bounds areas at schools are often neglected based on the questionable assumption of their low value for children’s play. Making better use of these spaces can disperse children over the whole school area and enhance their opportunities for safe play.

Children may also find these spaces quiet and less busy since they are typically secluded and partially segregated from sanctioned areas. Less noisy spaces make it easier for children to talk with each other, which is a significant part of their socio-dramatic play.

4. Create separate zones

School layouts can be designed to establish separate zones that offer suitable secluded spaces for various groups, or cohorts, of students in order to avoid crowding. A cohort is a distinct group that stays together for the entire school day for in-person learning, with little or no contact between groups.

“Cohorting”, also known as “podding”, allows for more efficient contact tracing in the event of a positive COVID-19 test result. Targeted testing, quarantine and isolation can be applied to a single cohort/pod rather than schoolwide closures in the event of an individual or group testing positive.

5. Use nearby community/public spaces

Schools can locate the extra space they need on nearby community/public open spaces when the local council and the Department of Education reach a joint-use agreement. Children’s safe use of these sites depends on:

• the quality of these facilities
• their location in the neighbourhood
• ease of walking there to and from school
• access during school hours.

Sharing neighbourhood facilities can help meet children’s need for access to broader recreational resources. It also strengthens the social bond between schools and their communities.

Overcrowding in Australian schools is not a new issue yet could be an obstacle to safe face-to-face education at a time when it is desperately needed. Current concerns about COVID-19 outbreaks at schools can prompt policy and institutional redesign to tackle this longstanding problem of overcrowding. Children and school communities should be engaged in the earlier phases of school design and planning to tap into their unique insights into the effectiveness of educational environments.

Read more:
In debates about opening schools, we’re neglecting an important voice: our children’s

Fatemeh Aminpour does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Physical distancing at school is a challenge. Here are 5 ways to keep our children safer – https://theconversation.com/physical-distancing-at-school-is-a-challenge-here-are-5-ways-to-keep-our-children-safer-168072

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robert S. Fuller, Adjunct fellow, Western Sydney University

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this article contains names of people who have died.

Songlines criss-cross across Australia. They are one of the foundational spiritual features of the world’s oldest continuing culture.

Australian Aboriginal peoples had oral cultures: while there are no Bibles or Qurans to document their spirituality, the Dreaming stories of Ancestral creators who formed the land and the features were shared through song. By walking and singing the songlines, those creators are celebrated by the passing generations.

Most of our knowledge of songlines comes from Aboriginal peoples in central and northern Australia, a well-known example being the Seven Sisters Songline, which crosses much of Australia from the west coast to the east.

But, due to invasion and attempted cultural destruction since 1788, knowledge of songlines in southeast Australia has been limited. Now, new research has begun reawakening a dormant Black Duck Songline covering 300 km along the New South Wales South Coast.

Read more:
Songlines: Tracking the Seven Sisters is a must-visit exhibition for all Australians

Umbarra and Wumbarra

The Black Duck Songline, as current Aboriginal knowledge holders confirm, travels up the South Coast from over the Victorian border to the Hawkesbury River, north of Sydney, passing through many important cultural locations of the Yuin and Dharawal peoples of the region.

The name comes from the Pacific Black Duck (Anas superciliosa), known as Umbarra to the Yuin and Wumbarra to the Dharawal.

The Yuin story of Umbarra comes from Wallaga Lake near Narooma on the NSW far south coast. Umbarra is an animal hero, rather than a Creator, and is the totem and protector of the Yuin peoples from the Dreaming.

A Yuin man, Merriman, had Umbarra as his totem. When his people were in danger, Umbarra warned them so they could take refuge on what is now called Merriman’s Island in Wallaga Lake.

Umbarra became the Yuin protector, and, through kinship linkages, the bird is equally important to the Dharawal.

One of the authors of this piece, Robert Fuller, was exploring the astronomy and songline connections of the Saltwater Aboriginal peoples of the NSW coast.
Through a yarning process, speaking to Yuin and Dharawal knowledge holders about the cultural astronomy of their communities, the importance of Umbarra to the Yuin peoples became clear, as did the route of the songline.

The Black Duck Songline has now been traced through multiple Aboriginal communities. Knowledge holders speak about how their people travelled along songlines for trade, to attend ceremonies and to access resources.

Read more:
How ancient Aboriginal star maps have shaped Australia’s highway network

How a songline is reawakened

A songline is not just a map across Country.

It is a celebration of the stories which make up the songline, and these stories are encompassed in the form of song. The melody stays consistent as a songline passes through different language groups and dialects along the route.

A songline is never extinguished, although the Country through which it passes may be dying because it is not being sung. This has given rise to the Aboriginal expression to “sing up Country”: refreshing the songs and the Country to which the songs belong.

The Black Duck Songline was not unknown to the knowledge holders of the South Coast, but the details of the route had begun to be lost. Probably the last public walk of the songline was by Uncle Guboo Ted Thomas (1909-2002), coinciding with the Bicentennial in 1988.

Other knowledge holders who learned from Uncle Guboo have been able to confirm details of the songline, and members of the Yuin and Dharawal communities are keen to recover the full knowledge of the route of the songline.

After the Hawkesbury River, it is possible the Black Duck Songline may continue north, eventually turning west and south, via the Narran Lakes and the Snowy Mountains, connecting with its origin on the Gippsland Coast, forming a circle.

The major focus of the reawakening of the songline will be to find the songs that make up the story and try and connect them in the correct sequence and with the correct spiritual locations along its route.

If the Black Duck Songline can be awakened, this could be a model for the recovery and reawakening of other songlines in areas of Australia where Aboriginal knowledge has been suppressed.

Robert S. Fuller received funding from the Australian Government Research Training Program (RTP) Scholarship

Graham Moore and Jodi Edwards do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. ‘Singing up Country’: reawakening the Black Duck Songline, across 300km in Australia’s southeast – https://theconversation.com/singing-up-country-reawakening-the-black-duck-songline-across-300km-in-australias-southeast-167704

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Plank, Professor in Applied Mathematics, University of Canterbury

The announcement today that New Zealand will introduce a vaccination certificate by November is welcome news. Whether by “carrot” or “stick”, vaccination rates must keep climbing, as it is now likely case numbers will climb under alert level 3 conditions in Auckland.

We’ve seen a growing number of mystery cases over the past couple of weeks – people testing positive after going to hospital for non-COVID reasons, or from essential worker surveillance testing.

These cases suggest there is a significant amount of undetected community transmission, and that makes it much harder to stamp out.

While the slight easing of restrictions announced yesterday may or may not accelerate the growth in cases, it is unlikely to slow it. This has led to some debate about whether the government has abandoned its elimination strategy in favour of suppression of cases.

To some extent this is a semantic argument. Elimination has been defined as “zero tolerance” for community transmission, as opposed to zero cases. The fact that New Zealand was able to get to zero cases for much of the past 18 months has inevitably come to define what elimination has meant in practice.

Before vaccines were widely available, having zero cases was crucial in allowing us to enjoy level 1 freedoms. But New Zealand is now transitioning into a new phase of the pandemic, and this was always going to happen. Borders can’t remain closed forever and the virus was always going to arrive sooner or later.

Return to tougher restrictions still a possibility

In an ideal world, our border defences would have kept Delta out and New Zealand would have been able to stay at alert level 1 until the vaccine rollout was complete. But the Delta outbreak has forced our hand to some extent.

Whether another week or two at level 4 would have been enough to eliminate this outbreak is impossible to know. Given the outbreak is spreading in very difficult-to-reach communities, stamping out every chain of transmission is extremely challenging.

As we shift from an elimination to a suppression strategy, the country will have to tread a very narrow path to avoid overwhelming our hospitals and throwing our at-risk populations under the bus.

This includes Māori and Pasifika, who were effectively put at the back of the vaccine queue by dint of their younger populations, despite being at higher risk of severe COVID-19.

Read more:
NZ needs a more urgent vaccination plan — with nearly 80% now single-dosed, the majority will support it

We are now relying on a combination of restrictions and immunity through vaccination to prevent cases growing too rapidly. As vaccination rates increase, restrictions can be progressively eased.

But if we relax too much, there is a risk the number of hospitalisations could start to spiral out of control. When the R number is above 1, cases will continue to grow relentlessly until either more immunity or tougher restrictions bring it back under 1.

Getting vaccination rates up is crucial but will take time, so the government may yet be forced to tighten restrictions to protect our healthcare systems.

Read more:
New Zealand cannot abandon its COVID elimination strategy while Māori and Pasifika vaccination rates are too low

The vaccination advantage

New Zealand was always going to have to grapple with these really tough decisions, though Delta has forced us to do this earlier than we would have liked.

But our elimination strategy has given us has an important advantage – almost 70% of the total population has had at least one dose of the vaccine before experiencing any large-scale community transmission.

We still have a lot of work ahead, but having access to the vaccine before being exposed to the virus is a luxury people in most countries didn’t have.

There is a lot that could happen between now and Christmas. Currently, the Australian state of Victoria has over 100 people in intensive care, which is equivalent to almost a third of New Zealand’s total ICU capacity. Those ICU beds are normally full with patients with conditions other than COVID-19.

The implications for the healthcare system are obvious. If New Zealand goes the way of Melbourne, harsher restrictions will probably be inevitable.

Not a white flag

The more optimistic scenario is that a combination of restrictions, vaccination and contact tracing is just enough to keep a lid on the case numbers. It’s almost inevitable cases will increase. But if it isn’t too rapid and hospitals can meet the demand, it could tide us over until we have the high vaccine coverage we need.

Read more:
New Zealand government takes a calculated risk to relax Auckland’s lockdown while new cases continue to appear

And while vaccination rates are not yet high enough, they are still helping a lot, cutting the R number to around half what it would be with no vaccine. The country is in a far better position now than it would have been if the Auckland outbreak had happened in May or June.

Everyone can do their bit by doing two things: help and encourage those around you to get vaccinated, and stick to the rules.

We have to keep community transmission rates low to keep pressure off our hospitals and help us get to the next step of the road map. Moving away from a literal interpretation of elimination does not mean waving a white flag.

Michael Plank is affiliated with the University of Canterbury and receives funding from the New Zealand Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) and Te Pūnaha Matatini, New Zealand’s Centre of Research Excellence in complex systems.

– ref. The COVID-zero strategy may be past its use-by date, but New Zealand still has a vaccination advantage – https://theconversation.com/the-covid-zero-strategy-may-be-past-its-use-by-date-but-new-zealand-still-has-a-vaccination-advantage-169251

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

Scott Morrison has a new attack word. “Shakedown”.

“Shakedown” is defined as “an illegal or deceitful attempt to get money from someone, for example by swindling or blackmailing them”.

In yet another episode in the old federal-state blame game, the Morrison government is accusing Queensland in particular of this unsavoury practice, with its Mafia connotations.

As NSW, Victoria and the ACT look towards moving out of lockdowns, the strain will come on already stretched hospital systems.

The hospital capacity of Queensland, with minimal COVID, would be quickly tested once it opened its border – as the Morrison government wants it to do in accordance with the COVID national plan’s vaccination timetable. The same goes for Western Australia, which has a notoriously stressed hospital system.

Last week health ministers from every state and territory signed a letter to the federal government saying: “We are entering into the most critical phase of the COVID-19 pandemic response for our hospital systems.

Read more:
Hospital emergency departments are under intense pressure. What to know before you go

“While we still need collaborative effort to find long term solutions to issues impacting our hospital systems, these have now been overtaken by the pressing need to address the situation at hand.

“All states and territories require immediate additional Commonwealth funding to support the pressures currently on our health systems.”

On Friday Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk linked the need for more hospital funding to Queensland’s border opening.

Morrison pushed back, declaring the pandemic should not “be used as an excuse for shakedown politics”.

On Tuesday the prime minister was giving “shakedown” another workout, targeting Queensland hard.

Pressed on Brisbane radio about Palaszczuk wanting more money, Morrison said, “we’re not going to respond to shakedowns in a pandemic.”

He pointed out that “we’ve increased our funding to hospitals in Queensland, since we came to government, by 99.2%”, saying this compared to a 55.3% increase by Queensland over the same period.

Read more:
Vaccination status – when your medical information is private and when it’s not

In another interview Morrison went further. “[To] say, ‘well … I’m going to hold the federal government to ransom and to seek to extort from them money on the basis of COVID’ – I just don’t think is the right way to go.”

“We’ve shared 50/50 the costs of COVID on the health system, more than $30 billion around the country […] So we’ve been doing our bit.

“Of course there are challenges, but as a state government, they’ve got to be responsible for their state health system. New South Wales is getting on with it. Victoria is getting on with it. The ACT is getting on with it. So Queensland needs to get on with it.”

There have been mixed messages out of Queensland about whether its hospital system is adequate to the challenges ahead.

Health Minister Greg Hunt insisted on Tuesday “on the advice that we have, all of the states and territories have prepared. They’ve prepared for a surge.”

If Queensland had an issue when they did not have COVID pressures, “that is not related to COVID”, he said, suggesting the state government should spend more money.

Read more:
How COVID health advice and modelling has been opaque, slow to change and politicised in Australia

Hunt said Queensland had “got themselves in a pickle of on the one hand saying their hospitals are prepared, on the other hand trying to justify using money as a basis for closing borders.”

The adequacy, or not, of the nation’s hospital systems in general, and that in Queensland in particular, is documented in work for national cabinet that’s overseen by the Secretary of the Health Department Brendan Murphy and regularly updated for national cabinet.

Murphy was asked during a Tuesday appearance with Hunt when that document would be released. He said:“I would favour a transparent approach, but national cabinet will make that decision”.

The national cabinet should immediately release this assessment.
The public has the right to know whether we can be confident about hospital adequacy as we move into this new phase of the pandemic.

Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. View from The Hill: Don’t play ‘shakedown’ with me, Morrison tells Queensland – https://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-dont-play-shakedown-with-me-morrison-tells-queensland-169283

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Tuffley, Senior Lecturer in Applied Ethics & CyberSecurity, Griffith University

It would have come as a surprise to Australian night owls when, at around 2:42am AEDT on Tuesday, their Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger and Oculus services were suddenly and inexplicably gone.

This was no local disturbance. In a blog post, Downdetector.com, a major monitoring service for online outages, called it the largest global outage it had ever recorded — with 10.6 million reports from around the world.

The outage had an especially massive knock-on effect on individuals and businesses around the world that rely on Whatsapp to communicate with friends, family, colleagues and customers.

It took Facebook nearly six hours to get services back online, albeit slowly at first. Ironically, the outage was so pervasive Facebook had to resort to using Twitter, its rival platform, to get updates out into the world.

The internet and its outwardly visible face (the World Wide Web) is a remarkably fault-tolerant machine. It was designed to be resilient — and the web has never gone down completely. As such, global outages like this one are quite rare.

But they do happen. To Google’s embarrassment, several of its services including Gmail, YouTube, Hangouts, Google Calendar and Google Maps went offline for about an hour in December last year.

And in June this year, a cloud-computing company that services clients such as the Guardian, the New York Times, Reddit and The Conversation went offline too.

Read more:
Fastly global internet outage: why did so many sites go down — and what is a CDN, anyway?

What caused it?

While Facebook’s management was apologetic, they gave no hint as to what caused the outage.

With hacking issues becoming all too common in today’s cyber-security threat environment, the question arises whether Facebook’s outage might have been the result of a successful hack. But this seems unlikely.

According to a report from The Verge referencing FaceBook’s Chief Technology Officer and Vice President of Infrastructure, it seems the problem was probably Facebook’s internal infrastructure.

Facebook engineers were sent to one of the company’s data centres in California to work on the problem, which implies they were unable to log in remotely to the data centre.

Experts have said the outage could have only have come from inside the company. It’s likely Facebook engineers inadvertently made changes to how the network is set up, creating a cascading set of problems.

Such events have happened before, albeit not with such a catastrophic effect.

However, given the highly confidential way Facebook operates its network, it’s not possible to know exactly what happened with the network configuration. We will probably never be told.

A Domain Name Server problem

Supporting the network configuration explanation is the fact that the error messages that appeared when people tried to contact facebook.com and whatsapp.com indicated it was a DNS problem. So the websites still existed, but couldn’t be reached.

DNS stands for Domain Name Server and is described as the “phonebook of the internet”. It translates domain names read by us into encoded internet addresses (IP addresses) to be read by computers.

When you enter a domain name such as “facebook.com” or “whatsapp.com” into your browser, the Domain Name Server is consulted and the corresponding encoded internet address, the IP, is called.

Read more:
‘What is my IP address?’ Explaining one of the world’s most Googled questions

When everything is working as it should, the user is then connected to the requested domain. On the strength of evidence gleaned from expert sources close to Facebook, it seems most unlikely the outage was caused by an external attack.

A whistleblower speaks up

The Facebook outage occurred only hours after the US-based 60 Minutes program aired an incendiary interview with former Facebook employee and whistleblower, 37-year-old Harvard graduate Frances Haugen.

In a complaint to federal law enforcement, and in the interview, Haugen alleges Facebook’s Instagram app is harming teenage girls, and that Facebook’s own research indicates the company “amplifies hate, misinformation and political unrest, but the company hides what it knows”.

To support the allegations, Haugen shared more than 10,000 pages of internal documentation with the US Securities and Exchange Commission — all pretty damning stuff. She said:

The thing I saw at Facebook over and over again was there were conflicts of interest between what was good for the public and what was good for Facebook, and Facebook over and over again chose to optimise for its own interests, like making more money.

Given the timing of the interview and Facebook’s global outage, it’s natural to wonder whether the two events are connected. However, with the absence of any definitive evidence to support this theory, a causal link has not been established between both events.

But considering the seriousness of Haugen’s revelations, and the weight of objective evidence in the form of thousands of insider documents, it’s clear further investigation is warranted.

Facebook has around 2.89 billion monthly active users and a market capitalisation of US$1.21 trillion. By any standard, it’s a big and powerful company with a great deal of influence. Now is the time to shine a light on its ethics, or lack thereof.

Hopefully there won’t be any more outages to slow down this process.

David Tuffley does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. What caused the unprecedented Facebook outage? The few clues point to a problem from within – https://theconversation.com/what-caused-the-unprecedented-facebook-outage-the-few-clues-point-to-a-problem-from-within-169249

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

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 Conversations’s politics team.

In this week’s episode, politics + society editor Amanda Dunn and Michelle discuss the dramatic changing of the guard in NSW and the fallout from ICAC’s announcement of its investigation into Gladys Berejiklian for the debate about a federal integrity commission.

They also canvass the increasing signs Scott Morrison is inclined to stay away from the Glasgow climate conference, as he points out Jacinda Ardern is not attending.

Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Politics with Michelle Grattan: Signs are Scott Morrison wants to avoid Glasgow – https://theconversation.com/politics-with-michelle-grattan-signs-are-scott-morrison-wants-to-avoid-glasgow-169263

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Giuseppe Carabetta, Senior Lecturer, Sydney University Business School, University of Sydney

Racing to hit vaccination targets and lift the restrictions making Melbourne the world’s most locked-down city, the Victorian government has mandated COVID vaccinations for an estimated 1.25 million of the state’s 3.5 million workers.

The order applies to all “authorised providers” and “authorised workers” whose work requires contact with others. By October 15 they must show proof they have received or booked their first vaccination, or have a medical exemption from a authorised practitioner. Anyone without an exemption must be fully vaccinated by November 26.

Separate deadlines apply for those subject to Victoria’s existing mandatory vaccination directions covering health care, construction workers and teachers.

Who are the ‘authorised’ providers and workers?

An authorised provider or worker is any business or person exempt from the orders to shut or work at home during lockdown.

The “authorised providers” list includes supermarkets, restaurants and cafes providing takeaway services, bottle shops, banks, post offices, news agencies, petrol stations, child care services, schools and mobile pet-grooming services.

The “authorised workers” list covers more than 70 categories. It includes health practitioners, emergency workers, essential services workers, those who work in courts or the administration of justice, manufacturing, public transport, professional athletes, zoo workers, faith leaders, actors and parliamentarians.

In short, if your work can’t be done from home, your job is most likely on the list.

Are there any exemptions?

There is an exemption for those unable to be vaccinated on medical grounds, as determined by the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation. The list of accepted medical reasons is short. Any exemption must be certified by an authorised medical practitioner.

Read more:
Who can’t have a COVID vaccine and how do I get a medical exemption?

What makes this legal?

The state government has the power to make public health directions including mandating vaccines under Victoria’s Public Health and Wellbeing Act and associated state-of-emergency powers. It is the same mechanism by which vaccinations for sectors such as construction have been mandated.

Read more:
What are the protests against Victoria’s construction union all about? An expert explains

Prior to the COVID pandemic, similar provisions have enabled the Department of Health to direct hospitals and health providers to require workers to be vaccinated against diseases such as influenza and hepatitis B. This was achieved through amendments to Victoria’s Health Services Act and Ambulance Services Act.

Doesn’t this conflict with the Fair Work Act?

No. The Fair Work Ombudsman has previously issued guidance on the conditions that make it lawful and reasonable under the Fair Work Act for an employer to require that employees be vaccinated. That guidance includes “tiers” of work to help assess if vaccination was justifiable. But these aren’t relevant if a direct law – in this case a public health direction – mandates vaccination.

Read more:
Can Australian employers make you get a COVID-19 vaccine? Mostly not — but here’s when they can

Is there any legal recourse?

There is already one legal challenge before Victoria’s Supreme Court. This has been lodged by couple Belinda and Jack Cetnar. Their core argument is the mandate is discriminatory and contravenes human rights.

One difference between this challenge and those being made in the NSW Supreme Court against the NSW government’s vaccine mandates is that Victoria has a Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities.

At the hearing setting the trial date for the Cetnars’ challenge, Justice Melinda Richards noted the Cetnars had grounds to argue their a case under the Charter but queried other arguments they presented in their written documentation. These included the mandate contravening the Commonwealth Biosecurity Act and the Nuremberg Code.

So what about discrimination and human rights?

Vaccination status is not a prohibited ground under discrimination law, so the mandate cannot be challenged as unlawful discrimination on this basis. Adverse treatment on the basis of health or disability may amount to unlawful discrimination in other circumstances, but the new rules allow for this.

Human rights law allows for limitations on human rights where necessary to protect public health and the fundamental right – to life. However, such restrictions must be necessary and proportionate to the risk and balanced against individual rights.

This principle is reflected in Victoria’s Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities, and in the position of bodies such as the World Health Organization.

In December 2020, at press conference, WHO’s immunisation director Kate O’Brien said the organisation didn’t favour vaccine mandates.

However, a WHO policy brief published in April notes vaccine mandates “can be ethically justified, as they are crucial to protecting the health and well-being of the public”. This comes with important caveats:

While interfering with individual liberty does not in itself make a policy intervention unjustified, such policies raise a number of ethical considerations and concerns and should be justified by advancing another valuable social goal, like protecting public health.

Ultimately it may be necessary for the courts to determine whether the new rules strike an appropriate balance. However, it seems unlikely any court will overturn this mandate, given vaccination is effective, the mandate is temporary, applies only to onsite work, provides medical exemptions, will alleviate pressure on the health system and help ease existing restrictions (which also infringe on individual liberty).

Who is responsible for enforcing these rules?

Workers covered by the mandate will be required when working to carry an authorised worker permit confirming they have been vaccinated. Businesses will be responsible for issuing these permits, and for ensure all employees onsite have a permit.

If an authorised officer attends a workplace and finds workers without a valid permit, both employers and employees can be fined.

The penalties are the same as other breaches of restrictions or directions. On-the-spot fines of up to $1,817 can be issued to individuals and up to $10,904 for businesses for not having a permit.

A court can impose a fine of up to $21,808 on individuals and $109,044 on employer for issuing worker permit to an employee not meeting the permit requirements.

Giuseppe Carabetta does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Your rights under Victoria’s ‘authorised worker’ vaccine mandate: an expert explains – https://theconversation.com/your-rights-under-victorias-authorised-worker-vaccine-mandate-an-expert-explains-169137

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nicole Sutton, Senior Lecturer in Accounting, University of Technology Sydney

One of the most significant outcomes from the aged care royal commission was the federal government’s commitment this year to mandate minimum staffing levels in residential aged care homes by 2023.

Our study, published today, shows only a tiny fraction of aged care homes would already comply with the new requirements.

Substantial increases in staffing will be needed across the sector, placing even more pressure on an industry already struggling to meet the needs of a growing number of Australians.

Read more:
4 key takeaways from the aged care royal commission’s final report

What are minimum staffing standards?

Minimum staffing standards are designed to ensure all aged care homes have sufficient staff to meet their residents’ care needs. This type of regulation already exists in several countries, including the United States, Japan and Germany.

Japan and Germany both prescribe minimum staff-to-resident ratios. In the United States, homes must have a certain number of staff on site each day and many states regulate the minimum time staff spend with residents. Also, while some countries mandate requirements for all care staff, others target specific roles, such as licensed nurses.

Read more:
Want to improve care in nursing homes? Mandate minimum staffing levels

In Australia, licensed nurses include both registered nurses (RNs), who have at least a bachelor’s degree, and enrolled nurses who have completed a two-year diploma.

However, most aged care is provided by unlicensed personal care workers, who don’t need formal qualifications.

Australia’s new staffing standard has three requirements that will be mandatory from October 1, 2023:

1. providers must ensure residents receive at least 200 minutes of total care per day

2. at least 40 minutes of that care must be provided by an RN

3. an RN must be on site for morning and afternoon shifts each day.

These requirements are stated as industry averages with each home’s requirements adjusted based on the relative complexity of their residents’ care needs.

Why are minimum standards necessary?

The royal commission heard evidence that more than half of all Australian residents in aged care (57.6%) live in aged care homes with inadequate staff.

In the final report, it stated

all too often, and despite best intentions, aged care workers simply do not have the requisite time, knowledge, skill and support to deliver high quality care.

For example, the commission heard testimony from families of residents at an understaffed home in Victoria, where staff didn’t have time to help residents go to the toilet or eat meals, or attend to their clinical care.

The commission also heard about the dangers of not having enough trained nurses. One witness described a regional home where three nurses had to look after up to 80 residents on weekends.

The witness’ father, a resident living with dementia, had been neglected and hospitalised on several occasions due to falls that occurred while left unattended.

What did we find?

Our study of historical staffing levels found few aged care homes (3.8%) had staffing above all three requirements of the new standard.

While many homes (79.7%) would meet the requirement to have an RN on site, few had levels above daily requirements for total direct care (10.4%) or RN care (11.1%).

The homes that fell short of these two requirements will need to increase staff time by an average of 43 minutes of total care per day and 18 minutes of RN time per day.

Read more:
Nearly 2 out of 3 nursing homes are understaffed. These 10 charts explain why aged care is in crisis

We also found evidence the new standard is likely to cause different pressures for homes across the sector. The homes most at risk of non-compliance are likely to be larger with more residents to care for, located outside metropolitan cities and run by small providers.

Interestingly, while smaller homes were more likely to meet the two requirements about daily minutes, they were much less likely to have an RN on site for two shifts.

So what needs to change?

The new minimum standards are a crucial piece of regulation to ensure Australian aged care homes provide sufficient staff to deliver quality care to residents.

However, this requires a substantial expansion of a workforce already under strain. Workforce shortages are already a problem due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with low immigration and additional work demands, such as infection control and handling family requests.

A report published in August by the Committee for Economic Development of Australia suggests even without the minimum standards, Australia’s aged care workforce needs to grow by an additional 17,000 workers per year between now and 2030.

Our study highlights areas requiring urgent action. For example, the new requirements will likely cause a dramatic increase in demand for RNs. While training and retention initiatives announced in the recent federal budget will help, much more will be required, such as improved working conditions and pay, to arrest the decline of RNs in the sector.

In addition, targeted government support will likely be required to help homes outside the major cities, and those smaller in size, to attract appropriate care workers to fill shortfalls.

Such measures will be required to enable a fair transition towards compliance with the minimum staffing standard within the sector.

Nicole Sutton is the current Treasurer of Palliative Care NSW.

Deborah Parker receives funding from the Department of Health and Ageing and the Australian Research Council. She is currently Vice President of Palliative Care NSW and Board Director of Carrington Care.

Nelson Ma does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Only 3.8% of Australian aged care homes would meet new mandatory minimum staffing standards: new research – https://theconversation.com/only-3-8-of-australian-aged-care-homes-would-meet-new-mandatory-minimum-staffing-standards-new-research-165877

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Olivia Meehan, Object-based Learning Co-ordinator, The University of Melbourne

In this series we pay tribute to the art we wish could visit — and hope to see once travel restrictions are lifted.

A nimble row of bamboo grows between the street and the grounds of the Nezu Museum 根津美術館 in Minami-Aoyama, Tokyo. The softly murmuring greenery gently ushers you along the side of the museum, beneath its overarching eaves, to the entrance.

In the winter months, when there is snowfall in the capital, masses of snow slide off the roof to line the ground at the bottom of this bamboo, creating the illusion of a white-peaked mountain range on the path.

There are many such transporting and transient scenes to be found at the Nezu Museum and Garden, located on the private estate of the Nezu family and housing the extraordinary collection of pre-modern East Asian treasures amassed by businessman and philanthropist Nezu Kaichirō (1860-1940).

The original house, built in 1906, was destroyed in an air raid in 1945. Following successive reconstructions over the decades, the decision was made to undertake a large scale renovation to restore Nezu’s vision.

The renowned Japanese architect Kuma Kengo redesigned the museum building with elements found in traditional Japanese residential architecture and a contemporary finish. It reopened in 2009.

Read more:
If I could go anywhere: a world through the eyes of botanical artist Marianne North at Kew Gardens

The foyer opens to full length windows overlooking the garden, a modern take on the traditional Japanese idea of creating an invisible threshold from the inside to outside world. Buddhist sculptural pieces are displayed facing inwards: they cast a friendly eye on visitors whose gaze naturally drifts from the garden inside. Though not specifically a house museum, the atmosphere here has the intimate characteristics of a private home.

I have a deep interest in museums that were once someone’s home, especially those with gardens; however small. From Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge, England to the Alvar Aalto House/Studio in Helsinki, to the Musée Nissim de Camondo, Paris, I seek them out for the intimacy and personality sometimes missing from large, formal museum spaces.

A gentle, calm atmosphere

There are over 7,400 objects in the Nezu collection, many of which are classifed as Important Cultural Property or national treasure. In some galleries, the LED light fittings are programmed and adjusted to resemble sunrise; in others, to imitate the diffused light from a paper lantern.

These carefully considered aspects of display serve to protect the objects from harsh, possibly damaging light, and generate a gentle, calm atmosphere. Each object is also afforded a luxurious amount of room, making it easier to become absorbed in the ritual of close observation.

Read more:
If I could go anywhere: Japanese art island Chichu, a meditation and an education

We might be invited to contemplate a small but robust 16th century, jewel-shaped ceramic incense container. Or to behold the pair of 19th century, six-fold screens created by Suzuki Kiitsu: Mountain Streams in Summer and Autumn — so modern and bright the water appears to flow across and off the panels.

At each turn, I feel as if I am activating Kuma’s architectural vision of designing a space at one with the landscape, not imposed upon it. This is a building that works in harmony with its surroundings. Stepping into the garden offers a seamless continuum of this experience.

As I think about living with objects and nature, I recall the brilliant short film made by husband and wife design team Charles and Ray Eames in 1955: House: After Five Years of Living. Composed entirely of 35mm slides, the film details their modernist family home in the Californian neighbourhood of Pacific Palisades. Intersecting with the building itself are objects and artefacts; table settings and images of nature such as pine needles or the silhouette of a eucalyptus tree. Just like Kuma’s approach, emphasis is placed on texture and warmth coupled with steel, and cool stone.

Four types of tea-houses

The garden of the Nezu Museum comprises a series of panoramic views and four types of tea-houses framed by the delicate architecture of maple trees and other foliage. The variant greens are pleasantly overwhelming, an irresistible and gentle embrace as you wander the winding pathways of this vast and multifaceted estate occupying 17,000 square metres of metropolitan Tokyo.

The initial layout reflected the shinzan-yūkoku garden style, translated as “deep mountains and mysterious valleys”, and over the years it has been carefully restored to reflect the tastes of Nezu.

The variation and life of a mountainside appears in small and delicate ways: pruned hedges, rocks covered in moss. Glimpses of the pond through a veil of evergreen trees might reveal a momentary sparkle of sun glitter or the reflection of clouds.

In the spirit of the ritual of tea drinking, the museum’s cafe, also designed by Kuma, sits at the end of a stone path lined with a low, snaking hedge of pink azalea. I have a long list of favourite museum cafés. This one is in the top tier. A glass tea-house nestled amongst the trees, it serves a deliciously refreshing matcha.

Drinking fragrant
new tea from Uji
I can scoop up the essence
and understand
how the ancients came to adore it.

-Ōtagaki Rengetsu (1791-1875)

The Nezu Museum is a cultural retreat offering restorative experiences through art, objects and its captivating garden. I look forward to our reunion once the borders are open again.

Olivia Meehan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. If I could go anywhere: the deep mountains and mysterious valleys of Tokyo’s Nezu Museum – https://theconversation.com/if-i-could-go-anywhere-the-deep-mountains-and-mysterious-valleys-of-tokyos-nezu-museum-168468

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Megan Prictor, Senior Research Fellow in Law, The University of Melbourne

In the US, some National Basketball Association (NBA) players have recently asserted their right to privacy over their COVID vaccination status. In Australia, discussion of vaccine passports has also highlighted this issue.

We value the idea that our medical information is private and subject to special protection and that our doctor can’t freely share it with others. Yet suddenly, it seems we might be asked to hand over information about our vaccination status in many different situations.

It might be so we can keep doing our job, go into shops and restaurants or travel. It might make us uneasy. But can we refuse to tell others our vaccination status on privacy grounds? What does the law in Australia say about who can ask for it, and why, and what they can do with it?

Read more:
‘Are you double dosed?’ How to ask friends and family if they’re vaccinated, and how to handle it if they say no

What we already disclose

Vaccinations and medical exemptions are recorded on the Australian Immunisation Register operated by the federal government.

Information from the register is used to create immunisation history statements and COVID digital certificates. This information can then flow through to check-in apps to let us prove our vaccination status when we are asked to.

It’s understandable to think our health information should be secret – kept between us and our doctor. But the law – principally the Australian Privacy Act and health records laws in many states – allows it to be collected by other people if certain conditions are met. And it’s not only the doctor’s clinic and other health services where this information is allowed to move around.

For instance the No Jab, No Play legislation in Victoria, designed to increase immunisation rates in young children, means proof of their vaccination status must be given in order for the child to access kindergarten.

Adults have to disclose information about medical conditions and disabilities to organisations like VicRoads in order to obtain a driver licence. We might even disclose a health condition to our employer so “reasonable adjustments” can be made to help us keep working.

So there are many examples of disclosing health information well beyond the doctor’s clinic walls, and all of them are provided for by law.

Read more:
Health workers are among the COVID vaccine hesitant. Here’s how we can support them safely

Sensitive information

Our vaccination status is classified as “health information” under Australia’s privacy laws.

Health information falls into a larger category of “sensitive information” – information that requires the most careful handling. The Australian Privacy Principles (APPs) in our Privacy Act set out the rules for how this information can be collected, used and disclosed.

The APPs say a business or employer (an APP entity) can only collect sensitive information like our vaccination status under certain conditions. An example is if the information is reasonably necessary for the business’s activities and we give our consent.

For this consent to be valid it must be given freely. People can’t be threatened or intimidated into disclosing their vaccination status.

Employers can mandate vaccination – as some businesses are doing – if it is “lawful and reasonable”. In this situation, an employee refusing to disclose their vaccination status would likely be in breach of a lawful and reasonable direction by their employer. Any consequences would be covered by the terms of their employment contract.

Read more:
The 9 psychological barriers that lead to COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy and refusal

Public health and consequences

The collection of our vaccination status might also be allowed by other Australian laws, such as public health orders and directions. The mandatory collection of vaccination status in the aged-care sector is a good example.

Where proof of vaccination becomes a requirement of entering a premises or working in a particular job, we can choose to keep that information private, but not without consequences. Our privacy is not protected absolutely – the trade-off might be that we are denied entry or refused employment.

Information about a person’s vaccination status can only be collected by “lawful and fair” means such as asking them directly, but not collecting it by deception or without them knowing.

Separate rules say what can then be done with the information. Generally, it can’t be used for a different purpose than it was collected for, or shared with other people or organisations, unless an exception applies.

Although private sector employers’ handling of employee records is exempt from the Australian Privacy Principles, they should still store this information securely and make sure it is not used and disclosed unnecessarily.

Read more:
If privacy is increasing for My Health Record data, it should apply to all medical records

But isn’t privacy a human right?

Privacy is recognised as a fundamental human right in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international human rights documents.

Australia is a signatory to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which states: “no-one shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his privacy” (Article 17.1).

But this right is not absolute and it can be limited by national measures “in time of public emergency” (Article 4.1). On the flip side, any requirement to disclose vaccination status is shaped by human rights principles so that the requirement must be reasonable, proportionate and necessary.

It must also take into account the risk of discrimination. Our Human Rights Commission has outlined how certain people might be at particular risk of discrimination related to sharing their vaccine status. They might have difficulty using technology or not have access to it. So, even those who have been vaccinated might find it difficult to provide proof.

The World Health Organisation says people who don’t disclose their vaccination status shouldn’t be denied participation in public life.

Although health information is protected under Australian law, the law also allows this information to be collected, used and shared when reasonably necessary.

Privacy is not absolute. The COVID emergency limits some privacy protections in favour of public health goals. We need to be alert to the trade-offs and potential discrimination – particularly when access to jobs and services depends on the disclosure of vaccine status.

Megan Prictor does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Vaccination status – when your medical information is private and when it’s not – https://theconversation.com/vaccination-status-when-your-medical-information-is-private-and-when-its-not-168846

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Candice Harris, Professor of Management, Auckland University of Technology

All parents work.

The difference lies in the breakdown between their paid and unpaid workloads. That equation is influenced by many things, including education, qualifications, age, ethnicity, financial status, number and age of dependants, gendered and societal expectations, and personal choice.

But during COVID-19 lockdowns, many working parents have had to conduct their paid work – usually done in the workplace – at home.

Personally, professionally and geographically, this is new territory — for working parents, their loved ones and their employers.

It is also largely uncharted territory for researchers.

Previous academic studies of work-life integration have largely treated home and work as separate domains, with clearly demarcated tasks performed in distinct locations and at different times.

Additionally, past research into balancing those roles and working flexibly (including from home) has found parents mainly worked while children were at school or day care, or that they weren’t in full-time paid work.

The lockdown effect

Lockdowns have changed that, requiring many parents to work full-time while simultaneously schooling and caring for their children.

In this context, we suggest established, seemingly distinct concepts such as “work-life conflict” or “work-life balance” are limited in their ability to reflect and describe this new pandemic reality.

To that end, we have conceived a new concept that more accurately describes the working parent’s experience of juggling paid work (formal employment) and unpaid work (such as caregiving, household duties and volunteering) when both are being performed in the same environment during the same blocks of time.

We call it “zigzag working”.

Read more:
The double juggle: how working parents manage school holidays and their jobs

The working-from-home shuffle

Let’s imagine a typical example: Sarah teaches 26 nine- and 10-year-olds at a local primary school and is also mum to two kids aged 11 and 15, both studying from home during lockdown. Her husband is an essential worker, so he still goes out to work during the week.

One hour of her morning might look something like this:

9am: set up in the kitchen, designated as her “work zone”, she begins a Zoom session with her class to facilitate a 20-minute discussion

9.07am: motions to her teenage son not to eat the ingredients she is planning to use for dinner that night

9.20am: leaves the Zoom call, giving her students time to complete a task and for her to hang out a load of washing and reply to an email from a parent

9.35am: goes online again with her students for eight minutes to check their progress

9.41am: is approached by her 11-year-old daughter who needs help with her maths

9.50am: brings her class back together on Zoom to hear about their work, while also indicating to her son what he can eat from the fridge

Read more:
Working from home during COVID-19: What do employees really want?

Meeting and monitoring

Or another imaginary example: Ananya is a senior team manager working in banking. She’s a solo mum of twin boys aged 16, also studying at home and really missing soccer, which both play at a high level. They have a Labrador puppy.

1.15pm: listening live to her CEO update, she is texting her boys to encourage them to get out for a skate rather than spend their lunchtime gaming (they ignore her)

1.30pm: after the update, she grabs some of leftovers as lunch

1.37pm: takes a phone call from a team member

1.48pm: now that her boys have resumed online classes she sits down to reply to several emails

2.07pm: encourages one son to complete an overdue school project, as well as filling the dog’s water bowl

2.11pm: starts an urgent conversation via Teams with her manager

2.17pm: realises one of her twins is gaming when he’s meant to be working on his project

2.19pm: courier knocks on the door, no one else hears it, she interrupts another Teams meeting

New territory for employers

These scenarios illustrate the realities of zigzag working — the continuous and concurrent diving between paid and unpaid work as micro sessions, or managing paid and unpaid tasks simultaneously.

During lockdowns, many of the forms of support parents rely on – including relatives, paid household services, schools, day cares centres and after-school sports – are not available.

This is also new territory for employers, with many making up the rules as they go along and with large numbers of staff working at home full time.

We encourage employers to think about the roles working parents are juggling. Some tried and true forms of organisational support and being a “good employer” will no doubt apply here.

Read more:
How to deal with a year of accumulated burnout from working at home

Employers might also consider tweaks for lockdown working, including:

• recognising that working parents may be frequently interrupted, prolonged periods of “focused time” do not exist, and there is no such thing as “complete silence”

• not starting online meetings exactly on the hour, when school class sessions typically start

• checking in advance with working parents when is convenient to take a call, or scheduling a time for one

• breaking up long online meetings with micro breaks for all participants

• recording organisational updates so parents can tune in at a time to suit the family schedule

• enabling and encouraging staff to take reasonable breaks, as they would do in a normal work environment

• encouraging and facilitating discussions of “chaos” to counteract notions of being the ideal worker or parent.

Read more:
Forget work-life balance – it’s all about integration in the age of COVID-19

Researching the new reality

Life was complex before COVID-19. Now it feels especially challenging.

We encourage employers to understand the reality of zigzag working and to play a positive part in it. As well, they should recognise zigzag working may also be experienced by working grandparents and contractors managing several jobs on top of family responsibilities.

For a parent, the impacts of zigzag working may be magnified if they have a partner also trying to do paid work in the home.

The permutations are many. So too are the research opportunities to study and understand this new zigzag reality.

Jarrod Haar receives funding from (1) Royal Society of New Zealand Te Apārangi; (2) The New Zealand Health Research Council, (3) Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga, and (4) New Zealand National Science Challenge: Science for Technological Innovation (Kia Kotahi Mai: Te Ao Pūtaiao me Te Ao Hangarau).

Candice Harris does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. In a lockdown, where does work end and parenting begin? Welcome to the brave new world of ‘zigzag working’ – https://theconversation.com/in-a-lockdown-where-does-work-end-and-parenting-begin-welcome-to-the-brave-new-world-of-zigzag-working-169088

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Candice Boyd, ARC DECRA Fellow in Human Geography, The University of Melbourne

Young people moving to the city has been a serious dilemma for regional Australian communities for decades.

Between 2011 and 2016, about 180,000 regional Australians between 20 and 35 years old moved to capital cities, although around 30% of them eventually returned to a regional area.

The reasons for what researchers term “youth outmigration” are varied, from seeking education and employment opportunities, to the lure of an urban lifestyle. This can have a negative impact on the communities left behind, including local workforce ageing, impact on the local economy and availability of services.

But what about the young people who don’t go?

New research

As part of a three-year study of this phenomenon, 50 young people were interviewed from three regional areas of Australia — Griffith in NSW, Port Hedland in Western Australia, and Port Lincoln in South Australia. Participants ranged in age from 18 to 34.

The study aimed to better understand the reasons why young people leave these areas, choose to stay in their hometowns, or return to their hometowns having left for a period of time.

The three locations were chosen because each is experiencing net youth outmigration despite increasing economic investment, online study options, and business sponsorship schemes such as Regional Development Australia’s Grow Our Own. Partnerships between industry and government like this are part of an effort to keep young people in their regional areas.

Young people explain why they stay

Interviews suggest the reasons Australian young people choose to stay or go had more to do with emotions and identity than money, education, or job opportunities. For example, young people who stay reported feeling safe and comfortable in the country:

I think country towns, they have more security, and more like a family feel. I think there’s a level of intimacy in the relationships you develop in the community.

Others talked about feeling unsafe and stressed in cities:

I was not confident to go to the city and live by myself. I am a big fan of wider populations, not the city. I would go down for a holiday and to go shopping, but I am not a big fan of crowds.

Others again said they wanted peace and stability:

I like my peace and quiet, and I also like to have good space around me. I don’t like hearing cars all the time. I am not big on change.

Young people also described their country or regional lifestyle as a positive thing, worth staying for:

All my life I have always grown up seeing old people having a yard, and they have their roses and their chickens or have their dogs and their cats, and they seem more content, like they have more of a purpose in the country — they can grow their own vegetables here.

The stigma of staying

But despite wanting to stay, this decision was not straightforward. Interviewees spoke of a cultural expectation, starting in childhood, that when you reach adolescence, you needed to go to “the big smoke” to go to university:

I think the pressure [to leave] probably came from the school sector more so than family […] when I think back, I think the schooling sector put the weighting on going to university.

This was reinforced by others in the community, who expected the younger people to leave.

If you were just waiting at the train station or something like that, they’d say “when are you leaving?” Everyone just assumes that you will.

Young people reported the pressure to leave came from schoolteachers who had had a positive experience of city life, or from parents who wanted their children to have “a better life”.

When I got the [local] job, I was too scared to tell my parents. They really wanted me to go to uni.

Interviewees spoke of how staying in their home areas was equated with failure.

It’s almost like you have to leave, if you’re going to be successful.

A small shift could make a big difference

What if instead of asking a regional young person “when are you leaving?”, we asked “what are your plans?”?

What difference might that small shift in emphasis make, so regional youth feel free to make a home wherever they feel safe and comfortable, and not according to prior assumptions and expectations?

Policymakers and regional community leaders should understand there can be complex emotional reasons behind young people’s migration decisions, and that they can feel pressured to leave or judged for staying.

Turning the tide of young people leaving their regional area might be as much about shifting community attitudes and expectations as it is about creating local employment opportunities.

Candice Boyd receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. ‘It’s almost like you have to leave’: young people from regional areas face a big stigma if they don’t move to the city – https://theconversation.com/its-almost-like-you-have-to-leave-young-people-from-regional-areas-face-a-big-stigma-if-they-dont-move-to-the-city-168655

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Caldicott, Senior lecturer, Australian National University

Emergency departments around Australia have experienced COVID in a variety of ways.

From the first quarter of 2020, most if not all have worked hard to plan for an influx of very unwell, highly infectious patients. In the less fortunate of jurisdictions, those apprehensions are being realised — though thankfully not yet to the magnitude seen in some overseas cities.

Hospital emergency departments (EDs) are under intense pressure and there have been calls for the public to carefully weigh up need before presenting there. Don’t come if you don’t need to, they’ve been told. But equally, don’t wait if you need treatment, especially for COVID.

Less staff, more pressure

For all hospitals, COVID planning has involved creating streams of patient flow, to ensure those infected can be treated in addition to and at the same time as those who are not — while preventing the former infecting the latter. This is labour-intensive work, often duplicating patient pathways but without a doubling of staff.

In fact, staff numbers in many EDs are down in Australia, for a variety of reasons. Many smaller rural departments rely on fly-in-fly-out locums, now locked out by lockdowns. At times, doctors and nurses have been furloughed because they have been infected at work or elsewhere, or because they have been close contacts.

Understaffed EDs push on, with the greater burden being carried by fewer health workers, resulting in their subsequent burnout. To that, add the task of working in full personal protective equipment, often for many hours at a time. It is physically demanding, uncomfortable, unpleasant work, in an environment in which both high levels of vigilance to keep staff safe and cognitive skills to manage often complex and rapidly deteriorating patients are required.

Read more:
Health workers are among the COVID vaccine hesitant. Here’s how we can support them safely

Not just COVID patients

Much of the focus in the media on health care in a time of pandemic has understandably been on COVID hospitalisations and subsequent intensive care unit admissions. Less has been said about the impact of COVID on the treatment of other illnesses or injuries.

We are very fortunate in Australia there is still more of “the other” in our EDs than there is COVID. That might change in the run up to Christmas.

The ED is most obviously a place of treatment for acute injuries and illnesses. In addition to that, we treat people with chronic illnesses. The ED can act as a safety net for those who have no one else to turn to and reassure many without affliction. For patients in each of these categories, the experience of ED has changed significantly.

There are great concerns many of those who need immediate medical care are deferring seeking it. They may fear catching COVID or being a burden on a strained system. Many in the latter category are elderly patients and those with probably the most reasonable indications for using our services.

Read more:
Here’s what happens when you’re hospitalised with COVID

First off, it’s your emergency

So how should we, as a resource-constrained civil society, in the middle of a pandemic, use our EDs?

The first and overriding principle is that any medical emergency is YOUR emergency. If you think you are experiencing a medical emergency — one you cannot see yourself addressing with the resources available to you, at the time you are experiencing it — you should come to ED. It doesn’t matter if it seems trivial to others, it’s your emergency. And we are your emergency department.

If you don’t feel too unwell, and are uncertain where you should go for medical care, there are alternatives to the ED where excellent medical advice and treatment can be found.

Telehealth has been a godsend to both patients and our GP colleagues. There are now also numerous health lines to call. Pharmacists can provide excellent information about medication, as well as now providing COVID vaccinations.

The ED is not the best place to go to have a COVID test. If you are otherwise well, there are many testing locations where you will wait a far shorter time for a test and the results.

Similarly, many concerns about the very rare side effects of COVID vaccination can be addressed with a telehealth consultation and a blood test if required.

Read more:
How COVID affects the heart, according to a cardiologist

Extra precautions, longer waits

If you do come to the ED, try and be patient. There are extra measures in place to keep you safe.

You’ll need to wear a mask and check in with a QR code, use hand sanitiser and physically distance. There are increasingly strict rules about the numbers of visitors.

If that’s a problem, you’re probably going to be asked to leave. It’s nothing personal — we have a duty of responsibility to all our patients.

You might wait longer than expected despite the efforts of medical staff to see everyone as quickly as possible.

Read more:
How contagious is Delta? How long are you infectious? Is it more deadly? A quick guide to the latest science

EDs treat all comers

Finally, if you’re worried about the consequences of catching COVID, get vaccinated. We treat all comers, with a variety of beliefs about their medical care — all as long as they agree to abide by the rules of “The House”: to be respectful and abide by hospital procedures.

But vaccination will reduce your chance of needing ED attention as a consequence of COVID — and protect you from catching it if you come to ED for another reason.

Working in the ED at the moment isn’t much fun for anyone. We’re all really tired and, for many, that’s even before the ED where we work has become COVID-dominant. We’re looking forward to moving out of this phase of the pandemic, safely. Then we can get back to treating the mishaps of more normal human lifestyles, led to the fullest.

Read more:
How well do COVID vaccines work in the real world?

David Caldicott does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Hospital emergency departments are under intense pressure. What to know before you go – https://theconversation.com/hospital-emergency-departments-are-under-intense-pressure-what-to-know-before-you-go-169098

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gregory Moore, Doctor of Botany, The University of Melbourne

From time to time, I’m contacted by people who have a favourite garden tree that seems suddenly to be in serious decline and lacking healthy foliage. Often the decline has been occurring over many months, but when first noticed, the change seems to have been dramatic.

The symptoms described accord with grazing — where animals nibble at foliage until it’s quite degraded — so I ask if they have seen brushtail possums in the tree.

More often than not the answer is a firm, “No!”

However, just because you haven’t seen them, it doesn’t mean the possums aren’t there. One owner, who said they weren’t aware of any possums, checked at night with a torch; they counted 56 possums in a single, sick-looking river red gum.

It’s not uncommon for one tree within a group of the same species to be grazed while other trees are left alone.

In the early evening, a steady stream of possums can be seen coming from all directions and from nesting sites in other trees hundreds of metres away, all homing in on the one sickly specimen.

To the human eye, this seems very strange behaviour. Wouldn’t the possums be better off grazing on a healthy tree?

But possums are real tree experts and know exactly what they are doing.

Read more:
Curious Kids: if trees are cut down in the city, where will possums live?

It’s all about the sugar content

The common brushtail possum, Trichosurus vulpecula, will eat both plants and small animals if given the chance, but plants form the bulk of their diet. Eucalypt leaves are a favourite, but they’ll nibble the leaves of other plants in our gardens.

So what is going on when one tree is grazed in preference to others? One of the main drivers revolves around sugar.

When plants photosynthesise, one of the first products of the process is sugar. Sugars are carbohydrates made up of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen atoms and one of the most common is glucose (C₆H₁₂O₆), which is the common sugar used in coffee, tea and cooking.

Sugar may be copping a bit of stick at present for its role in human diets, but in terms of plant metabolism, glucose is a marvellous molecule.

It is made from simple and ready available ingredients. It is soluble in water and can be easily transported around inside the plant. And it stores significant energy.

This makes it a very accessible and desirable molecule within the plant, but too much glucose in solution can cause problems for the plant and attract grazers keen on an easy sugar hit.

The plant has evolved an elegant solution to these problems. It simply takes two or more glucose molecules and bonds them together to make starch‚ which is not very soluble in water, contains lots of energy and so is an ideal storage form of carbohydrate.

The plant converts any excess glucose that it has into starch for later use when things might be tougher.

What’s this got to do with possums, again?

When a plant is stressed, one of its first responses is to mobilise its resources. Among other things, it often converts its starch reserves back to sugar. As soon as this happens, the stressed plant becomes sweeter than its healthier neighbours — and brushtail possums know it.

Some stressed trees emit chemicals that can be picked up by grazers. In other cases, the grazers may come upon a stressed tree by chance.

In either case, the grazer gets an increased sugar hit and so will return to the tree when the opportunity presents; other grazers may follow.

In the case of brushtail possums, a possum may return to the same tree night after night and, despite territorial disputes, may be joined by other possums in a feeding feast.

A stressed tree is a grazer’s delight

Initially, the tree may have been stressed by drought, poor nutrition or waterlogged soils. The increased grazing then adds to the level of stress.

And when lots of leaves are removed, many trees such as eucalypts, elms, oaks and even deciduous conifers will respond by producing new leaves and shoots. These lovely new leaves and shoots are soft and loaded with sugars — a grazer’s delight.

With more stress, the tree converts more and more starch into sugar and produces yet more new leaves and shoots — so the grazers get a sweet and nutritious reward for their efforts. They will keep returning to the same tree.

All of this extra grazing comes at a price to the tree, which is exhausting its starch reserves, but getting little or no reward from the sugar produced.

Eventually, the tree will succumb. It may die from starvation due to the loss of its reserves and the failure of new foliage to survive long enough to photosynthesise. Or it may die from another environmental stress or a pest or disease attack.

Grazing can be lethal to a tree, but you can see why the grazers keep coming back.

Stressed trees are an easy and rewarding energy source. Perhaps, like us, the possums become addicted to a high sugar diet and simply can’t resist returning to the tree — even if, in the end, the tree is grazed to death.

Read more:
Hidden housemates: when possums go bump in the night

Gregory Moore does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Why sweet-toothed possums graze on stressed, sickly-looking trees – https://theconversation.com/why-sweet-toothed-possums-graze-on-stressed-sickly-looking-trees-169241

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By William Partlett, Associate Professor, The University of Melbourne

On September 17, the first day of Russia’s parliamentary elections, Apple and Google agreed to demands from the Russian government to remove a strategic voting app developed by opposition leader Alexei Navalny from the iOS and Android app stores.

Apple then disabled its Private Relay feature (which enhances web browsing privacy) for users in Russia. Google also removed YouTube videos giving advice on how to vote strategically in the elections.

In the past, large tech companies have generally ignored censorship requests from the Russian government. So why did the US tech giants finally cave in to pressure?

The answer provides a glimpse into how Russia, a sophisticated cyber superpower, is building its sovereign internet. It is preserving control, but without isolating itself from the broader internet.

Is digital democracy a delusion?

Apple and Google have both placed democratic values at the centre of their sales pitch.

Google used to have “don’t be evil” as its unofficial motto and within its code of conduct. It now proclaims its mission is to “organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”.

Apple’s official policy is that “where national law and international human rights standards differ, we follow the higher standard”. Such marketing claims draw on the language of cyber-utopianism, a concept that sees the internet as a force for democracy in the world.

But many experts have been sceptical; US researcher Evgeny Morozov famously called cyber-utopianism a “delusion”. This scepticism has increased in recent years, with mounting evidence of a conflict between democratic values and the core business model of for-profit tech companies.

Adding to this, authoritarian governments have begun to develop ways to avoid the democratising effects of the internet. One key strategy is to construct a “sovereign” internet that isolates itself from the rest of the web.

The leading model comes from China, which has built an almost parallel internet infrastructure behind its “great firewall”. Human Rights Watch has warned Russia’s approach rests on the same principle of “increasing isolation from the World Wide Web”.

Battleground Russia

For many years, the internet had been a relatively democratic force in Russia, which has the most internet users in Europe.

The internet is increasingly important in Russian politics, as younger generations ignore state-sponsored media and engage through western tech platforms. Navalny has relied heavily on this to build his political movement.

Read more:
Alexei Navalny has long been a fierce critic of the Kremlin. If he was poisoned, why now? And what does it mean?

Until recently, the Russian state struggled to regulate this activity, allowing Navalny to amass a large following. In fact, efforts to regulate tech platforms has seemed ineffective.

For instance, in 2018, the government’s attempt to ban the messaging app Telegram collapsed into farce. As it turned out, the Russians not only lacked the technical capacity to block the app, it was also frequently used by Russian security services.

Russia’s September parliamentary election

The parliamentary election held last month, however, has some disturbing implications for the democratic use of the internet in Russia.

For a regime that relies heavily on image, the results of this election were crucial in demonstrating to both Russians and international audiences that Vladimir Putin and his ruling party were still popular.

It had been a difficult two years for the Russian regime. The pandemic exposed serious deficiencies in governance, and polls showed weakening support for the ruling party. The current regime had to show it was in control, and it needed to control the internet to do so.

Read more:
Vladimir Putin plans to win Russia’s parliamentary election no matter how unpopular his party is

The ruling party first responded with a vicious crackdown on the political opposition. In February, Navalny was sent to prison. Later, his entire organisation was declared “extremist” — leading to the blocking of its websites, and the imprisonment or exile of several of its members.

In addition, the Russian state sharpened its tools for internet censorship. Among other provisions, a law introduced in July required foreign social media companies with more than 500,000 daily Russian visitors to have employees in Russia.

Meanwhile, sophisticated techniques were developed to slow down internet access to targeted platforms.

Operating largely from exile, Navalny’s team continued to rely on the internet to influence the Russian parliamentary election. At the centre of this effort was the team’s Smart Voting app — designed to undermine the monopoly of the ruling party by uniting the opposition.

The app was initially made available through Apple’s and Google’s app stores. But the Russian state pressured the tech giants to remove it in the days leading up to the election — threatening two key actions if they failed to comply.

First, the state would prosecute Russia-based employees of Google and Apple. Second, it promised to slow down internet traffic to Apple and Google platforms in Russia, and shut down the Apple Pay and Google Pay services.

Facing an escalating series of threats, the tech giants eventually backed down and removed the app.

A new model of the sovereign internet?

The Russian regime secured a key win in its attempt to build a sovereign internet. On one hand, the state now has a technique for ensuring the deletion of sensitive online material that threatens its power.

On the other hand, it still has connections to the mainstream internet (including Google and Apple) that it can manipulate for its own goals. These cyber black-ops — most famously on show in the 2016 US presidential election — are a central part of Russia’s foreign policy.

To build this sovereign internet, Russia is exploiting a simple, unavoidable truth: tech giants are ultimately for-profit corporations, with a priority to maximise profits and shareholder value.

And this poses two worrying questions. Will other authoritarian countries follow Russia’s lead? And how can opposition movements that rely on big tech for their democratic organisation respond?

Read more:
Thanks to the internet, we know what’s happening in Myanmar. But a communication blackout may be near

William Partlett does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Russia is building its own kind of sovereign internet — with help from Apple and Google – https://theconversation.com/russia-is-building-its-own-kind-of-sovereign-internet-with-help-from-apple-and-google-169115

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Margie Danchin, Paediatrician at the Royal Childrens Hospital and Associate Professor and Clinician Scientist, University of Melbourne and MCRI, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute

As Australia works towards getting 80% of over-16s fully vaccinated against COVID and higher, there’s more pressure to mandate vaccination across a range of sectors.

Some sectors in certain states and territories already have a COVID vaccine mandate in place, such as health and aged-care staff. Victoria last week mandated COVID vaccination for all authorised workers in the state, which has been a tough but necessary decision. Governments and businesses are also considering mandates for many other groups.

Vaccine passports are also on the way, meaning you’ll need to show proof of being fully vaccinated to do things like travel internationally, and to visit venues in hospitality, entertainment, retail and others in certain states and territories.

But there are some people who can’t get a COVID vaccine for medical reasons, though these are very rare. So what are these conditions, and if you have one of them, how can you prove it?

Permanent exemptions

It’s recommended all Australians over 12 receive two doses of a COVID vaccine. We have robust data now on these vaccines, so we know they’re safe and effective. Serious adverse events are very rare.

There are few situations where someone can’t have a COVID vaccine for medical reasons. The criteria to receive a permanent medical exemption are very narrow and rarely required.

The only criteria are:

• anaphylaxis following a previous dose of a COVID vaccine

• or previous anaphylaxis to any component of a COVID vaccine.

For live vaccines, such the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) and varicella vaccines, people who are significantly immunocompromised can get a permanent medical exemption. But this isn’t relevant for COVID vaccines because they’re not live vaccines.

There are some conditions people commonly believe may require a vaccine exemption, but the following are not reasons to be exempt from COVID vaccination:

• egg allergy, even severe

• a chronic underlying medical condition – these individuals are often at higher risk of more serious disease from COVID, such as people who are immunocompromised who can still receive the COVID vaccines because they’re not live vaccines

• family history of any adverse events following immunisation.

Temporary exemptions

There are some situations when a COVID vaccine may need to be temporarily deferred. For example, if someone has an acute illness with a fever of 38.5℃ or over. However, this would usually be for a short period only and wouldn’t require them to obtain a written temporary medical exemption.

But there are also some “acute major medical illnesses” where people may be able to get a temporary immunisation medical exemption form. This needs to assessed and given by a medical provider, and only temporarily exempts you from a COVID vaccine.

Last week ATAGI, the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation, which provides medical advice to the federal government on the use of vaccines including COVID vaccines, released expanded guidance on which of these conditions may warrant a temporary medical exemption.

Read more:
Soon you’ll need to be vaccinated to enjoy shops, cafes and events — but what about the staff there?

These exemptions include people with acute major medical conditions such as major surgery or hospital admission for a serious illness.

Temporary exemptions are only recommended to be provided for up to six months. Ideally, they’re reviewed within six months to see whether the person has recovered and can now be safely vaccinated. They’re also only given if another COVID vaccine isn’t suitable or available.

Temporary exemptions may also be specific to a certain vaccine, such as:

• if a person has a history of heart inflammation (myocarditis or pericarditis) attributed to a previous dose, or has had another illness causing heart inflammation in the past six months, or acute decompensated heart failure. This is only for mRNA vaccines, including those by Pfizer and Moderna

• if a person has a history of specific very rare bleeding and clotting conditions including: capillary leak syndrome, cerebral venous sinus thrombosis, heparin-induced thrombocytopenia, idiopathic splanchnic thrombosis, or antiphospholipid syndrome (with thrombosis and/or miscarriage). This is only for the AstraZeneca vaccine.

If possible and safe, individuals who can’t get one of the above vaccines for one of these reasons should receive an alternative COVID vaccine.

Temporary exemptions may also be for people who:

• have had COVID, until they’ve completely recovered. ATAGI recommends vaccination can be deferred for up to six months, because past infection reduces the chance of reinfection for at least this amount of time. However, they don’t need to delay vaccination if they’ve recovered from COVID and their job requires them to be vaccinated, or they’re at higher risk of COVID due to exposure or personal risk. Having chronic symptoms following COVID, known as “long COVID”, isn’t a medical reason not to receive a COVID vaccine. If people who’ve recently had COVID are unsure about whether to get vaccinated, they should talk to their medical provider about the best time to proceed with vaccination

• have had a serious adverse event from a previous COVID vaccine dose that can’t be attributed to another cause. An adverse event is considered serious if the person is hospitalised or it causes persistent or significant disability. These events need to be reported to the adverse event surveillance system in the person’s state or territory and/or to Australia’s medical regulator, the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA). They’re carefully assessed on a case-by-case basis by an experienced specialist to work out how likely a recurrence of the serious adverse event is if another dose of COVID vaccine is given

• are assessed to be a risk to themselves or others during the vaccination process. For example, this could be due to a severe neurodevelopmental condition such as autism spectrum disorder. Specialist services may be available that can help facilitate safe vaccination for these individuals, such as with the assistance of distraction or awake sedation.

Pregnancy isn’t a valid reason for exemption, in the absence of any of the criteria listed above.

How would I get an exemption, if I’m eligible?

COVID vaccine medical exemptions can be obtained from general practitioners, paediatricians, clinical immunologists, infectious disease, general or public health physicians, gynaecologists or obstetricians.

If someone thinks they qualify for an exemption based on the above, it’s often best to visit a GP first to discuss.

The federal government will introduce a certificate system for people to prove they have a medical exemption later this month. These would be available through the Services Australia app.

With mandates looming, GPs and other providers will feel pressure to dispense exemptions to people not wanting to be vaccinated. Employers will be seeking clarity about who can receive one. This can often cause distress and conflict if the request for an exemption is denied, for both the provider and patient.

Also, if mandates aren’t applied equally and fairly, there’s a risk of compounding disadvantage.

These mandates are made at a jurisdictional level, so there may also be differences regarding which groups are affected depending on the state or territory.

The stakes are high for those who remain unvaccinated, so it’s vital employers, individuals and medical providers are aware of the new ATAGI clinical guidance regarding the medical exemption criteria and that jurisdictions provide additional clarity about the process.

Margie Danchin receives funding from the NHMRC, WHO, DFAT and the Commonwealth and State Departments of Health. She is Chair, Collaboration on Social Science and Immunisation (COSSI).

– ref. Who can’t have a COVID vaccine and how do I get a medical exemption? – https://theconversation.com/who-cant-have-a-covid-vaccine-and-how-do-i-get-a-medical-exemption-168371

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexandra Crosby, Associate Professor, University of Technology Sydney

Does anything beat the experience of finding a wild mulberry tree and stuffing a handful of fresh juicy berries in your mouth? Have you ever roasted potatoes with a sprig of rosemary taken from an overgrown nature strip?

COVID lockdowns have encouraged more people to explore their neighbourhoods and appreciate their local green spaces, where edible plants are often growing freely. Alongside the joy in eating something freely harvested, foraging can help us learn about plants, become better environmental stewards, and bring together communities.

It can also help us notice changes in season, weather and climate. So with spring upon us, how do you forage safely, respectfully, and legally?

Wild, edible plants thrive in cities

The locations of Sydney and Melbourne were chosen by colonists, in part, because they’re within large food basins. Many edible species existed well before colonisation, thanks to the favourable climate, shape of the coastline and custodianship of Country.

Edible native plants, from ground covering warrigal greens to the huge canopies of Illawarra plum trees, are still naturally growing all over southeast Australian cities. Further north, macadamias, lemon myrtles and finger limes thrive, and pigface is common on sand dunes along coastal towns.

Today, edible plants thrive despite the disturbances of soils and water from urbanisation. Fruit trees, for example, emerge spontaneously on the edges of park lands, in vacant lots and in people’s gardens.

In some cases, urbanisation is actually responsible for the growth and distribution of edible plants.

Birds, rats, bats broaden the trajectories of mulberry, loquat, and papaya seeds by eating them and expelling the seeds somewhere else. This is also how mulberries, which European settlers introduced to Australia, now grow in most Australian cities.

Kumquat, citrus, and fig trees are also very common in tropical and temperate climates. And keep an eye out for blackberry vines. They’ve created an immense environmental problem, although the fruit is delicious, and grow best in NSW, Victoria and Tasmania.

Think before you pick

But foraging is not a free for all, and doing it safely and respectfully is important.

First and foremost, in Australia, wherever you walk, you are on Country. Take a moment to remember that although urban foraging may be new to you, Aboriginal people have always gathered native plants while caring for Country.

Foraging also carries possible risks to your own health. Some plants in urban areas are poisonous, such as the castor oil plant and many gum trees. Plants could also be contaminated from pollution in the air, water and soil, and by chemical sprays.

You can learn about some of the possible environmental contaminants in your neighbourhood here, and there are a few services like VegeSafe that test soil samples for metals.

Always start by considering the past and current uses of the land where you’re foraging. Was the land once industrially zoned? Do dogs urinate there? Make sure you always wash foraged food.

Legally, plants are the property of whoever owns the land on which they’re growing. That means foraging for food on private land is legal, as long as you either own the land or have the owner’s permission.

Read more:
Our land abounds in nature strips – surely we can do more than mow a third of urban green space

But if food is accessible on public land — such as lemons or bananas hanging over a fence, or rosemary and parsley planted as ornamentals in a park or street shoulder — you can harvest them. Just take what you need, and leave plenty for others.

Foraging respectfully

There are different cultures around growing and sharing food, depending on the local area. For example, many neighbourhood nature strips are technically owned by the council, but planted and tended by residents.

Community gardens and even streets with nature strips may have their own harvesting rules. Some groups like Green Square Growers encourage spontaneous harvesting. Others, such as Sydney City Farm, carefully document volunteer hours then allocate produce accordingly.

Since 2016, we have been working in various suburbs of Sydney to conduct research on urban gardening. We discovered people often work with plants to develop a sense of place that goes well beyond what’s visible in their gardens.

We found networks of neighbours grow together with plants on street edges, through exchanging cuttings, seeds, tips, stories and produce. Coming across a row of trees heavy with olives on a nature strip may feel like a lucky discovery, but these plants are probably watered, pruned, and whitewashed for winter by one or more gardeners.

For someone who has carefully netted a fruit tree to protect it from bats and cockatoos, or who has patiently tended a vine for three years before their first passionfruit appears, there’s nothing more infuriating than a stranger harvesting.

On the other hand, helping yourself to a fragrant feijoa tree weighed down by ripe fruit makes sense, when the fruits would otherwise fall, rot and go to waste.

When possible, ask residents about the plants growing on or around their properties. Conversations about what’s growing in neighbourhoods build so-called “civic ecologies” — actions that bring together environmental and civic values, building neighbourly connections around common interests and care for shared places.

Learn from foraging celebrities

In Australia, a hand full of “foraging” celebrities have brought attention to this age old practice. They see foraging as an opportunity to learn about what’s growing where, and why.

Read more:
Supermarket shelves stripped bare? History can teach us to ‘make do’ with food

In Sydney, Randwick Council Sustainability Educator Julian Lee, has created a Scrumper’s Delight participatory map that records edible plants growing in public spaces. Sydney artist and activist Diego Bonetto — aka The Weedy One — brought a wealth of planty knowledge from Piedmont, Italy to Australia in the 1990s, and since then his passion has evolved to a public pedagogy about respectful foraging.

Milkwood Permaculture offer tips, even on foraging sea weed. The Melbourne Forager on Instagram makes urban foraging hip. And a growing number of Indigenous businesses, such as Indigigrow, share Indigenous knowledge by selling plants people can recognise outside their gardens.

Foraging in cities is fun, it helps us remember we’re part of ecosystems, and we have a responsibility to care for Country. So keep in mind principles of reciprocity, and go forth and learn what’s growing in your city.

Read more:
Farming the suburbs – why can’t we grow food wherever we want?

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

– ref. Rosemary in roundabouts, lemons over the fence: how to go urban foraging safely, respectfully and cleverly – https://theconversation.com/rosemary-in-roundabouts-lemons-over-the-fence-how-to-go-urban-foraging-safely-respectfully-and-cleverly-167883

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jane Tiller, Ethical, Legal & Social Adviser – Public Health Genomics, Monash University

Genomic testing — the ability to read an individual’s genetic code and identify their risk of conditions such as cancer — has opened up huge possibilities in personalised medicine.

But it has also introduced serious ethical challenges. Particularly, there is the danger of life insurance companies using such information to discriminate against those at higher risk of conditions.

Canada, Britain and most European countries have already banned or restricted life insurers from using genetic test results.

Australia’s response so far has been mostly to leave it to industry self-regulation. But our research suggests most health professionals don’t think this is enough. More than 90% of the experts we surveyed agreed more government oversight is required.

Australia’s regulatory approach

Australia’s federal Private Health Insurance Act (2017) prohibits health insurers from using genetic information to discriminate against customers. But there is no legal prohibition against life insurers using results to charge people higher premiums or deny them coverage altogether. This applies to death cover, total and permanent disability, critical illness/trauma and income-protection cover.

In 2018 a joint parliamentary inquiry recommended a prohibition against life insurers using the outcomes of predictive genetic tests, at least in the medium term. It also recommended the government maintain a watching brief and consider legislation in future.

The federal government did not respond to the inquiry’s report, leaving it to the industry to self-regulate.

Read more:
Australians can be denied life insurance based on genetic test results, and there is little protection

In 2019 the financial services industry’s peak body, the Financial Services Council, introduced a five-year moratorium on insurers using applicants’ genetic test results up to certain financial limits.

Life insurers can only ask for or use genetic test results for policies worth more than A$500,000 for death cover or total and permanent disability cover, A$200,000 for critical illness/trauma cover, and $4,000/month for income protection.

Given the median yearly household income is about A$122,000, these thresholds are arguably too low to prevent insurers from using genetic test results in many cases.

Our survey results

With the moratorium now half over (it will end in 2024), we surveyed health professionals to gauge their views about Australia’s approach. The survey was part of a federal government-funded research project to evaluate the moratorium.

Of 166 respondents, 121 were genetic specialists — geneticists and genetic counsellors who help people make sense of and make decisions about genetic testing. There are 480 such specialists in Australia registered with the Human Genetics Society of Australasia. With genetic testing increasingly being offered outside genetics clinics, we also invited specialists such as oncologists to take part.

Not everyone answered every question, so the following percentages are based on those that answered specific questions. While 93% agreed consumers are better protected under the moratorium, 88% remained concerned about genetic discrimination.

The most common complaints were that the financial thresholds were too low, there was no certainty for patients beyond 2024, and the insurance industry couldn’t be trusted to regulate itself.

More than 90% said the Australian government should introduce legislation to regulate life insurers.

Canada’s legislation, for example, bans insurers and other service providers from using genetic test results to discriminate against applicants.

The British government, meanwhile, has a hybrid regulatory model. This involves a Code on Genetic Testing and Insurance agreed to between the government and life insurance industry. In our survey, 95% said a similar approach is required for Australia.

Read more:
Why New Zealanders are vulnerable to genetic discrimination in health and life insurance

Safeguarding Australia’s genomic future

Genetic technology is transforming health care. Precision medicine relies on genomic testing to personalise therapeutic treatments. Genomic research is also critical to understanding disease, improving diagnostic methods and guiding the selection of the most effective drugs for treatment.

To maximise its potential and ensure public trust in genomics, it seems clear more must be done to prevent genetic discrimination and ensure all Australians — particularly those most at risk from genetic conditions — can benefit from the genomics revolution.

Jane Tiller has received funding from the Australian government’s Genomic Health Futures Mission, to monitor the effectiveness of the Australian genetics and life insurance moratorium. She is a founding member of the Australian Genetic Non-Discrimination Working Group

Paul Lacaze has received funding from the Australian government’s Genomic Health Futures Mission, to monitor the effectiveness of the Australian genetics and life insurance moratorium. He is a founding member of the Australian Genetic Non-Discrimination Working Group

– ref. Australians need more protection against genetic discrimination: health experts – https://theconversation.com/australians-need-more-protection-against-genetic-discrimination-health-experts-168563

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Catharine Coleborne, Dean of Arts/Head of School Humanities and Social Science, University of Newcastle

A new campus novel suggests the story of the university in Australia might be almost in vogue, if only as a backdrop for big questions about navigating human failings and representations of truth, and the topical issue of sexual consent.

Diana Reid’s new campus novel, Love and Virtue, is set in Sydney. Reid is a graduate of the University of Sydney, and the novel’s action takes place in a residential college, where the central character Michaela has a sexual encounter with a male student after a drunken night during O-Week. She must also navigate the politics of class and friendship in the way her experience is later appropriated and represented.

Australian readers and audiences have had meagre opportunities to examine the world of the university in novels, television or film, especially compared to North American examples, and British stories set at the Oxbridge universities, among others.

Rory Gilmore of the television series Gilmore Girls (2000-2007) dreamt of going to Harvard for her whole girlhood, ending up at Yale instead. Donna Tartt’s novel The Secret History (1992) is set at a small liberal arts college in Vermont, probably based on Tartt’s alma mater, Bennington College. Recently, Netflix series The Chair had fun with the complexities of university administration.

Read more:
New Netflix drama The Chair is honest and funny, but it still romanticises modern university life

These narratives share the setting of the university campus as a place for self-discovery and freedom, but also as sites in which to negotiate power, sex and relationships. Some learning in lectures also features, along with libraries, often depicted as imposing structures with weighty traditions.

From the rarified contexts of elite US colleges to the dreaming spires of Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited to sardonic depictions of academic life in the novels of British author David Lodge, stories about university life may seem plentiful.

Yet unlike England and America, there are few such readily available “popular” cultural narratives set here. Works of fiction do exist, as academic Colin Symes noted in a 2004 article. Symes cited Australian novels from the 1970s and 1980s such as Laurie Clancy’s The Wildlife Reserve, a story about the post-Dawkins university that muses over the legacy of earlier academic administrators. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, two other university-themed novels were published: No Safe Place by Mary-Rose MacColl and Academia Nuts by retired Sydney academic Michael Wilding.

Arguably none of these books — forming a slim canon of campus novels — made a large impression on the popular idea of the university in Australia, even if they investigated interesting ideas about the changing nature of education and workplaces in these decades.

Yet this relative cultural silence about universities is despite their rich history as a catalyst for social change and the many thousands of experiences of graduates.

Universities and social change

In the 1970s, Australian universities were beginning to expand and open up to a wider range of students, including mature-age women and new generations of politically aware young people. The Australian “idea of the university” was formed in a “new wave” of institutions such as La Trobe, Deakin and Griffith, as Glyn Davis noted in his 2017 book of the same name.

Hopefulness about the value and purpose of tertiary education was palpable. Campuses were lively, and students sought debate, difference, dialogue. New areas of study were being framed, including critical humanities and social science fields. University education in Australia also benefited from the intellectual traditions and influences of the British model and the emerging style of North American institutions.

The public, then, perceived universities as useful. Their presence assured a society founded in intellectual achievement and personal growth as much as jobs and degrees.

Read more:
The Australian idea of a university

Australian stories of the university

There are some stories to draw on as we plot this larger picture of the university experience in Australia. Jill Ker Conway’s memoir The Road From Coorain is one minor exception. Conway, who grew up on a sheep farm in Coorain, New South Wales, studied at the University of Sydney before leaving Australia for university education in the US in 1960. She was later president of the famous Smith College for women.

Cassandra Pybus’s book Gross Moral Turpitude (1993), though not a novel, featured a legal case around sexual misconduct at the University of Tasmania. In 1996, Helen Garner published The First Stone, her controversial interpretation of the sexual harassment case at the University of Melbourne’s Ormond College.

In a lighter vein, a film set at the University of Melbourne from the mid-1990s, Love and Other Catastrophes, featured the campus and starred Alice Garner (who later wrote a memoir The Student Chronicles). The Secret Life of Us also explored the lives of university graduates in Melbourne making their way in life.

Read more:
I turned to The Secret Life of Us for warm nostalgia. Instead, I found jarring memories

Yet the overwhelming lack of a collective memory of university education and the student experience in Australia now presents a serious problem in our social, cultural and political life.

Narratives about university found in both US and British contexts highlight questions of personal journeys into education and beyond, and rites of passage. They touch, too, on issues of inclusion and exclusion and campus culture.

In Australia, we have barely even imagined these spaces in public debate, much less celebrated or critiqued them. When it comes to thinking about the value, purpose and role of universities in public life, we are so far behind that we don’t even have a common language.

Talking about universities from the student, not staff, point of view, would be a good place to start as we reflect on generations of change in higher education.

Catharine Coleborne is affiliated with the Australasian Council of Deans of Arts, Social Science and Humanities (DASSH), the peak body for university education in these fields in Australia and New Zealand.

– ref. Beyond Oxbridge and Yale: popular stories bring universities to life — we need more of them in Australia – https://theconversation.com/beyond-oxbridge-and-yale-popular-stories-bring-universities-to-life-we-need-more-of-them-in-australia-168943

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Severine Lamon, Associate professor, Nutrition and Exercise Physiology, Deakin University

Women and girls account for 50% of the population, yet most health and physiology research is conducted in males.

This is especially true for fundamental research (which builds knowledge but doesn’t have an application yet) and pre-clinical (animal) research. These types of research often only focus on male humans, animals and even cells.

In our discipline of exercise physiology, 6% of research studies include female-only participant groups.

So why do so many scientists seem oblivious to the existence of half of the world’s population?

Read more:
Equal but not the same: a male bias reigns in medical research

Females, women, trans men and non-binary folks

Firstly, it’s important to understand key terminology in society and research. As referred to throughout this article, “male” and “female” are categories of sex, defined by a set of biological attributes associated with physical and physiological characteristics.

In comparison, “men”, “women” and “non-binary people” are categories of gender: a societal construct that encompasses behaviours, power relationships, roles and identities.

Here we discuss research on specific sexes, but further consideration of gender-diverse groups, such as transgender people, also remains a gap in science.

Why aren’t females studied?

The main reasoning is that females are a more “complicated” model organism than males.

The physiological changes associated with the menstrual cycle add a whole lot of complexities when it comes to understanding how the body may respond to an external stimulus, such as taking a drug or performing a specific type of exercise.

Read more:
From energy levels to metabolism: understanding your menstrual cycle can be key to achieving exercise goals

Some females use contraception, and those who do use different types. This adds to the variability between them.

Females also undergo menopause around the age of 50, another physiological change that fundamentally impacts the way the body functions and adapts.

Even when research with females is performed properly, the findings may not apply to all females. This includes whether a female individual is cisgender or gender nonconforming.

Altogether, this makes female research more time-consuming and expensive — and research is nearly always limited by time and money.

Does it really matter?

Yes, because males and females are physiologically different.

This does not only involve visually obvious differences (the so-called primary sex characteristics, such as body shape or genitals), but also a whole range of hidden differences in hormones and genetics.

There’s also emerging evidence from our research team that sex differences impact epigenetics: how your behaviours and environment affect the expression of your genes.

Conducting health and physiology research in males exclusively disregards these differences. So our knowledge of the human body, which is mostly inferred from what is observed in males, may not always hold true for females.

Some diseases, such as cardiovascular (heart) disease, present differently in males and females.

Read more:
Women who have heart attacks receive poorer care than men

Males and females may also metabolise drugs in a different way, meaning they may need different quantities or formulations. These drugs can have sex-specific side effects.

This may have major consequences in the way we treat diseases or the preferred drugs we use in the clinic.

Take COVID-19, for example. The severity and death rates of COVID-19 are higher in males than females. Sex differences in immunity and hormonal pathways may explain this, therefore researchers are advocating for sex-specific research to aid viral treatment.

We’re finally starting to see some change

No matter the cost or added complexity, research should be for everyone and apply to everyone. International medical research bodies are now starting to acknowledge this.

A March 2021 statement from the Endocrine Society, the international body for doctors and researchers who study hormones and treat associated problems, recognises:

Before mechanisms behind sex differences in physiology and disease can be elucidated, a fundamental understanding of sex differences that exist at baseline, is needed.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH), the largest medical research board in the United States, recently called for researchers to account for “sex as a biological variable”.

Unless a strong case can be made to study only one sex, studying both sexes is now a requirement to receive NIH research funding.

The Australian equivalent, the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), indirectly recommends the collection and analysis of sex-specific data in animals and humans.

However the inclusion of both sexes is not yet a requirement to receive funding in Australia.

But researchers can start now

Because sex matters, we created a freely available infographic based on our research that aims at making female health and physiology research easier to design.

It presents as a simple flow through diagram that researchers can use before starting their project and prompts them to consider questions such as:

• is the phenomenon I am investigating influenced by female hormones?

• should all females in my cohort use the same contraception?

• on which day of the menstrual cycle should I test my participants for the most reliable result?

Depending on the answers, our infographic proposes strategies (that can be practical — such as who to recruit and when — or statistical) to design research that takes into account the complexity of the female body.

It’s easy to follow and accessible to all. And, while initially designed for exercise physiology research, it can be applied to any type of female health and physiology research.

Read more:
Medicine’s gender revolution: how women stopped being treated as ‘small men’

Based on our infographics, we designed a female-only, four-year research project to map the process of muscle ageing in females. Females live longer than males but, paradoxically, are more susceptible to some of the consequences of ageing. Despite lots of ageing research in males, we still know very little about the female-specific characteristics at play.

So yes, the future is female — so is our research. And we hope to inspire health and physiology researchers all over the world to do the same.

Severine Lamon receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Olivia Knowles does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Why are males still the default subjects in medical research? – https://theconversation.com/why-are-males-still-the-default-subjects-in-medical-research-167545

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gregory Melleuish, Professor, School of Humanities and Social Inquiry, University of Wollongong

In many ways, this is the worst possible time for a new premier to take the helm in New South Wales. The resignation of John Barilaro as deputy premier creates an even greater mood of uncertainty and, perhaps, insecurity.

The state is due to open up, at least partially, in the next week, and with the end of lockdown will come a need for a different type of leadership than has been exhibited over the past few months. Gladys Berejiklian has done a reasonable job during the pandemic, as can be seen from the outpouring of support, even grief, at her decision to call it a day.

However, there have also been many complaints about her government’s actions, particularly in the western suburbs of Sydney. She has at times appeared to be the premier for the north shore and eastern suburbs. For any Liberal premier of New South Wales, such a perception is extremely dangerous as elections are won in outer suburban and regional electorates.

In the 18 months before the next election, especially given the slender Coalition majority in the Legislative Assembly, the new premier will need to ensure, or at least create the perception, that the government is working on behalf of all of the state.

Read more:
ICAC is not a curse, and probity in government matters. The Australian media would do well to remember that

Assuming Dominic Perrottet becomes the next premier, it is worth asking what he brings to that position and how it will affect the politics of the state over the next year. It is also worth pointing out that Perrottet, along with Planning Minister Rob Stokes, is from the north shore. That probably explains why he chose to run with Stuart Ayres, who represents the western Sydney seat of Penrith.

Both Perrottet and Ayres are quite young: Perrotet is 39; Ayres 41. They represent a new generation of leaders.

Perrottet grew up on the north shore, where he attended Redfield College and Oakhill College. Interestingly, neither school plays rugby league, compared to St Dominic’s College, Penrith, which Ayres attended and which counts among its alumni Nathan Cleary, Des Hasler and Brad Fittler.

Perrottet’s father works for the World Bank and he is one of 12 children. The family are religious Catholics.

Perrottet’s further education and career indicate he followed in his father’s footsteps in another way. He studied economics and law at university before working as a commercial lawyer.

He was elected to the state parliament in the landslide of 2011, at the tender age of 29. He quickly advanced up the ministerial ladder, primarily in economic portfolios. He began with finance in 2015, before advancing to industrial relations and then treasury and the deputy leadership of the Liberal Party in 2017.

Perrottet’s rise demonstrates he is very capable and intelligent, and he has “topped the class” of those candidates who went into parliament in 2011.

But his career also says something about what it means to be on the right in the modern Liberal Party. In some ways, he resembles former Liberal leader Nick Greiner, as a highly financially literate technocrat who sees the world through a business lens. While Greiner’s policies resonated on the north shore and in safe Liberal seats, they were his Achille’s heel everywhere else. So in the 1991 election, Greiner increased his proportion of the vote in safe Liberal seats while losing crucial seats in other areas, leading to minority government.

The other important aspect of Perrottet’s persona is his conservative Catholicism. One of his original sponsors was MLC David Clarke, a well-known conservative Catholic and leader of the conservatives in the Liberal Party. He is pro-life and opposed to assisted dying.

Perrottet has claimed his personal religious beliefs do not affect his work in public life. In any case, he requires the support of the moderates, who hold quite different moral and social values, to get legislation through.

His economic and financial experience will be far more important for his role as premier. He is focused very much on the economy and, as treasurer, aware of the huge debt that the state has incurred. Back in July, he reportedly opposed the extension of the current lockdown. He has also indicated he could change the current roadmap out of lockdown in the state.

In what seems to have been the perennial issue of the pandemic – public health versus the economy – there is no doubt Perrottet comes down on the side of the economy.

Certainly, the economy will loom larger as the state comes out of the worst of the pandemic. It is also the case that a focus on the economy will win him plaudits from the north shore, which has suffered fewer COVID cases than other areas of Sydney.

Read more:
Stadiums, bushfires and a pandemic: how will Gladys Berejiklian be remembered as premier?

The problem is that the state still has to navigate its way through the lifting of restrictions and the consequences of that action. It is not clear, despite high levels of vaccination, that all will be plain sailing.

Berejiklian honed her public relations skills during the pandemic and demonstrated a capacity to reassure the wider population that there was light at the end of the tunnel. Even so, she did not reach everyone.

Perrottet is largely untested in these matters. He will need to reassure the people of New South Wales that his focus is not just economic and financial. He could well ponder the fate of Nick Greiner.

That situation will not be made easier by Barilaro’s resignation. It is still somewhat of a mystery as to why he resigned. Could he really have been pushed into resignation by a nuisance YouTuber?

Whatever the reason, it will make the job of the new premier all the more difficult as it will be a new leadership team that seeks to guide NSW through largely uncharted waters.

How this new team handles those circumstances may well determine the outcome of the next state election.

Gregory Melleuish receives funding from the Australian Research Council

– ref. Dominic Perrottet is set to become the next premier of NSW. Who is he? – https://theconversation.com/dominic-perrottet-is-set-to-become-the-next-premier-of-nsw-who-is-he-169138

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Richardson, Senior Research Fellow, UNSW

Drone delivery company Wing recently celebrated 100,000 deliveries with an unusual burst of media fanfare. Australia is at the forefront of Wing’s plans, with the company’s two biggest trial sites running in Canberra and Logan in Queensland.

Wing tells a simple story of barista coffee and roast chooks dropped on your driveway at a moment’s notice. Short on Vegemite for the kids’ brekky? Hop on the app, order, and a drone will lower a new jar to your doorstep before the toast is cool. All quick, contactless, and COVID-safe.

But the real story is much more complex. Drone delivery at scale will transform the skies, change expectations for speedy delivery, and hide the labour that makes it possible.

Owned by Alphabet, the parent company of Google, Wing has huge resources. New drone regulations are already being written, and Wing is setting itself up to be the backbone of a new aerial infrastructure.

How Wing works

Wing operates much like many app delivery platforms. After signing up, customers use the smartphone app to place their orders. Orders are then packed at local base stations and flown to their destinations by Wing’s drones. On arrival, the packages are lowered to customers by winch, automatically detaching from the drone before it returns to the base station.

Unlike the hobby drones you might see above parks and beaches, Wing’s delivery drones can operate out of the operator’s line of sight. Flight is fully autonomous, with one pilot monitoring several flights at once and able to take over or land if necessary.

How that will scale up in volume and frequency isn’t clear. So far, the trial sites in Canberra and Logan offer clear and uncomplicated airspace and a flat, regular urban environment.

For customers, all this promises a swift, seamless and contactless experience.

Deloitte’s economic modelling on the drone industry in Australia notes that drones enable further automation of work. But behind every promise of “autonomous” or “automated” technology are hidden human workers.

Whose labour does it save?

One of Wing’s major promises is unbelievably fast delivery on demand. Wing boasts an average delivery time of roughly 10 minutes. Their quickest time recorded – from order placement to product in hand – is 2 minutes and 47 seconds.

This is a remarkable acceleration in the pace and expectation of delivery. Ordinary mail might take days or weeks, but thanks to the “Amazon effect” private delivery services have already shifted expectations from next-day to same-day and now even one or two hours.

While Wing’s drones are autonomous, the service still relies on human labour. Pilots monitor flight paths, packers parcel up the products, and maintenance staff take care of the hardware and software. All of these workers must perform to satisfy the 10 minute delivery time.

Amazon warehouses and food delivery apps have shown us how such punishing timelines can be dangerous for worker safety and devastating for morale. For precariously employed or gig economy workers, missing targets can mean instant termination.

Read more:
‘They track our every move’: why the cards were stacked against a union at Amazon

And the repercussions of 10-minute delivery may spread beyond Wing. If consumer expectations change, rival delivery companies (who may not be using automated drones) will feel pressure to keep pace.

Deloitte modelling from 2020 suggests drone delivery could cost less than half the current rate of an e-bike delivery. In the Canberra trial, some products at least are delivered for the same as in-store prices. How those delivery costs will be distributed between Wing, businesses, workers and customers once the pilot programs are over, however, is unclear — but if the likes of UberEats are anything to go by, it may well end up being businesses and especially delivery workers who carry most of the cost.

Closing the sky

Drone delivery may also have hidden environmental costs. Keeping cars and trucks off the road might cut energy consumption, but mining lithium for batteries and supplying energy for data centres may reduce or eliminate those gains.

Getting sandwiches via drone could also mean more packaging and waste, as well as potential risks to birds and habitats from heavy aerial traffic.

But a bigger question for the public is about the skies above our heads. Do we want to live under a cloud of drones?

At present, most of the time people are free to enjoy the skies above their homes and communities. Kids can fly kites and enthusiasts can fly their own drones. Drone delivery risks privatising a new layer of that common space, and handing it over to Alphabet and others.

Building the legal and technical architecture to control the skies

To privatise a new part of the sky, Australia’s drone regulations will have to change. The current rules are highly restrictive, built from a patchwork of international, federal and state laws developed primarily for aeroplanes.

Apart from hobbyists with constant line of sight, operating in limited times and places, each drone use requires explicit permission from the Civil Aviation Safety Authority.

New commercial applications are pushing this system beyond breaking point. They often require operation beyond visual line of sight, near populated areas, in a broad range of conditions, and without constant pilot supervision.

Bouyed by economic modelling from Deloitte suggesting the drone industry could be worth around $15 billion by 2040 (with e-commerce and deliveries making up about $600 million), the Australian government is pushing to modernise drone regulation. This means reappraising rules around environmental impacts, noise, safety, insurance, security and privacy.

The resulting changes will benefit different companies and business models. For example, more flexible noise standards will benefit commercial applications like delivery. This means the big question is how different stakeholders are influencing the development of these new laws.

Capturing the standards for unmanned traffic management

Alongside new regulations, new digital infrastructures are being developed to manage increasingly congested and “automated” skyways.

Wing is heavily involved, providing a flight planning and safety app for drone operators, a system for remote drone identification, and an “unmanned traffic management” service.

Owning the broader traffic management system is clearly part of the long-term business strategy. As Google has shown with its Android operating system, building infrastructure (even if it’s open source) can create a real commercial advantage.

Read more:
The age of drones has arrived quicker than the laws that govern them

Wing’s approach fits neatly with the Australian government’s desire for a market-based strategy to develop and implement its first unmanned traffic management system over the next 5 years. The trial programs in Canberra and Logan will help the company develop more comprehensive skyway traffic platforms that will govern airspace safety, communications standards, data management, and everything else needed to keep autonomous aerial commerce ticking over.

Policymakers know commercial development of communication infrastructure creates competition risks. However, they may not have the tools and expertise to enforce equal and fair access to skyway infrastructure.

And at present, the fundamental question of whether we want drone deliveries crowding our sky at all is completely off the table.

Taking flight

As we have seen with the likes of Uber and Airbnb, reining in tech companies once they are already running is hard. With Australia modernizing its aviation laws, Wing is well positioned to protect its agenda and make itself essential to future evolutions of the law.

The COVID-19 pandemic is also helping companies like Wing to accelerate their agenda, as they can promise less congestion, less consumer mobility, and less social contact.

Read more:
Coles and Woolworths are moving to robot warehouses and on-demand labour as home deliveries soar

While city skies crowded with delivery drones might be far away, the groundwork is being laid right now. Communities, businesses and workers need to be a much bigger part of the process of deciding if they want that future.

Getting sushi delivered by drone for lunch might seem like a neat idea, but the real price may have little to do with what gets charged to your card.

Michael Richardson receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Jake Goldenfein is supported by the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making & Society.

Thao Phan is employed in the ARC Centre of Excellence on Automated Decision-Making & Society

– ref. Privatising the sky: drone delivery promises comfort and speed, but at a cost to workers and communities – https://theconversation.com/privatising-the-sky-drone-delivery-promises-comfort-and-speed-but-at-a-cost-to-workers-and-communities-166960

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne

This week’s Newspoll, conducted September 29 to October 3 from a sample of 1,545, gave Labor a 53-47 lead, unchanged from last fortnight’s Newspoll. Primary votes were 37% Coalition (steady), 37% Labor (down one), 11% Greens (up one), 2% One Nation (down one) and 13% for all Others (up one).

It is likely Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party makes up a sizeable fraction of the Others vote. UAP ads have been ubiquitous, and they won 3.4% at the 2019 election, more than the 3.1% for One Nation, although One Nation did not contest all seats.

49% were dissatisfied with Scott Morrison’s performance (down one), and 48% were satisfied (up two), for a net approval of -1, up three points. Anthony Albanese’s net approval improved one point to -10. Morrison led as better PM by 47-34 (47-35 last fortnight).

For the large majority of this term, each Newspoll has been conducted three weeks apart. The two-week gap this time suggests they will do more polls in the lead-up to the election, due by May 2022. Newspoll figures are from The Poll Bludger.

By 59-31, voters approved of the AUKUS agreement, though the question did not mention the time to get the new submarines. 46% thought AUKUS would make Australia more secure, 29% that it would make no difference and 14% thought it would make us less secure. By 75-15, voters thought China posed a significant threat to our national security.

Labor has had a lead of 53-47 or more in all Newspolls conducted since July, but I am sceptical this solid position for Labor will mean a victory at the election. Once vaccination targets are met and lockdowns ease in Melbourne and Sydney, the economy is likely to rapidly recover, boosting the Coalition’s chances.

Furthermore, the Resolve polls in August and September have been far better for the Coalition than Newspoll. As I wrote after the late August Newspoll disagreed with Resolve, the different message in Resolve should not be ignored.

Read more:
Coalition slumps but Morrison gains in Newspoll; electoral changes to curb micro parties

The Guardian’s datablog has 45.2% of the population (not 16+) fully vaccinated, up from 37.2% two weeks ago. We rank 33 of 38 OECD countries in share of population fully vaccinated, unchanged since last fortnight. The Age shows 56.5% of 16+ are fully vaccinated and 79.4% have received at least one dose.

Essential and Morgan polls

In last fortnight’s Essential poll, the federal government had a 45-30 good rating on its response to COVID (43-35 in mid-September, 39-36 in late August). The NSW government’s good rating has surged 13 points since late August to 53%, while Victoria fell back to 44% good after rising six points to 50% in mid-September.

50% of Victorian respondents said they didn’t have confidence in their state’s roadmap out of lockdown, compared with 40% of NSW respondents.

A late September Morgan poll from a sample of 2,752 gave Labor a 54-46 lead, a 1.5% gain for Labor since the mid-September poll. Primary votes were 36% Coalition (down 2.5%), 36% Labor (up 1%), 12.5% Greens (down 0.5%), 3.5% One Nation (up 0.5%) and 12% for all Others (up 1.5%).

Essential vs Resolve’s issue questions

In Essential, the Liberals had a 15-point lead over Labor on national security and a 10-point lead on economic management, while Labor led by 13 points on climate change, and 18 on fair wages and workplace conditions. Since October 2019, Labor has improved five points on the economy.

Essential’s issue questions give very different outcomes from Resolve’s, where Labor led the Liberals by just one point on the environment and climate change in September. Resolve gives a “someone else” option, and people who support the Greens on this issue select “someone else”, but a large majority of them prefer Labor to the Liberals.

It is likely there is also a pro-incumbent skew in Resolve’s questions, as they use “the Liberals and Morrison” versus “Labor and Albanese”. Morrison has had large leads over Albanese as better PM, so this formulation likely skews towards the current PM.

Newspoll quarterly aggregate data: July to September

Newspoll provides state and demographic breakdowns from all its polls conducted during a three-month period. As reported by The Poll Bludger on September 27, the September quarter Newspoll data gave Labor a 52-48 lead in NSW, a two-point gain for Labor since the June quarter, and a four-point gain since the 2019 election.

In Victoria, Labor’s lead blew out five points from June to 58-42, a five point gain for Labor since the last election. In Queensland, the Coalition led by 55-45, a two-point gain for them since July, but a 3.4% swing to Labor since the election. In WA, Labor led by 54-46, which would be a swing of almost 10% to Labor since the election.

Perrottet set to become next NSW premier

Gladys Berejiklian announced she would resign as New South Wales premier on Friday, owing to ICAC investigations. Media reports, such as in The Guardian, indicate that the right-aligned treasurer, Dominic Perrottet, is set to be elected NSW Liberal leader and thus premier at a Liberal party room meeting on Tuesday under a factional deal.

Berejiklian is also resigning as Member for Willoughby (held by 21.0%), so there will be a byelection soon. There will be other byelections in Bega (Lib 6.9%), where the Liberal MP Andrew Constance has announced he will contest the federal seat of Gilmore, and in Monaro (Nat 11.6%), as Nationals leader John Barilaro is retiring. Other NSW MPs may quit in the near future, so there could be several byelections on the same date.

Nobody wins German election

At the September 26 German election, the centre-left SPD won 25.7% (up 5.2% from 2017), the conservative CDU/CSU 24.1% (down 8.8%), the Greens 14.8% (up 5.9%), the pro-business FDP 11.5% (up 0.8%), the far-right AfD 10.3% (down 2.3%) and the far-left Left 4.9% (down 4.3%).

The Left was below the 5% threshold, but won three of the 299 single-member seats to barely retain a proportional allocation of seats. Right-wing parties combined defeated the combined left by a 45.9-45.4 margin, and this is reflected in parliament where left-wing parties won 363 of the 735 seats, just short of the 368 needed for a majority.

No other party will cooperate with the AfD, but no government of the left can be formed. Protracted negotiations are likely to achieve a governing coalition. I live blogged this election for The Poll Bludger.

Adrian Beaumont does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Labor retains clear Newspoll lead with voters approving of AUKUS; Perrottet set to be next NSW premier – https://theconversation.com/labor-retains-clear-newspoll-lead-with-voters-approving-of-aukus-perrottet-set-to-be-next-nsw-premier-169152

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Savitri Taylor, Associate Professor, Law School, La Trobe University

Late last month, Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews and the president of Nauru, Lionel Aingimea, quietly announced they had signed a new agreement to establish an “enduring form” of offshore processing for asylum seekers taken to the Pacific island.

The text of the new agreement has not been made public. This is unsurprising.

All the publicly available information indicates Australia’s offshore processing strategy is an ongoing human rights — not to mention financial — disaster.

The deliberate opaqueness is intended to make it difficult to hold the government to account for these human and other costs. This is, of course, all the more reason to subject the new deal with Nauru to intense scrutiny.

Policies 20 years in the making

In order to fully understand the new deal — and the ramifications of it — it is necessary to briefly recount 20 years of history.

In late August 2001, the Howard government impulsively refused to allow asylum seekers rescued at sea by the Tampa freighter to disembark on Australian soil. This began policy-making on the run and led to the Pacific Solution Mark I.

The governments of Nauru and Papua New Guinea were persuaded to enter into agreements allowing people attempting to reach Australia by boat to be detained in facilities on their territory while their protection claims were considered by Australian officials.

By the 2007 election, boat arrivals to Australia had dwindled substantially.

In February 2008, the newly elected Labor government closed down the facilities in Nauru and PNG. Within a year, boat arrivals had increased dramatically, causing the government to rethink its policy.

After a couple of false starts, it signed new deals with Nauru and PNG in late 2012. An expert panel had described the new arrangements as a “necessary circuit breaker to the current surge in irregular migration to Australia”.

This was the Pacific Solution Mark II. In contrast to the first iteration, it provided for boat arrivals taken to Nauru and PNG to have protection claims considered under the laws and procedures of the host country.

Moreover, the processing facilities were supposedly run by the host countries, though in reality, the Australian government outsourced this to private companies.

Despite the new arrangements, the boat arrivals continued. And on July 19, 2013, the Rudd government took a hardline stance, announcing any boat arrivals after that date would have “have no chance of being settled in Australia as refugees”.

New draconian changes to the system

The 1,056 individuals who had been transferred to Nauru or PNG before July 19, 2013 were brought to Australia to be processed.

PNG agreed that asylum seekers arriving after this date could resettle there, if they were recognised as refugees.

Nauru made a more equivocal commitment and has thus far only granted 20-year visas to those it recognises as refugees.

The Coalition then won the September 2013 federal election and implemented the military-led Operation Sovereign Borders policy. This involves turning back boat arrivals to transit countries (like Indonesia), or to their countries of origin.

The cumulative count of interceptions since then stands at 38 boats carrying 873 people. The most recent interception was in January 2020.

It should be noted these figures do not include the large number of interceptions undertaken at Australia’s request by transit countries and countries of origin.

What this means is the mere existence of the offshore processing system — even in the more draconian form in place after July 2013 — has not deterred people from attempting to reach Australia by boat.

Rather, the attempts have continued, but the interception activities of Australia and other countries have prevented them from succeeding.

No new asylum seekers in Nauru or PNG since 2014

Australia acknowledges it has obligations under the UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees — and other human rights treaties — to refrain from returning people to places where they face the risk of serious harm.

As a result, those intercepted at sea are given on-water screening interviews for the purpose of identifying those with prima facie protection claims.

Those individuals are supposed to be taken to Nauru or PNG instead of being turned back or handed back. Concerningly, of the 873 people intercepted since 2013, only two have passed these screenings: both in 2014.

This means no asylum seekers have been taken to either Nauru or PNG since 2014. Since then, Australia has spent years trying to find resettlement options in third countries for recognised refugees in Nauru and PNG, such as in Cambodia and the US.

As of April 30, 131 asylum seekers were still in PNG and 109 were in Nauru.

Read more:
Explainer: the medevac repeal and what it means for asylum seekers on Manus Island and Nauru

A boon to the Nauruan government

Australia has spent billions on Pacific Solution Mark II with no end in sight.

As well as underwriting all the infrastructure and operational costs of the processing facilities, Australia made it worthwhile for Nauru and PNG to participate in the arrangements.

For one thing, it promised to ensure spillover benefits for the local economies by, for example, requiring contractors to hire local staff. In fact, in 2019–20, the processing facility in Nauru employed 15% of the country’s entire workforce.

And from the beginning, Nauru has required every transferee to hold a regional processing centre visa. This is a temporary visa which must be renewed every three months by the Australian government.

The visa fee each time is A$3,000, so that’s A$12,000 per transferee per year that Australia is required to pay the Nauruan government.

Where a transferee is found to be a person in need of protection, that visa converts automatically into a temporary settlement visa, which must be renewed every six months. The temporary settlement visa fee is A$3,000 per month — again paid by the Australian government.

In 2019-20, direct and indirect revenue from the processing facility made up 58% of total Nauruan government revenue. It is no wonder Nauru is on board with making an “enduring form” of offshore processing available to Australia.

Read more:
Cruel, costly and ineffective: Australia’s offshore processing asylum seeker policy turns 9

‘Not to use it, but to be willing to use it’

In 2016, the PNG Supreme Court ruled the detention of asylum seekers in the offshore processing facility was unconstitutional. Australia and PNG then agreed to close the PNG facility in late 2017 and residents were moved to alternative accommodation. Australia is underwriting the costs.

Australia decided, however, to maintain a processing facility in Nauru. Senator Jim Molan asked Home Affairs Secretary Michael Pezzullo about this in Senate Estimates in February 2018, saying:

So it’s more appropriate to say that we are not maintaining Nauru as an offshore processing centre; we are maintaining a relationship with the Nauru government.

Pezzullo responded,

the whole purpose is, as you would well recall, in fact not to have to use those facilities. But, as in all deterrents, you need to have an asset that is credible so that you are deterring future eventualities. So the whole point of it is actually not to use it but to be willing to use it.

This is how we ended up where we are now, with a new deal with the Nauru government for an “enduring” — that is indefinitely maintained — offshore processing capability, at great cost to the Australian people.

Read more:
Could the Biden administration pressure Australia to adopt more humane refugee policies?

Little has been made public about this new arrangement. We do know in December 2020, the incoming minister for immigration, Alex Hawke, was told the government was undertaking “a major procurement” for “enduring capability services”.

We also know a budget of A$731.2 million has been appropriated for regional processing in 2021-22.

Of this, $187 million is for service provider fees and host government costs in PNG. Almost all of the remainder goes to Nauru, to ensure that, beyond hosting its current population of 109 transferees, it “stands ready to receive new arrivals”.

Savitri Taylor receives funding from the Australian Research Council.
She is a member of the Committee of Management of Refugee Legal.
She is a member of the Kim for Canberra Party.
The views expressed in this article are her own.

– ref. Multibillion-dollar strategy with no end in sight: Australia’s ‘enduring’ offshore processing deal with Nauru – https://theconversation.com/multibillion-dollar-strategy-with-no-end-in-sight-australias-enduring-offshore-processing-deal-with-nauru-168941

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

Given the caring nature of their profession, the general public might assume there isn’t any vaccine hesitancy among health workers. It can surprise (and anger) the community when health workers protest the introduction of COVID vaccine mandates.

In France, around 3,000 health workers have been suspended because they were not vaccinated. In Greece, health workers have protested against mandatory vaccination plans. Similar scenes have played out in Canada and New York State.

In Australia, health workers have reportedly joined protests in Melbourne and Perth. A small number of unvaccinated staff members are challenging vaccination mandates in the NSW Supreme Court. Beyond the hospital sector, there are reports of staff members leaving the aged care sector following the introduction of mandates.

Hesitancy among health workers broadly reflects concerns in the wider community. But the risks of being unvaccinated in health settings mean we should acknowledge these concerns and support informed decision-making.

Read more:
‘Living with COVID’ looks very different for front-line health workers, who are already exhausted

A range of concerns

Over 90% of health workers in NSW and Victoria have received a COVID vaccine. But there remains a small percentage of people who work at hospitals and other clinical settings who are vaccine hesitant or want to choose the vaccine they receive.
NSW health figures suggest that currently about 7% (or 7,350 staff members) remain unvaccinated.

Internationally, prevalence of COVID vaccination hesitancy in health workers ranges from 4.3 to 72% (average 23%).

In the US, one in four hospital workers in direct contact with patients had not received a single dose of a COVID vaccine by the end of May.

A study conducted in the first few months of this year found while most health workers intended to accept a COVID vaccine, 22% were unsure or did not intend to vaccinate. These findings tallied with a study in Italy that found 33% of health workers were unsure or did not intend to vaccinate.

The top three reasons for health workers to be hesitant echo the same concerns expressed by some in the wider community: vaccine safety, efficacy and side effects.

Earlier surveys overseas showed less than a third of health workers felt they had enough information around COVID vaccines. And, just like the wider community, health workers are vulnerable to misinformation and sometimes have insufficient understanding about how vaccines are developed.

The risks

While hospital patients are more likely to be the source of hospital COVID outbreaks, unvaccinated health and aged care workers still pose a risk to patient and resident safety. Transmission of COVID to or between unvaccinated health workers poses a risk to the wider community including their families and friends.

Beyond the risk of transmission, there is also the impact vaccine-hesitant health workers have on wider vaccine confidence. Health workers are seen as credible sources of information and are trusted by the community.

There are videos on social media, YouTube and TikTok of individual health workers speaking about the COVID vaccines, often repeating misinformation regarding the safety or effectiveness of the vaccines or expressing uncertainty. The potential impact of these viral videos may be heightened compared to those featuring speakers who don’t work in health professions. University of Washington researcher Rachel Moran, who examines internet misinformation, says such health workers are

leveraging the credibility of medical professionals to create a false impression that there is considerable debate about COVID vaccines among doctors and nurses when, in reality, there is a consensus about their efficacy and safety.

Read more:
‘Are you double dosed?’ How to ask friends and family if they’re vaccinated, and how to handle it if they say no

How can we all stay safe?

Moving forward, we must acknowledge three things when it comes to health workers and vaccine hesitancy:

1. Don’t judge

While there is a moral imperative and duty of care for health workers to receive the COVID vaccine, we should ensure unvaccinated staff members have the opportunity to discuss vaccines in a non-judgemental way.

As with the general public, we need to find out who health workers trust and connect them with trusted resources to alleviate their fears. This might be done via hospital websites, discussions with their primary health-care providers or evidence-based information.

2. Work out what works

Unlike the community setting, there has been a gap in funding to develop and test resources and interventions focused on supporting health and aged care worker vaccine uptake.

Understanding the specific strategies that work to support vaccine uptake, without having to move directly to mandates, is important from not only a patient safety perspective but an occupational health and safety lens.

These findings are relevant for COVID and other occupational vaccine programs.

3. Ensure supply and access

Prior to introducing a mandate, there needs to be adequate supply and equitable access to vaccines. We need to ensure people have the opportunity to review vaccine safety and effectiveness data and to get the vaccine of their free will.

Careful planning, consultation and communication with key groups can improve acceptability of mandates.

In the coming weeks, more health workers are likely to resign or be dismissed for failing to comply with the COVID mandates. There will be those in social media who will call out the situation as the “right move”. But some health workers will become privately or publicly vocal on the issue and will cast doubt on the vaccine. It is important we prepare for these situations, especially in regional areas where there may be fewer voices and greater trust in long-serving health workers.

Read more:
The 9 psychological barriers that lead to COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy and refusal

Holly Seale is an investigator on research studies funded by NHMRC and has previously received funding for investigator driven research from NSW Ministry of Health, as well as from Sanofi Pasteur and Seqirus. She is the Deputy Chair of the Collaboration on Social Science and Immunisation.

Margie Danchin receives funding from the Victorian and Commonwealth Departments of Health, NHMRC, WHO and is Chair, Collaboration on Social Science and Immunisation (COSSI).

Ruby Biezen was part of the research team who received funding from the Victorian Government on the project ‘COVID vaccine key cohort preparedness and communication strategies’.

– ref. Health workers are among the COVID vaccine hesitant. Here’s how we can support them safely – https://theconversation.com/health-workers-are-among-the-covid-vaccine-hesitant-heres-how-we-can-support-them-safely-168838

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Trivess Moore, Senior Lecturer, School of Property, Construction and Project Management, RMIT University

The recent IPCC report highlighted we must urgently transition to a low carbon future. One low hanging fruit is to improve the sustainability of new and existing housing.

Minimum performance and quality requirements for new housing in Australia are set via the National Construction Code. The last significant change was in 2010 with the introduction of the six-star requirements. These requirements are at least 40% less stringent than international best practice.

A suite of proposed changes to energy efficiency section of the National Construction Code are a good step forward. However, a lot more can be done.

And improving building quality requirements isn’t just good for the climate — it also delivers enormous health benefits, slashes energy bills and makes our homes more comfortable.

Read more:
Low-energy homes don’t just save money, they improve lives

Change is underway

Proposed energy efficiency changes for the National Construction Code 2022 include:

• an increase in the minimum thermal performance of homes from six stars to seven stars

• whole-of-home requirements for performance of heating, cooling, hot water, lighting and pool heating equipment

• new provisions designed to allow easy addition of on-site solar photovoltaic panels and electric vehicle charging equipment

• additional ventilation and wall vapour permeability requirements.

The Regulatory Impact Statement — a document aimed at helping government officials understand the cost-benefit impacts of a proposed regulatory change — has also been released.

Overall, it finds the costs for proposed more stringent requirements will outweigh the benefits for society.

In better news, it finds that for the majority of households, any increase in mortgage repayments from the additional costs of higher standards will be offset by a reduction in energy costs. In other words, you save so much on energy costs over time that it doesn’t matter you have to borrow more to pay for these building features.

There is critique of the Regulatory Impact Statement from stakeholders such as the Victorian government and the Green Building Council of Australia. Critics have pointed to the limited consideration of health and well-being, the impact to the energy network, and the climate emergency.

There are also issues with key economic assumptions which do not reflect environmental impacts of decisions and concerns delivery costs to households have been overestimated, potentially encouraging a “do nothing” policy position.

Public consultation is open until October 17.

What do the changes mean?

The proposed changes are important steps towards reducing carbon emissions. Currently less than 5% of new housing in Australia is built to achieve seven or more stars. These changes will affect thousands of new dwellings every year.

The seven-star standard will reduce heating and cooling energy for new housing by about 24%, slashing energy bills. The changes future-proof housing by reducing costs to add renewables or electric car charging once the house is built.

And with issues of mould and condensation in Australian housing, changes will make our housing healthier.

Historically, higher standards have been met by boosting specifications like insulation and double glazing. These new standards will shift attention to cost-effective strategies like orientation and site-responsive design, as it becomes harder to achieve higher stars through specifications alone.

Research from Sustainability Victoria’s Zero Net Carbon Homes program show homes can increase performance by one star simply changing from their worst to best orientation.

There’s room for improvement

These proposed changes are a good step forward. However, more can be done.

A decade ago research and case studies showed that seven star housing was achievable for little additional costs.

YourHome and developments like The Cape make seven or more star house designs freely available, showing we don’t have to reinvent the wheel.

The recently announced Green Star Homes Standard will also help to drive innovation beyond minimum performance requirements.

Our energy regulations are still measured per square metre (rather than per dwelling/person) and are predominantly concerned with operational energy demand.

To further reduce carbon emissions, we need to acknowledge the influence of house size and materials usage on total energy consumption and factor in the carbon footprint of building materials.

Additionally, the code does not use future climate data when demonstrating compliance. This means that our housing may not be fit for purpose in our future climate.

We will need more focus on summer performance. This should include performance in late summer and autumn, when the sun is lower in the sky, but extreme heat will be more likely. This will require solutions like adjustable shading.

As-built verification is a critical inclusion in new schemes such as Green Star Homes; we need similar mechanisms in our construction code to ensure as-built compliance. There is no point improving regulations on paper if we can’t deliver it in practice.

While the focus of these changes is on new housing, we must not forget the millions of existing homes which need to undergo deep retrofits to improve sustainability and performance. The new standards will need careful adaptation to suit alteration and addition projects.

Tools like the National Scorecard Initiative aim to help homeowners in existing dwellings improve performance but more could be done with regulations to ensure existing housing is part of the push towards a sustainable housing future.

Read more:
Sustainable housing’s expensive, right? Not when you look at the whole equation

Trivess Moore has received funding from various organisations including the Australian Research Council, Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute, Victorian Government and various industry partners. He is a trustee of the Fuel Poverty Research Network.

Alan Pears receives funding from his consulting work, mainly with not-for-profit groups, industry organisations and governments. He is affiliated with the Australian Alliance for Energy Productivity.

Erika Bartak receives funding for her consulting work with Victorian Government agencies such as Sustainability Victoria and the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning (DELWP), as well as private clients. She is a member of the Thrive Research Hub at the University of Melbourne, and has received financial support for her PhD research.

Nicola Willand receives funding for research, including on retrofits, energy efficiency and health, from various organisations, including the Australian Research Council, the Victorian State Government, Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning (DELWP), the Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation, the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute and the Future Fuels Collaborative Research Centre (FF CRC).

– ref. Better building standards are good for the climate, your health, and your wallet. Here’s what the National Construction Code could do better – https://theconversation.com/better-building-standards-are-good-for-the-climate-your-health-and-your-wallet-heres-what-the-national-construction-code-could-do-better-166669

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robert Powell, Professor, Edith Cowan University

Evergrande, China’s second-largest property developer, is in peril. After a decade of massive growth, including investing in “Fairyland” theme parks, an electric car company and a professional football team (Guangzhou FC), it is now struggling to service debts exceeding US$300 billion.

So far it has avoided the fate of dozens of its unfinished apartment towers — demolished in spectacular fashion in recent weeks — by selling off assets to make its payments.

But this is not a sustainable strategy. Credit rating agency Fitch has in the past week downgraded Evergrande to a “C”, indicating exceptionally high risk, with default “imminent or inevitable, or the issuer is in standstill”.

Without intervention by the Chinese government, the company will collapse. Here are three key ways in which that could affect Australia.

1. Lower demand for iron ore

Evergrande’s collapse will reverberate throughout China’s real estate market. Investors and lenders will be more cautious, potentially resulting in a credit crunch. This could severely dampen property development, and thereby demand for construction materials including steel, made using mostly imported iron ore.

China is by far the world’s biggest steel producer, and accounts for nearly 70% of global iron ore imports. About 60% of that iron ore has been imported from Australia.

This trade has made iron ore Australia’s most valuable export commodity, worth an estimated AU$149 billion in the 2020-2021 financial year. About 75% went to China. Any drop in Chinese demand will therefore affect the Australian economy.

China has already been seeking to cut back steel production, a high-energy process, to reduce carbon emissions. The iron ore price has halved since July.

Plummeting demand for iron ore

Further falls in demand and thus prices will affect the Australian businesses and 45,600 jobs employed directly by the industry, as well as the thousands of jobs sustained though their wages, and government revenues from mining-related royalties and taxes.

2. Overall weakening of China’s economy

Beyond the direct effects, problems in China’s real estate and financial sectors could ripple across China’s economy, hurting Chinese demand for other goods and services in which Australia is a major provider.

To put trade with China in context, Australia’s exports to China are about three times those of our second-most valuable market, Japan. Even with iron-ore exports removed from the equation, China is still our biggest export market.

The effect of China buying less from Australia has been a matter of considerable debate. Some have argued Australia can compensate by diversifying into other markets. But such things take time. Economists Rod Tyers and Yixiao Zhou, who have simulated the effects of Australia-China trade being shut down, have argued short-term effects could be severe.

3. Global contagion

Evergrande’s debt crisis has echoes of the case of Lehman Brothers, the US investment bank whose bankruptcy in 2008 played a big part in precipitating the Global Financial Crisis.

Although most of Evergrande’s debt is localised in China, in financial and real estate sectors there is always a risk of investors and banks in other markets getting spooked, leading to a credit crunch throughout global markets.

Australian share markets have already fallen off their highs over the past few weeks, certainly in part over concerns about China’s economy. The mining sector has experienced the real carnage, but there are indicators of general unease in falls across all sectors.

Will the Chinese government intervene?

Without external help Evergrande has a very high likelihood of failure. All the signs are there. It is averting bankruptcy by servicing the interest payments on its massive debt by selling assets at unfavourable prices.

All eyes are now on the Chinese government as a potential saviour through some form of debt restructure or guarantees.

Read more:
Vital Signs: Evergrande may survive, but for its executives expect a fate worse than debt

So far it has not committed itself, and it has taken a strong stance against high debt by developers. But it may consider Evergrande “too big to fail” — its collapse having potentially disastrous local and global implications. So some form of intervention to stabilise the situation seems more likely than not.

Australians, and the rest of the world, will need to wait to see exactly what hand the Chinese government will play.

Robert Powell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. 3 ways the collapse of Evergrande will hurt the Australian economy – https://theconversation.com/3-ways-the-collapse-of-evergrande-will-hurt-the-australian-economy-168852

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mandy Hughes, Lecturer in sociology and social science course coordinator, Southern Cross University

Women from Afghanistan, Myanmar, Syria, Iraq and other countries are settling in regional Australian communities. Adjusting to life in a new home involves facing many challenges — but finding a sense of belonging can help the settlement process.

For those who have experienced trauma, including women from refugee backgrounds, creative arts can enhance well-being, improve social connections and promote a sense of belonging. Connecting through creativity also builds bridges, addressing fears of newcomers and communities around refugee settlement.

In our recent study, we looked at the experiences of refugee and migrant women in regional Australia, as they shared their work in community art exhibitions. We wanted to learn about the different benefits engaging in creative arts can provide for newcomers as they navigate their new lives.

The research collaboration with Anglicare Northcoast’s Three Es to Freedom program focused on fostering community connections to enhance social inclusion and achieve personal goals. Established in 2016, the program has supported 142 women from 36 countries. In the creative arm of the program, women undertook workshops with local community artists, harnessing existing skills and developing new ones.

At exhibitions in Coffs Harbour and Lismore in northern NSW, and the Gold Coast, women exhibited stories, textile works and installations alongside photographs of themselves.

Enhancing well-being and confidence

The therapeutic value of creative arts practice, especially for refugees, is well known. Art can provide a means of self-expression and advocacy, and promote good feelings, especially for those who have experienced trauma.

Read more:
A clearer view on the healing power of the arts

These positive experiences were reflected by the women when they considered what drawing, painting and sewing offered them. One woman told us the creativity “got me out of my depression, it’s given me love”.

The women made intricate circular textile works telling stories from their childhood. They created a group “story cloth” where they painted symbols to represent their personal journeys. They also made a large installation from feathers featuring inspirational words like “strong” and “free” to show their resilience.

It isn’t just about the creative process itself. The women’s enjoyment was enhanced by coming together as a group with shared experiences. One participant said:

sometimes if you are not happy it helps you. You come to group. You go home and you have lost the negative things you were feeling and that makes you happy.

The women supported each other, learnt about each other’s cultures and taught each other new skills, including special sewing techniques from their cultures.

Drawing on existing skills, learning new skills and gaining confidence encouraged the women to sell their work in various local markets and pop up shops. One woman became known in the broader community for her excellent dressmaking skills and set up her own business. These new initiatives presented a way forward for women who had previously been denied employment opportunities.

Alongside creating their own work, the women were photographed by professional photographers. The women dressed in traditional costumes, sat for formal portraits or were photographed enjoying themselves in the community garden. As one woman told us:

Yes, they were beautiful. It looks like for me a bit shy, but when I look at it, it made me happy to see that all the ladies changed in the photos.

Feeling heard

Another important part of this project was the public-facing exhibition. Knowing people were interested in learning about their lives and their culture increased the women’s feelings of empowerment and encouraged them to pursue their goals.

One woman told us:

I was very happy when I saw many people coming. I am very happy with my story displayed there, my story about my childhood, unforgettable memories […] I can show people what my tradition is about, so they can know my country.

Attendees wrote messages to the women on paper birds and posted them on the exhibition walls.

The words “welcome” and “friendship” were commonly found, as well as drawings of love hearts and peace doves. This conversation between the artists and visitors served as a bridge between migrants and their new community. One participant said the positive comments “made us feel the community was open to us”.

Negative perceptions of asylum seekers and refugees continue in Australia. Exhibitions like this one can create meaningful, personal encounters with people from different cultures, promote empathy and prompt social action. Australian communities can use art to welcome newcomers, investing in bridging community connections and enabling successful settlement.

As one visitor to the Stories of Freedom exhibitions wrote: “[thank you for] sharing your stories […] and adding your beautiful soul to Australia”.

Read more:
Refugees are integrating just fine in regional Australia

Mandy Hughes consults for Anglicare North Coast, through Southern Cross University.

Barbara Rugendyke consults for Anglicare North Coast, through Southern Cross University.

Louise Whitaker consults for Anglicare North Coast, through Southern Cross University and is a member of Ballina Region for Refugees

– ref. ‘It’s given me love’: connecting women from refugee backgrounds with communities through art – https://theconversation.com/its-given-me-love-connecting-women-from-refugee-backgrounds-with-communities-through-art-167786

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Denis Muller, Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Advancing Journalism, The University of Melbourne

Journalists are adept at creating and reflecting public sentiment. It is a reciprocating process: journalistic portrayal creates the sentiment, then the sentiment feeds back into journalistic portrayal.

This phenomenon can be seen clearly in the way the resignation of New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian has been reported and commented on.

The problem is that public sentiment does not always remain tethered to the underlying facts, so journalism that continues to reflect that sentiment likewise tends to become unmoored.

The sentiment about Berejiklian is based on a narrative about a good woman and excellent state premier led astray by a rogue boyfriend who abused his relationship with her to advance his interests in ways that led to his being investigated for corruption. In the process, he dragged her down with him.

In essence, it is a tale we are familiar with, may even have experienced at close hand: a good person making decisions of the heart until confronted by an ugly reality. Beats there a heart so cold that cannot sympathise with this predicament?

Much of the coverage of Berejiklian’s resignation has drawn on and fed into this narrative.

It had worked for her previously when she first appeared before ICAC in October 2020, so she no doubt thought it would work again. To a large extent, she has been proved right.

Read more:
Berejiklian’s downfall derailed a career built on accountability and control. Now, who will replace her?

In this telling, the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption deliberately brought down this paragon at the height of her powers to the detriment of the public welfare, disrupting the government at a crucial moment in the pandemic.

In this telling, too, ICAC becomes the wrongdoer. Instead of stalling its investigation until heaven knows when – the pandemic is over, the federal election is done – it irresponsibly pushes on regardless.

The surprising thing is that this line of chat has been accepted uncritically by so many elements of the media.

• Superwoman“ Gladys joins two previous NSW Liberal premiers on the “political scrap heap”.

• “Shock and cold fury: Berejiklian’s hand reluctantly forced”

• “Curse of ICAC claims Covid Crusader Gladys Berejiklian”

• “Angry voters mourn loss they don’t understand” says a front-page headline in Sydney’s Daily Telegraph.

Their understanding is not improved by coverage like this.

The facts are that ICAC is investigating the suspected corrupt allocation of about $35.5 million in taxpayers’ money: $30 million to the Riverina conservatorium of music at Wagga Wagga and $5.5 million to the local clay-shooting club.

ICAC is investigating whether Berejiklian, while NSW treasurer, allowed or encouraged corrupt conduct by her ex-boyfriend, the disgraced former Liberal MP for Wagga Wagga, Daryl Maguire, in respect of those allocations.

ICAC says it is investigating whether, between 2012 and 2018, Berejiklian engaged in conduct that “constituted or involved a breach of public trust” by exercising public functions relating to her public role and her private personal relationship with Maguire.

It says it will begin a four-week inquiry into these questions on October 18.

It should not be presumed that ICAC will make adverse findings against Berejiklian. In similar circumstances in 1983, Neville Wran stood aside as premier during a royal commission into corruption in rugby league. He was exonerated and resumed office.

So a further fact in the present case is that Berejiklian chose to resign rather than stand aside.

It is a fair bet she was unnerved by the prospect of NSW being in the hands of her National Party deputy John Barilaro for any length of time. By her resigning, the state gets a new premier from within the Liberal Party. It was a calculated choice.

ICAC is not a curse. Anyone involved in public affairs in NSW before 1988 when ICAC was established – public officials, politicians, journalists – knew that certain parts of the state administration were riven with corruption. Police, planning, prisons, even the magistracy: repeated scandals engulfed them all.

ICAC has been and remains a remarkable force for good.

A sad irony was that Nick Greiner, the Liberal premier who had the courage to establish it, became one of its early victims. In 1992 ICAC found he had misused his position to secure an independent MP’s resignation for political advantage. Greiner fell on his sword.

Read more:
History repeats: how O’Farrell and Greiner fell foul of ICAC

It is instructive to consider how many of the Morrison cabinet would survive exposure to an ICAC investigation.

Berejiklian’s alleged conflict of interest is not a trivial matter. It involves substantial sums of public money in an exercise that she has previously dismissed as “pork-barrelling”.

This disarming term, rendered harmless by repetition, is actually about the improper distribution of public money. It is a form of vote-buying, as has been shown in the procession of rorts engaged in by the federal government over sports grants, community security grants and car parks.

ICAC exists to root out these and other ways by which the democratic process is corrupted.

It is undoubtedly a personal tragedy for Berejiklian that she has found it necessary to resign, and a misfortune for the state to lose a premier who was held in high public regard.

However, sentiment that draws a misty veil over underlying issues of probity in public life does not serve the public well.

Read more:
The ‘car park rorts’ story is scandalous. But it will keep happening unless we close grant loopholes

Denis Muller does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. ICAC is not a curse, and probity in government matters. The Australian media would do well to remember that – https://theconversation.com/icac-is-not-a-curse-and-probity-in-government-matters-the-australian-media-would-do-well-to-remember-that-169132

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Catherine Bennett, Chair in Epidemiology, Deakin University

“Australia will be ready for takeoff very soon” said Prime Minister Scott Morrison today as he announced the ban on international travel will be lifted some time next month.

Returning Australian citizens and permanent residents will be able to quarantine at home for seven days if fully vaccinated with a TGA-approved vaccine.

The recognised vaccines include those already approved for use in Australia by Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Moderna and Johnson and Johnson/Janssen, as well as Sinovac and Covishield (Covishield is AstraZeneca’s vaccine made in India).

Unvaccinated returnees will still need to enter managed hotel quarantine for 14 days until Australia moves beyond Phase C of the National Plan.

Those who can’t be vaccinated, including young children and those with a medical exemption, will be counted as vaccinated for travel.

Arrival caps will also be abolished for fully vaccinated returnees.

Today’s announcement is one big step towards allowing vaccinated Australians to return home soon, as we move to a future that somewhat resembles pre-COVID life.

Is seven days enough?

Home quarantine trials in South Australia and New South Wales will answer this question.

Authorities will be testing returnees and the proportion of those who are COVID-positive, as well as when they test positive, will inform decision-making. This will also be monitored on an ongoing basis once we open up and can be adjusted if it turns out a higher than acceptable number of travellers test positive between day seven and 14.

Currently, NSW data tell us less than half of 1% of returnees in hotel quarantine are testing positive. The NSW Surveillance report from August 21 shows only 4% of those positive cases were in fully vaccinated.

The low percentage of returnees who are positive will matter less anyway as Australia progressively moves towards “living with COVID” with a background rate of the virus in the community.

We know fully vaccinated people can still get infected, but at much lower rates. There’s also mounting evidence suggesting their infectious period is shorter than unvaccinated people, so they’re less likely to pass the virus on. Importantly, there’s now a better than 70% reduction in risk of having a serious infection requiring hospitalisation in all of the vaccines the TGA has recognised for international arrivals.

How will we ensure people stay home?

South Australia is currently trialling an app that uses geo-tagged facial recognition software to ensure people stay home during quarantine.

If this app proves successful it might be rolled out across Australia.

It might also include supports for other aspects of compliance, like prompts to get tested, a checklist of symptoms and other ways to check in with returnees.

Random checks by police or ADF personnel have proven home quarantine and isolation have high levels of compliance. Something similar could also be brought in at some point if there were compliance concerns.

Read more:
Home quarantine for vaccinated returned travellers is extremely low risk, and won’t damage their mental health

One thing that’s more difficult to monitor is whether other people come into the house of a person meant to be isolating. The risk of transmission to the visitor is much higher than if the returnee ventured out. But this is the same risk we currently have with isolating close contacts locally.

Ultimately the system will need to rely, in part, on trust. We know Australians are generally very compliant, and many people will be desperate to travel again and reunite with family and friends. The majority will be likely to comply with the requirements to facilitate keeping travel open.

The system will be safe enough — and that’s all we need going forward.

What about other household members?

One question yet to be answered is whether everyone else in the house has to quarantine if housing a returned traveller.

With the risk of a fully vaccinated returnee being positive very low, so too is the risk to the household. If they do return a positive test on one of their test days, their household members may also be required to quarantine. Rapid Antigen Tests might be useful for early detection of infection in these cases.

Another question is whether we will still have offshore screening, requiring a negative test prior to departure for Australia?

The finer details will emerge and probably change over time as we collect data and manage changing risks. We’ll probably start conservatively and then gradually open things up more and more as we learn which components of risk mitigation are proportionate.

Which states will go first?

International travel will open to states and territories gradually as they reach 80% of over-16s fully vaccinated. So we won’t have to wait until all jurisdictions have individually hit the threshold.

Based on vaccination uptake rates, the ACT and NSW will likely be the first to open, followed by Victoria.

Tasmania is still tracking well but other states are lagging behind. Queensland and Western Australia will probably be the last to open their borders.

This is broadly in line with the national plan, but is coming probably a month or two earlier than looked possible in June. Vaccination rates, particularly in NSW, Victoria and the ACT, have been spurred on by significant COVID outbreaks. States are also assessing the distribution of vaccine coverage to ensure there are no parts of the community left behind by the time of opening.

What about travel bubbles?

The Prime Minister flagged potential bubble arrangements with countries like New Zealand where there’d be no quarantine requirements. The list of such countries will likely change over time, depending on circulating variants and country risk profiles.

We’re probably heading in the direction of eventually not requiring quarantine for returnees at all, only testing. For now, it’s clear we’re moving towards a system that manages risks rather than operating with zero risk tolerance.

Will contact tracers be able to cope?

As fully vaccinated people contribute less to transmission and are at less risk of severe COVID-19 symptoms, all states and territories will progressively shift the risk settings that underpin contact tracing. We have used comprehensive contact tracing, casting the epidemiological net wide to ensure not one contact of a case who might have contracted the virus was missed.

The chance of someone being positive drops away the more casual the exposure. Once you no longer have to be fearful of missing even just one case, we can make the net smaller and just trace the people at highest risk.

Read more:
Worksafe’s hotel quarantine breach penalties are a warning for other employers to keep workers safe from COVID

We might reach a stage where even close contacts just have to get a test, without having to quarantine.

This shift brings with it some risk of cases to the community, but we’re likely to have an ongoing, even if low, level of cases in the community. A low rate of introduction across international borders will not materially add to that. It’s about managing risk and being much more selective about identifying who’s at risk in a highly vaccinated population.

What about new variants from overseas?

Watching what variants are circulating will be a priority and some border rules changes might be needed if new risks are identified. For example, stricter arrangements for people arriving from “high-risk” areas where a particularly worrisome variant has emerged.

The system can be adapted for changing risks. There might be more transmissible variants which emerge, but we also might start using next-generation COVID vaccines which are a better fit for variants and precautions can be dialled down.

Being highly vaccinated allows Australia to move away from the ultra-conservative ways we’ve had to manage the pandemic previously, and allows us to start reopening to the world.

Catherine Bennett receives funding from the NHMRC and MRFF. Catherine was also an independent advisor on the AstraZeneca Vaccine Advisory Committee.

– ref. Australia’s international borders to reopen from November. It’s one big step towards living with COVID – https://theconversation.com/australias-international-borders-to-reopen-from-november-its-one-big-step-towards-living-with-covid-169094

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

Scott Morrison has promoted two of his closest allies in a reshuffle that follows Christian Porter’s recent departure from the ministry.

Immigration minister Alex Hawke moves from the outer ministry into cabinet, while Ben Morton goes being an assistant minister into the outer ministry.

As expected, energy minister Angus Taylor retains the industry part of Porter’s old portfolio.

Taylor was installed as acting minister when Porter was forced to resign after he refused to disclose the names of donors who helped him finance his legal action against the ABC.

Taylor becomes minister for industry, energy and emissions reduction.

However the science part of Porter’s former portfolio is being hived off and given to defence industry minister Melissa Price, who adds science and technology to her other responsibilities.

Morrison said he had asked Taylor “to focus on the critical supply chain initiatives from the recent Quad and the unique role Australia can play based on our national strengths in areas such as critical minerals”, working with resources minister Keith Pitt.

Read more:
Gladys Berejiklian quits premiership amid ICAC inquiry into links with former MP

Hawke, who has been a Morrison’s numbers man and close associate for years, doesn’t change his responsibilities for immigration, citizenship, migration services and multicultural Affairs, but fills the cabinet spot that Porter had.

Morrison said that “pleasingly” his elevation brought the immigration portfolio back into cabinet.

“Minister Hawke did an absolutely extraordinary job most recently in the evacuation from Kabul,” Morrison told a news conference.

Morton, who has been assistant minister to Morrison, goes into the ministry as special minister of state, minister for the public service, and minister assisting the prime minister and cabinet. Morrison said this would take in and expand Morton’s current responsibilities.

Read more:
VIDEO: Michelle Grattan on the Nationals and climate policy, the push for independent candidates, and Malcolm Turnbull

A former Liberal party director in Western Australia, Morton is a close confidant of Morrison’s.

Tim Wilson, from Victoria, has been promoted from the backbench to assistant minister to the minister for industry, energy and emissions reduction.

Attacking the reshuffle, Anthony Albanese said Morrison had “used it as an opportunity to reward his mates”. He said Hawke was one of the few people in the Liberal party close to Morrison.

Albanese said the industry ministry was a full time job but Morrison had chosen to promote Taylor into that position “on top of his existing responsibilities […] which have proven too much for him.”

Read more:
Grattan on Friday: To go or not to go — Morrison grapples with Glasgow

He said that on the same day Gladys Berejiklian resigned over an ICAC investigation, Taylor – who has been the subject of various controversies – had been promoted.

“This is yet another reminder of how so many people in Mr Morrison’s government are walking, talking reminders of the need for a national anti-corruption commission.”

Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Promotions for Morrison allies in post-Porter ministerial reshuffle – https://theconversation.com/promotions-for-morrison-allies-in-post-porter-ministerial-reshuffle-169104

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andy Marks, Pro Vice-Chancellor, Strategy, Government and Alliances, Western Sydney University

In announcing her intention to resign as NSW premier today, Gladys Berejiklian took the, “I have been given no option” option.

Her actions followed confirmation by the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) that it would continue its public inquiry into whether she engaged in conduct that “constituted or involved a breach of public trust”.

The ICAC investigation relates to Berejiklian’s “personal relationship” with the former Liberal member for Wagga Wagga, Daryl Maguire.

At issue, according to ICAC, is whether she was in a “position of conflict between her public duties and private interests” in the promise or awarding of public funding for projects in Maguire’s electorate.

In her parting statement, Berejiklian was at pains to emphasise she has “always acted with the highest level of integrity”. She described the matters involving the ICAC inquiry as “historic”, noting she has “been the subject of numerous attacks […] by political opponents over the last 12 months.”

A record of accountability and delivery

Berejiklian’s statement focused substantially on control, timing and choice. This is significant.

For a decision that has profound implications for a state enduring the most severe public health and socioeconomic events in its history, her deferral of the decision to ICAC’s agenda was notable.

Her hand, she said, was forced. The timing? “Out of [her] control”. The decision? “Against every instinct in [her] being.” The choice? “ICAC’s prerogative”.

The acquiescence of responsibility in resignation is uncharacteristic for a premier who has forged a path defined by clear policy objectives, accountability and delivery. Those traits are largely a matter of public record.

Through her parliamentary career – since being elected in 2003 as the member for the northern Sydney electorate of Willoughby, then as the minister for industrial relations and transport, and later as treasurer and premier – Berejiklian has overseen major initiatives.

Read more:
Brand Gladys: how ICAC revelations hurt Berejiklian’s ‘school captain’ image

Among them were the 2012 implementation of electronic transport ticketing, the 2015 return to budget surplus, the 2018 Western Sydney City Deal and the 2019 opening of the Sydney Metro Northwest.

Her early management of the COVID-19 pandemic – through rapid contact tracing and agile testing regimes – was seen as further confirmation of her success, with the Australian Financial Review Magazine going so far as to herald her, “The woman who saved Australia”.

Equally, the premier’s presiding over a AAA credit rating set the state up for a large-scale stimulus response to the pandemic’s economic disruption.

A catalyst for government expansion

For the leader of a Liberal-National administration, Berejiklian might be remembered for her championing of some distinctly uncharacteristic ideological approaches. Her “Premier’s Priorities” set a series of social policy benchmarks for her ministers and departmental heads in areas typically viewed as Labor terrain.

Protecting vulnerable children, reducing domestic violence, preventing street homelessness, and increasing Aboriginal access to education are among key measures where her impact, over the longer term, might be more felt than the headline-grabbing pursuit of hard infrastructure.

Against the Liberal tradition of “small government”, she became a catalyst for its expansion. In her orbit, a plethora of agencies and statutory bodies arose. With nuanced purpose and specific remits, the last two parliamentary terms alone have ushered in the Greater Sydney Commission, the Western City Aerotropolis Authority, the Western Parkland City Authority, Investment NSW and Resilience NSW, to name a few.

Read more:
The long history of political corruption in NSW — and the downfall of MPs, ministers and premiers

From an electoral standpoint, Berejiklian has also been a steady hand. Taking the reins from her popular predecessor, Mike Baird, in January 2017, she lost some ground at the March 2019 election. Her party dropped six seats and weathered a 2.3% two-party preferred swing, despite having an impressive budgetary record and infrastructure pipeline.

Since then, Berejiklian’s more recent responses to the pandemic have attracted criticism. Her government was viewed by some critics as slow to act in responding to the state’s Delta variant outbreak. On stimulus, NSW was left in the shade by commitments like the $5.3 billion social housing investment made by the Victorian government.

Her admission in late 2020 that pork barrelling is neither “illegal” or “unique to [her] government”, was also a significant misstep with an electorate bruised by perceived inequities in the distribution of public funds.

Who might replace Berejiklian?

Her successor will confront considerable challenges aside from the state’s protracted public health situation. The newly installed Labor leader, Chris Minns, is also making inroads in critical electoral battlegrounds like western Sydney.

Minns’ focus on engaging with large areas of Sydney’s west impacted by hard lockdowns and economic disruption will be difficult to counter for any incoming Liberal-National premier. The new leader will also need to consolidate a joint-party room destabilised by Berejiklian’s departure.

Who that new premier might be is a matter for conjecture. Treasurer Dominic Perrottet, a conservative faction figure, is viewed by many as a leading contender. He has been a vocal critic of the federal government’s approach to economic support during the pandemic.

Late last year, he also ventured into commentary on Sydney’s urban aesthetics. And in the past week announced a $5 billion funding package for western Sydney.

Others in the Coalition have a case for leadership. Rob Stokes, a moderate, has championed a wider view of planning and public space in a portfolio critical to a state contending with rapid urban growth and questions of sustainability.

The firebrand transport minister, Andrew Constance, might rethink his commitment to bow out of state politics and test his leadership credentials with colleagues.

And Stuart Ayres, the moderate faction minister for western Sydney, may also prove compelling to peers who view him as a steady set of hands with deep ties to a key constituency.

For now, though, the ripples of Berejiklian’s announcement still need to play out.

In taking the “no option” option, she has made her own irreconcilable challenges on timing a matter for her colleagues to consider, as well. We’ll know the ramifications of that in coming days. The outgoing premier’s legacy, however, is something that will take much longer to determine.

Read more:
As a NSW premier falls and SA guts its anti-corruption commission, what are the lessons for integrity bodies in Australia?

Andy Marks does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Berejiklian’s downfall derailed a career built on accountability and control. Now, who will replace her? – https://theconversation.com/berejiklians-downfall-derailed-a-career-built-on-accountability-and-control-now-who-will-replace-her-169093