Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Christopher Scanlon, Senior Lecturer in Communication, Deakin University

Which federal MP spends the most on Facebook advertising?

If you guessed Prime Minister Scott Morrison or Labor leader Anthony Albanese — or even headline-grabbing backbenchers Craig Kelly or Andrew Laming — you would be wrong. Way off, in fact.

No, the biggest spender on Facebook advertising — for the 90 day period between 20 June to 17 September 2021 — was deputy Labor leader, Richard Marles.

As recent scandals around the 2016 US presidential elections and the Brexit vote show, knowing how those in the political sphere spend their advertising dollars is key to maintaining trust and integrity in our political system. This has never been more important in an age where political messages can be targeted to particular audiences with laser-like precision.

Facebook’s Ad Library

I got the data for my study from Facebook’s Ad Library, a publicly accessible database of ads which are served up across Facebook, the Facebook-owned Instagram, Facebook Messenger and Facebook’s Audience Network, which is used to run ads within games and apps beyond Facebook’s platforms. The database is searchable by advertiser, location and keywords and can be filtered for issues, elections or politics.

Unless you specify otherwise, Facebook ads are automatically placed wherever its algorithm “decides” they should be placed.

Facebook launched its ad library in 2019. This came in the wake the 2016 US presidential election where the social network’s advertisements were used to influence the outcome.

Read more:
Fact check US: What is the impact of Russian interference in the US presidential election?

The ad library launched in Australia in March 2020.

By making ads on Facebook’s platforms, particularly those relating to elections and politics, accessible, the social media giant is attempting to improve transparency about who spends how much and on what issues.

Hey, big spender

My data analysis reveals Marles spent A$45,056 advertising on the social media site in the three months to 17 September 2021.

That’s more than double the next highest lower house MP advertising on Facebook, assistant defence minister Andrew Hastie. He spent $17,251 over the same period.

The adverts run by Marles focused on campaigning against proposed changes to the National Disability Insurance Scheme, campaigning against Geelong mayor and local Liberal candidate Stephanie Asher, and advocating for a federal anti-corruption commission.

Morrison doesn’t even rank in the top ten Facebook advertisers in federal parliament, coming in at number 15, while Albanese is ranked 12th. Perhaps the leaders’ relatively low ranking is not surprising. If you are a leader, you have a greater platform to get your message out without having to spend up big on Facebook ads.

It’s impossible to say exactly what you get for this money, as your ads are effectively bidding against other advertisers seeking the same audience. The cost per 1,000 impressions varies constantly. During an election campaign, the costs is likely to go higher, but still be much cheaper than traditional newspaper and TV advertising.

What about senators and premiers?

The data for the past three months shows MPs in the House of Representatives are bigger spenders than their Senate colleagues.

In the upper house, the biggest spenders on Facebook ads over the past three months were Liberal senators Zed Seselja and Concetta Fierravanti-Wells, who spent $18,280 and $17,192 respectively. Labor senator Kristina Keneally was the third highest ad spender, dropping $16,667 on Facebook ads.

And the state premiers? Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews spent $13,897, well behind his South Australian counterpart Steven Marshall, who spent $34,471.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian does not come up in the Facebook Ad Library, suggesting her Facebook page is not used to buy advertisements on the platform.

What information can you get?

When you search the ad library, users can see summaries about how much was spent, where it was spent and the ad copy and images that were displayed to Facebook users. Facebook also gives an indication of the potential reach of each ad and the number of screens it appeared on.

Marles’ adverts, for example, reached a potential audience of 100,000–500,000 people. In practice, though, his best-performing ad in the past three months was seen by 20,000–25,000 people, while his poorest performing ad was seen by 1,000–2,000.

You can can also search and view advertisements by political parties and organisations.

Here, the ALP dominates, spending $173,067 over the past three months, in comparison to the Liberal Party, which spent $23,167. Pauline Hanson’s One Nation comes in third, with a Facebook ad spend of $10,118.

The spending by political parties is modest compared to some non-governmental organisations. For example, Greenpeace Australia Pacific spent $327,117, ahead of Amnesty International Australia ($255,052) and the Australian Conservation Foundation ($253,260).

How the ad library could be better

Will Facebook’s steps toward improving transparency in public discussion and debate improve matters?

Perhaps, but at the moment it’s not the easiest tool to use, especially for the average user. To find out who spent the most among federal MPs requires entering the names manually. For a company that is otherwise obsessed about the user experience, the design of the ad library seems an afterthought.

And while you can create a link to the data, it doesn’t appear to update in real-time. The results are a snapshot of ad spend, frozen in time. This means the data is always slightly behind and users are required to enter the data anew to create a more up-to-date comparison. Facebook does have the capacity to provide real-time access to precise numbers if they so wished.

A bigger problem is Facebook’s system relies on individuals and organisations to self-report if an advertisement is related to social or political issues. This is required by Australian law, but those seeking to affect the outcome of election may just take the chance of avoiding such scrutiny.

For example, last October, Clive Palmer ran an ad about border closures titled “Down with the wall!!!” without a disclaimer. It was eventually removed by Facebook, but not before it had been served up in 10,000–15,000 Facebook feeds.

Read more:
After Clive Palmer’s $60 million campaign, limits on political advertising are more important than ever

Nevertheless, Facebook’s efforts to improve transparency around ad spending and reach is arguably more open and democratic than traditional advertising. Marles’ and other advertisers’ ad spends might raise eyebrows, but at the very least they’re being upfront about what they’re spending.

Perhaps it’s time we insisted all social and political advertising, both online and off, achieved similar levels of transparency.

I currently purchase Facebook ads to promote books I have co-authored.

– ref. Which federal MP is spending the most on Facebook advertising? (Hint: it is not Craig Kelly) – https://theconversation.com/which-federal-mp-is-spending-the-most-on-facebook-advertising-hint-it-is-not-craig-kelly-168197

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Whitehouse, Bennett Chair of Autism, Telethon Kids Institute, The University of Western Australia

A therapy for infants showing early signs of autism reduces the chance of the child meeting diagnostic criteria for autism at three years of age. That’s according to our new research, published today in the journal JAMA Pediatrics.

Therapy for children with autism often begins after receiving a diagnosis, which usually doesn’t occur until after the child turns two.

Our findings suggest starting therapy during the first year of life, when the brain and mind are developing rapidly, may provide even greater benefits.

Infants who received the therapy at 12 months of age were re-assessed at age three. They had fewer behaviours of autism, such as social communication difficulties and repetitive behaviours, compared to infants who didn’t receive the therapy.

Infants who received the therapy were also less likely to meet criteria for an overall diagnosis of autism when they were three.

Autism diagnosis

Like all neurodevelopmental conditions, autism is diagnosed using “deficit-focused” diagnostic criteria. In other words, children are assessed on what they can’t do.

The Diagnostics and Statistical Manual is the authoritative guide describing the behaviours we use to diagnose neurodevelopmental and psychiatric conditions. It specifies individuals must have “persistent deficits” in social communication and behavioural interaction to receive a diagnosis of autism spectrum.

Read more:
What causes autism? What we know, don’t know and suspect

Significantly more children are now recognised as having difficulties learning social communication skills than previously. This has led to an increase in the numbers of children being diagnosed with autism – now estimated to be 2% of the population.

These social and communication difficulties, restricted behavioural repertoire and sensory issues, can present significant barriers to relationships, education and employment as they mature. So reducing these challenges can be important to helping individuals thrive into adulthood.

The aim of the therapy we trialled in our study was to help support social communication skills early in life, with the aim of reducing these long-term barriers.

The therapy

The therapy, called iBASIS-VIPP, was based on the Video Interaction for Positive Parenting (VIPP) program. This program was adapted by our colleagues in the United Kingdom to specifically support social communication development.

The therapy is parent-led, which means parents and caregivers, who are the most prominent and important people in their babies’ lives, are trained to deliver it.

iBASIS-VIPP uses video-feedback to help parents recognise their baby’s communication cues so they can respond in a way that builds their social communication development.

Parents are videoed interacting with their baby in everyday situations, such as feeding and playing. The trained therapist then provides guidance to the parent about how their baby is communicating with them, and they can communicate back to have back-and-forth conversations.

We know these back-and-forth conversations are crucial to support early social communication development, and are a precursor to more complex skills, such as verbal language.

Importantly, parent-infant interactions are in no way the “cause” of autism. Infants are born with developmental vulnerabilities, which other studies tell us are likely of genetic origin.

Read more:
It’s 25 years since we redefined autism – here’s what we’ve learnt

This therapy focuses on supporting parent-child interactions as a way of enriching their social environment, creating learning opportunities for the child. And this is tailored to the child’s unique abilities.

The therapy takes the approach that children who develop differently experience the world and learn skills in different ways. By understanding unique abilities and interests of each baby, we can use these strengths as a foundation for future development.

What we found

In our study, we identified 103 infants in Perth and Melbourne who were showing early behavioural signs of autism, such as reduced eye contact, imitation or social smiling.

Fifty of the infants were randomised to receive the iBASIS-VIPP therapy for five months. The other 53 infants received the usual services they would receive in their local community, such as allied health therapy, working with psychologists, speech pathologists and occupational therapists.

The babies then received developmental assessments at around 18 months of age, two years, and three years.

When the babies were aged three, independent clinicians who did not know which therapies the children had received, reviewed all of the developmental information collected. And they determined whether the children met diagnostic criteria for autism.

The iBASIS-VIPP therapy was so effective in supporting children to learn social communication skills that only 6.7% of the children met diagnostic criteria for autism at age three years, compared to 20.5% of children who did not receive the therapy. That’s a reduction of two-thirds.

While most children in the study still had some level of developmental difficulties, the therapy supported the development of social communication skills. This meant they no longer met the criteria for a diagnosis.

The iBASIS-VIPP therapy led to increased parental responsiveness to their child’s unique communication. It also improved parent-reported language development, compared to the control group.

This is the first time a “pre-emptive” therapy – that is, a therapy provided before diagnosis – has shown an effect on autism diagnostic outcomes.

Read more:
We examined the research evidence on 111 autism early intervention approaches. Here’s what we found

What do the findings mean?

This therapy represents a new way of providing support to infants showing early developmental difficulties.

Many therapies for autism try to improve development by working with children directly to shape more “typical” behaviours.

By contrast, this therapy does not work with the child directly but with the social environment around the child. It adapts to each child’s unique differences, and helps them learn in a way that is best for them.

By doing so, this therapy was able to support social communication skills and behavioural expression to the point that infants were less likely to meet the “deficit-focused” diagnostic criteria for autism.

This finding provides strong evidence for a new model of how we provide clinical support to children with developmental differences.

Rather than waiting until a diagnosis to start therapy – typically at two years of age at the earliest – we need to identify developmental differences as early as possible. Then we need to provide developmental supports that nurture each child’s strengths.

At its most basic, this is a change of clinical support from “wait and see” to “identify and act”.

Read more:
Treating suspected autism at 12 months of age improves children’s language skills

The finding also emphasises the importance of providing supports to children based on functional difficulties, rather than the presence or absence of a diagnosis. This approach is consistent with Australia’s National Disability Insurance Scheme.

By understanding who a child is (their strengths and challenges) rather than what they are (a diagnostic label), we can provide individualised therapy supports that will help them towards their full potential.

Andrew Whitehouse receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council, the Australian Research Council, the Autism Cooperative Research Centre, the Angela Wright Bennett Foundation, the McCusker Charitable Foundation and JVCKENWOOD Corporation.

Jonathan Green receives funding from the UK Medical Research Council, the UK National Institute for Health Research and the Telethon-Perth Children’s Hospital Research Fund. He is Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, University of Manchester and Manchester Academic Health Sciences Centre. Hon Consultant, Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital, and NIHR Senior Investigator. The views expressed are his and do not necessarily those of the NHS, the NIHR or the Department of Health and Social Care.

Kristelle Hudry works for La Trobe University. She has received funding from two La Trobe University Research Focus Areas (Understanding Disease, Building Health Communities), the Cooperative Research Centre for Living with Autism (AutismCRC), the Australian Government Department of Social Services (DSS), the National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA), and JVCKENWOOD Corporation. She receives consultancy fees for training on the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS) and for her Associate Editor role with Research in Developmental Disabilities (RIDD).

– ref. Therapy for babies showing early signs of autism reduces the chance of clinical diagnosis at age 3 – https://theconversation.com/therapy-for-babies-showing-early-signs-of-autism-reduces-the-chance-of-clinical-diagnosis-at-age-3-167146

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Croucher, Professor and Head of School of Communication, Journalism, and Marketing, Massey University

After five weeks in the strictest lockdown, Auckland will move to level 3 restrictions from midnight on Tuesday, for at least two weeks.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said the decision was based on low community spread and an accelerated vaccination rollout. A targeted vaccination campaign will now focus on about 23,000 people in Auckland who are older than 65 but have not yet received their first dose.

GPs and pharmacies are offering vaccinations, walk-in or drive-through vaccination centres have been set up, and mobile vaccination buses are delivering doses throughout Auckland.

According to the Ministry of Health, 37% of New Zealand’s eligible population are now fully vaccinated, while 72% have received their first dose. But as our new research shows, about 20% choose not to be vaccinated, often because they remain unsure about vaccine safety.

Barriers to vaccination uptake

While the vaccine rollout has been criticised for being sluggish, it picked up pace since the start of the outbreak in August.

But a significant number of people continue to say they are not likely to get the vaccine. A recent report commissioned by the Ministry of Health shows 71% of those unvaccinated at the time were intending to get vaccinated. In this group, 67% of Māori and 62% of Pacific respondents said they would get vaccinated.

But 20% of unvaccinated people said they were unlikely to have a vaccine, and of those, 11% would “definitely not” get vaccinated.

A similar study in July showed only four in five New Zealanders said they planned on getting vaccinated.

Read more:
Four in five New Zealanders plan to get vaccinated, but many people want more information about vaccine safety

Both studies point to numerous barriers to uptake, such as lack of exposure to the virus, misinformation about vaccination and lack of confidence in the vaccine. The main reasons for being unsure continue to be concerns about long-term effects, safety and waiting to see if others have side effects.

Our work, conducted between June and August 2021, examined two of these barriers: misunderstandings about the vaccine and confidence in the vaccine.

We found 76.2% of our participants identified as physically able to be vaccinated. The remainder (23.8%) identified as physically unable to receive a vaccine due to pre-existing medical conditions or philosophical views.

But of the latter group only 28.9% actually meet the criteria set by groups such as the Ministry of Health or the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The people in this group most often asserted they could not get the jab because they have asthma, want to get pregnant or their doctor or a religious leader told them they shouldn’t. This lack of understanding about who can get the vaccine is a challenge for the vaccination rollout and the government.

Vaccine confidence is key to uptake

As the rollout continues and the government pursues its elimination strategy, it must clearly address issues about who can and cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons.

When asked if they would get the COVID-19 vaccine, 70.9% of those who said they are physically or medically unable to do so said they would eventually get it if they had to.

Of those who said they are able to get vaccinated, 76.9% said they would get the jab. Split by political affiliations, 42.5% of National, 66.4% of Labour, 49.5% of Green, 67.5% of Māori Party, 40.6% of “other” political party and 73.7% of non-affiliated voters said they would get vaccinated.

In terms of demographics, 65.2% of Pākehā, 57.7% of Māori, 33.5% of Pasifika and 72.4% of the “other” group (Indian/Asian) said they were likely to get vaccinated. These results for Pākehā, Māori and Pasifika are marginally lower than those reported in the Ministry of Health study.

The critical element to understanding the patterns in our research was vaccine confidence. We found significant differences in confidence in COVID-19 vaccines between ethnic groups in New Zealand. Pacific respondents had the lowest levels of confidence, while those who identified as “other” had the highest.

Māori and Pasifika communities are particularly vulnerable to COVID-19. There is a growing anti-vax movement within some parts of the Pacific community, which Pacific leaders and communities are currently addressing.

Recent modelling has shown that unless New Zealand can get its vaccination rate up to 90% and above, the threat of large-scale outbreaks, mass hospitalisations and thousands of deaths is possible once borders reopen.

Read more:
At least four in five New Zealanders will have to be vaccinated before border controls can be fully relaxed

To improve our nation’s vaccine rollout, the government should expand messaging on who can and cannot get vaccinated. Further messaging about the safety of the vaccine must continue with Pacific communities.

While the government has discussed the safety of the Pfizer vaccine, it’s clearly not enough. Additional work must be done at the grass-roots level (community centres, churches) to demonstrate the safety and increase confidence in the vaccine.

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. New Zealand has ramped up vaccination rates, but too many people remain concerned about vaccine safety – https://theconversation.com/new-zealand-has-ramped-up-vaccination-rates-but-too-many-people-remain-concerned-about-vaccine-safety-167984

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rachael Helene Nolan, Postdoctoral research fellow, Western Sydney University

Green shoots emerging from black tree trunks is an iconic image in the days following bushfires, thanks to the remarkable ability of many native plants to survive even the most intense flames.

But in recent years, the length, frequency and intensity of Australian bushfire seasons have increased, and will worsen further under climate change. Droughts and heatwaves are also projected to increase, and climate change may also affect the incidence of pest insect outbreaks, although this is difficult to predict.

How will our ecosystems cope with this combination of threats? In our recently published paper, we looked to answer this exact question — and the news isn’t good.

We found while many plants are really good at withstanding certain types of fire, the combination of drought, heatwaves and pest insects may push many fire-adapted plants to the brink in the future. The devastating Black Summer fires gave us a taste of this future.

What happens when fires become more frequent?

Ash forests are one of the most iconic in Australia, home to some of the tallest flowering plants on Earth. When severe fire occurs in these forests, the mature trees are killed and the forest regenerates entirely from the seed that falls from the dead canopy.

These regrowing trees, however, do not produce seed reliably until they’re 15 years old. This means if fire occurs again during this period, the trees will not regenerate, and the ash forest will collapse.

This would have serious consequences for the carbon stored in these trees, and the habitat these forests provide for animals.

Southeast Australia has experienced multiple fires since 2003, which means there’s a large area of regrowing ash forests across the landscape, especially in Victoria.

The Black Summer bushfires burned parts of these young forests, and nearly 10,000 football fields of ash forest was at risk of collapse. Thankfully, approximately half of this area was recovered through an artificial seeding program.

What happens when fire seasons get longer?

Longer fire seasons means there’s a greater chance species will burn at a time of year that’s outside the historical norm. This can have devastating consequences for plant populations.

For example, out-of-season fires, such as in winter, can delay maturation of the Woronora beard-heath compared to summer fires, because of their seasonal requirements for releasing and germinating seeds. This means the species needs longer fire-free intervals when fires occur out of season.

Read more:
Entire hillsides of trees turned brown this summer. Is it the start of ecosystem collapse?

The iconic gymea lily, a post-fire flowering species, is another plant under similar threat. New research showed when fires occur outside summer, the gymea lily didn’t flower as much and changed its seed chemistry.

While this resprouting species might persist in the short term, consistent out-of-season fires could have long-term impacts by reducing its reproduction and, therefore, population size.

When drought and heatwaves get more severe

In the lead up to the Black Summer fires, eastern Australia experienced the hottest and driest year on record. The drought and associated heatwaves triggered widespread canopy die-off.

Extremes of drought and heat can directly kill plants. And this increase in dead vegetation may increase the intensity of fires.

Another problem is that by coping with drought and heat stress, plants may deplete their stored energy reserves, which are vital for resprouting new leaves following fire. Depletion of energy reserves may result in a phenomenon called “resprouting exhaustion syndrome”, where fire-adapted plants no longer have the reserves to regenerate new leaves after fire.

Therefore, fire can deliver the final blow to resprouting plants already suffering from drought and heat stress.

Drought and heatwaves could also be a big problem for seeds. Many species rely on fire-triggered seed germination to survive following fire, such as many species of wattles, banksias and some eucalypts.

But drought and heat stress may reduce the number of seeds that get released, because they limit flowering and seed development in the lead up to bushfires, or trigger plants to release seeds prematurely.

For example, in Australian fire-prone ecosystems, temperatures between 40℃ and 100℃ are required to break the dormancy of seeds stored in soil and trigger germination. But during heatwaves, soil temperatures can be high enough to break these temperature thresholds. This means seeds could be released before the fire, and they won’t be available to germinate after the fire hits.

Heatwaves can also reduce the quality of seeds by deforming their DNA. This could reduce the success of seed germination after fire.

What about insects? The growth of new foliage following fire or drought is tasty to insects. If pest insect outbreaks occur after fire, they may remove all the leaves of recovering plants. This additional stress may push plants over their limit, resulting in their death.

This phenomenon has more typically been obverved in eucalypts following drought, where repeated defoliation (leaf loss) by pest insects triggered dieback in recovering trees.

When threats pile up

We expect many vegetation communities will remain resilient in the short-term, including most eucalpyt species.

But even in these resilient forests, we expect to see some changes in the types of species present in certain areas and changes to the structure of vegetation (such as the size of trees).

As climate change progresses, many fire-prone ecosystems will be pushed beyond their historical limits. Our new research is only the beginning — how plants will respond is still highly uncertain, and more research is needed to untangle the interacting effects of fire, drought, heatwaves and pest insects.

We need to rapidly reduce carbon emissions before testing the limits of our ecosystems to recover from fire.

Read more:
5 remarkable stories of flora and fauna in the aftermath of Australia’s horror bushfire season

Rachael Nolan receives funding from the Australian Research Council, NSW Rural Fire Service, ACT Parks and Conservation and the Hermon Slade Foundation. She is a member of the NSW Bushfire Risk Management Research Hub, which is supported by funds from the NSW Department of Planning, Industry and Environment.

Andrea Leigh receives funding from the Australian Research Council. She is affiliated with The University of Technology Sydney.

Mark Ooi receives funding from the ARC. and the Commonwealth Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment. He is a member of the NSW Bushfire Risk Management Research Hub, which is supported by funds from the NSW Department of Planning, Industry and Environment.

Ross Bradstock receives funding from the NSW Rural Fire Service and the NSW Department of Planning, Industry and Environment via the NSW Bushfire Risk Management Research Hub, the Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC and the ARC.

Tim Curran receives funding from the New Zealand Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE), Fire and Emergency New Zealand, the Miss E L Hellaby Indigenous Grasslands Research Trust, Marlborough District Council, and the Lincoln University Argyle Fund. Tim is the President of the New Zealand Ecological Society.

Tom Fairman has received funding from Australian Research Council and has previously worked in forest management and research for the Victorian Government.

Víctor Resco de Dios receives funding from MICINN and Velux Fundation.

– ref. Climate change is testing the resilience of native plants to fire, from ash forests to gymea lilies – https://theconversation.com/climate-change-is-testing-the-resilience-of-native-plants-to-fire-from-ash-forests-to-gymea-lilies-167367

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Chen Zhao, Research associate, University of Tasmania

The Antarctic ice sheet is the largest mass of ice in the world, holding around 60% of the world’s fresh water. If it all melted, global average sea levels would rise by 58 metres. But scientists are grappling with exactly how global warming will affect this great ice sheet.

This knowledge gap was reflected in the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It contains projections from models in which important processes affecting the ice sheets, known as feedbacks and tipping points, are absent because scientific understanding is lacking.

Projected sea level rise will have widespread effects in Australia and around the world. But current projections of ice sheet melt are so wide that developing ways for societies to adapt will be incredibly expensive and difficult.

If the world is to effectively adapt to sea level rise with minimal cost, we must quickly address the uncertainty surrounding Antarctica’s melting ice sheet. This requires significant investment in scientific capacity.

The great unknown

Ice loss from the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets was the largest contributor to sea level rise in recent decades. Even if all greenhouse gas emissions ceased today, the heat already in the ocean and atmosphere would cause substantial ice loss and a corresponding rise in sea levels. But exactly how much, and how fast, remains unclear.

Scientific understanding of ice sheet processes, and of the variability of the forces that affect ice sheets, is incredibly limited. This is largely because much of the ice sheets are in very remote and harsh environments, and so difficult to access.

This lack of information is one of the main sources of uncertainty in the models used to estimate ice mass loss.

At the moment, quantifying how much the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets will contribute to sea level rise primarily involves an international scientific collaboration known as the “Ice Sheet Model Intercomparison Project for CMIP6”, or ISMIP6, of which we are part.

The project includes experts in ice sheet and climate modelling and observations. It produces computer simulations of what might happen if the polar regions melt under different climate scenarios, to improve projections of sea level rise.

The project also investigates ice sheet–climate feedbacks. In other words, it looks at how processes in the oceans and atmosphere will affect the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, including whether the changes might cause them to collapse – leading to large and sudden increases in sea level.

Read more:
Anatomy of a heatwave: how Antarctica recorded a 20.75°C day last month

Melting from below

Research has identified so-called “basal melt” as the most significant driver of Antarctic ice loss. Basal melt refers to the melting of ice shelves from underneath, and in the case of Antarctica, interactions with the ocean are thought to be the main cause. But gathering scientific observations beneath ice shelves is a major logistical challenge, leading to a dearth of data about this phenomenon.

This and other constraints mean the rate of progress in ice sheet modelling has been insufficient to date, and so active ice sheet models are not included in climate models.

Scientists must instead make projections using the ice sheet models in isolation. This hinders scientific attempts to accurately simulate the feedback between ice and climate.

For example, it creates much uncertainty in how the interaction between the ocean and the ice shelf will affect ice mass loss, and how the very cold, fresh meltwater will make its way back to global oceans and cause sea level rise, and potentially disrupt currents.

Despite the uncertainties ISMIP6 is dealing with, it has published a series of recent research including a key paper published in Nature in May. This found if the world met the Paris Agreement target of limiting global warming to 1.5℃ this century, land ice melt would cause global sea level rise of about 13cm by 2100, in the most optimistic scenario. This is compared to a rise of 25cm under the world’s current emissions-reduction pledges.

The study also outlines a pessimistic, but still plausible, basal melt scenario for Antarctica in which sea levels could be five times higher than in the main scenarios.

The breadth of such findings underpinned sea level projections in the latest IPCC report. The Antarctic ice sheet once again represented the greatest source of uncertainty in these projections.

The below graph shows the IPCC’s latest sea level projections. The shaded area reflects the large uncertainties in models using the same basic data sets and approaches. The dotted line reflects deep uncertainty about tipping points and thresholds in ice sheet stability.

IPCC reports are intended to guide global policy-makers in coming years and decades. But the uncertainties about ice melt from Antarctica limit the usefulness of projections by the IPCC and others.

Read more:
This is the most sobering report card yet on climate change and Earth’s future. Here’s what you need to know

Dealing with uncertainty

Future sea level rise poses big challenges such as human displacement, infrastructure loss, interference with agriculture, a potential influx of climate refugees, and coastal habitat degradation.

It’s crucial that ice sheet models are improved, tested robustly against real-world observations, then integrated into the next generation of international climate models – including those being developed in Australia.

International collaborations such as NECKLACE and RISE are seeking to coordinate international effort between models and observations. Significant investment across these projects is needed.

Sea levels will continue rising in the coming decades and centuries. Ice sheet projections must be narrowed down to ensure current and future generations can adapt safely and efficiently.

The authors would like to acknowledge the contributions of Dr Ben Galton-Fenzi, Dr Rupert Gladstone, Dr Thomas Zwinger and David Reilly to the research from which this article draws.

Chen Zhao works under the Australian Antarctic Program Partnership, Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, University of Tasmania. She receives grant funding from the Australian Government as part of the Antarctic Science Collaboration Initiative program (ASCI000002).

Rupert Gladstone receives grant funding from the Finnish Government as part of the Coupled Ocean and Land ice Dynamics (COLD) consortium (Academy of Finland grant number 322430).

– ref. Scientists still don’t know how far melting in Antarctica will go – or the sea level rise it will unleash – https://theconversation.com/scientists-still-dont-know-how-far-melting-in-antarctica-will-go-or-the-sea-level-rise-it-will-unleash-166677

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Scott Davie, Lecturer in Piano, School of Music, Australian National University

On June 25 1910, Igor Stravinsky’s ballet The Firebird opened to acclaim at the Paris Opéra. The success propelled its composer, then aged 28, to international prominence, a position of influence he would retain for six decades.

The ballet’s myth-like storyline features a magical Firebird, who helps a young prince rescue a coterie of princesses from Kashchey, an evil sorcerer.

Based on the eponymous bird of Russian folklore, it has ultimately propagated some myths of its own – relating to the artistic ideals of the team who created it, and the narrative’s historical accuracy.

Most crucial, though, is the composer himself who, through successive elaborations of his own biography, engaged in myth-making on an extensive scale. Notable for what Stravinsky expert Richard Taruskin terms his “celebrated mendacity”, questions have lingered as to whether certain of the composer’s early musical ideas were as original as they seemed.

Conservative ‘modernists’

After The Firebird, Stravinsky’s early career was bolstered by the triumph of his next two works: Petrushka and The Rite of Spring. Given the impact of the last work in particular, it is customary to note Stravinsky’s pivotal influence on the development of musical modernism.

Yet in 1910, he was a largely untested novice. The Firebird was a production of the Ballets Russes, newly formed by its director, the Russian impresario Sergei Diaghilev. For over a decade, Diaghilev had been a leading member of a group known as “Mir iskusstva” (World of Art), the title of their short-lived magazine.

Their artistic ideals, however, were far from modern. A collection of conservatives, many were from aristocratic backgrounds with a tendency toward romantic nationalism. They were aligned against both the “realist” modernism of the previous generation, and the evolving spiritual modernism of fellow Russian composers like Scriabin. Their principles were those against which socialists would soon react.

In a series of ventures for Parisian audiences from 1906, Diaghilev looked to Russia’s past for his sources. After discovering how expensive opera was to produce, he settled exclusively on ballet from 1910. Again, however, his musical choices were initially conservative.

Repurposed myths

Magical birds are not without precedent in folklore, having featured in the childhood tales of many countries, such as Germany, where a similar creature appears in Grimm’s The Golden Bird.

Yet in Russia, the Firebird had a special significance, emerging as a nationalist symbol over the latter decades of the 19th century. Characterised as a bird of great beauty, it brought peril to those who tried to catch it or steal its glowing feathers.

In the Ballets Russes production, however, far from causing misfortune, when the young prince catches the Firebird it actually helps him.

Historians have noted the story is similar to lines from Russian poet Yakov Polonsky’s children’s poem, Winter Journey (1844). Yet the synopsis evidently is a conflation of two separate folk tales, developed by Mir iskusstva members as an export vehicle for foreign audiences.

Led by the choreographer Mikhail Fokine, the stories were repurposed by Alexandre Benois and Alexander Golovin, both important contributors to Ballets Russes design, and Nikolai Tcherepnin, the composer originally selected to write the Firebird’s music.

In short, the popular folk tale of Ivan-Tsarevich, and his quest for a beautiful princess (in which the Firebird features tangentially), was blended with a separate folk tale about the evil, immortal Kashchey, who dies at the hand of a prince who possesses a magical egg.

‘New’ music

Fokine, who by typical accounts was a difficult choreographer to work with, likely caused three composers to exit or decline the project. Hence, the fortuitous opening for Stravinsky, a student of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, the elder statesman of Russian music whose most progressive works were little known in the West.

According to Fokine’s autobiography, Stravinsky sat at the piano, improvising and accompanying as the choreographer first developed his ideas for the work. If this account is accurate, never again would the composer allow himself to appear so ancillary to the creative process.

The most noticeable element of Stravinsky’s score is the way harmonious, tonal music is given to the mortal characters – Ivan-Tsarevich and the princesses – while chromatic, non-tonal music underscores the supernatural others.

This clever device is, in fact, a Russian tradition. The source can be traced as far back as Mikhail Glinka’s opera Ruslan and Lyudmila (1842), where a strikingly non-tonal descending scale depicts the supernatural abduction of a bride from her traditional (and tonal) wedding feast.

Stravinsky, an observant student, had closely scrutinised the innovative, and increasingly non-tonal, musical works of Rimsky-Korsakov, where the device was also prevalent.

He elaborated on one of Rimsky’s theories to create what has been called a “ladder of thirds”. Analysis from recent decades by musicologist Taruskin, has detected this schematic underpinning large portions of The Firebird.

The weirdly alternating pattern of thirds generates the supernatural music of the introduction, the Firebird’s chromatic “swirls” and Kashchey’s motifs.

Most beautifully, it also provides the hushed musical transition from the underworld to the final tableau, where Ivan-Tsarevich and the princesses celebrate victory.

Yet for the mortal, tonal characters, Stravinsky, in places, incorporates folk melodies, another popular tradition among Russian composers.

Contrast Stravinsky’s setting of a folk-tune in the Khorovod of the Princesses from The Firebird, with Rimsky-Korsakov’s setting of the same melody in his Sinfonietta.

Stravinsky was always squeamish when questioned about his use of folk melodies, even flatly denying it. Yet as later analysis has shown, other works of this period, such as The Rite of Spring, feature them in abundance.

The influence of Rimsky-Korsakov can be noted in other ways, too, not least in his own opera about the very same Kashchey (1902), and his final opera, The Golden Cockerel (1908), also, tellingly, about a magical bird.

Indeed, if one wanted to really push the point, mention could be made passive of the notorious similarity of the Mt Triglav episode from Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera-ballet Mlada to Stravinsky’s Danse infernal
in The Firebird where, in short, the plagiarism seems breathtaking.

The ‘hit’

But that would miss the most important point: for audiences in the West, The Firebird was a hit. These fantastical tales of Russia’s past were woven, almost accidentally it seems, with a musical work that on foreign soil appeared unexpectedly modern.

The belated development of Russian music had for a century remained relatively hidden to the rest of the world. And after a long gestation, it was Stravinsky who revealed many of its treasures.

It was as if a baton had passed from one generation to the next, through the smallest of steps. The real genius of Stravinsky is that he was to run so far with it, and so quickly.

Scott Davie 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. Decoding the music masterpieces: Stravinsky’s The Firebird – https://theconversation.com/decoding-the-music-masterpieces-stravinskys-the-firebird-161582

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

The decision to move Auckland to alert level 3 from midnight on Tuesday is a calculated risk by the government. New daily cases in Auckland have stayed stubbornly high over the past week, a period when many of us had hoped to see them fall to single digits.

On a positive note, most of these new cases have been identified by contact tracing and many have been isolated before they tested positive, meaning they have had fewer chances to infect others.

On the other hand, a worrying few continue to test positive before being identified by contract tracers. Ideally we would like to see no more of these cases because they are much more likely to have been infectious in the community. We can’t be confident that the Delta outbreak is contained until these become few and far between.

This doesn’t mean level 4 has failed or that level 3 will. By the time this outbreak was detected on August 17, there were several hundred cases in the community. Level 4 put the brakes on that, but our contact tracers have struggled to extinguish the outbreak entirely.

At this stage, there still appears to be a low level of spread between households. Level 3 gives the virus more opportunities to spread and contact tracers will have to work harder to get ahead of cases.

The government will be hoping that case numbers are now small enough for contact tracing to focus on the suburbs where spread is still evident.

Read more:
With lockdowns easing for the rest of New Zealand, Auckland becomes the elimination frontline

Contact tracers are finding that most new cases are not being infected in essential workplaces or services but via extended family or friends. This means some increase in the number of workplaces and services operating at level 3 may be a relatively low-risk way to relax the lockdown, provided they carefully follow the appropriate procedures.

But it also means it’s absolutely crucial people continue to stick to their bubbles. The level of risk has reduced over the past five weeks but the danger has certainly not passed. We all need to resist the temptation to meet up with family or friends.

New cases beyond Auckland boundary

One of the unexpected cases was someone who tested positive while being held in custody after a court appearance. This man had been released from prison in Auckland on bail on September 8, returning home to Whakatīwai, which is outside the Auckland boundaries. He stayed at home, monitored electronically, until late last week when he returned to Auckland for a court appearance.

The most likely scenario is that he was infected as he left Auckland and has taken the virus home with him, passing it on to two primary school children in his household over the weekend of September 10-11. The two children would have been infectious at school last week so there is a high likelihood other children and parents associated with the school have caught the virus.

This is why the region has been put into its own level 4 restrictions for five days. This will allow time for testing and contact tracing to establish how widely the virus has spread there.

A more worrying possibility would be if the prisoner was infected in Whakatīwai by a family member. This could mean other cases were out in the community for some time. Whole-genome sequencing and testing in the community should tell us quickly if this was the case.

Where to from here

If this outbreak can’t be eliminated under level 3, it is unlikely Auckland will be able to return to level 2 for some time. The longer the outbreak goes on, the higher the risk it will eventually leak out of Auckland. This could send the whole country back into stricter alert levels while we complete the vaccination rollout, which is still months away.

In Auckland, more than 70% have had their first dose, but many still need their second. If there is a sustained growth in cases over the coming fortnight, the only real option would be to return to level 4 for a time to protect our health system.

The Australian states of Victoria and New South Wales are in this situation now with cases straining their health care systems. With no real prospect of elimination, they are now almost guaranteed to be under restrictions for several months.

Read more:
Whiteness in the time of COVID: Australia’s health services still leaving vulnerable communities behind

Whenever the government reduces alert levels, it shifts some of the responsibility for managing the outbreak to the public. There will certainly be relief at the easing of restrictions for some. But we need to enjoy the small additional freedoms that level 3 brings responsibly.

The fastest way to get out of lockdown is to eliminate this outbreak — and that relies on everyone continuing to stick to their bubble.

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.

Shaun Hendy is affiliated with the University of Auckland and has received funding from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) and Te Pūnaha Matatini, New Zealand’s Centre of Research Excellence in complex systems.

– ref. New Zealand government takes a calculated risk to relax Auckland’s lockdown while new cases continue to appear – https://theconversation.com/new-zealand-government-takes-a-calculated-risk-to-relax-aucklands-lockdown-while-new-cases-continue-to-appear-168269

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lara Herrero, Research Leader in Virology and Infectious Disease, Griffith University

Most people are wondering when and how the COVID pandemic will end and there are still no easy answers.

The word “endemic” is regularly mentioned, especially among public health leaders and experts as they discuss potential future scenarios. So, it’s important to define exactly it would mean for COVID to be endemic.

Scientists predict COVID will become endemic over time but there will still be sporadic outbreaks where it gets out of control. The transition from pandemic to endemic will likely play out differently in different locations around the world.

Read more:
Israel was a leader in the COVID vaccination race – so why are cases spiralling there?

‘Outbreak’, ‘Epidemic’, ‘Pandemic’ and ‘Endemic’

First let’s recap the public health terms Australians have been increasingly using in conversation over the last 18 months. These words cover the lifecycle of disease and include “outbreak”, “epidemic”, “pandemic” and “endemic”.

An outbreak is a rise in disease cases over what is normally expected in a small and specific location generally over a short period of time. Foodborne diseases caused by Salmonella contamination provide frequent examples of this.

Epidemics are essentially outbreaks without the tight geographical restrictions. The Ebola virus that spread within three West African countries from 2014–2016 was an epidemic.

A pandemic is an epidemic that spreads across many countries and many continents around the world. Examples include those caused by influenza A(H1N1) or “Spanish Flu” in 1918, HIV/AIDS, SARS-CoV-1 and Zika virus.

Finally, the normal circulation of a virus in a specified location over time describes an endemic virus. The word “endemic” comes from the Greek endēmos, which means “in population”. An endemic virus is relatively constant in a population with largely predictable patterns.

Viruses can circulate endemically in specific geographical regions, or globally. Ross River virus circulates endemically in Australia and the Pacific island countries, but is not found in other regions of the world. Meanwhile, rhinoviruses which cause the common cold circulate endemically around the world. And influenza is an endemic virus we monitor for its epidemic and pandemic potential.

Read more:
Whiteness in the time of COVID: Australia’s health services still leaving vulnerable communities behind

What’s the usual path from pandemic to endemic look like?

Over time and thanks to public health efforts from mask wearing to vaccination, the pandemic could disappear like small pox and polio did — or it might gradually become endemic.

Host, environment and virus factors combine to explain why some viruses are endemic while others are epidemic.

When we look at the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID, we see it is infecting human hosts with no prior immunity.

In terms of environment, the virus transmits better in cold, dry, crowded, close-contact, confined settings with poor ventilation.

Each virus has its own characteristics, from speed of virus replication to drug resistance. The new COVID strains are transmitted faster and cause different symptoms.

Viruses are more likely to become endemic if they become adapted to a local environment and/or have a continuous supply of susceptible hosts. For COVID these would be hosts with low or zero immunity.

Read more:
Four factors that increase the risk of vaccinated people getting COVID

How long will it take for COVID-19 to become an endemic disease?

Scientific mathematical modelling provide some idea of likely COVID epidemic outcomes.

Most public health experts currently agree COVID is here to stay rather than likely to disappear like small pox, at least for a while. They expect the number of infections to become fairly constant across years with possible seasonal trends and occasional smaller outbreaks.

Globally, the road from pandemic to endemic will be a rocky one. In Australia our national and state leaders are announcing future plans to reopen businesses and eventually borders. The process of doing this will result in the second nation-wide epidemic of COVID. People will die and our health systems will be challenged. Vaccination rates will protect many, but there are still those who won’t, or can’t get vaccinated. Herd immunity (from vaccination or infection) will play a key role in ensuring we move towards an endemic COVID.

With time, scientists predict COVID will become more prevalent among unvaccinated youths or those without prior exposure to the virus. This is what happens with common cold coronaviruses. Despite periodical spikes in caseloads each season or immediately after relaxation of economic, social, and travel restrictions, COVID will eventually become more manageable.

It won’t be the same everywhere

Countries will not enter an endemic phase at the same time because of variable host, environmental, virus factors including vaccination rates. The availability and rollout of booster vaccine shots each year or season will also shape this path. Poor vaccine coverage could allow the virus to continue at an epidemic level for longer. In a location where immunity wanes quickly and there are no booster shots available, COVID could go from endemic back to epidemic.

Once we see a stable level of SARS-CoV-2 transmission indicating a new “baseline” of COVID, we will know the pandemic has ended and the virus is endemic. This will likely include minor seasonal trends as we see now with flu.

The most important thing we can do to help reach a safe level of endemic COVID is to get vaccinated and continue to adhere to COVID-safe practices. By doing this we protect ourselves, those around us, and move together towards an endemic phase of the virus. If we don’t work together, things could turn for the worse very quickly and prolong the end of the pandemic.

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. COVID will likely shift from pandemic to endemic — but what does that mean? – https://theconversation.com/covid-will-likely-shift-from-pandemic-to-endemic-but-what-does-that-mean-167782

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jennifer King, Honorary Clinical Lecturer, University of Sydney

We’ve all done done a quick “just in case” wee before heading out or because we’re passing the bathroom. If you’re a parent, you might have also told the kids to “do a wee now so we don’t have to find a toilet later.”

Doing a “just in case” wee isn’t a problem if it’s just occasional and if you have normal bladder function.

But doing it too often, making a lifetime habit of it, can kick off a vicious cycle. You can end up training your bladder to “think” it needs to go when it’s only slightly full. And the problem can worsen over time.

If you’re always ducking to the loo to wee at even the slightest tingling sensation, have a go at resisting that first urge — and consider seeing your GP or a pelvic floor physiotherapist about it.

Read more:
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Your bladder can probably hold more than you think

Most bladders are actually capable of holding quite a lot of fluid.

For those with normal bladders (that is, you haven’t been diagnosed as having an overactive or irritable bladder), every day capacity is between 400–600 mls. It should take about two hours for the water you drink to make its way to the bladder.

So if you drink a 600ml bottle of water, it would be perfectly reasonable not to actually need to go to the toilet until a couple of hours later. In reality, however, I know of people who say they drink just a small amount and head off to the bathroom shortly after.

What happens if you get into the ‘just in case’ habit?

To pass urine easily, we need the bladder muscle to contract and the muscles around the urethra and pelvic floor to relax.

This nice, coordinated pattern does not occur nearly as well if there is no real urge to void. You’ll probably be able to squeeze some urine out, but it’s not how the muscles are supposed to work.

The bladder’s response is to spasm and contract more aggressively and inappropriately.

The bladder gets used to holding a certain amount and if you are always emptying at that amount, it gets harder to hold more. The bladder “thinks” it is at capacity, when it is not. You end up with a pattern of uncoordinated emptying.

The good news is most people with a normal bladder can train themselves out of this habit. It’s about learning to recognise the signs and differentiate between a small urge and a real need.

You don’t need to run off at the first urge — have a go at resisting it and see what happens.

Of course, nobody is saying you should hold on until you feel absolutely tortured. If ignoring the first urge is causing real distress, you should talk to your GP or a pelvic floor physiotherapist.

Let your kids go to the toilet when they actually need to

Everyone remembers the kids who wet their pants at school or those who were always in trouble “because they should have gone to the toilet at recess”.

In fact, it’s better just to let kids go to the toilet when they need to, instead of berating them about not having gone at recess or “before we left”.

You can cause more damage (physical and psychological) in the long run if you give kids a hard time about toileting, load it with emotion, or train them into the habit of always going “just in case”. Don’t always prompt them to go to the toilet.

(In some situations, such as with people with dementia, it can be appropriate to prompt people to go to the toilet. But this is done after a reasonable number of hours when there should be a good amount of urine in the bladder. And it is a compromise arrangement where we try to minimise incontinence episodes and patient distress.)

Not everyone has a ‘normal’ bladder

The aim with toilet training is to learn to recognise the sensation of bladder filling and gradually develop the ability to resist bladder emptying until convenient and socially appropriate.

But for some people this is never completely or consistently achieved.

Many people – perhaps 30% of adults and large numbers of children – do not have a normal bladder. Rather, they have an overactive or irritable bladder.

This can make people want to go all the time or cause sudden urgency. They may not always make it to the toilet quickly enough. It can be impossible to prevent bladder leakage. Some people cope by limiting fluids or forever going “just in case”.

As with all bladder problems, it’s more common for women than men and tends to become more troublesome as we age.

Overactive bladders are unlikely to spontaneously improve. A good place to start would be to talk with your GP, a continence nurse or a specialist physiotherapist. These bladders need to be retrained using techniques learned from a specialist physio. Medication can sometimes help.

For most of us, though, overly frequent visits to the loo, or going “just in case” is a habit worth quitting.

Read more:
Health Check: how do I tell if I’m dehydrated?

Jennifer King is the chair of the Education Committee of the International Urogynecology Association and state chair of the NSW Continence Foundation. The positions are unpaid.

– ref. Why you shouldn’t make a habit of doing a ‘just in case’ wee — and don’t tell your kids to either – https://theconversation.com/why-you-shouldnt-make-a-habit-of-doing-a-just-in-case-wee-and-dont-tell-your-kids-to-either-167628

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Chin, Professor of Asian Studies, University of Tasmania

The announcement of a new strategic alliance between Australia, the US and UK (AUKUS) has caught many by surprise. Besides France, which reacted with fury over Australia’s scrapping of a major submarine deal with a French company, few countries were as surprised as Australia’s neighbours to the north, the ASEAN members.

In particular, Indonesia and Malaysia have come out strongly against Australia’s plan to acquire a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines with the help of the US and UK. Even Singapore, Australia’s most reliable ally in the region, has expressed concern.

The Afghanistan debacle has left a bad taste among many Indo-Pacific countries, and some are wondering if the timing of the AUKUS announcement was intended as a show of US power in the region to reassure jittery partners.

Fear of a nuclear arms race

To understand the deep anxiety in Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta and other ASEAN capitals requires some context on where they are coming from.

First, many of them think there is no such thing as acquiring nuclear-powered submarines without the prospect of acquiring nuclear weapons in the future.

Australia has not joined the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which requires parties to agree not to develop, test, produce, acquire, possess, stockpile or threaten to use nuclear weapons.

The Morrison government says the treaty would be inconsistent with its alliance with the US, a nuclear weapon power.

Read more:
The nuclear weapons ban treaty is groundbreaking, even if the nuclear powers haven’t signed

However, Australia did ratify the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons in 1973 and the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1998. And Prime Minister Scott Morrison said last week Australia has “no plans” to pursue nuclear weapons.

Yet, some ASEAN countries are worried the AUKUS agreement is a clear signal the West will take a more aggressive stand towards China by admitting Australia to the nuclear club.

Both Indonesia (the unofficial leader of ASEAN) and Malaysia fear AUKUS will also lead to a major arms race in the wider Indo-Pacific region.

The potential for conflict in South China Sea

The new agreement also signals that the US, Australia and UK view the South China Sea as a key venue for this contest against China.

The ASEAN nations have always preached maintaining southeast Asia as a “zone of peace, freedom and neutrality”, free from interference by any outside powers. In 1995, the member states also signed the Treaty of Southeast Asia Nuclear Weapon-Free Zone, which committed to keep nuclear weapons out of the region. Not a single nuclear power has signed on to it.

Although everyone knows China, the US, Britain and France have ignored these protocols by manoeuvring armed warships through the South China Sea — not to mention China’s building of military bases on disputed islands there — ASEAN does not want to see this number grow.

Australian nuclear-powered submarines have the potential to change the dynamics in the South China Sea and make the Chinese much more nervous. There have already been plenty of “close encounter” incidents between the Chinese and US navies in the disputed waters, as well as the Chinese navy and ships belonging to ASEAN members. The region doesn’t need yet another potential “close encounter” to worry about.

The ASEAN states are already very worried about the China-US rivalry playing out in its backyard. And the new AUKUS agreement reinforces the idea that the opinions of the ASEAN members matter little when it comes to the superpowers and how they operate in the region.

Read more:
Jokowi’s visit shows the Australia-Indonesia relationship is strong, but faultlines remain

The region has always insisted on the idea of “ASEAN centrality” in their relations with the world — that ASEAN members must decide what is best for Southeast Asia — but as AUKUS shows, nuclear nations play a different game.

Indonesia is especially unhappy with Australia given the new agreement will affect it directly, given their common maritime border.

Morrison had already been forced to cancel his upcoming trip to Jakarta after Prime Minister Joko Widodo said he would be unavailable to meet — a decision that was made before the AUKUS announcement. This will add another layer to the strained relationship.

Is there anyone happy about the deal?

While in public, most southeast Asian governments have expressed uneasiness with AUKUS, there is a school of thought that says the more hawkish voices in the region will probably accept the agreement in the long term, as it will help keep China’s aggression in check.

For those in the “hawk” camp, the number one long-term threat to regional security is China. Many think the strategic balance of power has been tilting too much in Beijing’s favour in the past decade, especially after China started rushing to build military bases in the South China Sea and using its navy to protect Chinese fishing vessels in disputed waters.

So, they believe any moves to remind China it does not have a carte blanche to do what it wants in Southeast Asia is a good thing.

Japan and South Korea are clearly in this camp and their muted reaction to AUKUS suggests they are in favour of a “re-balancing” in the region. Taiwan and Vietnam are probably on this side, as well.

The only downside is that Australia may use its nuclear-powered submarines to bully ASEAN countries. If Canberra uses its nuclear submarines as a bargaining chip, it will simply turn public opinion in the region against Australia.

Implications for Australia-ASEAN relations

If anything, the AUKUS move reinforced the widely held perception that Australia’s mantra of being “part of the region” is, in fact, “empty talk”. Australia has firmly signalled its intentions to put its Anglo allies in the US and UK first.

AUKUS also reinforces the view that Australia cannot be accepted as a regional partner or player. This, of course, is nothing new. For years, the ASEAN bloc has seen Australia as “deputy sheriff” to the US, though this view would not necessarily be shared in public.

So, while AUKUS came as a surprise to many in the region, an alliance of this sort was probably bound to happen. It’s just that nobody expected it to happen so soon.

James Chin 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. Why is southeast Asia so concerned about AUKUS and Australia’s plans for nuclear submarines? – https://theconversation.com/why-is-southeast-asia-so-concerned-about-aukus-and-australias-plans-for-nuclear-submarines-168260

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 15-18 from a sample a little over 1,500, gave Labor a 53-47 lead, a one-point gain for the Coalition since the last Newspoll, three weeks ago. Primary votes were 38% Labor (down two), 37% Coalition (up one), 10% Greens (steady) and 3% One Nation (steady).

50% (up three) were dissatisfied with Scott Morrison’s performance, and 46% (down three) were satisfied, for a net approval of -4. Morrison dropped into net negative ratings six weeks ago, but recovered to +2 in the last Newspoll. This is his worst net approval in Newspoll since the start of the pandemic.

Read more:
First negative Newspoll rating for Morrison since start of pandemic; 47% of unvaccinated would take Pfizer but not AstraZeneca

Labor leader Anthony Albanese’s ratings also slumped, with his net approval falling four points to -11, his worst since becoming opposition leader. Morrison led Albanese by 47-35 as better PM (50-34 previously). Newspoll figures are from The Poll Bludger.

The vote for all Others in this poll was 12% (up one). It’s plausible Clive Palmer and Craig Kelly’s campaign promoting United Australia Party has lured some anti-lockdown voters. At the 2019 election, UAP preferences split 65-35 to the Coalition.

If the proportion of the Others vote supporting UAP is higher than usual, this would explain why the Coalition’s two party figure in Newspoll was a point higher than would be expected from primary votes according to analyst Kevin Bonham.

There’s good news for the Coalition in other polling on voting intentions and COVID handling. The Morgan poll last week had the Coalition up two for a 52.5-47.5 Labor lead. The Essential poll had the federal government’s COVID rating up to 43-35 good from 39-36 in late August.

The Guardian’s datablog has 37.2% of the population (not 16+) fully vaccinated, up from 27.2% three weeks ago. We rank 33 of 38 OECD countries in share of population fully vaccinated (35th three weeks ago). The Age shows 46.7% of 16+ are fully vaccinated and 71.7% have received at least one dose.

Employment and GDP reports from the ABS suggest that the economy was in good shape before the Sydney and Melbourne lockdowns began. Once these cities reopen, the economy is likely to recover rapidly, boosting the Coalition’s chances.

It is too soon to know whether there has been any impact from the decision to enter into the so-called AUKUS pact with the US and UK. A snap Morgan poll found voters approved by 57-43, but Morgan’s SMS polls have not been reliable, and this poll was taken before more negative publicity about the deal.

Two Essential polls

In the mid-September Essential poll, the federal government’s rating on response to COVID rose to 43-35 good from 39-36 in late August and 41-35 in mid-August. The Victorian government’s “good” rating was up six to 50%, after falling 12 in late August, and the NSW government was up six to 46% after dropping two.

41% thought states with low or no COVID should be able to keep their borders closed for as long as they think it necessary, 37% until 80% of the 16+ population is fully vaccinated, and 23% until 80% of the total population is fully vaccinated.

39% thought restrictions for fully vaccinated people should be relaxed immediately, 44% thought they should be relaxed when everyone has the opportunity to be vaccinated and 17% thought vaccinated people should not be treated differently to unvaccinated.

In the late August Essential poll, 50% approved of Morrison’s performance (steady since early August) and 41% disapproved (up one), for a net approval of +9. Albanese’s net approval increased five points to +1. Morrison led as better PM by 47-26 (45-26 previously).

56% of NSW respondents thought the lockdown restrictions in their area were about right, 28% too strong and 16% too weak. In Victoria, these figures were 57% about right, 35% too strong and 8% too weak.

61% said fewer than 100 COVID deaths a year in Australia was acceptable to “live with”, 25% between 100 and 1,000 deaths a year and 19% between 1,000 and 3,000. Before COVID in 2019, there were over 169,000 deaths from all causes in Australia.

Coalition gains two points in mid-September Morgan poll

A Morgan poll, conducted September 4-5 and 11-12 from a sample of over 2,700, gave Labor a 52.5-47.5 lead, a 2% gain for the Coalition since late August. Primary votes were 38.5% Coalition (up 1%), 35% Labor (down 3.5%), 13% Greens (up 1.5%) and 3% One Nation (steady). The late August Morgan poll had Labor’s lead up 0.5% from mid-August.

A separate SMS Morgan poll, conducted last Thursday from a sample of over 1,700, had voters approving 57-43 of the government entering the AUKUS pact.

Late August YouGov COVID poll

A YouGov poll for the News Corp papers, conducted August 20-25 from a sample of over 3,000, was reported by The Poll Bludger. By 41-37, respondents thought lockdowns should be ended when “everyone has the opportunity to be fully vaccinated”. WA respondents were most pro-lockdown, while NSW and Victorian respondents were least so.

66% supported proof of vaccination being required to participate in a range of public activities, 63% supported only opening state borders for the vaccinated, and 68% the same for international borders. Just 23% were opposed to employers being able to demand their staff be vaccinated, with 69% support for this in public facing jobs and 45% support in all industries.

Given a choice between “lockdowns should be ended immediately”, “lockdowns must be part of Australia’s future until COVID is eliminated” and “vaccination is the pathway to ending lockdowns”, 64% selected the third option, 22% the second and 14% the third.

Participation down in August jobs report

The ABS reported last Thursday that the unemployment rate in August dropped 0.1% from July to 4.5%. However, this was because the participation rate fell 0.8% to 65.2%. The employment population ratio – the percentage of eligible Australians employed – fell 0.7% to 62.2%.

The ABS reported on September 1 that GDP in the June quarter increased 0.7% from the March quarter, and a massive 9.6% since June 2020 as the economy rapidly rebounded from the 7.0% COVID-caused crash in the June 2020 quarter.

With Sydney and Melbourne in lockdown for most of the September quarter period, it is very likely GDP will contract. But once restrictions are eased, economic activity is likely to rebound quickly, and this will assist the Coalition.

Canadian and German elections

The Canadian election is Tuesday AEST, with most polls closing at 11:30am AEST. Canadian PM Justin Trudeau called this election two years early, hoping to win a majority for his centre-left Liberals. But the Liberals’ position deteriorated quickly.

However, the rise for the right populist People’s Party has hurt the Conservatives. According to the CBC Poll Tracker, the Liberals are likely to again win the most seats, but be short of a majority under Canada’s first past the post system.

The German election is next Sunday September 26, with polls closing at 2am Monday AEST. In the Politico poll aggregate, the centre-left SPD leads the conservative CDU/CSU, which has been in government since 2005 under retiring chancellor Angela Merkel. Overall left parties hold a narrow lead over overall right parties.

I will be live blogging both these elections for The Poll Bludger. I live blogged last week’s California recall election, in which the Democratic governor easily defeated Recall.

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. Coalition gains a point in Newspoll, but Morrison slides back into net negative ratings – https://theconversation.com/coalition-gains-a-point-in-newspoll-but-morrison-slides-back-into-net-negative-ratings-168076

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Quiggin, Professor, School of Economics, The University of Queensland

The great economist John Maynard Keynes, when accused of inconsistency on some policy, is credited with saying: “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?”

This point comes to mind in relation to the fractious debate over Australia’s “National Plan” to relax restrictions at 70% and 80% vaccination-rate thresholds.

This plan was agreed to by National Cabinet on August 6 — though apparently with a different interpretation for each government involved.

Read more:
National Cabinet leaves us in the dark about reopening the nation, so we’re left joining the dots

Underpinning it is modelling by the Doherty Institute, done in July this year. There has been plenty of argument about particular assumptions in the Doherty model. But the more fundamental problem is that it is effectively obsolete.

Delta has changed the landscape

Ideally models of any phenomenon are based on directly relevant data. In recent years the development of techniques for “big data” (large data sets, often derived from administrative records) have yielded a wide range of new insights.

In the case of COVID-19, the data needed for such an approach include evidence on the way in which changes in conditions change the “Reff” — the effective reproduction rate of the virus.

The Reff is a number that indicates the average number of new cases generated by each existing case. It is influenced by vaccination rates, movement restrictions and the capacity of testing and tracing measures to locate and isolate those infected. To avoid an uncontrolled pandemic we need to keep the Reff below 1 most of the time.

Read more:
We’ve heard of R numbers and moving averages. But what are k numbers? And how do they explain COVID superspreading?

When the Doherty Institute undertook its modelling there was essentially no data for Australia relevant to the scenario policy makers are now contemplating.

There had been no sustained outbreak of the Delta variant, and only one extended lockdown to give evidence on the effectiveness of various measures. So the Doherty Institute had to use a theoretical model with parameters derived from a combination of overseas evidence (from countries with experience very different to that in Australia) and the best guesses its experts could make.

We now have a great deal of data on the Delta variant and the effectiveness — or ineffectiveness — of various restrictions, and the extent to which people change their behaviour in an outbreak.

Read more:
Grattan on Friday: The transition to living with ‘endemic’ COVID could be rough

In particular, we have learned testing and contact tracing becomes markedly less effective once case numbers grow into the hundreds per day, as has happened in NSW and Victoria. The Doherty Institute has reportedly revised its modelling to take account of this, and presented revised advice to National Cabinet, but neither the model results nor the changes in modelling have been made publicly available.

By the time we reach the vaccination levels nominated in the National Plan, probably in October or later, we will have a good deal more data. Crucially, we will know if the effective reproduction rate is above 1 (indicating exponential growth) or below (indicating contraction of case numbers).

Rather than sticking to a predetermined schedule, we need to be willing to adjust our policy responses in the light of the latest data, and the most up-to-date models we have available.

It’s like climate modelling

This situation is somewhat analogous to climate change modelling.

The fundamental science underlying climate change has been known for more than 150 years. As long ago as 1896, the Swedish chemist Arrhenius estimated that doubling the global concentration of carbon dioxide would raise the earth’s average temperature by 5℃.

When global warming became a concern in the 1980s, however, we had little more to go on than simple simulation models, with no certainty as to whether they were realistic representations.

That changed over the 1990s. Climate scientists refined general circulation models of the atmosphere and ocean, running on supercomputers and capable of incorporating vast quantities of data, and began modelling effects on soil and vegetation. Also, we are increasingly experiencing the predicted consequences of climate change, learning the hard way that the models were, if anything, conservative in their predictions.

Factoring in new evidence

With COVID-19 we don’t have time to develop the massive models that would make optimal use of the data that is daily becoming available. But we can use that data to improve our understanding of the way the virus spreads and the way our behaviour responds.

To some extent this is already happening with work done by the Burnet Institute, which is providing weekly updates to the NSW government. But this work is not being released publicly, and it appears the NSW government’s announced policies may be contrary to health advice based on the modelling.

The evolution of the pandemic is an interaction between the mutating characteristics of the virus and the way in which humans respond, interactively and collectively. For this reason, it is a mistake to let disciplinary boundaries decide whose advice should be heeded, and whose ignored. Epidemiologists, public health researchers, economists and other social scientists all have relevant expertise. In this emergency, it should be a case of “all hands to the wheel”.

Read more:
Delta is tempting us to trade lives for freedoms — a choice it had looked like we wouldn’t have to make

In these rapidly changing times it makes no sense to fix a policy plan based on a months-old model.

We need to respond flexibly to new evidence as it comes to hand. We need to consider all kinds of data, including new evidence on the transmissibility of the virus, estimates of the likely uptake of vaccines, and observations on the way restrictions reduce movement around our cities.

What we don’t need is more speculation about the hypothetical dates and vaccination rates at which various restrictions will be lifted (or perhaps, looking at overseas experience, reimposed). Let’s focus on the facts as they are now.

Richard Holden is President-elect of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia.

John Quiggin and Steven Hamilton 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. Australia’s COVID plan was designed before we knew how Delta would hit us. We need more flexibility – https://theconversation.com/australias-covid-plan-was-designed-before-we-knew-how-delta-would-hit-us-we-need-more-flexibility-168189

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Nichols, Senior Lecturer – Urban Planning, The University of Melbourne

Review: Palazzo di Cozzo, directed by Madeleine Martiniello

Every Melburnian over 40, and many under, knows (or thinks they know) who Franco Cozzo is. He rose to fame through self-promotion aided by a little bit of associated fascination around a man who sold a product seemingly exclusively to a non-English speaking sector of the community — first-generation Mediterranean migrants — and did it in Italian (and, sort of, Greek).

This was radical at a time when some Anglo-Australians insisted (sometimes virulently) on only English being spoken in their presence. Cozzo’s success speaks for itself: at its height, his empire was three large outlets in inner-city Melbourne and a huge product awareness.

Many Italian-Australians also silently cringed, not at Cozzo’s speaking of Italian on television, but at the promotion of a baroque furnishing mode that seemed to signify a gaudy conception of success.

You didn’t have to be a second-gen Italian-Australian to regard the Cozzo phenomenon with embarrassment: not just because of all the jokes made by Anglo-Australians, but because he was a particular kind of Italian: a Sicillian — read “peasant” — with all the attendant stereotypes.

In 1985, when television still united the nation in water-cooler moments, Cozzo commercials were voted the most hated by readers of The Age. Whatever else this signified, it showed strong product recognition. Were Cozzo launching himself on the world today, he would not be compelled to appear on mass media just to reach his niche market.

In that regard, the pre-internet age did us all a favour, establishing a new awareness that there were other cultures hiding in plain sight amongst what was still an assimilationist environment.

A gem of a documentary

Madeleine Martiniello’s documentary on Cozzo, Palazzo di Cozzo, was first scheduled for the Melbourne International Film Festival. Soon to show on ABC TV, it had its cinema premiere, ironically, in Perth.

There’s a lot more to the man than we could glean from the smooth, showy, handsome 50-something gentleman who addressed us from his 30-second spots with long strings of Italian, Greek and English ending in the famed accented pronunciation of “Norda Melbourne, Brunswick and Footiscray”.

Cozzo tells us, in this minor gem of a documentary, about his overbearing father, his beloved mother and his sister, Vincenzina, who died at the age of 12. The pictures of her atop one of the family horses are touching, as are photographs of youthful, directionless and somewhat resentful Franco and his “very tough daddy” arm-in-arm in an unidentified city street in the early 1950s.

Arriving alone in Melbourne on Australia Day, 1956, Cozzo took his horse-trading knowledge and became a Fiat dealer, a reality which gives some context to his hard-sell approach to beds and wardrobes.

He embraced television the following decade, presenting the Italian-language variety show Carosello on Channel 0 and then, briefly, Channel 7.

(In Palazzo di Cozzo, he claims it lasted three years; television listings from 1968-9 suggest less than 18 months).

Cozzo’s delivery of his life story told to the camera drifts between Italian and English without missing a beat, English subtitles covering both. Now in his 80s, a father of ten, he seems unwilling to distinguish between the public and private persona, but is resigned to dealing with the rumours.

Firstly, there have been many regarding mafia connections (which he denies). Additionally, his divorce and remarriage — his second wife, Assunta, appears here but his first, Antonietta, is only included in archival images — were controversial in the Italian community; the scandal is addressed implicitly. Another controversy, eldest son Luigi’s prosecution for drug dealing, is the outcome, Cozzo suggests, of his own leniency as a parent (as well as Luigi being a “fool”).

Luigi, who was cleared of a charge of threatening to kill his father five years ago, is not even mentioned by name in this film, let alone interviewed.

Marketing a legacy

There are two Franco Cozzo stores these days. The film concentrates on the purpose-built Footscray store and gives less time to the Brunswick outlet (North Melbourne, it seems, was lost in the divorce).

Much of the Footscray property is currently closed to the public and used as a storeroom. Yet Cozzo insists he will maintain a shopfront presence to sell his stock. Which makes sense: why wouldn’t he continue to make as much as he can of his image and his legacy?

As the man himself says: “No other people popular like Franco Cozzo in Melbourne”.

Palazzo di Cozzo is in select cinemas now.

David Nichols 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. ‘No other people popular like Franco Cozzo in Melbourne’: a new film explores his colorful, hard-sell life – https://theconversation.com/no-other-people-popular-like-franco-cozzo-in-melbourne-a-new-film-explores-his-colorful-hard-sell-life-167352

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kelly Menzel, Assistant Professor – First Nations Health, Bond University

Due to the ongoing effects of colonisation, First Nations peoples often experience socio-economic disadvantage and health inequality. The pandemic has no doubt worsened these conditions for some.

In addition, the health of Australia’s First Nations peoples is framed in a deficit focus. This means representing First Nations people through a narrative of difference, disparity, disadvantage, dysfunction, and deprivation, what is sometimes referred to as the 5Ds.

Viewing First Nations peoples through a deficit or negative lens is a form of racial segregation. However, this practice of white privilege or “whiteness” in health services can only cause harm to marginalised communities.

For instance, COVID-19 is more common in disadvantaged areas, where people face a triple threat – low vaccination rates, greater likelihood of getting COVID-19, and greater risk of dying.

Though the government has recently boosted efforts to reach vulnerable First Nations communities, there have long been complaints of lack of access to vaccines in high-risk areas.

Therefore, when the federal government speaks of 80% vaccination rate targets, it has somewhat felt like this means 80% of white, middle-class people without disabilities.

Read more:
The first Indigenous COVID death reminds us of the outsized risk NSW communities face

Whiteness dominating health services

Whiteness refers to perspectives, practices and policies that enable the dominance of white people and their culture in society and institutions.

Historically, pretty much every political and health system has been under the leadership of white, cis-gendered heterosexual (often middle-aged) men without disabilities. This has resulted in white perspectives being interwoven in health practice and policy development.

White, cis-gendered health is often the norm against which deviation is measured in health practices. This is detrimental to First Nations peoples and other marginalised communities.

For First Nations peoples, good health is holistic and includes physical, social, emotional, cultural, spiritual and ecological wellbeing. This is why First Nations peoples need to be included in health planning, particularly during the global pandemic.

COVID-19 disproportionately impacting First Nations people

First Nations peoples were identified as a priority group early in the vaccine rollout because globally, First Nations peoples are disproportionally more likely to die from COVID-19.

However, until recently First Nations peoples in Australia were six times less likely to contract COVID-19 because communities responded quickly to the first wave in 2020.

Aboriginal organisations came together drawing on experience from the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic and implemented culturally appropriate resources to share with the community.

However, there have been further waves of COVID-19 since then and increasingly restricted access to health care in response to lockdowns, border closures and the inadequate vaccine rollout. This has led to over 1,000 COVID cases in First Nations communities, and deaths that could have been avoided.

This is occurring while First Nations peoples and other communities continue to be confronted with racism when trying to access health care.

Read more:
The COVID-19 crisis in western NSW Aboriginal communities is a nightmare realised

Misinformation and government negligence

In Australia, First Nations peoples are significantly more likely to have two or more chronic health conditions. This makes us more vulnerable to contracting and dying from COVID-19.

Despite this, health services in regional, rural and remote areas with predominantly Aboriginal populations continue to be under-resourced by state and federal governments.

In addition, many people in western NSW communities are being turned away from health care facilities because they simply lack capacity.

In June, concerns were raised about vaccination rates in First Nations communities in Australia. However, we still have lower vaccination rates than the non-Indigenous NSW population.

There is indeed a level of vaccine hesitancy in the community. Inconsistent and sometimes inaccessible health messaging has contributed to understandable mistrust and fear.

However, First Nations peoples are among the most over-researched groups of people in the world. So, vaccine hesitancy can also be due to the long history in Australia of government trying to control our communities.

It certainly doesn’t help when white people continue to interfere with Indigenous health through the spread of false claims about COVID-19.

For instance, a self-proclaimed Indigenous prayer group in Western Australia spread misinformation that God will protect against COVID-19. This group turned out to be a white man from Brisbane.

And in the NSW community in Wilcannia, which has been hard hit by a recent wave of COVID-19 infections, First Nations people have been targeted by a group spruiking the benefits of ivermectin.

Both occurrences feel reminiscent of colonial missionary days, where white people regarded First Nations peoples as barbarian savages who needed controlling (mind and body), civilising, and educating in white, European ways.

Read more:
Politics with Michelle Grattan: Pat Turner on COVID – and god botherers – stalking Indigenous communities

Where to from here

We need to find ways to disrupt health systems currently excluding First Nations people.

Community self-determination is essential and Aboriginal community-controlled responses must remain a priority.

The government has made efforts recently alongside the National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation to increase COVID vaccinations in communities across Australia. This is a positive start, but more must be done.

There is talk of the borders re-opening and the country opening up after vaccination rates exceed 75-80% of the adult population.
A Freedom Day, if you will.

So, when is our mob’s “Freedom Day”? Besides our ignored cries for sovereignty and self-determination, we cannot be left to die due to low vaccination rates while the rest of the country is deemed “safe”.

Whiteness needs to stop being the baseline from which health services originate. Unless there is a move to strengths-based strategies for vaccinating at-risk populations, such as First Nations communities, we will remain more likely to get sicker and die sooner.

Kelly Menzel 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. Whiteness in the time of COVID: Australia’s health services still leaving vulnerable communities behind – https://theconversation.com/whiteness-in-the-time-of-covid-australias-health-services-still-leaving-vulnerable-communities-behind-167701

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sarah Richardson, Research Director, Surveys and International Assessments, Australian Council for Educational Research

More Australian 15 year olds feel they are familiar with global issues such as climate change, migration, causes of poverty and equality between men and women than the OECD average.

But only 8% of Australian students say they are learning two or more foreign languages, compared to 50% of students across OECD countries.

These are some of the results of the OECD’s 2018 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which included efforts to measure students’ global competence. It gathered the perceptions of students, teachers and school principals on whether 15 year olds have the skills, knowledge and attributes to thrive in global contexts.

How students were tested

Teachers and students filled out a questionnaire on students’ awareness of global issues and cultures, skills (both cognitive and social) and attitudes, which covered all four dimensions of global competence.

For instance, student awareness of global issues was measured by asking students to indicate how informed they felt they were about:

• climate change and global warming

• global health (e.g. epidemics)

• migration (movement of people)

• international conflicts

• hunger or malnutrition in different parts of the world

• causes of poverty

• equality between men and women in different parts of the world.

Students were asked to respond on a four-point scale: I have never heard of this; I have heard about this but I would not be able to explain what it is really about; I know something about this and could explain the general issue; and I am familiar with this and I would be able to explain this well.

Australian students well versed on global issues

On the whole, the data is reassuring. On almost all measures, Australian students were above the OECD average. This included awareness of global issues, respect for people from other cultures, positive attitudes towards immigrants and a greater sense of global mindedness.

This reflects Australian students’ access to global news, and their ability to interact with people from different cultures.

Around two-thirds of Australian students reported having contact with people from other countries in their family, at school and in their circle of friends. Almost half of Australian students reported having contact with people from other countries in their neighbourhood.

Beyond this, Australian students reported more opportunities to participate in intercultural learning practices and to engage in global competence learning activities than the OECD average. These include learning about different cultures at school and learning about the histories of diverse cultural groups that live in our, and other, countries.

Read more:
5 Australian books that can help young people understand their place in the world

But further improvements can be made. Australian students were consistently outperformed by peers in Canada and Singapore in the global competence stakes.

For instance, only 43% of students said “I am often invited by my teachers to give my personal opinion about international news”, which was lower than students in Singapore, Canada, Korea, Poland, Hong Kong (China), Germany and across the OECD.

Male students lagged behind female students, other than for their self-efficacy in explaining global issues. This included asking how students believed they would perform on their own in areas such as discussing the different reasons people become refugees.

Students in Tasmania, in regional areas and those born in Australia trailed their more globally-empowered counterparts. This could partly reflect different concentrations of cultural diversity in different parts of Australia.

Australian students aren’t choosing to learn languages

Despite the positives, the data indicate some clear areas of concern. Australian students reported a greater awareness of intercultural communication than their OECD peers. While being aware of intercultural communication is certainly useful, being able to communicate with people from different countries in their own languages is even better.

Unfortunately, in comparison to their OECD peers, a mere 12% of whom do not learn a foreign language, 64% of 15-year-old Australian students reported language learning was not part of their lives.

This is disheartening. Learning a foreign language is hard. It teaches valuable lessons about vulnerability, compassion for those who struggle to be understood and differences in cultural norms.

Language learning has been shown to enhance cognitive abilities and support improved reading and maths achievement. To achieve mastery, language learning requires determination and resilience — attributes students will need to thrive as adults.

Read more:
Thinking of taking a language in year 11 and 12? Here’s what you need to know

Australian students also reported a low level of interest in learning about other cultures: how people live in different countries, their traditions and how others see the world.

Additionally, just over a third of Australian students felt learning more about the religions of the world was important, compared with half of Singaporean students and significantly higher proportions of students in countries such as New Zealand and Canada. Religious understanding enhances tolerance, peace and mutual respect at home and abroad, so this finding is a concern.

Language learning in Australia is patchy across school and states. Some states have no language policy at all. This needs to change. A key focus should be on ensuring that adequately trained and knowledgeable language teachers are available in all schools.

If Australia is to fulfil its potential on the global stage, particularly in the Asia-Pacific, our students need to gain the skills to equip them to thrive in a world characterised by cultural intermingling. As Kwame Anthony Appiah eloquently suggests, “conversations across boundaries can be delightful, or just vexing: what they mainly are, though, is inevitable”.

The data reported here was collected by ACER, who were funded by the Department for Education, Skills and Employment to coordinate Australia’s participation in PISA 2025.

– ref. Australian students say they understand global issues, but few are learning another language compared to the OECD average – https://theconversation.com/australian-students-say-they-understand-global-issues-but-few-are-learning-another-language-compared-to-the-oecd-average-168073

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joo-Cheong Tham, Professor, Melbourne Law School, The University of Melbourne

The American union movement has split over President Joe Biden’s proposal for companies with more than 100 employees to vaccinate their workforces against COVID-19.

With increasing numbers of employers mandating COVID-19 vaccination, will something similar play out in Australia?

Despite a push for mandatory workforce vaccination by some union members, the Australian trade union movement has been remarkably cohesive in opposing employer mandates.

Four interlocking principles underpin this position. They are:

• high vaccination rates should be attained through encouragement and facilitation, not employer mandates

• where strictly necessary, mandates should be implemented through public health orders

• effective access to vaccines should be secured

• the voices of workers should be respected.

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

Encourage and facilitate, don’t coerce

In a joint statement with the Business Council of Australia opposing employer mandates, the Australian Council of Trade Unions said:

[…] for the overwhelming majority of Australians your work or workplace should not fundamentally alter the voluntary nature of vaccination.

This emphasis on choice aligns with international labour standards on workplace immunisation as well as the federal government’s policy of COVID-19 vaccination being free and voluntary.

It also recognises the invasive nature of vaccinations and the fact that employer mandates involve compulsion. In some cases, this would mean risking workers’ jobs and livelihoods.

However, it does not mean being agnostic about vaccination. On the contrary, ACTU Secretary Sally McManus has acknowledged high vaccination rates are necessary for workplace and community safety and for avoiding lockdowns.

The ACTU recently launched a national vaccination campaign to encourage workers to be vaccinated. It has also advocated for effective access to vaccination (including paid vaccine leave).

This approach aligns with the World Health Organisation, which does not support vaccine mandates. Instead, the WHO argues for a focus on information campaigns and making vaccines accessible.

Encouragement and facilitation do not guarantee workforces are 100% vaccinated (in the short term). But they may have more enduring public health benefits than forcing vaccination.

Discussing and encouraging vaccination can be effective in overcoming vaccine hesitancy. For instance, meetings of the health sector union have resulted in many initially reticent members deciding to be vaccinated.

The ACTU’s focus on “uniting” people to get behind vaccination, highlighting how vaccination is “an act of solidarity”, touches on something deeply important. Both Pope Francis and the WHO director-general have emphasised that solidarity – a mindset that thinks in terms of community – is vital in the pandemic.

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

Limited mandates through public health orders

The BCA-ACTU statement calls on governments to:

ensure that where mandatory vaccination requirements are necessary (in a small number of high-risk places), they are implemented through the use of nationally consistent Public Health Orders.

As the statement recognises, mandating vaccinations involves “serious decisions that should not be left to individual employers”. Any decision to limit fundamental rights is best done through accountable public institutions, rather than private entities motivated by commercial considerations.

Public health orders also give the community confidence that such decisions have been informed by expert advice, and various stakeholders have had a chance to be heard (as employer groups and unions have had with the federal vaccine roll-out).

Effective access to vaccines

With the difficulties plaguing the vaccine roll-out, a key focus of unions has been on vaccine supply, particularly for front-line health workers. The ACTU and the nursing and health sector unions have also highlighted the inequity of employer mandates when there are acute vaccine supply issues, as with aged care and disability workers.

Unions have called for all workers to be given paid vaccination leave (to be vaccinated and recover from its side effects). This would ensure workers are not deterred from being vaccinated because of a loss of pay. It’s particularly important for those in low-paid and precarious work (including casual employees who do not have paid annual and sick leave).

Giving workers a voice

The ACTU as well as transport, manufacturing and tertiary education unions have insisted workers be consulted on employer vaccination policies.

At stake is the fundamental principle of worker voice. This principle is integral to the right of workers, as recognised in the International Labour Organisation’s 1944 Declaration of Philadelphia, to:

pursue both their material well-being and their spiritual development in conditions of freedom and dignity.

Worker voice is also central to workplace health and safety legislation, which requires consultation with workers and trade unions on employer vaccination policies. The underlying insight is that worker education and empowerment are key to workplace safety.

Respecting worker voice is also essential to the collaborative approach to workplace vaccination urged by the federal government and the Fair Work Ombudsman. As the International Labour Organisation has pointed out, such collaboration helps build a climate of trust essential for the unprecedented workplace adjustments occurring in the pandemic.

We see in the unions’ opposition to employer-mandated vaccinations a framework of principles that places public health as its centre, together with respect for bodily autonomy, workers’ rights, fairness and democracy.

This approach may prove to be more far-sighted than employer mandates.

Joo-Cheong Tham has received funding from the Australian Research Council and the Australian Council of Trade Unions. He is the Deputy Director of the Migrant Workers Centre and a National Councillor of the National Tertiary Education Union.

– ref. Why unions support vaccination — but not employer mandates – https://theconversation.com/why-unions-support-vaccination-but-not-employer-mandates-167970

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Philippa Martyr, Lecturer, Pharmacology, Women’s Health, School of Biomedical Sciences, The University of Western Australia

We’re researching COVID-19 in a fast-paced world with new data becoming available all the time. We track which interventions work well and which ones don’t.

But in 1918, during the Spanish flu pandemic, the world was a different place. No one was entirely sure what caused influenza. By the time health authorities began to find out, it was too late.

Our knowledge about viruses was limited in 1918, but we knew about bacteria. People who died of flu had bacterial infection in their lungs. However, this threw researchers off track because these were secondary infections, not caused directly by the flu.

With this lack of knowledge, it was still an anything-goes medical research world. There were unregulated vaccine trials and lots of hype for the latest “cure”, even in respectable medical journals.

More than 100 years on, controversial “cures” for COVID-19, such as ivermectin, are making the headlines, being reported in medical journals and are being promoted by doctors and politicians.

Here’s what we know about the Spanish flu “cures” of the day, whisky included.

Read more:
I asked historians what find made them go ‘wait, wut?’ Here’s a taste of the hundreds of replies

Doctors, pharmacists and nurses had cures

Doctors developed and used some of these cures for the flu. Sydney’s chief quarantine officer, Dr Reid, treated patients in March 1919 with 15-grain (1 gram) doses of calcium lactate every four hours, and a “vaccine” containing influenza and pneumococcus bacteria. In 203 cases, he had no deaths.

Calcium lactate is used today to treat low levels of calcium in the blood. But Dr Reid’s doses are well above the current recommended daily level.

Chemists were also busy making and selling their own influenza cures. J. Reginald Albert McAlister of Guyra in regional New South Wales advertised his 1919 patented mixture as curing influenza at once.

People even listened to nurses — who at the time were usually the least important people in the health-care system — about cures for the Spanish flu.

Nan Taylor, a New Zealand nurse, advocated whisky — lots of it, including gargling and drops up the nose. She also recommended quinine and castor oil.

Nurse Kate Guazzini cared for Spanish flu patients in South Africa in late 1918, and caught the flu there before moving to Sydney. She said:

I was kept alive on brandy and milk for six weeks […] That, with quinine and hot lemon drinks, were found to be the only effective remedies.

Food manufacturers linked themselves to flu cures. In 1919 a brand new beef extract, Bonox, had just hit the Australian market, and the flu epidemic was a great marketing opportunity. Bonox was advertised as a sure way to recover your health and strength after the flu.

News of ‘cures’ spread far and wide

In much of Australia just after WWI there were often no doctors close by. So many people were used to dosing themselves with homemade potions and remedies. They shared their prescriptions in the pages of local newspapers.

Between 1918 and 1920, Australian newspapers were flooded with Spanish flu cures of all kinds.

In October 1918, a journalist at Victoria’s Bendigo Independent lamented:

Cures? My goodness me, the vast amount of cures on the market are positively frightening, and everyone has a favorite cure. I pin my faith to one, you to another. There’s a certain influenza mixture that, taken in the early stages, is regarded as a certain cure by one large section […] Asperin [sic] is the cry of another batch of victims, and they tell you that that drug does the trick. ‘Try whiskey and milk taken hot and taken often,’ is the advice of others who have had it. But one and all end in the same way: ‘Go to bed and stay there till the thing leaves you.’

Aspirin was very popular as a Spanish flu treatment worldwide. But people sometimes took it at dangerously high doses, which may have boosted the number of deaths attributed to the flu.

In the absence of many other treatments, government authorities promoted aspirin, along with quinine and phenacetin.

The pain killer phenacetin is now banned because it’s linked to kidney and urinary tract cancers.

Like aspirin, its overuse might have boosted the Spanish flu death rate.

Read more:
100 years later, why don’t we commemorate the victims and heroes of ‘Spanish flu’?

They’re using it in America

Like today, Australians were also eagerly reading about overseas experiments, and wanting to try these cures locally.

In June 1919, the Richmond River Herald reported:

On Friday we published the following New York cable: — ‘Dr. Charles Duncan, at the Convention of the American Medical Association, said the cure for influenza was one drachm of infected mucus pasteurised and with filtered water injected subcutaneously … Yesterday (says Tuesday’s Tweed ‘Daily’) a youth was seen inquiring for a chemist, having in his hand the above clipping and sixpence, his object being to secure that amount’s worth of the ‘cure.’ Several others, it is understood, have also been inquiring into the same matter, with a view to ‘having it made up’ locally.

Some of these cures lingered

Once the Spanish flu pandemic was over, many of the cures remained. Most of them, like aspirin, incorporated the threat of influenza into regular advertising.

Some, like quinine, have made a reappearance during the COVID-19 pandemic.

And one of the most commonly recommended cures — whisky taken at frequent intervals — hasn’t lost its popularity.

Philippa Martyr 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. People dropped whisky into their noses to treat Spanish flu. Here’s what else they took that would raise eyebrows today – https://theconversation.com/people-dropped-whisky-into-their-noses-to-treat-spanish-flu-heres-what-else-they-took-that-would-raise-eyebrows-today-167525

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Lowe, Emeritus Professor, School of Science, Griffith University

The federal government on Thursday announced a landmark defence pact with the United States and United Kingdom that involves this nation acquiring nuclear-powered submarines. The question of nuclear submarines in Australia has been bubbling along for some time – and with it, whether we should also develop a nuclear energy sector.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison insisted the defence deal did not mean Australia would look to develop a civil nuclear capability.

But there is strong support within Coalition ranks for a homegrown nuclear power industry. And the Minerals Council of Australia on Thursday quickly pointed out the “opportunity” the submarine announcement created for expanding nuclear technology in Australia.

The submarine announcement is sure to trigger a new round of debate on whether nuclear energy is right for Australia. But let’s be clear: the technology makes no sense for Australia, economically or politically, and would not be a timely response to climate change.

A twin discussion

The topics of nuclear submarines and nuclear energy are often discussed in tandem.

The technology is similar: the energy source for a nuclear submarine is basically a miniature version of that for a power station. And a similar supply chain is needed for mining and processing uranium, fuelling the reactor and managing waste. That also means both technologies require similar skills and regulatory frameworks.

The Minerals Council of Australia chief executive Tania Constable on Thursday responded to the submarine announcement, pointing out the apparent synergies with nuclear power:

This is an incredible opportunity for Australia’s economy – not only will we develop the skills and infrastructure to support this naval technology, but it connects us to the growing global nuclear power industry and its supply chains.

Now that Australia is acquiring nuclear submarines which use small reactors, there is no reason why Australia should not be considering [small modular reactors] for civilian use.

A former commander of Australia’s submarine force, Denis Mole, in April also questioned why Australia doesn’t have a larger and more diverse nuclear industry.

Mole argued that of the top 20 world economies, all have nuclear power except Australia, Italy and Saudi Arabia. And as nations commit to achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 “it’s noteworthy that no major economy intends doing so without nuclear power in the mix”, he said.

And in February this year, Lindsay Hughes, a senior analyst in the Indo-Pacific program of research organisation Future Directions International, also suggested Australia should develop a nuclear power sector to support a nuclear submarine fleet.

Hughes argued a nuclear power sector would provide skills that could be transferred into the military domain, including nuclear-powered submarines, saying:

A nuclear power sector would demand university graduates with skills in engineering, physics and mathematics, the same skills and skill levels that the US Navy requires to operate its nuclear submarines. Australian graduates with similar skills could be employed on Australian nuclear-powered submarines.

Hughes conclude a nuclear power sector ought “could potentially provide much of the foundational skills required to maintain and operate a nuclear-power submarine fleet”. That really is the military tail wagging the electricity industry dog.

Nuclear power is not the logical next step

Even if there’s agreement Australia needs nuclear submarines patrolling the South China Sea, there is no logical jump for a nuclear power sector to support that activity.

In an opinion piece in March this year, former defence minister Christopher Pyne wrote that without nuclear energy, Australia could not support nuclear submarines – but establishing the former would be difficult. He went on:

Australia does not have a nuclear industry. One cannot be created overnight. Even if there was the political will to create one, which there isn’t, what political party is going to waste its political capital on creating a legislative framework for a nuclear industry that can sustain nuclear submarines, that has zero chance of passing any Upper House in any jurisdiction in Australia.

A nuclear industry in Australia would need a solution for the safe storage and disposal of high-level radioactive waste – this appears unlikely, given the public opposition to establishing a site to dispose of even low-level nuclear waste in Australia.

And research suggests there would be little community support for nuclear power – especially following the Fukushima disaster – let alone a community willing to host a reactor.

The decision to build nuclear submarines raises a new set of issues about uranium processing, fuel fabrication and waste management. The Morrison government needs to tell the community how these will be managed.

What’s more, while nuclear power may have once been cheaper than wind or solar, the economics have since changed dramatically.

Nuclear power plants are very expensive to build and the economics of nuclear power are getting steadily worse. By contrast, renewables continue to come down in price.

As I wrote in my new book Long Half-life: The Nuclear Industry in Australia, global average prices for new power last year were 3.7 cents per kilowatt-hour for large solar, 4.1 cents for wind, 11 cents for coal and 16 cents for nuclear.

It would also take at least ten years to build one nuclear plant in Australia. So it’s clearly not an adequate response to the urgent challenge of climate change.

And the water use of a nuclear power industry, needed for cooling, would be a fundamental issue on the driest of all inhabited continents.

Over the past 20 years, new nuclear reactors have struggled to establish a business case in any OECD country, with the potential exception of South Korea. The world has obviously made its decision on nuclear: last year 192 gigawtts of renewables came on line, compared with a net 3 gigawatts of nuclear power.

Read more:
Why don’t Australians see nuclear as a climate change solution?

The future is renewables

Australia’s 2009 Defence White Paper noted the federal government had ruled out nuclear propulsion for submarines. Now the federal government will outlay huge amounts of money establishing the framework for the technology.

However, the massive public subsidy of this project must not be used to justify the much greater risks of nuclear power.

Australia is blessed with a bounty of sun and wind, and is well on the way to achieving 50% renewable energy by 2030, even without government help. No matter which way you look at it, nuclear power in Australia makes no sense at all.

Ian Lowe received funding in the 1980s from the National Energy Research, Development and Demonstration Council for a study of Australia’s future energy needs. He is a former President of the Australian Conservation Foundation.

– ref. Yes, Australia is buying a fleet of nuclear submarines. But nuclear-powered electricity must not come next – https://theconversation.com/yes-australia-is-buying-a-fleet-of-nuclear-submarines-but-nuclear-powered-electricity-must-not-come-next-168110

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Caroline Hunt, Professor of Clinical Psychology, University of Sydney

In August this year, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) published research charting the impact of the pandemic on the mental health of young people. In the first year of the pandemic, one in four young people worldwide was experiencing depression, while one in five was experiencing anxiety.

Alarmingly, the research concluded these elevated mental health concerns were double pre-pandemic estimates and increasing over time.

At the end of August, the New South Wales Education Department handed its struggling senior school students several extra weeks to study for the Higher School Certificate (HSC) exams — delayed until November.

The Universities Admissions Centre, which processes undergraduate course applications for universities mainly located in NSW and the ACT, assured students they would still receive an ATAR and university offers despite the delay. The release of the ATAR is scheduled for January 2022 and the release of offers based on ATAR in January and February 2022.

In stressful environments, people can find comfort in having a finish line. The NSW announcement lacked the detail needed to quell many anxieties in young people. To use sporting parlance, students who had prepared for a long-expected 5km run felt they were now running a marathon.

Read more:
Fears loom for teens undergoing vital brain development during COVID. Telling stories might help

What the class of 2021 is saying

The afternoon when the delayed HSC plans were announced, a year 12 person told me there was an overwhelming sense of despair among her peers.

She pointed me to a group on Facebook where many are sharing their frustrations and offering each other support. The HSC Discussion Group 2021 has more than 39,000 members.

After the announcement the exams would be delayed, many were shocked they were still going ahead. Others were upset at the delay itself, wanting to have the year over and done with.

One student wrote:

[…] can someone legit listen to us for once? We’re all fucked mentally Sydney haven’t been out in months but yeah let’s continue to put stress on kids and make them set [sic] the most stressful exams just for the student number to not mean anything after a year […] Do adults listen?!?

Another wrote:

well there goes all my motivation, graduation a formal haha what a joke. was meant to be graduating in september and finishing my exams in october before covid came and ruined it.

A study of Australian final-year high school students before the pandemic indicated alarmingly high levels of depression, anxiety and stress, especially among students who felt lonely and disconnected from their friends.

While there is no research specific to final-year students in Australia, overseas studies show existing mental health problems have increased for this group of students during COVID. This is especially during lockdowns, which required online learning and disruptions to the usual events that mark the end of high school.

Australian students are feeling the effects of missing school events, especially milestones like graduation.

On September 13, one student posted in the HSC discussion group:

To think that this is that time of the year when you open Insta and just see graduation photos, and that would’ve been us now.

Another wrote:

I don’t know about y’all but since Graduation was supposed to be this week, things have been hitting me real hard. As the class of 2021, we won’t have a Graduation Assembly, no walking across the stage, no formal, no muck up day and none of that overall graduation feeling. We went through 13 years of school just for this. I don’t care what anyone says, the class of 2021 had it harder than any other year before.

What states need to do

NSW and Victoria have announced initiatives to provide additional youth mental health services. NSW is spending A$109.5 million over four years to develop 25 “Safeguards” — child and adolescent mental health response teams to provide services to children and teenagers with moderate to severe mental health issues. Victoria has announced more than $13 million for establishing 20 pop-up mental health centres across Melbourne and regional Victoria, with 90 dedicated clinicians.

These services, if properly staffed and structured, can be positive models of care to address the enormous demand in the community. However, this will all come many months too late to support the class of 2021.

So, what could we do to have an immediate impact? Fast-tracked services delivering care almost immediately can be implemented through existing low-cost services, such as Headspace. Effective care must include mental health experts such as clinical psychologists providing leadership to teams of mental health staff including trainees, registrars and registered psychologists.

Clinical psychology postgraduate students undertaking placements can boost numbers quickly to expand access to an expert workforce for youth across the country. Each year in NSW alone, over 300 clinical psychology students undertake six-month-long placements mostly in public mental health services, and there is capacity for many to be working in Headspace centres to provide psychological interventions to youth in need. All we need here is government funding for supervisors.

Under such a model the structures to ensure community safety, such as supervision in accredited placements, are already in place.

Read more:
‘It really sucks’: how some Year 12 students in Queensland feel about 2020

Headspace is also highly accessible. An internal report into the reach of our local Headspace I undertook with a University of Sydney student showed the service was accessed by a significant proportion of youth from disadvantaged groups, including Aboriginal youth, LGBTQI youth and youth from diverse cultural backgrounds.

We know most private psychologists are booked out and public resources were scant even before the pandemic began.

Given the emerging mental health crisis in the class of 2021, governments need to act quickly to provide access to psychology services. Once we have emerged from the crisis of this pandemic, we all need to look seriously at how we equip our mental health workforce for the long term.

If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call Lifeline on 13 11 14 or Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800.

Caroline Hunt receives funding from the NHMRC. She is affiliated with the Australian Clinical Psychology Association and the University of Sydney.

– ref. Delayed graduations, no formals — the class of 2021 has had a hell of a year. They need mental health support, and quickly – https://theconversation.com/delayed-graduations-no-formals-the-class-of-2021-has-had-a-hell-of-a-year-they-need-mental-health-support-and-quickly-167187

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Catherine Bennett, Chair in Epidemiology, Deakin University

Victoria’s roadmap out of lockdown, released today, marks an important milestone. It’s a clear commitment to delivering on the National Plan, and provides much-needed clarity on where we are heading and what the next few months will look like. It is staged and sensible, striking the balance between opening up and maintaining a level of control over transmission.

The roadmap charts a course of staged reopening as more Victorians become vaccinated. It’s informed by modelling from the Burnet Institute, which makes some sobering predictions on the number of cases and the strain on our health system, no matter what course we take from here.

It steps us through what things will look like as we move from 80% of those aged 16 and older having had at least one dose, to 70% fully vaccinated, through to and 80% and beyond.

The potential risk of easing restrictions will be managed through a continued focus on outdoor activity and leveraging the lower risk of infection and, even more so, hospitalisation, in the growing number who are fully vaccinated.

Having a clear vision for where you are heading can make all the difference, especially when the time horizons are now within weeks. We need this, as it will still be a difficult transition through “the gateway” to living with COVID.

Balancing the risks

The roadmap was only one of five scenarios the Burnet team modelled and is in fact the least cautious. But the decision was taken to balance these risks with the direct and indirect health costs of delaying the easing of restrictions further.

The modelling forecasts twice the peak in case numbers, ICU admissions and deaths under the proposed path compared with staying under lockdown, or the other more restricted scenarios.

But it also shows that maintaining high levels of testing can mitigate some of this additional risk.

We have a road out, and one we can make less costly by testing when symptomatic, and abiding by the public health orders now the end is in reach.

So what does the plan say?

When 80% of Victorians have had a single vaccination dose

At 80% single dose coverage among those aged 16 and over, expected by September 26, the travel limit in Melbourne will extend to 15km.

Outdoor activities such as basketball, golf, tennis will be allowed, subject to the same people limits as picnics: two adults if unvaccinated, or up to five fully vaccinated.

In regional Victoria, final year VCAL (Victorian Certificate of Applied Learning) students will be allowed back to study onsite. Masks will no longer be required for beauty or personal care services.

When 70% of over-16s are double dosed

October heralds the staged return to partial onsite schooling, with further changes once 70% of those 16 and older are fully vaccinated, expected by October 26.

This marks the official ending of what we know as lockdown.

The curfew will also end in metro Melbourne and outdoor hospitality will open to those fully vaccinated.

Weddings and funerals will be allowed outdoors for up to 50.

Students from all years will be able to return to face-to-face learning for at least part of the week in both Melbourne and regional Victoria.

Regional Victoria will also see further easing with up to 30 fully vaccinated patrons allowed indoors in hospitality venues.

When 80% of over 16s are double-dose vaxxed

When we get to 80% double dose coverage, projected for November 5, all of Victoria will share the same more modest restrictions.

Indoor activity will open further for those fully vaccinated, including retail, and caps will lift to 150 for organised indoor events and 500 outdoors.

Private gatherings of up to 30 people outdoors will be allowed, but only ten guests are allowed in the home, the setting deemed the highest risk.

Masks will only be required outdoors.

Read more:
We’ve become used to wearing masks during COVID. But does that mean the habit will stick?

By the end of the year

By year’s end, as we exceed 80% of adults fully vaccinated and aim for 80% including 12- to 15-year-olds, more visitors to the home will be allowed, possibly extending to 30 by Christmas.

International travel might be possible by then too, at least to low-risk countries.

Interstate travel will also be on the cards, although this might be limited to New South Wales and ACT until other states also move to living with the virus.

Why lift restrictions on outdoor activities and for the vaccinated?

It makes sense to use outdoor settings and individual and population vaccination protection to progress on this road out to manage transmission risk.

Remaining unvaccinated is a greater risk now, even with these rules in place – 204 people in hospital this week, and only 1% of these fully vaccinated.

Vaccine passports won’t be a permanent fixture, but allow us to do more things earlier than otherwise possible.

Read more:
Vaccine passports are coming to Australia. How will they work and what will you need them for?

But it could be worse – or better

It’s important to recognise that the steps along the way may end up looking somewhat different depending on case numbers, perhaps for the better.

Lower case numbers as we start this transition will put us in a better position, as the Doherty modellers reported last week. So the more we contain transmission while in lockdown, the easier the road ahead and lowest impact on hospitals.

The immediate challenge has not changed. We still need to do everything we can to keep case numbers from rising and, if possible, bring them down. We still need to get vaccinated as quickly as possible and push coverage in those over 16 up to 80%, and beyond.

What has changed is that we can see clearly where we are heading and how our hard work to prevent further waves while waiting for the vaccine roll-out now translates into greater freedoms in coming months.

This is a critical transition period that will test us all, and it helps to see vaccination levels that can provide some relief within reach after a gruelling 18 months. With the end of this “pre-vaccine” phase within sight, a final push to control transmission over this last stretch makes this a safer and quicker passage through the gateway to living with the virus.

If we do better than the Burnet modelling assumes by getting tested when symptomatic, vaccinated or not, and abiding by the rules in place, we will come in well under the forecast case and death counts.

Victoria and NSW are watching and learning from each other as each state eases out of lockdown while keeping a level of control over the virus. Success will reassure other states and territories of how this can work, and allow Australia to once again be open for business.

Read more:
NSW risks a second larger COVID peak by Christmas if it eases restrictions too quickly

Catherine Bennett receives funding from Medical Research Future Find and the National Health and Medical research Council, and was appointed as a independent advisor on the AstraZeneca COVID Vaccine Advisory Board

Hassan Vally 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. With a post-lockdown Victoria in sight, the more we can contain transmission now, the easier the road ahead – https://theconversation.com/with-a-post-lockdown-victoria-in-sight-the-more-we-can-contain-transmission-now-the-easier-the-road-ahead-168245

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

Industry Minister Christian Porter has been forced to resign from cabinet after declining to seek and provide to Scott Morrison the names of the anonymous benefactors who have helped fund his legal costs.

Morrison has appointed energy minister Angus Taylor acting industry minister and sources say he is likely to continue in the dual role.

In a three-page statement, Porter renewed his attack on the ABC and said a statement provided by the now-deceased woman who accused him of historical rape – which he denies – showed the allegation lacked credibility and was written by someone “very unwell”.

Porter is keeping the funds donated to a “blind trust”, the amount of which is unknown. He also says he will seek to run again in his Western Australian seat of Pearce, which is on a 5.2% margin.

Last week, Porter updated his parliamentary register of interests to reveal a “part contribution” to his legal bills for his (now settled) defamation case against the ABC from “a blind trust known as the Legal Services Trust”. Porter said he did not know the names of donors.

Morrison asked his department to advise whether the arrangement breached ministerial standards.

But Morrison indicated at a news conference on Sunday he and Porter had finalised his future ahead of the advice.

Morrison was clearly anxious to have it settled before his trip to the United States, so it would not be a distraction during what he hopes will be time of positive news following last week’s announcement of the AUKUS security agreement.

Bad publicity around Porter has been a running sore for the government for much of the year.

The historical rape allegation surfaced publicly in February, when the ABC reported material about it had been sent to several politicians, including the prime minister. Porter was not named but later identified himself, declaring the alleged assault had never happened.

Initially, he hoped to retain his position as attorney-general, but this was politically untenable and he was moved to the industry job in a reshuffle.

With an outcry over the “blind trust” and an election approaching next year, Morrison could not afford another prolonged scandal around Porter. He indicated Porter’s future was in doubt when he said last week he was taking the matter very seriously.

Morrison said on Sunday that in their discussions, Porter had been unable to “practically provide further information because of the nature of those [trust] arrangements”.

That Porter couldn’t provide the information meant he could not conclusively rule out a perceived conflict of interest.

Morrison said Porter was upholding the ministerial standards by resigning.

Porter said in his statement that while he had no right of access to the trust’s funding or conduct, he had asked the trustee for an assurance, which he received, “that none of the contributors were lobbyists or prohibited foreign entities.

“This additional information was provided as part of my Ministerial disclosure,” he said.

He said no doubt the desire of some or many of the donors to remain anonymous was driven by wanting to avoid “trial by mob”.

Porter said he believed that he had provided the information required under the Members’ Register of Interests, and that the additional disclosures he provided under the Ministerial Standards were in accord with its additional requirements.

“However, after discussing the matter with the Prime Minister I accept that any uncertainty on this point provides a very unhelpful distraction for the Government in its work.”

He said to the extent the uncertainty might be resolved by seeking further information about donors’ identities, “this would require me to put pressure on the Trust to provide me with information to which I am not entitled.

“I am not prepared to seek to break the confidentiality of those people who contributed to my legal fees under what are well-known and regular legal structures, including the confidentiality attached to the Trust contribution,” Porter said.

He had explained he “could not assist any process that would ultimately allow people who have done nothing wrong to become targets of the social media mob.”

“Ultimately, I decided that if I have to make a choice between seeking to pressure the Trust to break individuals’ confidentiality in order to remain in Cabinet, or alternatively forego my Cabinet position, there is only one choice I could, in all conscience, make.”

In his renewed attack on the ABC, Porter said that “seemingly with great care and effort – [it] has reported only those parts of the information that it has in its possession which feeds into its narrative of guilt.

“I have recently been provided from a source outside the ABC with a copy of the only signed document that the person who made and subsequently withdrew the complaint ever made.

“Many parts of that 88-page document are such that any reasonable person would conclude that they show an allegation that lacks credibility; was based on repressed memory (which has been completely rejected by courts as unreliable and dangerous); which relied on diaries said to be drafted in 1990/91 but which were actually words composed in 2019; and, was written by someone who was, sadly, very unwell.”

Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese said Porter needed to answer where the money had come from. He also said Morrison had not sacked Porter – Porter had resigned.

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. Christian Porter quits cabinet, refusing to find out who gave him money for legal costs – https://theconversation.com/christian-porter-quits-cabinet-refusing-to-find-out-who-gave-him-money-for-legal-costs-168246

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amanda Porter, Senior Fellow (Indigenous Programs), The University of Melbourne

Proposals to expand police powers, to criminalise coercive control and to establish specialist women’s police stations have all occupied a prominent place in Australia’s recent debate about responses to violence against women.

The proposal to establish women’s police stations has received a strong platform in mainstream media and academic journals. It has also featured in debates on policy development, such as in the Women’s Safety and Justice Taskforce currently underway in Queensland.

In the local and global movement for Black and Indigenous lives where associated campaigns are asking the public to scrutinise police powers and to discuss defunding police, many Australian feminists have been advocating for punitive solutions to domestic violence.

But there is currently no credible evidence to support the implementation of women’s police stations, and the research underpinning the proposal in Australia is problematic in several ways.

Read more:
Increased incarceration of First Nations women is interwoven with the experience of violence and trauma

What are women’s police stations?

Specialist women’s police stations are designed to respond specifically to violence against women. They have been a feature of policing in Argentina, Brazil and other Latin American countries since the late 1980s, as well as parts of Africa and Asia.

Some women’s police stations adopt a “multidisciplinary” approach to policing domestic violence. They are staffed with teams of police who work alongside social workers, psychologists and lawyers. However, women’s police stations are still police stations.

They vary in appearance, with some colourfully designed with play rooms for children and welcome rooms that are decorated with flowers and murals.

Their mandate is to provide services for women. It’s unclear whether the stations provide support for people who identify as women outside of the cis-gender binary.

What does the research say?

To date, Australian news reporting on women’s police stations has relied almost exclusively on research led by Australian criminologist Kerry Carrington.

Journalists and commentators have frequently used this research to report on and advocate for the establishment of women’s police stations in Australia. Investigative journalist Jess Hill states:

We don’t get cops to fight fires or drive ambulances, because that’s considered specialist work. So why don’t we just take the police who love responding to family violence […] and create a parallel force? […] It’s a proven model that’s existed across Latin America (and various other countries) for 35 years.

The evidence presented in favour of women’s police stations is largely drawn from two original studies. Both studies were led by Professor Carrington at the Queensland University of Technology.

The first was a study undertaken in Argentina over a three-month period.

This research included interviews with 100 employees from ten women’s police stations in the Buenos Aires province of Argentina. The research participants represented were selected by the province’s Ministry of Security – who the police station reports to.

The second study drew on the findings of 2 surveys conducted in Australia on attitudes towards the proposal of women’s police stations.

These two surveys were: one “workforce” survey, which was distributed to Australian police officers, non-governmental organisations and case workers; the second “community” survey, with recruitment of Australian adults via Facebook advertising.

The second study found people thought women’s police stations could improve the policing of gender violence in Indigenous communities in Australia if staffed by appropriately trained teams working from both gender and culturally sensitive perspectives.

The authors of the study concluded:

adapted to an Australian context where Indigenous women are many times more likely to experience domestic family violence, these specialist police stations will need to be appropriately staffed by Indigenous and non-Indigenous officers trained to work from both gender and culturally sensitive perspectives.

Issues with the studies

There are several concerns with both studies.

In relation to the study in Argentina – all 100 of the participants were paid employees of the two police stations being researched. Police officers made up 79%, and 21% were lawyers, social workers or psychologists employed by or otherwise engaged with the two police stations selected for the study.

The study doesn’t consider how the research participants’ statuses as employees of the police stations may have influenced their views.

A second concern is the study didn’t include interviews with survivors or their families or support networks. It also didn’t include interviews with the communities where the stations were located.

A third limitation (which the authors acknowledge), is the study does not examine whether these police stations reduced crime rates, statistics of domestic violence or apprehended violence orders.

In addition, no data is supplied about important factors to assess the claims of the benefit of women’s police stations in other matters related to domestic violence. Such as whether women’s police stations increase access to legal supports or whether they improve a person’s ability to report violence.

Finally, neither study examines whether there was a reduction in crime rates or statistics of domestic violence, femicide or apprehended violence orders.

It is difficult to assess the effectiveness of women’s police stations without this data.

Evidence to suggest women’s police stations don’t work

Evaluations of women’s police stations have had mixed results. For example, one recent evidence summary in India found “all-women police stations did not improve services for gender violence victims”.

Another study suggests no improvement in reporting or accountability with respect to women’s police stations in India.

And there is evidence to suggest women’s police stations are not free from discrimination and violence, such as reports of transphobia.

This paper from Spanish journal Delito y Sociedad in 2016, reported female officers associated with La Plata women’s police station apprehended and publicly searched ten transgender women. The women said they were threatened with being shot if they moved. They stated four of them were detained for no reason other than their visibility as trans women.

The event led to widespread condemnation of the La Plata women’s police station by transgender advocacy groups, particularly as station staff at that time included a trans woman.

There is also the death of Úrsula Bahillo that indicates these police stations aren’t always effective with protecting people who experience domestic violence.

Bahillo reported violence from her policeman boyfriend to a woman’s police station on at least 18 separate occasions. She died three days after reporting her case to a women’s police station in Buenos Aires province in February this year.

La Capital reported Bahillo’s family stated the women’s police station “did nothing.”

BBC Mundo notes that:

Úrsula Bahillo’s case became notorious for the repeated times she asked for help, denounced her aggressor [to police] and was not listened to.

Policing studies conducted in Australia and the UK suggest simply increasing the number of female police officers will never be enough to improve discriminatory policing.

Despite female leadership in policing in Queensland, there have still been reports of sexism and racism among police, including police posting on social media that women lie about domestic violence.

What about Black and Indigenous women?

We found very little research on the experiences of Black and Indigenous women with women’s police stations, besides one 2010 report, looking at Latin America, which observed:

Indigenous and Afro-descendent women have limited access [to women’s police stations] because few operators come from or understand those cultures and few speak their languages.

Indigenous advocates have repeatedly drawn attention to the police failure to protect Indigenous women and families.

An example of this involves the case of Tiffany Paterson, an Aboriginal woman from the Northern Territory who was violently assaulted after the Northern Territory Police failed to protect her.
Tiffany, who survived the attack, later sued the Northern Territory Police on the grounds of negligence and settled on confidential terms.

It is broadly understood in Indigenous communities that police stations are not safe places for Indigenous people. They are also not safe for Indigenous people to call upon for assistance, with domestic or state-sanctioned violence.

We know Indigenous families and communities are often frontline responders to domestic violence. Indigenous women are more likely to report violence or seek support from staff within Indigenous organisations, not police nor non-Indigenous services.

We know policing of domestic violence plays a significant role in the removal of Indigenous children from their families. The deep mistrust of police within Indigenous communities is acknowledged by police themselves.

Read more:
Four Aboriginal deaths in custody in three weeks: is defunding police the answer?

Why women’s police stations are not the answer

Literature produced with Indigenous communities by Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars in Australia points to concrete alternatives for Indigenous women and families experiencing violence.

This includes community-based services and culturally safe legal support services.

White feminists must listen to Indigenous peoples and organisations who are at the frontline delivering evidence-based early intervention and prevention services, as well as Indigenous researchers with lived experience.

All those who have previously supported women’s police stations should read this important work and reconsider their position. Now is a crucial time for these discussions, on the 30 year anniversary of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, and with Indigenous incarceration rates increasing and the preparation of a new ten year National Plan to address violence against women and children.

Crystal McKinnon receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Marlene Longbottom is employed by the University of Wollongong and is currently the VC Aboriginal Postdoctoral Research Fellow.

Amanda Porter and Ann Louise Deslandes 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. Women’s police stations in Australia: would they work for ‘all’ women? – https://theconversation.com/womens-police-stations-in-australia-would-they-work-for-all-women-165873

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

Medical news is full of stories about promising new treatments for challenging conditions, or for additional health benefits of routine behaviours and habits. Who doesn’t want to feel good about drinking coffee or eating chocolate?

In this rich vein, a study by German and British researchers published earlier this year — which just won the Ig Nobel prize for medicine — suggests orgasmic sex can clear nasal congestion as well as a nasal decongestant.

The Ig Nobels are awarded to “honour achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think”, with a ceremony at Harvard University and Nobel laureates among those handing out prizes.

This year’s winner deserves critical appraisal before deciding whether to prescribe orgasm for consenting partners with stuffy noses.

Read more:
Sniffles, sneezing and cough? How to tell if it’s a simple allergy rather than The Virus

A small but well-formed study

When we critically appraise research it’s important to look at “internal validity” first. Could the results have been caused by other factors, such as bias due to flaws in design or how the research was conducted? The next step is to ask whether the findings have “external validity” or can be generalised to the wider population.

Also, with most studies that aren’t using the “gold standard” study design of double-blinded, randomised controlled trials, we need to consider other factors to establish cause and effect. This includes consistency with other evidence and biological plausibility — or whether the findings tally with established understandings of our bodies.

The German-UK study was clearly not a double-blind study (the couples knew they were having sex) and was small in size (18 heterosexual couples), but each subject was their own “control” subject. That means each person had the intervention — sexual intercourse with orgasm — compared with a nasal decongestant spray applied the following day.

Nasal flow was measured at five time points: before sex, after orgasm and up to three hours afterwards. Subjects were tested with a questionnaire to determine which ones had pre-existing nose blockages over the past month. Nasal function was assessed subjectively by the participant and objectively with a portable device measuring air flow.

As such, this study was well-designed and conducted. That is, apart from one minor flaw: some participants were unable to focus on the device before and immediately after intercourse, leading to some missing data!

Read more:
4 things about female orgasms researchers actually study

Going with the flow

The study did find a significant improvement in nasal flow immediately after orgasm and this was of similar size to the benefit from decongestant spray used the following day.

However, the benefit from sexual activity was short-lived and nasal flow was back to baseline within hours. Unsurprisingly, the improved nasal flow was only seen in those with pre-existing nasal congestion.

Wait, there’s a connection between orgasm and noses?

The research paper notes the theory of “reflex nasal neurosis” was put forward by German otolaryngologist Wilhelm Fliess, a close friend of Sigmund Freud, in 1897. Both believed neuroses were mostly caused by sexual problems.

Fliess theorised there were specific “genital spots” in the nose that influenced genital function. Yet his theory failed scientific scrutiny and faded into obscurity.

However, exercise is known to cause an improved nasal flow and this benefit persists for up to 30 minutes after physical activity.

Read more:
I’ve always wondered: why your nose runs when it’s cold

The ‘take home’ message

There are some limitations of the research, such as the small sample size of volunteer couples, and the timing of nasal air flow measurements.

But overall, the study presents some convincing evidence that orgasm improves nasal obstruction, at least for an hour or so. And, as the researchers note: “I don’t think other methods to relieve congestion are nearly as much fun as sexual activity.”

The Ig Nobel winners suggest further research into whether masturbation has similar benefits, or whether multiple orgasm might provide longer relief of nasal congestion.

So, those with nasal congestion shouldn’t throw away their decongestant sprays just yet. However, all of us can bask in the warm glow of knowing we can add another health benefit to sexual intercourse and orgasm.

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

– ref. Forget nose spray, good sex clears a stuffy nose just as effectively — and is a lot more fun – https://theconversation.com/forget-nose-spray-good-sex-clears-a-stuffy-nose-just-as-effectively-and-is-a-lot-more-fun-167901

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anastasia Dalziell, Postdoctoral Associate, Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Cornell University

Recently, two native Australian birds have stolen the limelight with their impressive vocal imitations.

A superb lyrebird called Echo at Sydney’s Taronga Zoo has produced a painfully realistic vocal rendition of a human baby crying. Lyrebirds are already world-famous for their astonishingly accurate vocal mimicry, but these new recordings show their abilities can still surprise.

Then a new paper announced the arrival an unexpected newcomer to Australia’s vocal imitation scene. A male musk duck (Biziura lobata) named Ripper was recorded imitating two stereotypical Australian sounds: a loudly shutting gate and a person exclaiming “you bloody fool!”.

The gate sound, at least, proved a hit with one of Ripper’s male colleagues who also ended up mimicking the sound. Excitingly, these recordings — originally from the 1980s and dug out from archives — provide the first material evidence of any duck species copying a sound in its environment, disrupting current understandings of the evolution of vocal learning in birds.

So what’s the big fuss about crying and swearing birds?

Why musk ducks are odd

Vocal production learning is a highly specialised trait that’s rare among animals.
It requires flexible and sophisticated control over vocal production, and can be associated with enlarged regions of the brain relative to non-vocal learners.

For a long time, the only other animals known to possess similar vocal learning abilities to humans were parrots and male songbirds. But today, the musk duck joins a broad, but relatively small, list of non-human animals capable of vocal learning, including some bats, elephants, dolphins, whales and seals. Belatedly, we can now add female songbirds to the list of vocal production learners.

The loquacious “Ripper” was a captive-reared male musk duck at the Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve near Canberra. When he hatched, with the help of a foster bantam hen, he was the only musk duck there.

But even in the wild, musk ducks are odd. Male musk ducks are up to three times larger than females and have a distinctive bulbous lobe of skin hanging from their bills. Their name comes from the musky smell emitted by dominant males.

In the breeding season, males group together (in “leks”) and perform an exciting aquatic courtship displays for females, performing both day and night. Each male performs a structured, audio-visual display with his tail over his back, inflating his throat lobe, and splashing water while whistling loudly.

In the wild, male display whistles seem to form local dialects — a signature of vocal learning. But this doesn’t involve imitations of other species.

Ripper produced many elements of wild display, but would avidly display to people. His bizarre mimicry of anthropogenic sounds formed part of this display.

Mimicking in captivity

The story of Ripper is part of a long scientific tradition. Captive-reared parrots and some songbirds mimicking human speech feature in ancient European writings, including the works of Aristotle and Pliny the Elder.

More recently, the possible complexities of parrot communication were explored in a pioneering study of “Alex”, the captive African grey parrot, who had a vocabulary of more than 100 words.

By and large, such accounts of human imitations involve a captive individual raised in isolation from others of its own kind, but in close association with a human caretaker. The human caretaker then becomes the social model for the captive bird’s vocal development.

So while these examples reveal an animal’s capacity for vocal production learning, they don’t show that wild animals imitate sounds from their environment. Indeed, very few of the animal species that mimic people in captivity produce anything other than their own, species-specific vocalisations in the wild.

However, this is not true of Australia’s lyrebirds and other avian vocal mimics.

Mimicry in wild Australia

Two lyrebird species are famous for the diversity and accuracy of their vocal mimicry: the superb lyrebird of the wet eucalypt forests of southeast Australia, and the Albert’s lyrebird of Australia’s subtropical east.

In captivity, male superb lyrebirds have been recorded mimicking anthropogenic sounds ranging from chainsaws, emergency vehicle sirens to this new recording of a crying human baby.

In the wild, both males and females are proficient mimics of the vocalisations and wingbeats of other bird species — and occasionally mammals. A single individual male superb lyrebird can even mimic a flock of alarm-calling birds.

Despite many rumours, it remains a bit of a mystery when and how often wild lyrebirds mimic sounds of human origin.

Lyrebirds aren’t the only ones. Australia is the lucky home to a surprisingly large number of songbird species that regularly mimic in the wild, from tiny thornbills to the large enigmatic bowerbirds that, even in the wild, occasionally produce startlingly accurate renditions of humans.

Read more:
The mimics among us — birds pirate songs for personal profit

But not all mimics are what they seem. In a heartbreaking example, the mimetic song of the Regent honeyeater is both a consequence and a cause of the species’ decline. Wild males copy other species because there aren’t enough males left to pass on their song to the next generation.

Threatened archival treasures

Ripper the swearing musk duck, Echo the bawling lyrebird, and the forgotten songs of the Regent honeyeater show us how much we still have to discover about Australia’s extraordinary birds. Far from being the biogeographical oddity, Australian birds are still destabilising biological theory.

Ripper was a bird of the 80s, and we only know of his bizarre mimicry because Rippers’ recordist, Dr Peter Fullagar, was on a mission to establish a natural history sound archive for Australia. Like all good 80s singers, Ripper was recorded on cassette tape before Peter digitised it.

It’s only from historical archives that researchers could discover that original song of the Regent honeyeater was unique to the species and more elaborate than the songs of contemporary males. Simply listening to captive-reared birds or the dwindling singers in the wild is no longer enough to reveal the Regent honeyeater’s natural song: the baseline has shifted.

What other treasures lie gathering dust in forgotten sheds or library stacks? We must be quick, before those cassette tapes degrade too far to be read.

Read more:
Only the lonely: an endangered bird is forgetting its song as the species dies out

Anastasia Dalziell receives funding from the National Science Foundation (USA). She was recently a postdoctoral research fellow with the Macaulay Library: a scientific archive of natural history audio, video, and photographs.

Justin A. Welbergen receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the National Science Foundation (USA).

– ref. ‘Bloody fool!’: why Ripper the musk duck, and many other talkative Aussie birds, are exciting biologists – https://theconversation.com/bloody-fool-why-ripper-the-musk-duck-and-many-other-talkative-aussie-birds-are-exciting-biologists-167709

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

University of Canberra Professorial Fellow Michelle Grattan and University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor and President Professor Paddy Nixon discuss the week in politics.

This week Michelle and Paddy discuss the revelation that anonymous donors covered some of former attorney-general Christian Porter’s legal fees incurred during his defamation case against the ABC.

They also discuss Scott Morrison’s upcoming trip to Washington for the QUAD forum, and what this means for the AUKUS partnership announced this week, which will see Australia acquiring nuclear-powered submarines.

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. VIDEO: Michelle Grattan on the Anglosphere’s reassertion in the Indo-Pacific – https://theconversation.com/video-michelle-grattan-on-the-anglospheres-reassertion-in-the-indo-pacific-168111

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Vijay Sivaraman, Professor of Telecommunications and Internet Technologies, UNSW

Of the 8.2 million homes and businesses active on Australia’s National Broadband Network (NBN) in July 2021, 77% are now reported to be on a broadband plan that delivers speeds of at least 50 megabits per second (Mbps). This is plenty to accommodate a typical household’s needs for video streaming (Netflix high-definition resolution, for instance, uses about 3Mbps and ultra-high definition about 12Mbps), video conferencing (2-3Mbps), gaming (less than 1Mbps) and general web browsing.

So why do we still experience video freeze, game lag spikes, and teleconference stutters? The problem is not speed, but other factors such as latency and loss, which are unrelated to speed.

For more than three decades we have been conditioned to think of broadband in terms of Mbps. This made sense when we had dial-up internet, over which web pages took many seconds to load, and when DSL lines could not support more than one video stream at a time.

But once speeds approach 100Mbps and beyond, studies from the Broadband Forum and others show that further increases are largely imperceptible to users.

Yet Australian consumers fear being caught short on broadband speed. More than half a million Australians moved to plans delivering more than 250Mbps in the March 2021 quarter. Indeed, we have collectively bought about 410 terabits per second (Tbps) on our speed plans, while actual usage peaks at 23Tbps. This suggests we collectively use less than 6% of the speed we pay for!

Read more:
How to boost your internet speed when everyone is working from home

In contrast to our need for speed, our online time has grown tremendously. According to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), the average Australian household consumed 355 gigabytes of data in December 2020, a 59% increase on the year before.

Our internet usage is like a marathon runner gradually adding more and more miles to their training distances, rather than a sprinter reaching higher and higher top speeds. It therefore makes little sense to judge our multi-hour marathon of video streaming, gaming and teleconferencing by running a connection speed test which is a 5-10 second sprint.

What do we really need from broadband?

So what do we need from our broadband for a good streaming, gaming or conferencing experience? A connection that offers low and relatively constant latency (the time taken to move data packets from the server to your house) and loss (the proportion of data packets that are lost in transit).

These factors in turn depend on how well your internet service provider (ISP) has engineered and tuned its network.

To reduce latency, your ISP can deploy local caches that store a copy of the videos you want to watch, and local game servers to host your favourite e-sport titles, thereby reducing the need for long-haul transport. They can also provide good routing paths to servers, thereby avoiding poor-quality or congested links.

To manage loss, ISPs “shape” their traffic by temporarily holding packets in buffers to smooth out transient load spikes. But there’s a natural trade-off here: too much smoothing holds packets back, leading to latency spikes that cause missed gunshots in games and stutters in conferences. Too little smoothing, on the other hand, causes buffers to overflow and packets to be lost, which puts the brakes on downloads.

ISPs therefore have to tune their network to balance performance across the various applications. But with the ACCC’s Measuring Broadband Australia (MBA) Program predominantly focused on speed-testing, and with a 1% margin separating the top three ISPs all keen to claim the top spot, we are inadvertently incentivising ISPs to optimise their network for speed, rather than for other factors.

This is a detrimental outcome for users, because we don’t really have quite the need for speed we think we do.

How can we do better?

An alternative approach is possible. With advances in artificial intelligence (AI) technology, it is now becoming possible to analyse network traffic streams to assess users’ experience in an application-aware manner.

For example, AI engines trained on the pattern of video “chunk” fetches of on-demand streams such as Netflix, and live streams such as Twitch, can infer whether they are playing at the best available resolution and without freeze.

Similarly, AI engines can analyse traffic throughout the various stages of games such as CounterStrike, Call of Duty or Dota2 to track issues such as lag spikes. And they can detect videoconferencing stutters and dropouts by analysing traffic on Zoom, Teams, and other platforms.

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

Australia has made significant public investment into a national broadband infrastructure that is now well equipped to provide more-than-adequate speed to citizens, as long as it runs as efficiently as possible.

In addition to his academic appointment, Vijay Sivaraman is co-founder and part-time CEO of Canopus Networks, which develops network traffic analytics software. He has received funding from many organisations including Google, Cisco, HPE, Optus, Telstra, NBN, Canopus and ACCAN. He is affiliated with the IEEE.

– ref. Why does my internet connection feel slow and jumpy, even when my internet speed is high? – https://theconversation.com/why-does-my-internet-connection-feel-slow-and-jumpy-even-when-my-internet-speed-is-high-167362

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katie Pickles, Professor of History, University of Canterbury

In 1992 four New Zealand icons (and the queen) appeared on new banknotes. Part of creating national identity, these notable citizens were chosen to represent the pinnacles of achievement.

Āpirana Ngata, Edmund Hillary, Ernest Rutherford and Kate Sheppard — all in circulation so their acts and values can be admired, celebrated and emulated.

Collectively, the banknote icons signalled a bicultural nation that celebrates Māori knowledge and success, a place where women are equal and where it is possible to lead the world, including in science and exploration.

But while positioned on individual pedestals, these people were also part of citizenship-building that relied on team efforts.

Ngata was one of many talented members of the Young Māori Party. Hillary didn’t climb Everest alone. And Rutherford’s scientific breakthroughs resulted from collaborative work that stood “on the shoulders of giants”.

Cast in bronze

So what of Kate Sheppard’s position? A year after she graced the $10 note, she was put on another pedestal, literally. Unveiled in 1993, the national memorial provides a useful interpretation of the suffrage leader’s place in the collaborative women’s movement of the late 19th century.

The memorial’s Christchurch location, Sheppard’s name in its title and her central position cast in bronze all recognise her leadership. But the monument also recognises how, after the victory, she brought together the networks that had formed during the suffrage campaign.

Sheppard became the first president of the National Council of Women (NCW) in 1896, but flanking her in bronze are others central to the women’s movement.

Read more:
The ‘epicentre of women’s suffrage’ — Kate Sheppard’s Christchurch home finally opens as a public museum

Meri Te Tai Mangakāhia of Taitokerau requested the vote for women from the Kotahitanga parliament. Amey Daldy was a leader of Auckland’s Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) and Franchise League. Ada Wells of Christchurch worked for equal educational opportunities for girls and women. Harriet Morison of Dunedin was an advocate for working-class women and active in the Tailoresses’ Union. And Helen Nicol led the important women’s franchise campaign in Dunedin.

The monument also recognises the complex layers and themes of women’s suffrage, including the place of men such as MP Sir John Hall who played a vital part in the suffrage victory. Seven other prominent suffragists are also named. Smaller panels depict generic women going about their daily lives, all part of the wider movement.

An archetypal heroine?

So what makes Sheppard so iconic? As well as her role in a world-first episode in New Zealand history, I would argue Sheppard embodies many of the characteristics common to modern heroines globally.

She is emblematic of a mother figure, specifically as a maternal feminist concerned with home, purity and well-being. Metaphorically, her work involves giving birth to the nation.

Accompanied by an image of the symbolic white camellia flower presented to pro-suffrage MPs, Sheppard’s image on the banknote is part of her invention as a feminine, stylishly dressed, commanding figure.

But there are other dynamics at work, too. Sheppard is sometimes framed as a reformer, called to work for a more peaceful and egalitarian society. But the 2015
punk-rock musical That Bloody Woman portrays her as a rebel warrior queen, fighting with bravery and determination.

Read more:
Did a tragic family secret influence Kate Sheppard’s mission to give New Zealand women the vote?

Intrigue in her private life also adds to Sheppard’s appeal. Was her marriage to Walter Sheppard unhappy? They lived apart from 1905 until he died in 1915. Author Rachel McAlpine wrote a fictional account involving an extramarital affair and a love child.

And what of the rumours surrounding Sheppard’s friendship with William Lovell-Smith, who she married towards the end of her life after the death of his wife Jenny? Her private life hints at mystery and suggests a woman advancing new ways of co-habiting.

There is also tragedy. Sheppard lost her only child, Douglas, in 1910, and outlived her nearest and dearest friends and relations, including her only grandchild.

Sheppard’s shape-shifting presence leaves room for us to create our own versions to augment all the writing she left revealing her beliefs and ideas. The Kate Sheppard Women’s Bookshop aptly memorialises her, and her leadership is honoured through scholarships and awards.

All this has helped keep her memory alive, especially with the feminists who have always claimed her as a heroine.

Who else but Sheppard?

Sheppard is on the money, then, but who else might represent the heroic archetype?
Waikato woman of mana and Kīngitanga leader Te Puea Hērangi is surely one, described by historian J.G.A. Pocock as possibly the most influential woman in New Zealand’s political history.

Te Puea was also a mother figure. A literal healer, she nursed her people back to health — especially after the smallpox epidemic of 1913 and the devastating 1918 influenza epidemic that killed a quarter of the population at Mangatāwhiri, leaving many orphans to be cared for.

Her motto is said to have been “work, eat, pray, work again”. Te Puea was called to help her people and was dedicated to leading their resurgence. In particular, her efforts secured the Kīngitanga movement. Part of her legacy as the most active leader of her generation was the building of Tūrangawaewae marae at Ngāruawāhia.

Like Sheppard, Te Puea’s health and welfare work included campaigns against alcohol and smoking. In the face of Pākehā resistance she built an impressive health facility at Tūrangawaewae. In 1951 she became the first patron of the Māori Women’s Welfare League.

Read more:
NZ was first to grant women the vote in 1893, but then took 26 years to let them stand for parliament

Her activism included seeking compensation for land confiscation. An early peace warrior, she led a non-violent campaign against conscription during the first world war. Like Sheppard, she was part of an international network and well-connected around the Pacific.

Also like Sheppard, Te Puea was strategic and collaborated with many men. She launched Māui Pōmare’s political career and later collaborated with Āpirana Ngata. Well known in the Pākehā world as Princess Te Puea, in 1937 she was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire.

In many ways, of course, Christchurch and Ngāruawāhia were worlds apart. While both women challenged the state, Sheppard represented a mainstream Pākehā establishment, whereas Te Puea pursued mana motuhake for her people. Yet, placed side by side and viewed through an early 21st-century lens, both are important heroines in history.

Both stand for citizens working together for the common good. Kate Sheppard might be on the money to represent women’s rights as a fundamental part of Aotearoa New Zealand. But, as her memorial suggests, it’s important we don’t see her as the only woman worthy of being on a pedestal.

Katie Pickles received funding from Royal Society Te Aparangi James Cook Research Fellowship.

– ref. On the money: Kate Sheppard and the making of a New Zealand feminist icon – https://theconversation.com/on-the-money-kate-sheppard-and-the-making-of-a-new-zealand-feminist-icon-167627

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Romain Fathi, Senior Lecturer, History, Flinders University

French diplomatic language can be subtle. When Canberra announced its abrupt foreign policy change and unilateral decision to walk away from its contract with French submarine builder Naval Group, the French foreign affairs and defence ministers released a very short statement to “note” the “unfortunate decision”.

But make no mistake. Behind muffled diplomatic language, Paris is furious and there will be repercussions for Australia.

The French media have been far less restrained in their reactions, using language like “stabbing”, “backstabbing”, and “treason”.

It’s not all about the money. France is the third-largest retailer of weapon systems across the globe. Rather, the affront comes from the way in which Canberra announced the decision: through the media.

Left in the dark about Australia’s sudden change of mind, France and the European Union more broadly now face a dramatic re-think of their diplomatic and military doctrine in the Indo-Pacific region on very short notice.

We can expect four major consequences from the scrapping of the A$90 billion submarine deal with France.

1. Possible economic retaliation from the EU

In the wake of Brexit, the UK and Australia are currently renegotiating free trade agreements with the EU. There can be little doubt some kind of economic retaliation will now come against both Britain and Australia through EU legislation.

With German Chancellor Angela Merkel soon to step down, French President Emmanuel Macron will have right of way to shape these FTAs, meaning Australia may find the door to Europe and its markets blocked for decades to come.

Read more:
Post-Brexit, Australia’s best option is a trade pact with EU

For example, France was supposed to help facilitate the Australia-EU agreement with regard to mining resources, in particular. This support is now likely to be withdrawn.

The French parliament could also refuse to ratify the FTA when it is formalised. One of France’s leading Liberal politicians, Renaud Muselier, is calling on the EU to suspend negotiations with Australia altogether.

2. Loss of defence training and upskilling

The entire high-tech ecosystem built around Naval Group in Australia, and in South Australia in particular, will now vanish.

The knock-on effect of this decision will be significant. At the heart of the contract with France was the employment and training of the Australian workforce to ultimately take complete control of the submarine fleet.

It was about Australian self-sufficiency and national sovereignty. Now, the many Australians training in France as part of the “future submarine program” will likely no longer complete their exchange programs and apprenticeships.

Read more:
French company DCNS wins race to build Australia’s next submarine fleet: experts respond

Similarly, some of Naval Group’s French subcontractors in cyber-security, telecommunications and the space industry are also likely to depart Australia or reduce their operations, bringing an end to any technology transfer and upskilling for Australians.

Former Prime Minister Paul Keating has remarked the new nuclear-powered submarine deal with the US and UK will result in

a further dramatic loss of Australian sovereignty, as material dependency on the United States robbed Australia of any freedom or choice in any engagement Australia may deem appropriate.

3. South Australia will lose other investments

There are also many effects that will be felt beyond the defence sector.

Since 2016, the South Australian government has leveraged the submarine deal to lure a number of large French multinationals to the state and establish an Office for French Strategy to accelerate Australian-French ventures.

South Australia also established a sister relationship with the region of Brittany in France, resulting in cultural and educational exchanges.

Further to this, SA Premier Steven Marshall also committed to opening a trade office in Paris to drive SA export growth in Europe.

Many of these efforts will now be wasted, with Paris likely to redirect its investments elsewhere.

4. The French connection, c’est fini?

Finally, the annulment of the submarine deal will bring to a sad end the nascent “French connection” within Australia.

Hundreds of French families who recently relocated to Adelaide will be forced to return to France. This means the bilingual educational program established for French and Australian children now appears bleak.

Similarly under threat are the many partnership agreements between the three universities of South Australia and French universities and research hubs centred specifically on supporting the Naval Group ecosystem in Adelaide.

A Naval Group union representative has at least confirmed the French workers in Adelaide will go home to jobs.

But what will happen to thousands of Australian workers and the hundred or so local businesses supplying parts to Naval Group? The new deal with the US does not guarantee they will be employed, as no contract has yet been signed.

The future of French-Australian relations at a standstill

The overnight change in Australian strategic policy has left the French bemused. The French submarine deal ensured sovereignty, independence and autonomy to Australia, but Paris is discovering the conditioned reflex of relying on “great and powerful friends” (the US and UK) runs high in the Australian psyche.

France proposed a genuine strategic alliance with Australia, one based on mutual respect and common values that would have bolstered Australia’s sovereignty in the long term and diversified Australia’s partnerships to reduce its dependence on those “great and powerful friends”.

However, the French-Australian partnership is unlikely to be salvaged anytime soon given the public humiliation France has felt. Australia will now likely face economic and diplomatic retaliations from France. Just how and when will be decided in due course in both Paris and Brussels.

Read more:
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And there will be another showdown between France and the US, between whom a diplomatic crisis is brewing.

While condemning Australia’s betrayal and unreliability on French national TV, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian also expressed his ire at the US, saying “this is not done between allies” and it’s “a knife in the back”.

The French ambassador to the US declared on Twitter:

Interestingly, exactly 240 years ago the French Navy defeated the British Navy in Chesapeake Bay, paving the way for the victory at Yorktown and the independence of the United States.

Diplomacy is not an overnight matter; it is built on centuries of relationships built with others in the great Concert of Nations. The French also have a long memory, and a sense of history.

To French eyes, Australia is yet to sit at the table of this great Concert of Nations with a sovereignty, foreign policy and submarines of its own.

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

– ref. C’est fini: can the Australia-France relationship be salvaged after scrapping the sub deal? – https://theconversation.com/cest-fini-can-the-australia-france-relationship-be-salvaged-after-scrapping-the-sub-deal-168090

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Kenny, Professor, Australian Studies Institute, Australian National University

One imagines the retirement of Joel Fitzgibbon at the next election simplifies things for Anthony Albanese, as he crafts a climate change formula more in sync with the established science and the global consensus.

A vocal defender of coalmining and “hi-vis” jobs in the regions, Fitzgibbon had become a burr in the Labor leader’s saddle — and a gift to the Coalition — as he regularly lamented his party’s latter day “obsession” with emissions reduction at the expense of regional jobs.

The voluntary exit of a media-enabled critic should help Labor present a unified front. But the electoral dualism bedevilling the ALP, both championed and personified by Fitzgibbon, remains problematic.

The end of an era

Fitzgibbon, a trade-qualified regional MP of 25 years, represented a dying breed in a parliamentary peloton now typically populated by tertiary-educated cosmopolitans.

That dualism may yet pose real-world implications in Fitzgibbon’s regional NSW seat of Hunter, which has been held between him and his father Eric for almost a third of a century.

Albanese knows that to secure a Labor majority, he must first wrest seats from the Coalition, not give away strongholds already in his column. Yet some in Labor believe the risk of losing Hunter — still a 62.4% Labor seat —has been overstated, anyway.

They say (or is it hope?) the savage 14-plus percentage swing against Fitzgibbon in 2019 “probably” represented the nadir of Labor’s support, citing an election blighted by mixed messaging over the Adani Carmichael coal mine and Bill Shorten’s proposed 45% cut to emissions by 2030.

Whatever the cause, there’s little doubt the 21.5% share of the first preference vote secured by One Nation’s Stuart Bonds sent shockwaves through the ALP. It was certainly instrumental in Fitzgibbon’s decision to step up his public criticism, complaining long and loud about his party’s “drift to the left”, driven by the concerns of inner-city professionals.

Restaurant chats and public spats

One ostentatious demonstration of this new muscularity was the formation of the OTIS group led by Fitzgibbon. The group first met at a Canberra restaurant of the same name ahead of parliamentary sittings in February, 2020. As Peter van Onselen reported in The Australian at the time,

the members want to see Labor move further to the right on policy scripts such as coal mining, climate change more broadly and how Labor best handles the threat of the Greens on its left flank.

Even more divisive was Fitzgibbon’s public spat with Labor’s climate change spokesperson, Mark Butler. In an uncommonly frontal public attack in November 2020, Fitzgibbon successfully called for Butler’s removal from the climate role in favour of a more conservative figure.

Read more:
With the release of a terrifying IPCC report, Australia must face its wilful political blindness on climate

A swap of jobs between Butler — a left-aligned Albanese confidant — and health spokesperson Chris Bowen of the NSW Right faction, duly followed.

‘Back to the centre’?

Albanese has since signalled Labor’s election pledge will be less ambitious arguing, among other things, an already steep emissions reduction path designed to begin in 2019, would be too sharp if commenced in 2022. changed precipitous to dangerous – still acurate/ok?

Either way, Fitzgibbon claims some of the credit, telling media that his work of dragging the ALP “back to the centre”, was largely done.

While the emission policy was only part of a wider sweep of policy initiatives blamed for Labor’s shock defeat in 2019, Fitzgibbon had called the 45% cut “crazy” in an interview with Sky News.

Read more:
View from The Hill: Kristina Keneally’s house switch stops one row, starts another

Announcing his retirement, Fitzgibbon continued to prosecute his case declaring the retention of Hunter would be contingent on Albanese’s “strong support” for an ongoing coal mining industry. As he told Radio National:

I’m confident that Albo has taken us sufficiently to the centre and put sufficient emphasis on hope and aspiration amongst working families that I can go comfortably knowing that Hunter is safe.

Local sensitivities are clearly front-of-mind. Albanese has endorsed Fitzgibbon’s choice of a successor, Daniel Repacholi, a former coal miner who also happens to be five times Olympic shooter — most recently in Tokyo.

The Labor leader has also parked his past objections to local ALP branch members being denied a vote, calling for Labor’s national executive to short-circuit the process of selecting Fitzgibbon’s successor if there is more than one nomination.

Albanese has been fielding red-hot anger in Labor ranks over the plan to parachute current deputy Senate leader, Kristina Keneally into the western Sydney seat of Fowler. But similarly, he expects the national executive to step in. cut back quote here – this ok?

Labor’s TBC climate policy

Once the politics here is navigated, the next challenge is one of policy.

Fitzgibbon has previously argued Labor should hold its tongue on emissions targets, leaving it for the government to set the policy.

So far this has been Albanese’s approach — wait until the Morrison government has determined its final position going into the UN COP26 climate talks in Glasgow in November, before setting out a policy which is more ambitious, but not dramatically so.

It seems Labor’s previous terror of being picked off on its left flank by the Greens in the inner cities, has given way to another fear — a virtuous loss in the more conservative suburbs and regions. And potentially a fourth consecutive defeat.

Mark Kenny 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. Fitzgibbon is quitting politics but this doesn’t mean Albanese can party – https://theconversation.com/fitzgibbon-is-quitting-politics-but-this-doesnt-mean-albanese-can-party-168184