Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Deb Massey, Associate Professor, Faculty of Health, School of Nursing, Southern Cross University

The current wave of COVID cases is leading to more hospital and intensive care (ICU) admissions. Frontline health workers and experts use the term “intubation” for the extra breathing support some patients need in an emergency.

But many people don’t know what this procedure involves and the trauma it can cause.

Patients with COVID-19 who deteriorate and need additional support with their breathing require intubating and ventilating. That means a tube is inserted and a ventilation machine delivers oxygen straight to the lungs.

Inserting the tube

Intubating a patient is a highly skilled procedure and involves inserting a tube through the patient’s mouth and into their airway:

1. patients are usually sedated, allowing their mouth and airway to relax. They often lie on their back, while the health-care professional stands near the top of the bed, facing the patient’s feet

2. the patient’s mouth is gently opened. An instrument called a laryngoscope is used to flatten the tongue and illuminate the throat. The tube is steered into the throat and advanced into the airway, pushing apart the vocal chords

3. a small balloon around the tube is inflated to keep the tube in place and prevent air from escaping. Once this balloon is inflated, the tube must be tied or taped in place at the mouth

4. successful placement is checked by listening to the lungs with a stethoscope and confirmed via a chest x-ray.

Read more:
How are the most serious COVID-19 cases treated, and does the coronavirus cause lasting damage?

Can breathe, can’t speak or swallow

While intubated patients are attached to a ventilator and their breathing is supported, they are unable to talk or swallow food, drink or their saliva.

They often remain sedated to enable them to tolerate the tube. They can’t attend to any of their own needs and disconnection from the ventilator can be catastrophic.

For this reason any patient who is intubated and ventilated is cared for in an intensive care unit with a registered nurse constantly by their bedside.

American lawyer and editor David Latt recalled his experience of being intubated and ventilated following a diagnosis of COVID-19, saying:

When they were giving me anesthesia to put me to sleep so they could put a tube in my mouth that would enable me to breathe, I just remember thinking, ‘I might die.’ Sometimes in the abstract, you think, ‘If it’s my time, it’s my time.’ But when I was on that table […] I just thought, ‘No, I don’t want to go.’

Latt feared he would never see his two-year-old son or his partner again.

Taking the tube out

The length of time a COVID patient requires intubation and ventilation varies and depends on the reasons for it and the response to treatment. However, there are reports of patients being intubated and ventilated for over 100 days.

Once a patient’s respiration improves and they no longer require breathing support, the tube is removed in a procedure called “extubation”. Like intubation, extubation requires highly skilled health-care workers to manage the process. It involves:

1. a spontaneous breathing trial, which assesses the patient’s capacity to breathe unassisted before extubation to decrease the risk of respiratory failure

2. an assessment by the treating doctor, intensive care nurse, speech pathologist or physiotherapist of the patient’s ability to cough (so they can effectively clear their own throat and prevent substances entering the lungs)

3. treatment from a physiotherapist is usually required before and after extubation if the patient has had mechanical ventilation for more than 48 hours. This is to ease the process of weaning the patient off the ventilator and help them learn to breathe independently again.

Once extubated, patients remain in ICU and are closely monitored to ensure they can safely maintain a clear and effective airway. Once they are able to do this and are stable enough to transfer to the ward they are discharged from the ICU.

Intubation, ICU and trauma

Patients with COVID-19 who require intubation and ventilation have witnessed a number of stressful events in the ICU, such as emergency resuscitation procedures and deaths. This may increase the risk of post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, and depression.

Although we don’t have definitive long-term data, patients who have been critically ill from COVID often have a long and difficult journey of recovery. They will likely remain dependant on health care services for some time.

Many patients who have been intubated and ventilated recall it as being one of the worst experiences of their lives. Clearly it is something we should try to avoid for as many people as possible.

There are currently 138 patients patients intubated and ventilated in ICUs across Australia. That’s 138 patients who cannot communicate with their loved ones, who are scared, frightened and vulnerable.

Most of these patients have not been vaccinated. The most important thing we can do to reduce the risk of being intubated and ventilated as a result of COVID-19 is get vaccinated.

Read more:
We’re two frontline COVID doctors. Here’s what we see as case numbers rise

Deb Massey is also a Registered Nurse, Intensive Care Unit, John Flynn Hospital.

– ref. When COVID patients are intubated in ICU, the trauma can stay with them long after this breathing emergency – https://theconversation.com/when-covid-patients-are-intubated-in-icu-the-trauma-can-stay-with-them-long-after-this-breathing-emergency-167361

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Daryl Sparkes, Senior Lecturer (Media Studies and Production), University of Southern Queensland

Soap operas have been around since television was invented. Often involving outlandish plots, exaggerated storylines and hyperbolic characters and dialogue, they labour each moment on screen for ultimate dramatic effect. The women are transcendingly good looking and the men impossibly buff.

Packed to the Rafters — which aired for 122 episodes on Seven from 2008 to 2013 and was broadcast in over 20 countries — always managed to transcend the soap genre, presenting the daily struggles of everyday people without melodrama or histrionics.

Read more:
Fewer episodes, more foreign owners: the incredible shrinking of Australian TV drama

Following the trials and tribulations of the Rafter family, they confronted issues from the usual (births, deaths and marriages) to the extreme (arrests, vasectomies and even a kidney donation to an HIV-positive grandmother).

Throughout, the drama was understated and subtle. The show handled these crises sensitively, exploring them thoroughly. They were not glossed over or rushed. It didn’t try for the shock factor. Nor were there easy answers to anything, with problems resolved quickly. Some issues were not resolved at all, just like in real life.

Now, after eight years, they are … Back to the Rafters, re-imagined for Amazon Prime.

Getting off the road

At the end of the final season, Dave (Erik Thomson) and Julie (Rebecca Gibney) with their four-year-old daughter Ruby had left Sydney and their extended family to do what many Australians do in later life: travel the byways and highways in a campervan.

At the beginning of the new series, the recent past is recapped before setting up the new premise. After being on the road for six years, the van they are travelling in breaks down outside the small fictional town of Buradeena, and Dave, Julie and now 10-year-old Ruby (Willow Speers) decide to plant roots in this picturesque rural village.

Across six episodes, the drama in the new series revolves around contemporary issues: country versus city life; Ruby’s concern for climate change; homelessness as a result of a defective apartment building; dealing with sick parents in aged care; the infertility Ben and his new wife face.

But the internal conflict is the more relevant overarching arc of the series. Julie wants to move back to Sydney so she can better provide care for both her father and her children; Dave is resolute in his desire to stay in Buradeena.

They are torn between duty, responsibility, love and dedication to their family — but even moreso to each other.

A drama about us

As Seinfeld is oft-quoted as a comedy about nothing, Rafters has always been a drama about the ordinary. Ordinary people facing ordinary issues many of the viewers have faced in their own lives. But ordinary doesn’t mean mediocre. Far from it. Ordinary means the characters and drama feels drawn from real life.

I always found Packed to the Rafters to be honest and authentic. It was relatable because the issues, actions and dialogue of the characters were grounded in realism.

Most television shows cater to a specific audience niche: crime dramas for adults, teen dramas for younger people. Horror shows like The Walking Dead or comedies like Ted Lasso are even more niche. Reality television shows like The Block and The Voice rate well because they cater to a wide demographic.

Rafters is like the reality TV of drama. Its multi-generational approach means it caters to all ages. While it aired on Seven, it was one of the only dramas on Australian television a whole family — from grandparents to children — could sit down to watch together, finding it reflected real family life back at them.

Back to the Rafters avoids most of the trappings of what I have previously dubbed “Zombie TV” – those shows that come back from the dead and act as if nothing has changed.

The writers of Back to the Rafters have not tried to emulate the familiar concerns of the past. Instead they created issues relevant to 2021, with all the current complications attached.

Read more:
The new Seachange is a sad case of Zombie TV: when your favourite programs come back from the dead

At the heart of Rafters has always been one thing: family. The conflict and care between generations as they go through different stages of their lives. Dave and Julie, like many middle-aged couples, are caught in the middle. Pulled between needing to help ageing parents and the desire to still help children and grandchildren.

And this is the key to Rafters continued success. It takes the ordinary in our lives and makes it just a little bit more extraordinary on the screen. It’s a great joy to go Back to the Rafters again, after all these years.

Back to the Rafters is streaming on Amazon Prime from today.

Daryl Sparkes 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. Back to the Rafters review: series reboot is full of heart and reflects changing times – https://theconversation.com/back-to-the-rafters-review-series-reboot-is-full-of-heart-and-reflects-changing-times-167702

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nicholas Biddle, Professor of Economics and Public Policy, ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences, Australian National University

COVID-19 has upended so many aspects of our lives in Australia, it can be hard to remember what life was like before the pandemic. It’s also hard to remember what we feared would happen when the pandemic first struck.

Some of the predictions have come to pass — there was a massive economic shock, travel and mobility have been constrained, mental health has suffered as lockdowns have been extended, and government budget deficits are at levels that would have seemed inconceivable only two years ago.

Another early prediction was that the pandemic would lead to a fraying in social cohesion.

In data released recently we show there’s been an increase in many aspects of social cohesion over the course of the pandemic. But this may be slipping as lockdowns drag on.

Read more:
5 questions to ask yourself before you dob — advice for adults and kids, from an ethicist

What does social cohesion mean?

Before discussing results from the most recent survey, it is worth reflecting on what “social cohesion” actually means.

It can mean different things to different people but one useful definition from a recent research report is:

the degree of social connectedness and solidarity between different community groups within a society, as well as the level of trust and connectedness between individuals and across community groups.

In other words, it’s about how much we trust each other, how connected we feel to others and to what extent we feel solidarity and empathy with others.

Social cohesion can operate at the individual, household, or community level.

How did we measure social cohesion?

Since April 2020, the ANU Centre for Social Research and Methods has been running a multi-wave longitudinal survey tracking the outcomes, attitudes, and behaviours of a representative sample of Australians during the pandemic period. We wanted to see how these factors have changed over time.

Incorporated into the ANUpoll series of surveys, the data also allows us to track outcomes at the individual level from prior to the COVID-19 period. The study was carefully designed to ensure we could be confident the responses were free of many of the biases that plague many studies where people opt-in to participate.

In February (pre-COVID), May and October 2020, respondents were asked three questions related to social cohesion. These were repeated in August 2021, our most recent wave of data collection. The questions were:

• “Generally speaking, would you say that most people can be trusted, or that you can’t be too careful in dealing with people?”

• “Do you think that most people would try to take advantage of you if they got the chance, or would they try to be fair?”

• “Would you say that most of the time people try to be helpful or that they are mostly looking out for themselves?”

These questions are asked across a range of social surveys in Australia and internationally.

All three questions were answered on a scale of 0 to 10, and averaged out to give a perceived social cohesion score on a scale of 0 to 10.

Individual-level data for all four surveys are available through the Australian Data Archive for any researcher to analyse.

A significant and substantial boost early on — but a recent dip

Our data suggests there was a significant and substantial improvement in social cohesion between February and May 2020 (the early stages of the pandemic). There was another increase between May and October 2020.

So rather than leading to an erosion of social cohesion, the pandemic — and arguably the government and societal response — appears to have enhanced it.

There was a slight but not statistically significant decline in perceived social cohesion between October 2020 and August 2021. However, perceived social cohesion is still significantly and substantially above what it was pre-COVID.

The greatest improvement over the COVID-19 period has been in the trust measure — from 5.40 (out of 10) in February 2020 to 6.02 in October.

The greatest decline over the last 10 months has been in whether people are perceived to be helpful. That declined from an average of 6.23 in October 2020 to 6.04 in August 2021, a difference that was statistically significant.

Why does it matter?

Measures of social cohesion are important in their own right. However, there are other reasons society should care about social cohesion.

One that has featured extensively in the literature is the reduction in the costs associated with buying and selling — what researchers and investors call transaction costs.

If people trust others to not harm them and to follow through on agreements, then there’s less need for expensive contracts and contract enforcement (think fewer court cases, expensive legal work, resource-intensive arbitration).

Causality is particularly difficult to show with this type of data but it’s possible social cohesion may also lead to or support pro-social behaviour — meaning positive behaviours like friendliness or helping one another.

Our data show, for example, that 38% of those who gave a value of 0 to 2 on the “helpful” question had been vaccinated as of August 2021, compared to 51% of those who gave a score of 3 to 6, and 66% of those who gave a score of 7 to 10.

In other words, those who perceive that people mostly try to be helpful are more likely to have been vaccinated.

Even though we have avoided the worst of the effects that some other countries have seen, COVID-19 has caused immense damage to Australia’s economic, social, and mental health.

One bright spot has been an increase in many aspects of social cohesion.

There are some initial indications that this may be dropping as lockdowns go on, and the end of the worst impacts does not appear to be in sight.

We should make sure that we do not lose our unexpected gains.

Read more:
Victoria has announced extra funds for counselling, but it’s unlikely to improve our mental health

Nicholas Biddle received funding from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare for the ANUpoll surveys mentioned in this article

– ref. Do you think most people are trustworthy and helpful? How we measured ‘social cohesion’ and why its recent dip matters – https://theconversation.com/do-you-think-most-people-are-trustworthy-and-helpful-how-we-measured-social-cohesion-and-why-its-recent-dip-matters-168069

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Heather Douglas, Professor of Law, The University of Melbourne

The Queensland Police Service (QPS) is expected to begin a trial using artificial intelligence (AI) to determine the future risk posed by known domestic violence perpetrators.

Perpetrators identified as “high risk” — based on previous calls to an address, past criminal activity and other police-held data — will be visited at home by police before domestic violence escalates, and before any crime has been committed.

It is necessary to find better ways to improve safety for women subjected to domestic violence. However, using AI technology in this context may have unintended consequences — and the proposed plan raises serious questions about the role of police in preventing domestic violence incidents.

The approach relies on an algorithm that has been developed from existing QPS administrative data (QPRIME). All statistical algorithms must assess risk based on available data, which in turn means they are only as good as the data underpinning them.

Experts who criticise the use of data-driven risk assessment tools in policing point to the lack of transparency in the specific kinds of data analysed, as well as how predictions based on these data are acted upon.

Because of how police operate, the key data most consistently captured are information about past situations police have been called to, and criminal history data.

Using this information to train an AI algorithm could reinforce existing biases in the criminal justice system. It could create an endless feedback loop between police and those members of the public who have the most contact with police.

In Australia, they are Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. It is not difficult to imagine that under this new regime Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people will be visited more by police.

QPS representative Ben Martain has said police won’t be able to charge someone they door-knock for a future suspected offence.

He also said for the pilot, attributes of ethnicity and geographic location were removed before training the AI model. But despite this, it seems likely Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people will continue to be disproportionately targeted, since they are over-represented across all kinds of police contact.

Read more:
NSW Police want access to Tinder’s sexual assault data. Cybersafety experts explain why it’s a date with disaster

Introducing risk

The aim of such AI-based strategies in policing is to prevent or reduce crime, through an assessment of the risk of future offending. In theory, this means police would intervene early to stop a crime from occurring in the first place.

However, with this approach there are risks police may create crime. An unprompted police door-knock would be unwelcome in most households — let alone one where police have previously attended to carry out searches or make arrests.

In this “preventative” program, perpetrators and the victims they live with may be nervous, agitated or even angry at the police intrusion at their home for no apparent reason.

A visited person might use offensive language or refuse to provide their name. It would not be surprising if this led to charges.

Such charges might lead the visited person to become even more nervous, agitated or angry, and then they may find they are charged with assault and resisting police. This is popularly known as the “trifecta”, wherein a person who has otherwise not offended is ultimately charged with offensive language, resisting arrest and assaulting police.

The standard powers in the police toolbox are to arrest and charge. With QPS’s proposed plan, there is an obvious risk of widening the net of criminalisation for both perpetrators, as well as victims who may be misidentified as perpetrators. For instance, sometimes victims who have used violence in self-defence have been arrested instead of the perpetrator.

Bringing further harm to victims

The role of the victim in such a program is also of concern. Any program that deepens surveillance of perpetrators also deepens surveillance of victims.

Victims do not always want police to intervene in their lives. In some cases, this form of proactive policing might feel like an extension of control, rather than help. What happens when police visit and discover a high-risk perpetrator and victim are living together again?

Victims may fear child protection authorities will get involved and feel obliged to cover up the fact they are still with the perpetrator. And once a victim has been pressured to lie, they may be reluctant to call the police the next time they do need police intervention.

In some cases, the perpetrator or victim may decide not to take the safety advice of police officers who visit. It is not clear what police might do in a situation where they ask a perpetrator to leave, or try to take a victim to safety, but they refuse.

The mission of any domestic violence intervention should be to restore power to victims. But we know interventions do not assist all women (or men) equally. Structural inequalities, including race and class, mean interventions are experienced differently by different people.

Will a victim have a say in whether police engage in proactive policing of their perpetrator? Should they have a say?

Read more:
Police access to COVID check-in data is an affront to our privacy. We need stronger and more consistent rules in place

Are there safer options?

In the context of risk assessment, many experts argue women often (although not always) have a strong sense of when they are at heightened risk.

Family court-ordered contact visits can be one of those moments of high risk. Yet in these situations women often report police refusing to help keep them and their children safe. How is the voice of the victim factored into risk assessment with this tool?

One particular concern is whether police are really equipped to intervene in circumstances where there is no crime. QPS representative Ben Martain said when perpetrators are “not at a point of crisis, in a heightened emotional state, or affected by drugs or alcohol” — they are “generally more amenable to recognising this as a turning-point opportunity in their lives”.

But police themselves have questioned their role in domestic violence circumstances — instead highlighting the potential role social workers may have, in their place.

It is not clear whether police are the best-positioned service to intervene when there is no identified disturbance. Queensland already has information-sharing protocols involving teams tasked specifically with responding to people involved in high-risk domestic violence relationships. These teams include community-based support workers.

This may be a better path for intervention during those critical periods of calm.

Heather Douglas receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Robin Fitzgerald receives funding from Australian Research Council.

– ref. QLD police will use AI to ‘predict’ domestic violence before it happens. Beware the unintended consequences – https://theconversation.com/qld-police-will-use-ai-to-predict-domestic-violence-before-it-happens-beware-the-unintended-consequences-167976

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Patrick Harris, Senior Research Fellow, Deputy Director, CHETRE, UNSW

Until COVID-19, few people knew anything about Australia’s chief medical officer or the state and territories’ chief health officers. Now they are front and centre of the news cycle.

But media coverage misses the nuances of the role. We see people with particular skills and personalities. Yet, each of the offices and officers is embedded in a particular institutional and historical context, which drives their role.

We are involved in an international study to look at their role during the pandemic in Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and Canada. Here’s what we’ve found so far from the Australian data.

Read more:
My year as Victoria’s deputy chief health officer: on the pandemic, press conferences and our COVID future

Remind me, who are they?

In Australia, the chief medical officer, Paul Kelly, is the principal medical adviser to the federal health minister and health department. So he has the overarching bureaucratic responsibility for Australia’s federal health response to the pandemic.

For the states and territories, the chief health officers have that overarching responsibility.

COVID-19 has seen all assuming regular slots in press conferences. They are constantly under the microscope of the millions of epidemiologist wannabes.

COVID-19 has shown how contested their roles are. Are they public servants who act on behalf of the government? Or ought they be independent from politics, shaping policy to protect public health? Or must they balance the contradictions that come with being both a health professional and a public servant?

Read more:
Now everyone’s a statistician. Here’s what armchair COVID experts are getting wrong

Their legal powers can help or hinder

Legislation in each jurisdiction gives the chief health officer varying degrees of institutional power. This not only affects their role, but how outbreaks are defined and managed.

In some jurisdictions (New South Wales, Queensland, Tasmania, Western Australia) the chief health officers become public health emergency “controllers” for pandemic management.

Qld gives its chief health officer the most power (possibly the most, even internationally). This is partly due to also serving as deputy director-general (a senior position in the bureaucracy). Qld’s chief health officer is also the final decision-maker on public health restrictions (most notably borders) “in consultation” with the premier. NSW also holds the director-general position but the premier is the final decision-maker.

In comparison, Victoria’s chief health officer has neither the deputy director-general role nor “controller” oversight of emergency procedures.

An inquiry into Victorian hotel quarantine concluded this prevented the chief health officer from fulfilling the “controller” position. As a result, certain infection control details were overlooked, resulting in the outbreak that led to the state’s second wave.

The chief medical officer at the federal level has arguably the least legislative power of all given the jurisdictional autonomy of the states. The power of this role during the pandemic has mainly come through chairing the national committee of state and territory chief health officers.

Read more:
Politics with Michelle Grattan: Chief Medical Officer Brendan Murphy on COVID-19

They work with politics, policy and evidence

Chief medical and health officers work at the interface of politics, policy and health evidence. They are unelected, yet are accountable to ministers, the premier and parliament. They work with the relevant secretaries and ministerial offices.

Whatever their remit, ultimately the buck stops with them. As we’ve seen under COVID-19, they have the power to “stop the nation”.

However, our analysis provides practical insight about how health evidence during the pandemic intersects with political realities.

Read more:
Contrasting NSW and Victoria lockdown coverage reveals much about the politics of COVID – and the media

They must be strategic and media savvy

These officers work within formal pathways to gather and interpret the best available evidence, from say, the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation.

But communicating evidence is an entirely different matter. More than acting as “honest brokers” of evidence to policy, their use of evidence needs to be strategic if they are to have influence. And this requires political acumen.

Elected politicians need to be seen to be in control. When presenting evidence, not all of which will be popular, chief health and medical officers need to anticipate political responses.

They must also be media savvy. The much-watched daily COVID-19 press conferences (recently disbanded in NSW) are well orchestrated. In times of crisis, clarity of messaging is as important as evidence. Image is too. Displaying collegiality across government is necessary visual messaging despite robust negotiations behind the scenes.

Read more:
Calling Brett Sutton a ‘CHOttie’ is not objectification – but it’s not feminism either

They must be bureaucrats, networkers

As public servants, chief health officers must be excellent networkers and departmental managers. They delegate authority while holding ultimate responsibility for their legislated role.

In their agencies each has put into place management systems to deal with the complexities of the pandemic. Their networks extend to other sectors and agencies. For example, one chief health officer we interviewed explained having to unexpectedly collaborate closely with the police enforcement of public health restrictions.

Quarantine is under the constitution a federal government responsibility but was agreed to be managed at state level. This source of outbreaks challenged the effectiveness of chief health officers because the mix of public and private involvement compromised effective quarantine management.

Relationships with other chief health officers matter. The virus does not respect state boundaries, however much political leadership claims the contrary.

Collective decisions, often with massive ramifications, must be made. Trust in the skills and decision making of fellow chief health officers in different jurisdictions is fundamental.

Experience helps, demonstrated by those in NSW and Qld who have held the role the longest. But being relatively new brings dynamism. The early goal of zero transmission was championed by a chief health officer with less experience.

Read more:
Right-wing shock jock stoush reveals the awful truth about COVID, politics and media ratings

What happens next?

An unprecedented pandemic has thrust previously faceless bureaucrats and their representatives onto our screens and devices in ways unimaginable even two years ago.

Ultimately, chief health officers have shown they need to balance the mix of public servant and health professional with a nuanced approach to politics.

But individuals are never the whole story. Investment in public health (putting hospitals aside) remains inadequate, for instance. New variants of COVID-19 are also testing a coordinated public health response like never before, chief health officers included.

Patrick Harris receives funding from CIHR on a joint project with Canadian and Scottish colleagues called “Senior public health leadership during the 2019 novel coronavirus outbreak: Comparative approaches to mitigating the spread of infectious disease and its social consequences in Canada and abroad” . Patrick is the President of the NSW Branch of the Public Health Association of Australia.

receives funding from CIHR on a joint project with Canadian and Scottish colleagues called “Senior public health leadership during the 2019 novel coronavirus outbreak: Comparative approaches to mitigating the spread of infectious disease and its social consequences in Canada and abroad.

Evelyne de Leeuw receives funding from CIHR on a joint project with Canadian and Scottish colleagues called “Senior public health leadership during the 2019 novel coronavirus outbreak: Comparative approaches to mitigating the spread of infectious disease and its social consequences in Canada and abroad”

– ref. Chief health officers are in the spotlight like never before. Here’s what goes on behind the scenes – https://theconversation.com/chief-health-officers-are-in-the-spotlight-like-never-before-heres-what-goes-on-behind-the-scenes-166828

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Benjamin Richardson, Professor of Environmental Law, University of Tasmania

Australians consume a lot of salmon – much of it farmed in Tasmania. But as Richard Flanagan’s new book Toxic shows, concern about the industry’s environmental damage is growing.

With the industry set to double in size by 2030, one dubious industry practice should be intensely scrutinised – the use of so-called “cracker bombs” or seal bombs.

The A$1 billion industry uses the technique to deter seals and protect fish farming operations. Cracker bombs are underwater explosive devices that emit sharp, extremely loud noise impulses. Combined, Tasmania’s three major salmon farm operators have detonated at least 77,000 crackers since 2018.

The industry says the deterrent is necessary, but international research shows the devices pose a significant threat to some marine life. Unless the salmon industry is more strictly controlled, native species will likely be killed or injured as the industry expands.

Protecting a lucrative industry

Marine farming has been growing rapidly in Tasmania since the 1990s, and Atlantic salmon is Tasmania’s most lucrative fishery‑related industry. The salmon industry comprises three major producers: Huon Aquaculture, Tassal and Petuna.

These companies go to great effort to protect their operations from fur seals, which are protected in Australia with an exemption for the salmon industry.

Seals may attack fish pens in search of food and injure salmon farm divers, though known incidents of harm to divers are extremely rare.

The industry uses a number of seal deterrent devices, the use of which is approved by the government. They include:

• lead-filled projectiles known as “beanbags”, which are fired from a gun

• sedation darts fired from a gun

• explosive charges or “crackers” thrown into the water which detonate under the surface.

In June this year, the ABC reported on government documents showing the three major salmon producers had detonated more than 77,000 crackers since 2018. The documents showed how various seal deterrent methods had led to maiming, death and seal injuries resulting in euthanasia. Blunt-force trauma was a factor in half the reported seal deaths.

A response to this article by the salmon industry can be found below. The industry has previoulsy defended the use of cracker bombs, saying it has a responsibility to protect workers. It says the increased use of seal-proof infrastructure means the use of seal deterrents is declining. If this is true, it’s not yet strongly reflected in the data.

Read more:
Here’s the seafood Australians eat (and what we should be eating)

Piercing the ocean silence

Given the prevalence of seal bomb use by the salmon industry, it’s worth reviewing the evidence on how they affect seals and other marine life.

A study on the use of the devices in California showed they can cause horrific injuries to seals. The damage includes trauma to bones, soft tissue burns and prolapsed eye balls, as well as death.

And research suggests damage to marine life extends far beyond seals. For example, the devices can disturb porpoises which rely on echolocation to find food, avoid predators and navigate the ocean. Porpoises emit clicks and squeaks – sound which travels through the water and bounces off objects. In 2018, a study found seal bombs could disturb harbour porpoises in California at least 64 kilometres from the detonation site.

There is also a body of research showing how similar types of industrial noise affect marine life. A study in South Africa in 2017 showed how during seismic surveys in search of oil or gas, which produce intense ocean noise, penguins raising chicks often avoided their preferred foraging areas. Whales and fish have also shown similar avoidance behaviour.

The study showed underwater blasts can also kill and injure seabirds such as penguins. And there may be implications from leaving penguin nests unattended and vulnerable to predators, and leaving chicks hungry longer.

Research also shows underwater explosions damage to fish. One study on caged fish reported profound trauma to their ears, including blistering, holes and other damage. Another study cited official reports of dead fish in the vicinity of seal bomb explosions.

Read more:
Climate change is causing tuna to migrate, which could spell catastrophe for the small islands that depend on them

Shining a light

Clearly, more scientific research is needed into how seal bombs affect marine life in the oceans off Tasmania. And regulators should impose far stricter limits on the salmon industry’s use of seal bombs – a call echoed by Tasmania’s Salmon Reform Alliance.

All this is unfolding as federal environment laws fail to protect Australian plant and animal species, including marine wildlife.

And the laws in Tasmania are far from perfect. In 2017, Tasmania’s Finfish Farming Environmental Regulation Act introduced opportunities for better oversight of commercial fisheries. However, as the Environmental Defenders Office (EDO) has noted, the director of Tasmania’s Environment Protection Authority can decide on license applications by salmon farms without the development necessarily undergoing a full environmental assessment.

Tasmania’s Marine Farming Planning Act covers salmon farm locations and leases. As the EDO has noted, the public is not notified of some key decisions under the law and has very limited public rights of appeal.

Two relevant public inquiries are underway – a federal inquiry into aquaculture expansion and a Tasmanian parliamentary probe into fin-fish sustainability. Both have heard evidence from community stakeholders, such as the Tasmanian Alliance for Marine Protection and the Tasmanian Conservation Trust, that the Tasmanian salmon industry lacks transparency and provides insufficient opportunities for public input into environmental governance.

The Tasmanian government has thrown its support behind rapid expansion of the salmon industry. But it’s essential that the industry is more tightly regulated, and far more accountable for any environmental damage it creates.

Read more:
Why Indigenous knowledge should be an essential part of how we govern the world’s oceans

In a statement in response to this article, the Tasmanian Salmonid Growers Association, which represents the three producers named above, said:

Around $500 million has been spent on innovative pens by the industry. These pens are designed to minimise risks to wildlife as well as to fish stocks and the employees. We believe that farms should be designed to minimise the threat of seals, but we also understand that non-lethal deterrents are a part of the measures approved by the government for the individual member companies to use. If these deterrents are used it is under strict guidelines, sparingly, and in emergency situations when staff are threatened by these animals, which can be very aggressive.

Tasmania has a strong, highly regulated, longstanding salmon industry of which we should all be proud. The salmon industry will continue its track record of operating at world’s best practice now and into future. Our local people have been working in regional communities for more than 30 years, to bring healthy, nutritious salmon to Australian dinner plates, through innovation and determination.

Benjamin Richardson is a member of the Tasmanian Greens, and a former member of the management committee of the Tasmanian Environmental Defenders Office.

– ref. Tasmania’s salmon industry detonates underwater bombs to scare away seals – but at what cost? – https://theconversation.com/tasmanias-salmon-industry-detonates-underwater-bombs-to-scare-away-seals-but-at-what-cost-167854

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Euan Ritchie, Professor in Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, Centre for Integrative Ecology, School of Life & Environmental Sciences, Deakin University

What do koalas, barking owls, greater gliders, southern rainbow skinks, native bees, and regent honeyeaters all have in common? Like many native species, they can all be found in vegetation along fences and roadsides outside formal conservation areas.

They may be relatively small, but these patches and strips conserve critical remnant habitat and have disproportionate conservation value worldwide. They represent the last vestiges of once-expansive tracts of woodland and forests, long lost to the chainsaw or plough.

And yet, the NSW government last week made it legal for rural landholders to clear vegetation within 25 metres of their property boundaries, without approval. This radical measure is proposed to protect people and properties from fires, despite the lack of such an explicit recommendation from federal and state-based inquiries into the devastating 2019-20 bushfires.

This is poor environmental policy that lacks apparent consideration or justification of its potentially substantial ecological costs. It also gravely undermines the NSW government’s recent announcement of a plan for “zero extinction” within the state’s national parks, as the success of protected reserves for conservation is greatly enhanced by connection with surrounding “off-reserve” habitat.

Small breaks in habitat can have big impacts

A 25m firebreak might sound innocuous, but when multiplied by the length of property boundaries in NSW, the scale of potential clearing and impacts is alarming, and could run into the hundreds of thousands of kilometres.

Some plants, animals and fungi live in these strips of vegetation permanently. Others use them to travel between larger habitat patches. And for migratory species, the vegetation provides crucial refuelling stops on long distance journeys.

For example, the roadside area in Victoria’s Strathbogie Ranges shown below is home to nine species of tree-dwelling native mammals: two species of brushtail possums, three species of gliders (including threatened greater gliders), common ringtail possums, koalas, brush-tailed phascogales, and agile antenchinus (small marsupials).

Many of these species depend on tree hollows that can take a hundred years to form. If destroyed, they are effectively irreplaceable.

Creating breaks in largely continuous vegetation, or further fragmenting already disjointed vegetation, will not only directly destroy habitat, but can severely lower the quality of adjoining habitat.

This is because firebreaks of 25m (or 50m where neighbouring landholders both clear) could prevent the movement and dispersal of many plant and animal species, including critical pollinators such as native bees.

An entire suite of woodland birds, including the critically endangered regent honeyeater, are threatened because they depend on thin strips of vegetation communities that often occur inside fence-lines on private land.

For instance, scientific monitoring has shown five pairs of regent honeyeaters (50% of all birds located so far this season) are nesting or foraging within 25m of a single fence-line in the upper Hunter Valley. This highlights just how big an impact the loss of one small, private location could have on a species already on the brink of extinction.

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

But it’s not just regent honeyeaters. The management plan for the vulnerable glossy black cockatoo makes specific recommendation that vegetation corridors be maintained, as they’re essential for the cockatoos to travel between suitable large patches.

Native bee conservation also relies on the protection of remnant habitat adjoining fields. Continued removal of habitat on private land will hinder chances of conserving these species.

Disastrous clearing laws

The new clearing code does have some regulations in place, albeit meagre. For example, on the Rural Fire Service website, it says the code allows “clearing only in identified areas, such as areas which are zoned as Rural, and which are considered bush fire prone”. And according to the RFS boundary clearing tool landowners aren’t allowed to clear vegetation near watercourses (riparian vegetation).

Even before introducing this new code, NSW’s clearing laws were an environmental disaster. In 2019, The NSW Audit Office found:

clearing of native vegetation on rural land is not effectively regulated [and] action is rarely taken against landholders who unlawfully clear native vegetation.

The data back this up. In 2019, over 54,500 hectares were cleared in NSW. Of this, 74% was “unexplained”, which means the clearing was either lawful (but didn’t require state government approval), unlawful or not fully compliant with approvals.

Landholders need to show they’ve complied with clearing laws only after they’ve already cleared the land. But this is too late for wildlife, including plant species, many of which are threatened.

Read more:
The 50 beautiful Australian plants at greatest risk of extinction — and how to save them

Landholders follow self-assessable codes, but problems with these policies have been identified time and time again — they cumulatively allow a huge amount of clearing, and compliance and enforcement are ineffective.

We also know, thanks to various case studies, the policy of “offsetting” environmental damage by improving biodiversity elsewhere doesn’t work.

So, could the federal environment and biodiversity protection law step in if habitat clearing gets out of hand? Probably not. The problem is these 25m strips are unlikely to be referred in the first place, or be considered a “significant impact” to trigger the federal law.

The code should be amended

Nobody disputes the need to keep people and their assets safe against the risks of fire. The code should be amended to ensure clearing is only permitted where a genuinely clear and measurable fire risk reduction is demonstrated.

Granting permission to clear considerable amounts of native vegetation, hundreds if not thousands of metres away from homes and key infrastructure in large properties is hard to reconcile, and it seems that no attempt has been made to properly justify this legislation.

We should expect that a comprehensive assessment of the likely impacts of a significant change like this would inform public debate prior to decisions being made. But to our knowledge, no one has analysed, or at least revealed, how much land this rule change will affect, nor exactly what vegetation types and wildlife will likely be most affected.

A potentially devastating environmental precedent is being set, if other regions of Australia were to follow suit. The environment and Australians deserve better.

Read more:
‘Existential threat to our survival’: see the 19 Australian ecosystems already collapsing

Euan Ritchie receives funding from the Australian Research Council, Australian Government Bushfire Recovery program, Australian Geographic, Parks Victoria, Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning, WWF, and the Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC. Euan Ritchie is a Director (Media Working Group) of the Ecological Society of Australia, and a member of the Australian Mammal Society.

Ben Moore receives funding from The Department of Planning, Industry and Environment (NSW) and the Natural Resources Commission (NSW). He is a member of the Ecological Society of Australia and The Australian Mammal Society.

Mark Hall is a member of the Ecological Society of Australia and the Australian Native Bee Association

Megan C Evans receives funding from the Australian Research Council through a Discovery Early Career Research Award fellowship and has previously been funded by the National Environmental Science Program’s Threatened Species Recovery Hub.

Jen Martin and Ross Crates 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. Destroying vegetation along fences and roads could worsen our extinction crisis — yet the NSW government just allowed it – https://theconversation.com/destroying-vegetation-along-fences-and-roads-could-worsen-our-extinction-crisis-yet-the-nsw-government-just-allowed-it-167801

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Cathy Stone, Conjoint Associate Professor, School of Humanities & Social Science, University of Newcastle

For university students living out of reach of a campus and studying online, the growing presence of Regional University Centres is proving to be a lifeline in times of COVID-19. An early evaluation shows these centres in regional and remote Australia are highly effective in supporting students who have been historically under-represented at university and are at high risk of not completing courses. As one student said:

“I probably would not have persisted with the course if I had not seen [their centre’s learning skills adviser] to help me.”

Managed locally by indepedent, not-for-profit boards formed from community members, the number of centres has grown to 26 around the country. These centres collaborate with universities to offer face-to-face learning communities for students in regional and remote areas. Within each centre are quiet study spaces, computers, internet, study support and the company of peers.

Read more:
We can put city and country people on more equal footing at uni — the pandemic has shown us how

Why are these centres needed?

People in regional and remote Australia are about half as likely as those living in major cities to have a university qualification. This educational divide starts early, with high school students from these areas being about 30% less likely on average to complete year 12 than their city-based peers.

Yet research indicates this is not because these young people don’t want to go to university. Both the cost and the physical and emotional disruption of leaving home are the key barriers for students and their families.

The pandemic has led to a greater appreciation and expansion of online learning. It has given more regional and remote students of all ages the flexibility to stay and study within their local communities. Studying regionally is also more likely to lead to regional work, which boosts the local economy.

Read more:
Why regional universities and communities need targeted help to ride out the coronavirus storm

The shift to online learning has thrust the challenges of online study into the spotlight. Until recently only a minority experienced these challenges. Now there is more awareness of the need to improve support for online students, including those outside major cities.

The challenges of online learning include technology and internet connectivity problems, which are more likely in regional and remote Australia. Isolation from teachers and other students can be another barrier.

Regional University Centres are helping students to overcome these challenges.
At each of the centres, they can study, link up with other students, have access to high-speed internet and information technology and get help with their study skills.

Of the 26 centres across Australia, 13 are operating within the Country Universities Centre (CUC) network. A student at one these centres said:

“I have unreliable internet as I live 20km from town. Having access to CUC has helped so much. I am more motivated to continue with my studies because I love going there.”

Read more:
Will Australia’s digital divide – fast for the city, slow in the country – ever be bridged?

Early evaluations show centres are effective

The number of Regional University Centres has steadily increased around the country since 2018. This growth has been fuelled by community willpower and funded by a combination of governments and local industry. Early evidence from CUC evaluations is starting to show the positive impact on students.

One example is the Learning Skills Advisor (LSA) program begun in 2020 to provide generic academic skills sessions across the CUC network. The first in-house evaluation provides an interesting snapshot of the students who came to LSA sessions from March 2020 to July 2021, and of the impact of the program in general.

Students from government equity categories were strongly represented. They included students from low socioeconomic status (SES) (72%) and Indigenous (9%) backgrounds. As well, 53% were the first in their families to be at university, 65.5% were aged 25 and over, and 46% were studying part-time.

Other research tells us that part-time, mature-age, low-SES, Indigenous and online students have been historically under-represented at university. If they do manage to get to university, they are more likely to withdraw without qualification.

The recent snapshot tells us the centres are reaching the students most at risk.

Read more:
Where are the most disadvantaged parts of Australia? New research shows it’s not just income that matters

Student feedback is very positive

The positive impacts of the LSA program are clear. The evaluation found:

• 93% of participating students reported feeling more confident about their studies
• 96% were more motivated
• 97.5% achieved higher grades
• 95% were more likely to continue with their studies.

Students said they found the practical information helpful.

“I learned about different ways to look up information. There were ideas about how to arrange information and structure essays more efficiently.”

“I learned to reference as I go, add the reference to my bibliography as I found the source.”

As students’ confidence improved, so did their grades and their motivation to continue. Their responses make this clear:

“Managed a HD/D average. I attribute this to the support I have received from [LSA].”

“Gave me the edge on exam day.”

“My confidence is up and my marks are following suit.”

They also valued having a space to study, with the facilities they need:

“Perfect study space, away from distractions and everything that is needed right in the one place.”

These preliminary evaluation findings are highly encouraging. They show that the right type of locally available support can encourage and motivate regional and remote students. Building their confidence and skills helps them to persist and succeed.

Read more:
New research shows there is still a long way to go in providing equality in education

A more formal evaluation of the CUC student experience is under way. The results are due to be published in early 2022.

The early results indicate that Regional University Centres are successfully complementing the online education universities are providing. The physical space, technology and face-to-face support the centres offer are making a difference.

This is a win-win, not only for students and universities, but also for the economic, social and educational capital of regional, rural and remote communities.

The author acknowledges the help of Monica Davis, CEO, and Chris Ronan, Equity & Engagement Director, of the Country Universities Centre in the writing of this article.

Cathy Stone consults with Country Universities Centre in her capacity as an independent consultant and researcher. She is also a researcher/author in other work cited within this article.

– ref. Local, face-to-face support offers a lifeline for uni students in regional and remote Australia – https://theconversation.com/local-face-to-face-support-offers-a-lifeline-for-uni-students-in-regional-and-remote-australia-167439

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard Holden, Professor of Economics, UNSW

This week the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development published its first “Economic Survey of Australia” since 2018.

It gives Australia good marks for a remarkably good economic response to the COVID pandemic, but warns of the importance of not shirking reforms needed for long-term prosperity.

The Reserve Bank of Australia’s governor, Philip Lowe, also addressed Australia’s recovery this week, in a speech to the Anika Foundation, which funds research into adolescent depression and suicide. Lowe has made a speech annually since 2017 to help raise funds for the foundation, as his predecessor Glenn Stevens also did.

Lowe was upbeat about Australia’s recovery from the pandemic, and also had important observations about Australia’s economic outlook.

Read more:
Four GDP graphs that show how well Australia was doing – before Delta hit

He emphasised the central bank would not be lifting interest rates to curtail the latest spike in house prices. The OECD report warns the Australian government relies too much on income taxes for revenue. It also argues forcefully for the significant economic benefits in Australia doing more to reduce carbon emissions.

Taken together, these two assessments point to the outstanding job done in managing the economic recovery.

But they also tell us we will have economic problems down the road if three big, structural reform areas — housing affordability, the tax mix, and decarbonisation — are not addressed.

Recovery signposts

In his speech on Tuesday, Lowe painted a helpful picture of the path of Australia’s recovery before the Delta outbreak — with the unemployment rate hitting a 20-year low and GDP growth recouping all its 2020 losses.

At the end of the June quarter, domestic final demand was more than 3% above its pre-pandemic level. GDP was up close to 10% for the previous 12 months.

Australia’s gross domestic product, seasonally adjusted

The recovery of the labour market was even more impressive. As Lowe put it:

In June, the employment-to-population ratio reached a record high of 63% and the unemployment rate fell to 4.9%, the lowest it had been in more than a decade.

The momentum in the labour market was so strong that in July the unemployment rate dropped to 4.6%, despite Delta-related lockdowns in greater Sydney.

Australia’s unemployment rate, seasonally adjusted

Delta thoughts

Lowe went on to discuss the economic hit of Delta.

Of course, how big that hit is depends on vaccination rates and how safely NSW and Victoria reopen. At a time when there’s a fair bit of discussion of best-case scenarios, Lowe warned of grimmer possibilities, warning of the possibility of:

further significant restrictions on activity […] in response to new outbreaks of Delta, the emergence of a new strain of COVID-19 or a decline in the potency of the current vaccines.

What Lowe hinted at, but didn’t say, was that, absent the Delta outbreak in Australia, the recovery would have continued to drive GDP up and unemployment down.

Read more:
Vital Signs: with vaccine thresholds come the danger of repeating past mistakes

“On the economy,” Lowe said, “our central message is that the Delta outbreak has delayed – but not derailed – the recovery of the Australian economy. If that turns out to be correct then unemployment could fall below 4% by early 2023 — though how far below remains to be seen.

It’s worth remembering that had the federal government not bungled its vaccine buying and roll-out strategy, Australia might have avoided the current economic pain.

Finally, Lowe was emphatic the central bank would not be raising interest rates to “cool the property market”:

I want to be clear that this is not on our agenda. While it is true that higher interest rates would, all else equal, see lower housing prices, they would also mean fewer jobs and lower wages growth. This is a poor trade-off in the current circumstances.

That’s Lowe-speak for: “Read my lips — no interest rate hikes until 2024.”

Read more:
Vital signs: to fix Australia’s housing affordability crisis, negative gearing must go

OECD’s report card

The hefty OECD report (about 130 pages) concurs with Lowe’s view on strength of Australia’s pandemic recovery. It essentially congratulates the government for its response, noting “fiscal policy has responded with unprecedented force”.

But it also notes the low rate of Australia’s goods and services tax (GST) compared to consumption taxes in other countries, leaving the federal government (and thereby state and territory governments) reliant on personal income taxes.

The report observes that GST revenue as a share of total taxation has been falling — from 15.4% in 2003-04 to 14.1% in 2020-21. It suggests increasing the rate of GST would lead to a more efficient tax mix.

This puts both side of politics squarely on notice that serious tax reform needs to be on the agenda soon.

The OECD report also emphasises the importance of the Australian economy decarbonising more rapidly. This is another big policy reform on which the government has show little inclination to take stronger steps.

Common threads

So the RBA and OECD both point to Australia’s strong pandemic recovery, driven in large part by the fiscal force of programs such as JobKeeper and JobSeeker.

The Delta outbreaks have put a serious dent in this recovery. But there is reason to believe the recovery will be back on track by early 2022. In the longer term, though, there will have to be a reckoning about major structural reforms.

By 2050 we will need to have a largely decarbonised economy. We are also going to need to have an improved tax mix to drive innovation. And sooner rather than later the housing affordability crisis must be addressed.

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

– ref. Vital Signs: we’re doing well despite Delta, but 3 major economic challenges loom – https://theconversation.com/vital-signs-were-doing-well-despite-delta-but-3-major-economic-challenges-loom-167992

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dean Biron, PhD in Cultural Studies; teaches in School of Justice, Queensland University of Technology

For many of us back in 1991, it felt as if the planet tilted slightly further on its axis when Smells Like Teen Spirit — the lead single from Nirvana’s Nevermind album — began to dominate the airwaves. The song’s compelling fusion of blast furnace punk, whimsical melody and inscrutable lyrics was unlike anything else commercial radio had embraced up to that point.

Friday September 24 marks the 30th anniversary of the release of Nevermind. Materialising apparently out of nowhere, within four months the album had shoved its way to the top of the US charts, dislodging Michael Jackson’s Dangerous in January of 1992. It did almost as well in Australia, reaching number two.

Nevermind has gone on to become a recording phenomenon, with over 30 million copies sold. Nobody saw this coming, not least the band’s record company. John Rosenfeld, who worked for Nirvana’s label, Geffen, at the time of its release has said they originally projected sales of 50,000.

Nirvana formed in 1987 in the logging and fishing town of Aberdeen, Washington. Featuring guitarist, vocalist and principal songwriter Kurt Cobain, bass player Krist Novoselic, and new drummer Dave Grohl, Nevermind was Nirvana’s second album — the first for a major label.

Instantly identifiable by its cover image of an infant swimming toward a fish hook baited with a dollar note, it included three more frenetic-cum-fragile singles — Come As You Are, Lithium and In Bloom — as well as two haunted acoustic tracks — Polly, a repudiation of sexual violence, and the cello-bathed Something in the Way, which alluded to homelessness.

A range of factors converged to draft Nirvana into the mainstream with Nevermind. Certainly, the quality of the songs helped.

So did Teen Spirit’s incendiary video, which conveyed generational antipathy through robotic cheerleaders, a swarm of convulsive teens and a wizened school janitor (Cobain having held down just such a job for a short time). Producer Butch Vig and mixer Andy Wallace were also vital, applying precisely the right amount of gleam to the band’s coarse-grained, jet engine roar.

Significant, too, were the many post-punk musicians who in the 1980s shaped what Nirvana biographer Michael Azerrad subsequently termed a “shadow music industry”. This underground faction of American bands — Minutemen, Hüsker Dü, Dinosaur Jr, Mudhoney, Sonic Youth and others — forged a crucial alternative, do-it-yourself aesthetic pathway through the ultra-conservative Reagan-Bush era.

Sometimes important art takes time to inject itself into the bloodstream of the culture. While the Velvet Underground are now acknowledged as a pivotal force in early rock music, at the time their records had limited critical cache and sold poorly. With Nevermind, however, audiences caught on quickly, leaving cultural commentators scrabbling to hook on to a hurtling zeitgeist.

Three stars from Rolling Stone

Bass guitarist Novoselic has since spoken derisively of the many journalists who initially mocked Nevermind before later claiming “they loved it from the start”.

In hindsight, this seems slightly exaggerated. Some publications did completely overlook the record at first. A few came in with fists flailing: the Boston Globe referred to it as “moronic ramblings”.

Others, though, were prescient in their praise. Melody Maker’s Everett True prophesied Nevermind would “blow every other contender away”.

Renowned author Greil Marcus expressed a surprising preference for Nirvana’s murky debut album Bleach, while Chad Channing, the drummer replaced by Grohl to make Nevermind, complained the record’s major label sheen wasn’t true “grunge”.

But the most revealing response came from Rolling Stone magazine, whose initial reviewer Ira Robbins was one of the smarter music writers of the time. He concluded that Nevermind found Nirvana “at the crossroads — scrappy garageland warriors setting their sights on a land of giants”. The magazine’s editors hedged even more bets by adding a three-star rating, the rock press equivalent of consigning a record to eternal mediocrity.

Rolling Stone eventually yielded to popular sentiment. In 1992 there was a revised four-star review. Then, in 2004, Nevermind’s standing was upgraded even further: a five-star ranking in that year’s Rolling Stone Album Guide. This followed on from 17th place in the magazine’s 2003 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list, putting it up there with Highway 61 Revisited, Are You Experienced? and Marquee Moon.

Robbins, too, seemed determined to set the record straight as soon as the opportunity arose. For the 1996 edition of his Trouser Press Guide, the review of Nevermind — one of the longest in the entire volume — deemed it “the Rosetta Stone of 90s punk-rock”.

Read more:
Kurt Cobain and the search for a sincere rock star

By the 1990s, music criticism was changing. A glut of available recordings — nowadays an overwhelming deluge — coincided with further fragmentation of the rock genre both in style and format. At the same time, publications like Rolling Stone were increasingly seen as tied up with traditionalist, patriarchal notions of popular music history.

Kurt Cobain voiced the alienation of a marginalised youth who couldn’t care less about the old rules. His group’s music was nowhere near as unorthodox as, say, that of close friend Dylan Carlson’s influential drone-metal project Earth. But Nevermind was a subversive assault upon the rock elite from within: a big guitar sound without the big-dick attitude.

Into the stratosphere

We’ll never know exactly what sent Nirvana into the stratosphere while artists of comparable brilliance didn’t transcend their relatively minor standing. After all, in the 1980s quite a few of us in Australia were convinced each new Go-Betweens record would be the one to spark global domination.

Similar could have been said for Public Enemy circa 1991, or for Sleater-Kinney (like Nirvana, hailing from the Pacific Northwest) a few years after.

No doubt Cobain himself would have conceded being a white, all-male, US-based guitar-bass-drums outfit (albeit one from the seamier side of the tracks) gave them a leg-up on these and many other contenders.

Read more:
Redefining the rock god – the new breed of electric guitar heroes

Cobain’s amalgam of influences was expansive, from the Raincoats, Iggy Pop, Ian MacKaye and REM to Samuel Beckett and William S. Burroughs. He wasn’t above raiding the classic rock fortress for ideas, but also excavated deep below in search of subterranean misfits to emulate.

Nonetheless, Boston’s Pixies were the main forebears of Nirvana’s trademark quiet-loud-quiet sound. As it happens, I recall The Happening, an extraordinary Pixies song from 1990, giving me the same kind of this-could-be-the-one jolt that Teen Spirit did a year later. Yet one is regarded as a historical turning point, the other an obscurity.

Wherever the alternative banquet began, big business and media were always going to be quick to gatecrash. As Nevermind broke, the corporate vultures weren’t just circling: they’d already flown in to commence tearing the last morsels from the skeleton of post-Reagan America.

As journalist and political analyst Thomas Frank noted in his important 1995 essay Alternative to What?, by the time of Cobain’s 1994 death by suicide, the commodification of rebellion was complete. For the ultimate proof, Frank pointed to a cynical MTV advertisement found in the business sections of certain newspapers and magazines. It featured an image of a grunge-styled youth along with the caption: “Buy this 24-year-old and get all his friends absolutely free”.

Corporate scavengers aside, Nevermind continues to stir fans and critics. Its history continues to be told, and many of the sharpest (and best written) recent takes are by Australian writers.

Josh Bergamin’s recent note-perfect analysis sets Nevermind’s success within contrasting milieus of generational disillusionment and executive greed, arguing Cobain and many of his fans engaged in radical acts of political resistance.

Cristian Strömblad uses the context of growing up in suburban Brisbane to tell of how Nirvana helped open up new aesthetic worlds.

Tiarney Miekus explores perennial death-of-rock narratives in light of “the big dumb accident” that was Nevermind.

Conversely, wardens of the conventional rock canon still emerge to disdain the achievements of alt-culture’s “anaemic royalty”. In one resentful, ridiculous critique of the album on the Classic Rock Review website, J.D. Cook concluded Nirvana was “only popular because of Cobain’s suicide”, implausibly overlooking the two-and-a-half years of international acclaim preceding that grim epilogue.

A beginning

To me, Nevermind wasn’t a peak. It was a beginning. Nirvana was a stunning band and Cobain by all accounts a dedicated, intelligent, yet supremely troubled individual whose life always teetered on the chasm’s edge. Until his death partly stalled the show – the imperatives of consumerism ensuring the band’s ghost would continue to post a profit regardless – the music kept getting better.

Cobain’s craft evolved as success lured his social conscience further into the open. This is palpable on the In Utero album (1993), in songs such as Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Seattle and Rape Me (the latter later distorted by those who hid behind a controversial title to evade its prescient, victim’s-eye view of sexual abuse).

Once Nevermind raised Nirvana’s media profile, Cobain continued putting forward positions on different political issues (for instance, after they appeared in drag for the video to In Bloom, he told an interviewer that “at least it brings the whole subject of homosexuality into debate”).

The band’s social justice stance was made abundantly clear in the liner notes for the 1992 compilation Incesticide, which warned sexists, racists and homophobes would not be welcome to sweat in their particular mosh pit. They also contributed a “leftover” of exceptional quality, a song titled Sappy, to the 1993 AIDS fundraiser album No Alternative.

The group even did its best to subvert MTV’s rebellion-into-cash mentality at their November 1993 Unplugged in New York appearance. The show featured gut-wrenching versions of the best tracks from In Utero (Pennyroyal Tea and All Apologies) and a touching three-song gambol with underground mentors Meat Puppets. Topping it off were surely two of the most remarkable cover versions ever performed: David Bowie’s The Man Who Sold the World and Lead Belly’s Where Did You Sleep Last Night.

Today, Nirvana’s iconic stature is only confirmed by it being caught up in two of America’s pet modern-day farces: the conspiracy theory (some still claim Cobain’s death was murder) and a multi-million dollar lawsuit (the child depicted on Nevermind’s cover is currently suing the band and others for damages).

As for all that voice-of-a-generation stuff … well, Nirvana’s appeal was hardly universal: they meant something to plenty of people in places like New York and Sydney, probably a lot fewer in Addis Ababa or Tehran.

Nor is the ultimate cultural significance of Nevermind easily pinned down. In that context, it is worth remembering that two other major US events of 1991 — the videotaped beating of Rodney King in Los Angeles and the Luby’s Cafeteria mass shooting in Texas — didn’t exactly portend epochal change in racial equality or gun control.

Nevermind didn’t change the world. But for a while it helped some of us believe the world could change, and that is enough.

Dean Biron 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. Friday essay: Nevermind 30 years on – how Nirvana’s second album tilted the world on its axis – https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-nevermind-30-years-on-how-nirvanas-second-album-tilted-the-world-on-its-axis-167108

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexander Gillespie, Professor of Law, University of Waikato

We live, to borrow a phrase, in interesting times. The pandemic aside, relations between the superpowers are tense. The sudden arrival of the new AUKUS security agreement between Australia, the US and UK simply adds to the general sense of unease internationally.

The relationship between America and China had already deteriorated under the presidency of Donald Trump and has not improved under Joe Biden. New satellite evidence suggests China might be building between 100 and 200 silos for a new generation of nuclear intercontinental missiles.

At the same time, the US relationship with North Korea continues to smoulder, with both North and South Korea conducting missile tests designed to intimidate.

And, of course, Biden has just presided over the foreign policy disaster of withdrawal from Afghanistan. His administration needs something new with a positive spin.

Enter AUKUS, more or less out of the blue. So far, it is just a statement launched by the member countries’ leaders. It has not yet been released as a formal treaty.

The Indo-Pacific pivot

The new agreement speaks of “maritime democracies” and “ideals and shared commitment to the international rules-based order” with the objective to “deepen diplomatic, security and defence co-operation in the Indo-Pacific region”.

“Indo-Pacific region” is code for defence against China, with the partnership promising greater sharing and integration of defence technologies, cyber capabilities and “additional undersea capabilities”. Under the agreement, Australia also stands to gain nuclear-powered submarines.

Read more:
Australia to build nuclear submarines in a new partnership with the US and UK

To demonstrate the depth of the relationship, the agreement highlights how “for more than 70 years, Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States have worked together, along with other important allies and partners”.

At which point New Zealand could have expected a drum roll, too, having only just marked the 70th anniversary of the ANZUS agreement. That didn’t happen, and New Zealand was conspicuously absent from the choreographed announcement hosted by the White House.

Having remained committed to the Five Eyes security agreement and having put boots on the ground in Afghanistan for the duration, “NZ” appears to have been taken out of ANZUS and replaced with “UK”.

Don’t mention the nukes

The obvious first question is whether New Zealand was asked to join the new arrangement. While Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has welcomed the new partnership, she has confirmed: “We weren’t approached, nor would I expect us to be.”

That is perhaps surprising. Despite problematic comments by New Zealand’s trade minister about Australia’s dealings with China, and the foreign minister’s statement that she “felt uncomfortable” with the expanding remit of the Five Eyes, reassurances by Ardern about New Zealand’s commitment should have calmed concerns.

Read more:
Why nuclear submarines are a smart military move for Australia — and could deter China further

One has to assume, therefore, that even if New Zealand had been asked to join, it might have chosen to opt out anyway. There are three possible explanations for this.

The first involves the probable provision to Australia of nuclear-powered military submarines. Any mention of nuclear matters makes New Zealand nervous. But Australia has been at pains to reiterate its commitment to “leadership on global non-proliferation”.

Similar commitments or work-arounds could probably have been made for New Zealand within the AUKUS agreement, too, but that is now moot.

The dragon in the room

The second reason New Zealand may have declined is because the new agreement is perceived as little more than an expensive purchasing agreement for the Australian navy, wrapped up as something else.

This may be partly true. But the rewards of the relationship as stated in the initial announcement go beyond submarines and look enticing. In particular, anything that offers cutting-edge technologies and enhances the interoperability of New Zealand’s defence force with its allies would not be lightly declined.

Read more:
ANZUS at 70: Together for decades, US, Australia, New Zealand now face different challenges from China

The third explanation could lie in an assumption that this is not a new security arrangement. Evidence for this can be seen in the fact that New Zealand is not the only ally missing from the new arrangement.

Canada, the other Five Eyes member, is also not at the party. Nor are France, Germany, India and Japan. If this really was a quantum shift in strategic alliances, the group would have been wider — and more formal than a new partnership announced at a press conference.

Nonetheless, the fact that New Zealand’s supposedly extra-special relationship with Britain, Australia and America hasn’t made it part of the in-crowd will raise eyebrows. Especially while no one likes to mention the elephant – or should that be dragon? – in the room: New Zealand’s relationship with China.

Alexander Gillespie 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. ANZUS without NZ? Why the new security pact between Australia, the UK and US might not be all it seems – https://theconversation.com/anzus-without-nz-why-the-new-security-pact-between-australia-the-uk-and-us-might-not-be-all-it-seems-168071

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

For a very intellectually smart man, Christian Porter often shows extraordinarily bad judgment.

After he was accused of historical rape, which he strongly denied, he believed he could remain as attorney-general, despite that being clearly not viable.

Then he chose to sue the ABC and one of its reporters for defamation, but quickly found this brought reputational risks and huge financial costs. The case was settled before going to trial.

Now Porter has disclosed, in an update this week to the parliamentary register of MPs’ interests, that he has accepted funds from a “blind trust” to help him pay his legal bills.

Unsurprisingly, there was a general outcry, and Prime Minister Scott Morrison has his department advising whether this arrangement breaches the ministerial standards code. Once more, Porter’s frontbench future is hanging in the balance.

How this plays out is an integrity test for Morrison. Porter needs to leave the ministry or (taking the most lenient view of the situation) immediately have the trust repay all the money to those anonymous benefactors.

Indeed, Porter shouldn’t have to wait to be told by the PM – he should recognise this himself.

Regardless of the departmental advice to Morrison, acceptance of anonymous donations fails the standards of propriety that we should expect from MPs, and certainly from ministers.

Former PM Malcolm Turnbull – who admittedly is no fan of Porter for various reasons – described his action colourfully as “like saying ‘my legal fees were paid by a guy in a mask who dropped off a chaff bag full of cash’”.

Porter argued the government didn’t pay for his court action so these funds are coming to him in a private capacity. But regardless of the fact he was liable for his bills, he is a senior public figure – the debate surrounded his public role and anyway the “private” morphs into the “public”.

There are practical reasons, as well as the matter of principle, why political figures shouldn’t accept money from unknown sources.

While Porter says he doesn’t know the names of the donors, obviously others do. Potential benefactors must have been directed to the trust, which has administrators, with the funds provided to Porter’s lawyers.

Why do the benefactors want to remain anonymous? Do they believe backing Porter will cause them damage or embarrassment? These donors have helped Porter with money, but by staying in the shadows they have actually harmed him, as his present invidious position shows.

One day, their names may emerge publicly. If they don’t, they very likely will be known privately in Liberal circles. That just invites rumours, down the track, that so-and-so might have obtained favours from the Liberals because he or she helped Porter out. Compromising all round.

The rules covering the disclosure of political donations are woefully inadequate. Among much else, we can now see they should extend to cover donations made to politicians in their so-called “private” capacity.

The anonymous largesse to Porter is the latest example of the poor standards in political life that so alienate many of the public, fuelling distrust and cynicism.

At a governmental level, we’ve seen this in the scandals of the community sports grants and commuter car parks schemes before the last election, which were run essentially as vote-buying exercises. Proper process came a distant second to the pursuit of political advantage.

In the sport rorts affair one minister, the Nationals’ Bridget McKenzie, was finally forced to resign. But the reason given was a technicality; there was no admission by Morrison that the scheme – in which his office was intimately involved – had been shamelessly rorted. (All’s ended well for McKenzie – after the Barnaby Joyce leadership coup she was restored to the cabinet.)

Constitutional lawyer Anne Twomey, from the University of Sydney, in a recent speech pointed to the damage this sort of behaviour does.

“The notion abounds amongst politicians that the means are justified by the ends – that it is OK to abuse the rule of law and make unlawful grants to buy an election outcome, because the success of your side in that election is for the overall benefit of the country,” Twomey said.

“Even if that were objectively true in the short term, it is not in the long term. The corrosion of the rule of law and the seeding of future corruption are profoundly worrying. We are being set on a trajectory with horrific ends. Yet our own leaders cannot see beyond the immediate glittering prize of the next election.”

The “whatever it takes” mindset has become all-pervasive. It’s often partnered with “whatever can be hidden”.

The Morrison government is notorious for trying to conceal its workings. At present it is attempting to legislate to get round a legal judgment that found the national cabinet is not a committee of the federal cabinet and therefore it cannot claim cabinet confidentiality. Let’s hope the Senate crossbench stands up against the government’s bid.

A few years ago, both sides of federal politics doubted the need for a national commission against corruption. But after Labor, the Greens and crossbenchers pressed the issue, the Coalition government was reluctantly forced to accept the idea.

While attorney-general, Porter produced draft legislation in late 2020 for an integrity commission. His model was widely criticised; its many holes included that there would be no opportunity for whistle-blowers to directly lodge complaints against politicians and public servants, and investigations involving these figures would not have public hearings.

The government says it will introduce its legislation for the integrity commission before year’s end. We don’t know what changes it is making to the earlier version following the consultation process, but whatever the revised model looks like, it will be a stretch to get legislation through before the election.

An integrity commission is an overdue reform that will help promote greater trust in the political system. Australia Institute polling done in August in four seats – Brisbane (Qld), Braddon (Tas), Bennelong (NSW) and Boothby (SA) – found overwhelming support for setting up a commission. But it’s only part of the answer to the trust deficit.

To promote trust, politicians and governments need to feel proper standards matter – that there is a political cost (short of an integrity commission investigation) to doing the wrong thing, or cutting corners for political ends.

Reinforcing this point requires deterrents to bad behaviour in the form of institutional checks and transparency as well as sanctions.

But there also needs to be positive reinforcement wherever possible – within parties, inside a government, and from voters – of the message that high standards are a central KPI for politicians.

Without that messaging, lack of trust and public cynicism will only grow, poisoning the political system further.

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. Grattan on Friday: Porter’s funding from a ‘blind trust’ is an integrity test for Morrison – https://theconversation.com/grattan-on-friday-porters-funding-from-a-blind-trust-is-an-integrity-test-for-morrison-168112

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

For a very intellectually smart man, Christian Porter often shows extraordinarily bad judgment.

After he was accused of historical rape, which he strongly denied, he believed he could remain as attorney-general, despite that being clearly not viable.

Then he chose to sue the ABC and one of its reporters for defamation, but quickly found this brought reputational risks and huge financial costs. The case was settled before going to trial.

Now Porter has disclosed, in an update this week to the parliamentary register of MPs’ interests, that he has accepted funds from a “blind trust” to help him pay his legal bills.

Unsurprisingly, there was a general outcry, and Prime Minister Scott Morrison has his department advising whether this arrangement breaches the ministerial standards code. Once more, Porter’s frontbench future is hanging in the balance.

How this plays out is an integrity test for Morrison. Porter needs to leave the ministry or (taking the most lenient view of the situation) immediately have the trust repay all the money to those anonymous benefactors.

Indeed, Porter shouldn’t have to wait to be told by the PM – he should recognise this himself.

Regardless of the departmental advice to Morrison, acceptance of anonymous donations fails the standards of propriety that we should expect from MPs, and certainly from ministers.

Former PM Malcolm Turnbull – who admittedly is no fan of Porter for various reasons – described his action colourfully as “like saying ‘my legal fees were paid by a guy in a mask who dropped off a chaff bag full of cash’”.

Porter argued the government didn’t pay for his court action so these funds are coming to him in a private capacity. But regardless of the fact he was liable for his bills, he is a senior public figure – the debate surrounded his public role and anyway the “private” morphs into the “public”.

There are practical reasons, as well as the matter of principle, why political figures shouldn’t accept money from unknown sources.

While Porter says he doesn’t know the names of the donors, obviously others do. Potential benefactors must have been directed to the trust, which has administrators, with the funds provided to Porter’s lawyers.

Why do the benefactors want to remain anonymous? Do they believe backing Porter will cause them damage or embarrassment? These donors have helped Porter with money, but by staying in the shadows they have actually harmed him, as his present invidious position shows.

One day, their names may emerge publicly. If they don’t, they very likely will be known privately in Liberal circles. That just invites rumours, down the track, that so-and-so might have obtained favours from the Liberals because he or she helped Porter out. Compromising all round.

The rules covering the disclosure of political donations are woefully inadequate. Among much else, we can now see they should extend to cover donations made to politicians in their so-called “private” capacity.

The anonymous largesse to Porter is the latest example of the poor standards in political life that so alienate many of the public, fuelling distrust and cynicism.

At a governmental level, we’ve seen this in the scandals of the community sports grants and commuter car parks schemes before the last election, which were run essentially as vote-buying exercises. Proper process came a distant second to the pursuit of political advantage.

In the sport rorts affair one minister, the Nationals’ Bridget McKenzie, was finally forced to resign. But the reason given was a technicality; there was no admission by Morrison that the scheme – in which his office was intimately involved – had been shamelessly rorted. (All’s ended well for McKenzie – after the Barnaby Joyce leadership coup she was restored to the cabinet.)

Constitutional lawyer Anne Twomey, from the University of Sydney, in a recent speech pointed to the damage this sort of behaviour does.

“The notion abounds amongst politicians that the means are justified by the ends – that it is OK to abuse the rule of law and make unlawful grants to buy an election outcome, because the success of your side in that election is for the overall benefit of the country,” Twomey said.

“Even if that were objectively true in the short term, it is not in the long term. The corrosion of the rule of law and the seeding of future corruption are profoundly worrying. We are being set on a trajectory with horrific ends. Yet our own leaders cannot see beyond the immediate glittering prize of the next election.”

The “whatever it takes” mindset has become all-pervasive. It’s often partnered with “whatever can be hidden”.

The Morrison government is notorious for trying to conceal its workings. At present it is attempting to legislate to get round a legal judgment that found the national cabinet is not a committee of the federal cabinet and therefore it cannot claim cabinet confidentiality. Let’s hope the Senate crossbench stands up against the government’s bid.

A few years ago, both sides of federal politics doubted the need for a national commission against corruption. But after Labor, the Greens and crossbenchers pressed the issue, the Coalition government was reluctantly forced to accept the idea.

While attorney-general, Porter produced draft legislation in late 2020 for an integrity commission. His model was widely criticised; its many holes included that there would be no opportunity for whistle-blowers to directly lodge complaints against politicians and public servants, and investigations involving these figures would not have public hearings.

The government says it will introduce its legislation for the integrity commission before year’s end. We don’t know what changes it is making to the earlier version following the consultation process, but whatever the revised model looks like, it will be a stretch to get legislation through before the election.

An integrity commission is an overdue reform that will help promote greater trust in the political system. Australia Institute polling done in August in four seats – Brisbane (Qld), Braddon (Tas), Bennelong (NSW) and Boothby (SA) – found overwhelming support for setting up a commission. But it’s only part of the answer to the trust deficit.

To promote trust, politicians and governments need to feel proper standards matter – that there is a political cost (short of an integrity commission investigation) to doing the wrong thing, or cutting corners for political ends.

Reinforcing this point requires deterrents to bad behaviour in the form of institutional checks and transparency as well as sanctions.

But there also needs to be positive reinforcement wherever possible – within parties, inside a government, and from voters – of the message that high standards are a central KPI for politicians.

Without that messaging, lack of trust and public cynicism will only grow, poisoning the political system further.

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. Grattan on Friday: Porter’s funding from a ‘blind trust’ is as integrity test for Morrison – https://theconversation.com/grattan-on-friday-porters-funding-from-a-blind-trust-is-as-integrity-test-for-morrison-168112

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jeff Borland, Professor of Economics, The University of Melbourne

Australia’s labour force statistics for August again make the case for giving up on the rate of unemployment as an indicator of the state of the labour market.

In June the official unemployment rate dropped below 5% for the first time since before the Global Financial Crisis of 2008. In July it dropped again, to 4.6%.

With major lockdowns across Australia since late July, the rate for August was widely expected to go up. Yet the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ figures show that while total hours worked were 5.6% down on their May peak, the jobless rate defied all predictions and fell again, to 4.5%

To understand why this has happened, we just need to follow the COVID-19 trail.

Employment fell

The re-emergence of COVID-19 in Victoria in June and NSW in July had already reduced hours of work. That trend accelerated in August with simultaneous lockdowns in NSW, Victoria, Queensland and the ACT.

Total hours worked in Australia declined by 3.8% in just one month, and are now back below their pre-COVID level in March 2020.

NSW has, unsurprisingly, been hardest hit. Hours worked there have fallen 11.8% since May. This is a more severe downturn than NSW experienced with the onset of COVID-19 in 2020, when hours worked decreased by 9.9%.

Until July, the re-emergence of COVID-19 brought decreases in hours worked but not in the number of people employed. That changed in August. Employment in NSW fell by 173,000, or 4.4%.

Other states in lockdown, Victoria and Queensland, have also gone backwards but to a lesser extent. Victoria in particular appears to have got away lightly in the month to August. Hours worked did fall by 2.8% but there was a slight increase in employment.

ABS payroll data — a different measure to its monthly labour force survey — show much smaller decreases in jobs in Victoria than NSW in August across most industries.

This may reflect that Victoria’s latest lockdown started after NSW; or it may show that Victoria has managed to have its lockdown with less disruption to work. Data on employment for September will tell us more.

Hours worked fell more

Seeing larger falls in hours worked than employment tells us something important about how businesses adjust to needing less labour.

Rather than laying off their staff, at least in the initial stages of lockdown, businesses have chosen to reduce their hours of work.

This can be seen in the rise in the rate of underemployment between July and August, from 8.3% to 9.3%. Since May, the number of workers getting fewer hours than usual due to “no work, not enough work or stood down” rose about 490,000. Of those workers, about an extra 190,000 worked zero hours in the week of the survey.

People gave up looking for work

If employment fell between July and August, you might be thinking, doesn’t that mean more people unemployed, and a higher rate of unemployment?

Normally that’s what we’d expect to happen.

But it only happens if the people who lose their jobs stay in the labour market, looking for work.

In August, however, while employment decreased by 146,000, the number of people wanting to work — who the ABS counts as part of the labour force — declined even more, by 168,000. Thus unemployment fell by 22,000.

Withdrawals from the labour market were almost entirely concentrated in NSW. The state that saw the biggest decrease in hours worked also had the biggest decrease in people wanting to work — 3.8%.

Read more:
New finding: jobseekers subject to obligations take longer to find work

So the lower rate of unemployment in August is not a sign of improving labour market conditions. Instead it shows many potential workers decided it wasn’t worth looking for a job.

Young people and women most affected

Those bearing the brunt of these latest lockdowns are same groups most adversely affected by the initial impact of COVID-19 in 2020.

Youth (aged 15 to 24 years) make up just 15% of the population but accounted for half of the decrease in employment in August. It’s likely this disproportionate impact is again due to younger people being more likely to work in the industries most affected by lockdowns – such as accommodation and food services.

Read more:
JobKeeper and JobMaker have left too many young people on the dole queue

The story from 2020 is also repeating in the labour market impact of lockdowns by gender. From May to August, female employment fell by 90,000, compared with 25,000 for males. Women also withdraw from the labour force in much larger numbers than males, 119,000 to 80,000.

Jeff Borland receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. Just 4.5% jobless during lockdowns? The unemployment rate is now meaningless – https://theconversation.com/just-4-5-jobless-during-lockdowns-the-unemployment-rate-is-now-meaningless-167805

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Susan Green, Professor in Indigenous Australian Studies and GCWLCH Co-ordinator, Charles Sturt University

The COVID-19 crisis in Wilcannia demonstrates how entrenched neglect, combined with a global pandemic, have created a perfect storm impacting the most marginalised people in society.

The treatment of the Barkindji people of Wilcannia is appalling by anyone’s standards and should be unacceptable to every Australian. The stories flooding out of Wilcannia of mistreatment of Aboriginal people should make every person stand up and demand immediate action.

The government needs to take immediate action to address the conditions in which the people in Wilcannia are forced to live, and by providing vaccinations immediately to all those who want to be vaccinated.

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

Not enough healthcare, too much police involvement

As part of my research, I spoke to community members over the phone to listen to their experiences of this breakout. Here are just a few stories told to me by the people of Wilcannia:

• a young mother who was made to sit outside a hospital on a cold night, before being sent home due to under-resourcing

• a woman who had police arrive on her doorstep to inform her she had tested positive to COVID-19, and they must take her to the isolation unit. There was no phone call from NSW Health, just police arriving to take her to isolation. Her elderly mother, who is on dialysis, was taken to another town

• Aboriginal people with mental illness or disorders, who require regular treatment and medication, being picked up in police vans and taken to the hospital because they “may” have COVID-19. The people of Wilcannia told me they were told this is because police vans are “easier” to clean.

The police or the defence force themselves cannot be blamed. They are doing all they can to assist, much of which NSW Health should be resourced to do. Without the police and the defence force, Wilcannia would be in a much worse situation. However, we need a health and community response, not a law and order response.

Reports have surfaced Aboriginal people in Wilcannia are being fined up to $5,000 for leaving home to get food. Some of the people being fined are already living on meagre incomes and having to pay those fines will cause significant distress and further financial problems, further entrenching disadvantage.

Neglect of Aboriginal people has led us here

Overcrowded and poor-quality housing already results in poor health outcomes. The effects of overcrowded and poor quality housing during a viral pandemic cannot be overstated.

Aboriginal people have been isolating in tents during cold desert nights to try to protect their families. They do not choose to live in overcrowded and poor-quality housing; that is all that is available.

NSW Health have since supplied 30 motor homes for people diagnosed with COVID so they can isolate away from their families.

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

The situation in Wilcannia did not just happen overnight, nor was it unforeseen. The neglect of Aboriginal people by current and successive governments has led us to this point.

Furthermore, Aboriginal health services predicted last year that if COVID-19 entered Aboriginal communities, it would be disastrous. Instead of governments taking responsibility for their failures, some have blamed the people suffering the consequences of their failure.

For example, the government demonised the family and community who attended a funeral, making false statements and allegations, despite the funeral occurring before restrictions and lockdowns outside of the Greater Sydney Region. Those who made negative statements about the funeral attendance have expressed regret, but it’s too little too late.

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

Aboriginal people were classified as 1B priority for the vaccines, but in many places, the vaccines were simply not available. This was either because services on the ground did not have the capacity to deliver or there just were not enough vaccines. Many Aboriginal people across the state of NSW have reported long waiting lists to get vaccinated.

It must also be noted that those Aboriginal people wary of vaccines have good reason, based in over 200 years of history, not to trust what the government says.

However, we do not need to go back that far to understand this crisis. We only need to look at the government’s failure to secure enough (timely) vaccines for these vulnerable communities.

What has to happen now?

The government firstly must address the immediate needs of the community, by ensuring adequate and appropriate housing for people to isolate in, tents and motor homes are not appropriate in this situation. Vaccinations must be urgently administered and everyone who wants to be vaccinated must be able to do so without a waiting list.

More doctors and nurses need to be sent to regional areas affected by the virus. Social workers must also be sent to ensure people have access to adequate and appropriate health care, food and accommodation as well as programs to allow people to deal with issues worsened by the pandemic and to maintain mental and cultural well-being during times of isolation and lock down.

Susan Green receives funding from ARC research funding. She is affiliated with CSU as an academic, AASW, as the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Board member and Visual Dreaming as a board member.

– ref. COVID in Wilcannia: a national disgrace we all saw coming – https://theconversation.com/covid-in-wilcannia-a-national-disgrace-we-all-saw-coming-167348

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By AJ Mitchell, Research fellow, Australian National University

The Australian government has just declared an historic defence agreement with the United States and United Kingdom that will see a new fleet of nuclear-powered submarines patrol our shores and surrounding waters.

Research into nuclear-based propulsion of marine vessels began in the 1940s with the dawn of the “nuclear age”. Since then, only six nations have owned and operated nuclear submarines: China, France, India, Russia, the UK and the US.

Considering Australia has just torn up a A$90 billion contract to construct a new arsenal of conventional submarines, yesterday’s announcement will probably come as a surprise to many.

Read more:
Australia to build nuclear submarines in a new partnership with the US and UK

So what is “nuclear” about a nuclear submarine? The first thing to say is that a nuclear-powered submarine is not a nuclear weapon.

On the surface, they look like any other submarine. The key difference lies in the way they are powered.

In the early days of atomic research, scientists rapidly realised the huge amounts of energy released by “splitting the atom” can be harnessed to generate electricity. Nuclear reactors inside power stations have been powering homes and industry across the world for 70 years. Similarly, each nuclear submarine draws power from its own miniature onboard nuclear reactor.

At the heart of every atom is an atomic nucleus, made of protons and neutrons. The number of protons defines what chemical element that atom belongs to; nuclei with the same number of protons but varying numbers of neutrons are called isotopes of that element.

Some very heavy nuclei are highly susceptible to a process known as nuclear fission, whereby they split into two lighter nuclei with a total mass less than the original nucleus. The remainder is converted to energy.

The amount of energy released is immense, as we can see from Einstein’s famous equation, E = mc², which tells us the energy is equal to the change in mass multiplied by the square of the speed of light!

Reactors in a nuclear-powered submarine are typically fuelled with uranium. Natural uranium mined from the ground consists mainly of an isotope called uranium-238, mixed with small amounts (0.7%) of the key isotope uranium-235.

For the reactor to work, the uranium fuel has to be “enriched” to contain the desired proportion of uranium-235. For submarines, this is typically about 50%. The degree of fuel enrichment is a crucial factor in maintaining a chain reaction that gives a consistent, safe level of energy output.

Inside the reactor, uranium-235 is bombarded with neutrons, causing some of the nuclei to undergo nuclear fission. In turn, more neutrons are released and the process continues in a so-called “nuclear chain reaction”. The energy is given off as heat, which can be used to drive turbines that generate electricity for the submarine.

What are the pros and cons of going nuclear?

One huge advantage of nuclear-powered submarines is they do not require refuelling. When one of them enters into service, it will be commissioned with enough uranium fuel to last more than 30 years.

The high efficiency of nuclear power also enables these submarines to operate at high speed for longer periods than conventional diesel-electric submarines. What’s more, unlike conventional fuel combustion, nuclear reactions do not require air. That means nuclear submarines can stay submerged at deep depths for months at a time, giving them better stealth capabilities and allowing for longer, more remote deployments.

The downside is the eye-watering cost. Each nuclear submarine typically costs several billion dollars to build, and requires a highly skilled workforce with expertise in nuclear science. With its dedicated training programs offered by world-class universities and government agencies, Australia is well situated to meet the increasing demands in this space, and will also benefit from existing UK and US expertise through the new trilateral security pact.

At this stage, details on where the fuel would be sourced are unclear. While Australia has an ample supply of uranium in the ground, it lacks the capacity to enrich or fabricate the reactor fuel, which could be sourced from overseas.

What will happen to the spent fuel? The 2015 Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission found commercial viability for long-term radioactive waste storage and disposal facilities in South Australia. Whether this eventuates will doubtless be subject to deliberations at local and federal government levels for years to come.

Read more:
Why nuclear submarines are a smart military move for Australia — and could deter China further

Popular misconceptions

I’ll say it again. This is not a call by Australia to deploy nuclear weapons in our waters. For uranium to be designated “weapons grade”, it needs to be enriched to upwards of 90% uranium-235 – the fuel for a nuclear-powered submarine doesn’t come close.

In any case, Australia has never produced a nuclear weapon, and it is a party to nuclear nonproliferation treaties and international export control regimes, including the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and Non-Proliferation and Disarmament Initiative.

The tactical advantage of submarines comes from their stealth and ability to pinpoint targets secretly without detection.

Maintaining safety, for both crew and the natural environment, is crucial onboard any sea vessel. Hollywood movies such as K19: The Widowmaker, in which a nuclear submarine malfunctions on its maiden voyage, play on our emotions and our instinctive fear of nuclear radiation.

But advances in modern safety controls and procedures mean reactor accidents in submarines are hopefully now consigned to the past.

The strategic and geopolitical outcomes of this policy decision are yet to be seen. But one thing is already clear: Australia’s latest foreign policy venture is also a firm embrace of nuclear science.

AJ Mitchell works for The Australian National University, Canberra.

– ref. How do nuclear-powered submarines work? A nuclear scientist explains – https://theconversation.com/how-do-nuclear-powered-submarines-work-a-nuclear-scientist-explains-168067

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adam Hannah, Lecturer in Public Policy, The University of Western Australia

On Friday, US President Joe Biden announced a sweeping new vaccine mandate for employers covering around 100 million adults.

Given the urgent need to increase Australia’s vaccination rate, it may be tempting to think we need our own mass mandates.

That would be a mistake. The US mandate responds to problems which aren’t major barriers to vaccine uptake in Australia.

State and federal governments here should pursue other avenues first.

Why did Biden announce a mandate?

Biden has mandated vaccination for federal workers and contractors, and employees at hospitals and health centres that receive federal government funding. This covers around 17 million people.

Biden will also instruct his Department of Labor to issue an emergency ruling to require vaccination (or weekly testing) for workers at companies that have 100 or more employees. This should cover around 80 million people.

This big step has already courted backlash in Republican-led states. Why was it necessary?

Despite setting a good early pace, the US has fallen behind many other wealthy nations. The country hit 40% of its total population fully vaccinated in May, but is now only at just over 53%. Canada began June with just 6% of its population vaccinated, but is now at almost 70%.

Read more:
Could a France-style vaccine mandate for public spaces work in Australia? Legally, yes, but it’s complicated

The US also faces large regional disparities. In the northeast, some states have vaccination rates comparable to Canada. In the south, rates are much lower. Despite administering more than 380 million vaccine doses, the country is currently recording over 140,000 COVID cases and 1,600 deaths per day.

The causes are complex. However, under-resourced and/or unwilling state governments, a fragmented and inequitable health-care system, a deficit of social trust, and the viral spread of misinformation undoubtedly contribute.

Biden’s announcement arises out of well-known problems with political action in the United States. Passing legislation would require agreement from a Congress already at loggerheads over other key planks of the Democrats’ domestic agenda. Therefore, the mandate will be implemented via Biden’s unilateral powers as president.

It may provoke backlash against vaccination among some people, which could impact existing vaccinations for children, as well as COVID vaccines. However, it’s difficult to see what other options are available.

Australia has other ways to increase uptake

Fortunately, the circumstances are different in Australia. We would therefore advise a more circumspect approach.

Some states have already announced mandates for frontline health-care workers and police, and the Australian Medical Association has backed mandates for all of those who work in a health-care setting.

Companies have introduced their own private mandates for workers, the public, or both, with Crown Resorts this week announcing it’s looking to introduce such a policy. State governments will be adding vaccine passports to their toolkits for venues in New South Wales and Victoria.

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

But there are additional important pathways to increasing vaccination rates that can foster trust in the health-care system. These have proved difficult in the US, but are available in Australia.

Targeted outreach in the form of clinics and bespoke persuasive communications are needed for poorly reached communities. Culturally and linguistically diverse populations and Aboriginal communities need culturally safe vaccination sites and interventions to address specific concerns.

The Biden administration can do little to work with states with low vaccination rates. Even as cases soar in Kentucky and Tennessee, Republican state governments have been largely unwilling to take additional steps to stop the spread and speed up vaccination.

In Australia, with supply issues soon to dissipate, the states and territories can work together with the federal government on improving communications and addressing access issues. The current significant disagreements in our National Cabinet nevertheless pale in comparison to the ceaseless battlefield of US federalism throughout the pandemic.

While there has been some gnashing of teeth regarding additional supplies of vaccines to NSW, western Sydney has demonstrated how effective targeted local campaigns can be.

As recently as late July, there were concerns raised about hesitancy in western Sydney. Blacktown now has one of the highest vaccination rates in the country: 89.5% of those over 15 years old have had at least a single dose.

A US-style mandate is a blunt instrument. It’s potentially effective if all else fails, but not without costs.

We should continue to build a rollout that strengthens trust in health systems and vaccinations. This will not only help us reach the high vaccination coverage rates we need, but will also prepare us for the next crisis.

Read more:
Vaccinations need to reach 90% of First Nations adults and teens to protect vulnerable communities

Adam Hannah receives funding from the WA Department of Health.

Katie Attwell receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the WA Department of Health. She is currently funded by ARC Discovery Early Career Researcher Award DE1901000158. She is a member of a government advisory committee, the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI) COVID-19 Working Group 2. She is a specialist advisor to the Therapeutic Goods Administration. All views presented in this article are her own and not representative of any other organisation.

– ref. Biden announces COVID vaccine mandate for 100 million Americans. Australia shouldn’t follow just yet – https://theconversation.com/biden-announces-covid-vaccine-mandate-for-100-million-americans-australia-shouldnt-follow-just-yet-168066

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Narelle Lemon, Associate Professor in Education, Swinburne University of Technology

School holidays are upon us again. In pre-pandemic days, many parents and carers would be busily planning holidays interstate or overseas, booking in play dates, organising day trips or tee-ing up visits to family and friends.

Instead, a significant amount of us are in lockdown (still), living with restrictions and likely working from home.

School holidays may feel like more of the same, and many parents are burned out from trying to work while managing remote learning.

I am an education researcher with a lasting interest in how to blend creativity with educational experiences for children.

If you and the kids are stumped for things to do these holidays, and looking for ways to reconnect after a really trying school term, here are some ideas to try.

Read more:
Kids’ fitness is at risk while they miss sport and hobbies — but mums are getting more physical

Try some conversation starters — you might be surprised what comes out

Think back to your own childhood memories. It’s likely your favourite moments are less about big grand gestures and more about moments of connection with a parent or carer.

Finding fresh ways to cultivate this positive relationship in lockdown might be hard, but it’s not impossible.

One idea is to experiment with “conversation starters” — perhaps while you go on your daily walks, as you throw a ball around, or as you go around the dinner table.

Give your children language to talk about their experiences, to help them develop a sense of self.

You might want to talk about experiences you have had today, recently, since lockdown began or even ever. These sentence starters may help kick things off:

• I enjoyed …

• In future, I’d like to try …

• Wouldn’t it be cool if we could …

• I look forward to …

• When such-and-such happened, I felt …

Give it a try. Perhaps it’ll feel a bit stilted at first. But you might be surprised at what comes up once you and your child start talking.

Find new ways to share positive emotions

Positive emotions are contagious. Look for new ways to share positivity around by, for example:

• each person saying three things they are grateful for over dinner or while on a family walk

• making a list of small joys (like a recent dish you enjoyed or a local garden you like walking past). Keep the list in a visible place, like on the fridge, and add to it over time

• try a random act of kindness. Make a nice card or postcard and deliver it to someone in your neighbourhood. Or write a note of appreciation to a teacher or local business

• celebrate day-to-day achievements. See if you can teach your child a family recipe, form a mini book club by reading the same book together and discussing it, or try to learn something new together.

Remember, though, you don’t have to try to enforce constant positivity. Sadness and stress are normal too, and we must ensure children are given space to share those emotions as well.

Even in the city, we can connect with nature

Connecting with nature helps improve mental well-being, even when that contact is brief.

A visit to the national park might be out of the question but you can still find nature even in the most urban of settings. You could:

• try mindful walking with your child, where you purposefully notice what is around you (so no earphones or devices)

• borrow a trick from meditation practice and name five things you see, four things you hear, three things you feel, two things you smell and one thing you taste. Think of it as a kind of sensory “scavenger hunt” to do while you’re on your walks. You just might notice something new

• if it’s allowed, go on a picnic to your local park. Take your shoes off and feel the grass in your toes

• if you’re subject to a lockdown radius, get out the map and study closely what exactly is in your radius. There may be a park or a street you haven’t visited yet. Finding new streets to walk can be shockingly invigorating

• if you’re lucky enough to have a backyard, make the most of it. Create a sculpture together using found objects, arrange petals in a shape, build a fairy house, fix up a garden bed, cook outside, set up a tent and go camping in the garden

• plant something — herbs, flowers, anything — in balcony pots or a little indoor garden and watch it grow. Take progress photos.

Connect with your child and their interests

Find ways to connect with your children — take an interest in what they’re interested in, even if it’s not something you’d typically do with your leisure time.

You could try:

• a regular board game or card game night (and let your child pick what to play)

• making a favourite food from scratch (pasta is fun for all ages)

• teach your children new ways to connect with pets

• make a time capsule that captures pandemic life

• help your child re-arrange their bedroom

• start a community art installation that brings hope and joy, like the Spoonville craze or the bears in windows movement.

Be gentle with yourself

If reading that list makes you feel exhausted, please be gentle with yourself. You don’t have to do any of those things if you don’t have the time, energy or inclination. Nobody is expecting you to plan every moment of your child’s holidays.

But if a spare pocket of time arises and you’re looking for ways to reinvigorate the same old walks, chores or activities, I hope this list proves useful.

Read more:
What art are you engaging with in lockdown? Australians are mostly watching TV — but music, singing and dancing do more for your mood

Narelle Lemon consults on wellbeing via Explore and Create Co. She is currently funded with a research team for a two year project, funded by the Building Safe Communities grant from the Victorian Department of Justice and Community Safety, supporting Pasifika secondary students to stay and complete school, where wellbeing is one part of the research focus. She volunteers for Action for Happiness Australia. She sits on the board and currently holds the position of Chair.

– ref. Wondering what to do with kids in lockdown school holidays? Ideas from a happiness expert – https://theconversation.com/wondering-what-to-do-with-kids-in-lockdown-school-holidays-ideas-from-a-happiness-expert-167798

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katherine Ravenswood, Associate Professor in Employment Relations, Auckland University of Technology

As Auckland enters it’s fifth week in level 4 lockdown and the rest of New Zealand stays at level 2, spare a thought for the nation’s invisible network of essential community support workers.

They are the people caring for those who, through age or disability, cannot work or leave their homes, cannot independently care for themselves, and who in many cases have underlying mental health and cognitive problems.

While other front-line essential workers are rightly recognised for their service, it’s important we also remember those less obvious workers who put their own health and well-being at risk to care for and support some of our most vulnerable citizens.

Often these community workers receive little support themselves. And while the stress on hospital staff, supermarket workers and even political leaders has been acknowledged, this other essential group has largely gone unnoticed.

As one community worker told us when reflecting on being overlooked as essential workers and the potential impact this could have on their own well-being:

At the start, the government kind of didn’t even really consider us as health workers, did they?

Struggle for pay and PPE

In our ongoing research, we have so far heard from over 75 community support workers nationwide about their well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic.

They are employed mostly by private companies (some not-for-profit) contracted to a variety of government agencies, including the Ministry of Health, ACC and district health boards.

Read more:
Languishing, burnout and stigma are all among the possible psychological impacts as Delta lingers in the community

Our preliminary findings show these workers struggled to gain recognition throughout the first national lockdown in 2020. Furthermore, they struggled to be paid and to receive even the most basic personal protective equipment (PPE) provided by their employers:

Our employers were so slack, not recognising that we needed [PPE]. But they were following Ministry of Health guidelines and so it was government […] it was the World Health Organization — it was everybody.

What was wrong with people to think that we could go out there and do our jobs without PPE? And then why do we have to have such a battle for it? Because it was actually hard enough doing the job without having all of that as well.

This very real struggle underscored a wider battle by community care workers to be appreciated for their work — or even to be “seen”. As one support worker noted:

In comparison with nurses, who are angels, caregivers are just ignored […] it’s like a little underworld where, all over your city, women, mostly in uniforms in little cars, are getting in and out of the cars and going into houses and doing things that nobody has any idea about.

Working in isolation

Despite working with people in the most vulnerable situations, support workers spoke of being turned away or facing public backlash when trying to use essential worker queues at supermarkets.

And yet these support workers are undeniably essential. In many ways they are the “glue” in the health system, as another told us:

One thing I want to make sure that you understand is that we look after [everyone from] medically fragile children to palliative [cases]. We look after all of them — anybody that wants to remain in the community, then has a health issue, we look after them.

Read more:
Low-wage essential workers get less protection against coronavirus – and less information about how it spreads

Even during the best of (non-pandemic) times, these workers operate in isolation. The majority hardly ever see a co-worker, and almost never see a manager in person. Communication is via impersonal emails, phone apps or call centres.

But during lockdowns, support workers are the only people isolated clients see — they step in as communicators and carers. In effect they become like family. They have to deal – alone – with the confusion and anxiety of their clients. Their own well-being and mental health often come second:

I felt unsupported in regards to dealing with these [client] behaviours at the time, because there were no people on the ground. They were all working from home, so they were all on a phone. So, in some cases, my biggest “PPE” would have been having someone there, and it wasn’t there. I had someone on a phone.

Read more:
Historic pay equity settlement for NZ care workers delivers mixed results

‘I would have just loved a phone call’

As with other healthcare workers, coping is a strategy built up over time by community support workers:

It’s like, right, suck it up and just, you know, dry those tears and put on that smile and be your bouncy self again […] I’ve had to learn.

But unlike other healthcare workers, such as those at COVID testing and vaccination stations and hospitals, community support workers don’t have a team around them for support:

We just had days and days where we didn’t hear anything from our employer and we felt really alone and vulnerable. And, of course, when we went into lockdown and everything, we didn’t feel supported at all.

It was very frightening. We had to go out there as essential workers and, oh God, it was stressful.

Asked what might improve their well-being, a common refrain has been that employers and society in general pay attention and care more:

Somehow showing how you’re valued […] It would be nice just to have a “you’re doing well” or something.

I would have just loved a phone call, just to check if I’m coping or not.

This project is funded by the Health Research Council’s ‘Wellbeing of Essential Workers during Covid-19: Community Support Workers’, in partnership with the E tū and PSA Unions. The findings here represent the views of the authors, not the funder and not necessarily the research partners.

Amber Nicholson receives funding from the Health Research Council.

Fiona Hurd receives funding from the Health Research Council.

– ref. Overlooked and undervalued, New Zealand’s community caregivers have become the ‘invisible’ essential workers – https://theconversation.com/overlooked-and-undervalued-new-zealands-community-caregivers-have-become-the-invisible-essential-workers-167632

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jessica Suzanne Dudley, Postdoctoral Fellow, Macquarie University

Supplying oxygen to their growing offspring and removing carbon dioxide is a major challenge for every pregnant animal. Humans deal with this problem by developing a placenta, but in seahorses — where the male, not the female, gestates and gives birth to the young — exactly how it worked hasn’t always been so clear.

Male seahorses incubate their embryos inside a pouch, and until now it was unclear how the embryos “breathe” inside this closed structure. Our new study, published in the journal Placenta, examines how pregnant male seahorses (Hippocampus abdominalis) provide oxygen supply and carbon dioxide removal to their embryos.

We examined male seahorse pouches under the microscope at different stages of pregnancy, and found they develop complex placental structures over time — in similar ways to human pregnancy.

Read more:
Curious Kids: Is it true that male seahorses give birth?

A pregnant dad gestating up to 1,000 babies

Male pregnancy is rare, only occurring in a group of fish that includes seahorses, seadragons, pipehorses and pipefishes.

Pot-bellied seahorse males have a specialised enclosed structure on their tail. This organ is called the brood pouch, in which the embryos develop.

The female deposits eggs into the male’s pouch after a mating dance and pregnancy lasts about 30 days.

While inside the pouch, the male supplies nutrients to his developing embryos, before giving birth to up to 1,000 babies.

Embryonic development requires oxygen, and the oxygen demand increases as the embryo grows. So too does the need to get rid of the resulting carbon dioxide efficiently. This presents a problem for the pregnant male seahorse.

Enter the placenta

In egg-laying animals — such as birds, monotremes, certain reptiles and fishes — the growing embryo accesses oxygen and gets rid of carbon dioxide through pores in the egg shell.

For animals that give birth to live young, a different solution is required. Pregnant humans develop a placenta, a complex organ connecting the mother to her developing baby, which allows an efficient exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide (it also gets nutrients to the baby, and removes waste, via the bloodstream).

Placentae are filled with many small blood vessels and often there is a thinning of the tissue layers that separate the parent’s and baby’s blood circulations. This improves the efficiency of oxygen and nutrient delivery to the fetus.

Surprisingly, the placenta is not unique to mammals.

Some sharks, like the Australian sharpnose shark (Rhizoprionodon taylori) develop a placenta with an umbilical cord joining the mother to her babies during pregnancy. Many live-bearing lizards form a placenta (including very complex ones) to provide respiratory gases and some nutrients to their developing embryos.

Our previous research identified genes that allow the seahorse father to provide for the developing embryos while inside his pouch.

Our new study shows that during pregnancy the pouch undergoes many changes similar to those seen in mammalian pregnancy. We focused on examining the brood pouch of male seahorses during pregnancy to determine exactly how they provide oxygen to their developing embryos.

What we found

By viewing the seahorse pouch under the microscope at various stages of pregnancy, we found that small blood vessels grow within the pouch, particularly towards the end of pregnancy. This is when the baby seahorses (called fry) require the most oxygen.

The distance between the father’s blood supply and the embryos also decreases dramatically as the pregnancy goes on. These changes improve the efficiency of transport between the father and the embryos.

Interestingly, many of the changes that occur in the seahorse pouch during pregnancy are similar to those that occur in the uterus during mammalian pregnancy.

We have only scratched the surface of understanding the function of the seahorse placenta during pregnancy.

There is still much to learn about how these fathers protect and nourish their babies during pregnancy — but our work shows the morphological changes to seahorse brood pouches have a lot in common with the development of mammalian placentae.

Read more:
The secret sex life and pregnancy of a seahorse dad

Camilla Whittington receives funding from the Australian Research Council and The University of Sydney.

Jessica Suzanne Dudley 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. Pregnant male seahorses support up to 1,000 growing babies by forming a placenta – https://theconversation.com/pregnant-male-seahorses-support-up-to-1-000-growing-babies-by-forming-a-placenta-167534

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Blaxland, Professor, Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University

The Morrison government has decided it’s best for Australia to accelerate the production of a more capable, integrated, nuclear-powered submarine platform with the US and the UK.

This will more tightly enmesh Australia into the US orbit. Technologically and militarily, it means if the US goes into a conflict in the Indo-Pacific region, it would be much more difficult for Australia not to be directly and almost automatically involved.

The other side of argument is this is a good thing because it will at least incrementally add to the deterrence against China.

Chinese strategists and leaders will have to weigh up the risk and presumably be less likely to decide that crossing the threshold of war is something they are prepared to do. The hope is that added deterrence will make the stakes higher for the Chinese and the prospects of success lower.

How do nuclear submarines differ from conventional ones?

In recent years, the Australian government and Department of Defence have been placing greater emphasis on longer-range military capabilities, particularly with the Defence Strategic Update in 2020.

This includes the acquisition of missiles, as well as space and cyber capabilities. Nuclear-powered submarines now leapfrog our existing naval capabilities.

Read more:
Defence update: in an increasingly dangerous neighbourhood, Australia needs a stronger security system

The benefit of nuclear submarines is you don’t have to snorkel: they allow you to stay submerged and be stealthier for longer. The conventionally powered (diesel/electric) submarine does not have the same range without exposing itself to detection by surfacing.

This potentially will transform the ability of the Australian Defence Force to operate at range around Australia and beyond, and operate more closely in an integrated way with the US and UK.

Our previous A$90 billion deal with the French company DCNS to build up to 12 submarines was always less connected with the US and UK.

The French ironically had nuclear propulsion in their Barracuda submarine, and had we gone with that option when we signed the deal in 2016, they could have said, “OK, let’s replicate what we do and give that to you”. Had we done that, we would be well on the way to our first one.

But we said we wanted the propulsion to be conventional. That delayed the French program, so they now have cause to be irritated over this new deal.

The question is how quickly these new submarines will become available, because the French-designed ones were decades away from being operational.

This new deal potentially would see Australia able to lease British and/or American submarines on an interim basis to develop Australian expertise with nuclear propulsion, or at least operate with them and have Australian crew on board to learn the ropes.

But we do not have the capability in Australia at the moment to operate and maintain nuclear submarines. There’s a whole infrastructure that’s missing.

This means we either have to spend an enormous amount of money to develop it, or subcontract it to the UK or US, which makes us beholden to them and subject to their domestic, political dynamics.

Where did things go wrong?

We’ve fumbled the ball in our handling of our future submarine capability over the last decade and a half. We should have made a decision on a new submarine design a long time ago — one that was feasible — and locked it in.

We bypassed a couple of other options, including an upgrade of our current Collins-class submarine — a newer, snazzier, more capable version of what we already know.

Instead, we went for a radical new design that even the French had never built before. Anything with cutting-edge technology is going to incur delays and cost overruns. And that’s exactly what we faced.

In the meantime, the clouds have gotten darker in our region and the need to acquire new, capable submarines has become all the more pressing and important.

The combination of those factors has driven a hard-nosed re-evaluation of our previous half-baked decisions on our future submarine requirements.

Interestingly, in defence industry circles there is emerging a strong sense of approval that Australia is now going with a known quantity — a reliable, technological platform that is more integrated with the US and hopefully can become operational much sooner.

How will this build up Australia’s defence industry?

The details remain sketchy but it appears the initial plan will be to subcontract the development of the submarines to the US or UK.

But if Australia is to be self-reliant, which I believe the government recognises the need for, then much of this technology will have to be transferred to Australia — at least to allow for maintenance.

No doubt, aspects of the fit-out are not directly linked to insider knowledge on nuclear propulsion secrets, so there will be a considerable portion of the work that could be done in Australia. But that will incur delays and additional costs.

Australia’s circumstances are more turbulent and the prospect of the American alliance coming to the rescue is more precarious than ever. The irony is that to be more self-reliant, there’s a need to double down on US technology and US capabilities. They are the world leaders and they have the industrial capacity to quickly provide the technology.

One of the things Defence Minister Peter Dutton went to Washington to do was to persuade the US to share technology. This AUKUS arrangement talks about developing a technology industrial basis and supply lines — this means the US and UK are appear prepared to invest in Australia’s ability to sustain it.

Read more:
China does not want war, at least not yet. It’s playing the long game

How will China likely react?

That’s the million dollar question: does this make us safer? There’s no question we will get strong and sharp-edged criticism from Beijing, where the Chinese government will see it in conspiratorial terms.

But Chinese rhetoric doesn’t need be taken at face value. This is largely for domestic purposes and about influencing and shaping opinion in a way that’s consistent with China’s perceived interests.

In the past few years, China has become more assertive in its rhetoric, matching its military buildup, which most security pundits now say is about seeking to intimidate potential adversaries so they’ll just back down.

So, does a more capable AUKUS coalition, with Australia in the middle, deter or aggravate China?

It’s fair to say there is growing consensus we need to do more to deter Chinese actions in the region. Deterrence requires credible capabilities. This new alliance is consistent with that line of reasoning.

We have put our eggs in the US security basket for the past 70 years — and this new coalition puts more eggs in that basket. The hope is collaborating with the UK and US will improve our ability to defend ourselves. But submarines are only really useful if you find yourself contemplating having to use them.

Short of such circumstances, some deft diplomacy and regional engagement is key. Australia’s Foreign Policy White Paper of 2017 spoke of investing in regional security ties. For this policy change to enhance security, it needs to be coupled with much greater efforts aimed at bolstering security and stability alongside our neighbours in Southeast Asia and the Pacific.

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

– ref. Why nuclear submarines are a smart military move for Australia — and could deter China further – https://theconversation.com/why-nuclear-submarines-are-a-smart-military-move-for-australia-and-could-deter-china-further-168064

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Paul Komesaroff, Professor of Medicine, Monash University

While some Australians are awaiting the nation reopening after lockdowns with hope and optimism, others are approaching it with dread. This is because a blanket lifting of restrictions when the vaccination rate reaches 70% will have devastating effects on Indigenous and other vulnerable populations.

At present, vaccination rates in Indigenous populations are very low. Meanwhile international data show the risk of serious illness and death among First Nations populations from COVID and other diseases is up to four times that of the wider population.

Once restrictions are lifted everyone unvaccinated will be exposed to the virus. The outcomes for Indigenous people may therefore resemble the early effects of British colonialism, when a high proportion of the population died from introduced infections.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adults and teenagers need vaccination rates of 90-95% among First Nations people to protect their communities.

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

Additional health challenges

As with many other medical conditions, the effects of COVID-19 are worse among people with lower socioeconomic status and especially among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

There are multiple reasons for this, including the greater likelihood of underlying conditions and reduced access to appropriate health care.

We saw a similar situation in 2009, when H1N1 influenza rates among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were more than five times those of other Australians.

Overseas, COVID-19 has been associated with striking racial disparities, with death rates for African Americans more than triple the rates for Caucasians, and more than 4% for Navajo people (compared to 1.6% for the whole population).

Outcomes for other First Nations groups in the United States and elsewhere are similar.

What’s the current vaccination plan?

On September 9, the New South Wales government announced its intention to lift lockdowns and other public health measures when the state reaches a vaccination target of 70% of the adult population. This equates to a little over 50% of the state’s population.

NSW will reach the 70% target in less than a month in NSW and the nation will reach the target by October 30.

Read more:
We can’t rely solely on arbitrary vaccination levels to end lockdowns. Here are 7 ways to fix Sydney’s outbreak

If such a policy were implemented it would have disastrous consequences for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and other vulnerable populations.

Vaccination rates in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities are lagging badly behind the remainder of the Australian population. In many places in NSW, Western Australia, Queensland and the Northern Territory fewer than 20% are fully vaccinated.

What should happen instead?

Aboriginal organisations have called on state and federal governments to delay any substantial easing of restrictions until vaccination rates among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander populations aged 12 years and older reach 90-95%.

The organisations calling for such a target include the National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation, the Aboriginal Medical Services of the Northern Territory and the Central Australian Aboriginal Congress.

A 90-95% vaccination rate gives about the same level of population coverage for all ages as the 80% target for the entire population. That’s because Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities are younger than the wider population.

Vaccinating 90-95% of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population will better protect children and other unvaccinated people in First Nations communities from infection.

This will require an immediate, well-resourced and determined effort to lift vaccination rates.

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

How can this be achieved?

Many Aboriginal community controlled health services are already running urgent vaccination campaigns with existing resources, but more needs to be done.

The Australian government’s announcement this week of A$7.7 million to fast-track vaccinations in 30 priority areas across the country is an important first step.

But the program needs to be expanded to all areas with significant Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander populations.

Australia’s First Nations vaccination program needs to:

1. guarantee a sufficient and reliable source of vaccines to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities

2. ensure health services have the capacity and the workforce to carry out intensive outreach vaccination programs. This includes culturally knowledgeable Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander workers able to engage with communities, and clinicians

3. address vaccine hesitancy. This should start with the recognition there are many reasons for reluctance to be vaccinated.

What are the reasons for vaccine hesitancy?

For some, there is a historical and understandable distrust of the health system.

Others have been confused or made fearful by misinformation spread on social media or through fringe religious groups.

Many others are not fundamentally opposed to vaccination but are adopting a “wait and see” approach.

To overcome this hesitancy we need urgent government support for financial incentives, in the form of food vouchers or other benefits. This has been done for vulnerable groups in other countries.

Non-financial incentives requiring full vaccination for travel, entering pubs, clubs, restaurants, sporting venues and so on need to be flagged now with a commencement date in the near future.

Effective health education in Aboriginal languages developed by local Aboriginal community controlled health services need to be in the media daily.

Don’t leave vulnerable groups behind

All this is achievable but it requires the combined efforts of government working in partnership with Aboriginal community controlled health services.

Until the 90-95% target is met, rigorous restrictions should remain in place. This is consistent with modelling from the Burnet and Doherty institutes, which inform the NSW and national policies about reopening.

As the Burnet Institute told the authors of this article, Australia:

should not move to Phase B and C until vaccination coverage in each jurisdiction’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities is as high as, or even higher than, the general community.

Similar considerations undoubtedly apply to some other vulnerable groups in the population.

Australia remains burdened by the legacy of centuries of harm and damage to its First Nations people. We are facing the possibility of a renewed assault on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health.

The difference today is the outcomes are foreseeable and we know what needs to be done to avert them.

I am a member of the Australian Labor Party

Donna Ah Chee, Ian Kerridge, and Paul Komesaroff 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. Vaccinations need to reach 90% of First Nations adults and teens to protect vulnerable communities – https://theconversation.com/vaccinations-need-to-reach-90-of-first-nations-adults-and-teens-to-protect-vulnerable-communities-167800

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Monica Thielking, Associate Professor, Chair of the Department of Psychological Sciences, Swinburne University of Technology

If you’re a parent feeling a modicum of dread about the upcoming school holidays, you’re not alone. Many parents will be working from home over the school holidays and wondering, “how am I going to juggle online meetings in the absence of online schooling?”

It’s likely the school holidays will bring a tangle of feelings: stress, guilt, sadness or anger that many of the usual school holiday family activities will be off the table due to lockdowns. Then there’s fear the additional unpaid duties created for working parents (especially women) will be more pronounced. Many feel pressure to find ways to keep the kids occupied.

I’m a psychologist, a former school psychologist and have lived experience of being a working parent with two teenagers in lockdown. My advice to parents is to take the pressure off yourself.

Let your children embrace boredom and don’t try too hard to create the perfect lockdown holiday. Do what you can now to warn your employer your attention might be even more divided than usual over the next few weeks.

Leer más:
We asked over 2,000 Australian parents how they fared in lockdown. Here’s what they said

Embrace the boredom

Home schooling, while challenging, has the advantage of occupying children and teenagers for a good chunk of the day. It can provide structure and routine to the stay-at-home blur.

Without school, locked down children and their parents are left to contemplate whatever will they do in all the waking hours of a two-week holiday at home? Do I hear a small voice saying, “I’m bored”?

Many parents instinctively react by trying to think of things for their child to do but have a go at resisting that urge. When they say, “I’m bored”, you say “Great! Now off you go.”

A growing body of research evidence suggests boredom in children can make them more creative, with one study describing how:

previous research has shown that individuals use daydreaming to regulate boredom-induced tension, thus suggesting that daydreaming is used as a coping strategy for dealing with the unpleasant state of boredom.

Daydreaming is important. The same study notes how US psychologist Jerome Singer described daydreaming

as shifting attention from the external situation or problem to the internal representation of situations, memories, pictures, unresolved things, scenarios, or future goals.

Your children might complain they’re dying of boredom, but they are not. It may even be good for them.

For children, school holidays are a time to refresh and recharge. It offers some time out from the routine and learning expectations of school. Boredom and long periods of unstructured play are part of that refresh.

Leer más:
Books offer a healing retreat for youngsters caught up in a pandemic

A role for employers

A recent study of Australian parents revealed a significant number of parents have increased rates of depression, anxiety, stress and strained family relationships during the pandemic compared to pre-pandemic times.

With school holidays looming, employers should be looking for practical ways to help working parents through the next two weeks. This might include:

• delaying deadlines where possible

• asking whether those long online meetings are really necessary or productive

• giving working parents permission to take leave, even half-days, to allow for a more manageable balance of paid and unpaid work.

For parents, think carefully about how to communicate your needs to your workplace and your family.

If you have older children, set boundaries around your time — talk to them about your work, let them know what you are doing and why.

Most of all, know you are not alone. You are part of an amazing and resilient tribe of locked down working parents all experiencing the same highs and lows of school holidays at home – and during a global pandemic.

It’s not going to be perfect, but it will be OK in the end.

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

Monica Thielking no recibe salario, ni ejerce labores de consultoría, ni posee acciones, ni recibe financiación de ninguna compañía u organización que pueda obtener beneficio de este artículo, y ha declarado carecer de vínculos relevantes más allá del cargo académico citado.

– ref. Parents, take the school holidays pressure off yourself. Let the kids embrace the boredom – https://theconversation.com/parents-take-the-school-holidays-pressure-off-yourself-let-the-kids-embrace-the-boredom-167797

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Teresa Ubide, Senior Lecturer in Igneous Petrology/Volcanology, The University of Queensland

The volcanoes we see on Earth’s surface are just the tip of the iceberg. Beneath the surface, they are fed by a complex network of conduits and reservoirs that bring molten rock, called magma, to the surface.

When the magma erupts, it can generate lava flows that cool down to become volcanic rocks. These rocks hold key clues about volcanoes’ inner workings, and what triggered them to erupt in the past. But decoding these clues is a puzzling task.

Our new research, published in the journal Geology, reveals previously hidden information in the chemistry of erupted lavas. Intriguingly, we discovered that many volcanoes have an internal “filter” that prompts them to erupt.

If we can detect magma at this crucial tipping point inside the volcano, it might even help us detect when an eruption is imminent.

Hotspot volcanoes

Most volcanoes, such as those in the Pacific Ring of Fire and the mid-Atlantic, are at the boundaries between tectonic plates. But some volcanoes, including the ones that created the Hawaiian islands, occur where hot plumes from deep inside Earth reach the surface. These are known as “hotspot” volcanoes.

Australia hosts the longest track of hotspot volcanoes in a continental setting. Over tens of millions of years, volcanoes such as The Glass House Mountains in Queensland, or Wollumbin (Mount Warning) in New South Wales, tracked the movement of the Australian continent over a stationary hotspot.

In the oceans, hotspots build chains of paradise islands such as Hawaii, the Galapagos or the Canary Islands. These ocean island volcanoes were previously thought to have been made of magma that welled up from tens of kilometres beneath the surface, deep in Earth’s mantle.

But our new research suggests ocean island volcanoes may erupt magma that has been filtered and modified at shallower depth.

Crystal-rich, not crystal clear

Volcanic lavas often contain crystals from inside the volcano, that were mixed in with the erupting magma. The crystals tell us a lot about the volcano’s insides, but they can also disguise the chemistry of the lava itself.

Read more:
Volcano crystals could make it easier to predict eruptions

Think of it like rocky road chocolate. If we want to analyse the ingredients of the chocolate itself, we first need to disregard the marshmallows and nuts.

We can do this by analysing rocks made from crystal-free lavas. In our study, we compared crystal-free and crystal-rich magmas from El Hierro volcano in the Canary Islands, which last erupted in 2011.

It turns out that the crystal-free magma from these volcanoes is very similar across millions of years of volcanic activity, and across many ocean island volcanoes around the world, including the Canary Islands and Hawaii. This is how we realised the magma was not pristine and coming directly from great depth, but rather filtered at shallower depths.

And if the magma from hotspot island volcanoes is so similar, the chances are their eruptions are triggered by common mechanisms too.

The ‘secret volcano filter’

When crystals form inside the volcano, this “steals” chemical elements from the magma. In turn, this alters the composition of the leftover magma, almost as if it had been passed through a sieve.

This filtering process makes the magma less dense, and increases its gas content. This gas can then bubble up and propel the magma to the surface, just like the cork popping from a bottle of champagne.

In ocean island volcanoes, the magma can reach this “tipping point” at the base of the Earth’s crust, just a few kilometres beneath the surface, rather than at depth.
This means that if we detect magma at this depth with the help of earthquake monitoring equipment, an eruption might follow. This is exactly what happened when El Hierro erupted in 2011.

Does this make it easier to forecast eruptions?

If we could open a volcano like a doll’s house, we would be able to track the movement of magma towards the surface. It’s a pity we can’t, although we can try to “see” this journey indirectly, by monitoring earthquakes, deformation and gas emissions, all of which can indicate magma rising inside a volcano.

But to assess whether a volcano is likely to erupt, or whether a dormant volcano is reawakening, we also need to compare current observations with information about what triggered eruptions in the past.

This is where our new discovery could prove especially useful. If the eruption triggers happen at similar depths in ocean island volcanoes globally, warning signs from such depths may be particularly important to monitor and consider as the precursory signs of eruption.

Read more:
Australia’s volcanic history is a lot more recent than you think

Teresa Ubide receives funding from The University of Queensland, the Queensland Government and the Australian Research Council.

– ref. There she blows: the internal ‘magma filter’ that prompts ocean island volcanoes to erupt – https://theconversation.com/there-she-blows-the-internal-magma-filter-that-prompts-ocean-island-volcanoes-to-erupt-167358

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Julian Savulescu, Visiting Professor in Biomedical Ethics, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute; Distinguished Visiting Professor in Law, University of Melbourne; Uehiro Chair in Practical Ethics, University of Oxford

The main way to control the pandemic, as we have all painfully found out, has been to restrict the movement of people. This stops people getting infected and infecting others. It is the justified basis for lockdowns, isolation, vaccine passports, and quarantining people who have been in high-risk areas.

It is the foundational ethical principle of any liberal society like Australia that the state should only restrict liberty if people represent a threat of harm to others, as John Stuart Mill famously articulated. This harm can take two forms.

Firstly, it can be direct harm to other people. Imagine you are about to board a plane. Authorities have reason to believe you are carrying a loaded gun. They are entitled to detain you. But they are obliged to investigate whether you actually have a gun and if you do not, they are obliged to free you and allow you to board your plane. To continue to detain you without just cause would be false imprisonment.

Having COVID is like carrying a loaded gun that can accidentally go off at any time. But if vaccines remove the bullets from the gun, the carriers are not a risk to other people and should be free.

In perfect conditions, vaccine passports are therefore a human rights issue under conditions of lockdown like Melbourne and Sydney are experiencing. Perfect conditions mean vaccines reduce transmission to other people sufficiently.

This means it is not discrimination to continue to restrict the liberty of the unvaccinated – it is just like quarantining those who have entered from high-risk countries overseas. Their liberty is restricted because they are a threat to others.

Discrimination occurs when people are treated differently on morally irrelevant grounds. But differential treatment on the basis of differential threat is morally relevant. That is why I can be quarantined if I have come into contact with a positive case: there is a relevant reason to treat me differently.

For example, some countries require travellers must be vaccinated against yellow fever and receive a card as a vaccine passport. No card, no travel. Infected travellers can bring yellow fever to the local mosquito population when they are bitten and thereby start an endemic infection.

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

Do COVID vaccines fit into the same justification?

Hard to say. They appeared to reduce transmission of the original alpha variant by 50-60%, but it is unclear whether they significantly reduce transmission of delta, particularly over time. Israel’s data suggest those vaccinated in January could have as little as 16% protection against symptomatic disease by July (though still 80-90% protection against hospitalisation and severe disease). Other studies have shown similar viral loads in those infected with delta regardless of vaccination status.

To let the vaccinated roam free and restrict the freedom of movement of the unvaccinated would be discrimination if the vaccine does not significantly reduce transmission.

Some have made colourful analogies: that requiring vaccination is like requiring a surgeon to scrub before an operation. Or an analogy I have used is that vaccination is like wearing a seatbelt – it is good for the wearer and for others in the car, as well as the health system.

But these analogies are flawed in two ways when it comes to COVID. First, vaccination does not reduce the chance of infecting others to the extent of surgical scrub techniques. Second, washing your hands or wearing a seatbelt benefits all concerned; vaccines have side effects, including lethal ones.

It’s true seatbelts can kill you, but overall they are expected to prevent more harm. Vaccination for COVID in low-risk groups such as children and young people is less clearly in their interests, though it is clearly in the interests of older people.

The inherent, unrecognised and unresolved problem in the vaccination and vaccine passport debate is one of proportionality. Vaccines may reduce transmission but do they reduce it enough to warrant mandates, including restricting freedoms of the unvaccinated? If vaccines were risk-free (like washing your hands), then mandating them would be reasonable – but the current vaccines do have rare risks that become more significant for groups at lower risk from COVID, such as children and young people.

Burden on the health system

There is a second way we can harm other people besides directly infecting them. We can use up a scarce resource like intensive care unit (ICU) beds by getting ill. In a public health system, we can indirectly harm others by taking more than our fair share of resources. Though Mill explicitly rejected “harm to self” as a justification for coercion, that was before a public health system with finite resources.

If vaccines significantly reduce the chance of becoming seriously ill in a pandemic, there can be a justification for using coercion to employ them to protect the health system in a public health emergency.

Again, proportionality is key: the strain on the health system must be severe. Otherwise any measure to promote health could be mandated, such as giving up smoking, losing weight, exercising, and so on. Freedom has some value and that includes the freedom to take on some risk.

How much risk we should tolerate and what level of coercion is justified depends on the safety and efficacy of the vaccines, the reduction in transmission, the gravity of the public health problem, the effectiveness of less liberty-restricting measures, the costs of coercion and, ultimately, the value of health and liberty.

Do COVID vaccines satisfy this criterion of reducing serious illness in a public health emergency? The evidence is very strong that they prevent serious illness with delta.

To introduce vaccine passports ethically requires either showing vaccines reduce transmission significantly or that, without them, we would face a health system crisis that is not reasonably sustainable.

Restricting people’s liberty, for example by vaccine passports, can be ethically justified in certain circumstances – but we need good evidence to justify them. Under conditions of lockdown, they can be a human rights issue.

Everything I have said about vaccine passports applies to natural immunity (immunity acquired by infection rather than vaccination), which provides ‘equal or higher protection’ against asymptomatic and symptomatic infection. (Of course, the whole point of the vaccine is to avoid or limit the harm of the first infection and it remains preferable as a strategy).

Read more:
Do vaccination passports take away freedoms? It depends on how you frame the question

What about only some people having to have vaccine passports?

Most people believe that restrictions of liberty, like vaccine passports, have to be universally applied or they are discriminatory. That’s wrong. Selective restriction of liberty can be justified for certain groups. This is what happens when we quarantine travellers because they are at increased risk of infecting others.

Selective restriction of liberty, including selective mandatory vaccination or passports, could be justified for “super spreaders” or those more likely to become ill (particularly the elderly but other also high-risk groups). On the latter approach, vaccine passports are more appropriate for older rather than younger people, as they are the ones most likely to benefit.

Consent

The problem in public health is that the person who makes the sacrifice is often not the one who benefits. By mandating a measure, the government is deciding to impose a burden on one group, sometimes to benefit a different group. The person who suffers the vaccine-related side effect (although very rare) may not have suffered adversely from COVID if they had got infected (even though there is a higher risk of this at the population level).

For this reason, consent is important. Because both being vaccinated and not being vaccinated involve risks, and we do not know on whom the risks will fall, it is preferable to consent to the particular risks for yourself, rather than have others impose them.

Responsibility

If people are choosing which risks they take, it is tempting to hold them accountable for the consequences of their choices. That would imply giving those who become ill after refusing vaccination lower priority if health resources are limited.

This requires that we can attribute responsibility to the individual, rather than their peer group, education, culture or other social factors. It requires that responsibility is treated equally across healthcare: we should not single out COVID-risky behaviour without treating other dangerous lifestyles, such as risky sex and unhealthy habits, in the same way. And it will limit the kinds of lives people can freely lead by making risky alternatives more difficult to pursue. Ultimately, it depends on what price we place on freedom and health.

Road fatalities would be reduced by drastically reducing speed limits. Yet we balance lives lost on the roads (and carbon emissions) with transport efficiency, pleasure and liberty. The same will eventually happen as we learn to live with COVID.

So where does this leave us?

Vaccine passports could be justified in Australia. But whether the burden of proof rests with the government to show the vaccines significantly reduce transmission (which they don’t appear to) or that the health system could not reasonably cope without them, or the burden rests on those who oppose vaccine passports depends on whether we value liberty more than health. Different countries will reasonably differ on this trade-off.

Vaccine passports could be also justified for certain groups of super spreaders or those more likely to become ill. This creates inequality, but we face a trade-off between equality versus maximising public health and liberty.

Ethics is about weighing different values. Decisions about vaccination should be fundamentally ethical, not political or purely medical.

Julian Savulescu receives funding from the Uehiro Foundation on Ethics and Education, NHMRC, Wellcome Trust, Australian Research Council, and the UK Research and Innovation (Arts and Humanities Research Council) as part of the Ethics Accelerator Award AH/V013947/1, WHO. He is a Partner Investigator on an Australian Research Council Linkage award (LP190100841, Oct 2020-2023) which involves industry partnership from Illumina. He does not personally receive any funds from Illumina.

– ref. Vaccine passports are coming. But are they ethical? – https://theconversation.com/vaccine-passports-are-coming-but-are-they-ethical-167693

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gail Matthews, Professor and Program Head, Therapeutic Vaccine and Research Program, Kirby Institute, UNSW

Increasing COVID-19 vaccination rates as quickly as possible is currently a major focus for Australia.

Doing so has clear benefits in reducing new infections and preventing severe disease, hospitalisation and death.

One question which is frequently asked is – does COVID vaccination prevent you from getting long COVID?

Here’s what the science says so far.

How many people get long COVID?

There has been much international debate as to the definition of long COVID, how common it is, and how long it may last.

Studies examining the frequency of long COVID range from anywhere to over 80% in hospitalised patients with severe initial illness, to as low as 2-3% in one large app-based study of largely young healthy people in the United Kingdom.

A recent review of 45 studies and almost 10,000 people suggested almost 75% of them reported at least one persistent symptom at 12 or more weeks after COVID infection.

Many of these studies are highly dependent on the choice of people studied, and whether they required a definite confirmation by positive swab testing.

The Australian ADAPT study (led by myself and other colleagues from St Vincent’s Hospital, Sydney), enrolled people who’d had confirmed positive PCR tests, as well as a mix of hospitalised people and those who didn’t go to hospital. It found around one-third of people had persistent symptoms at an average of two to three months after infection.

The most common symptoms were persistent fatigue, shortness of breath and chest tightness, although a variety of other symptoms were also reported. These findings are in keeping with most of the evolving research which documents a wide variety of long COVID symptoms.

One review published in August involving 15 studies and more than 47,000 people detailed up to 55 separate symptoms involving all body systems and organs. The five most common were fatigue, shortness of breath, palpitations, brain fog and loss of smell.

The diverse nature of long COVID symptoms makes a clear definition difficult. The World Health Organization is currently attempting to achieve a consensus agreement from its members. Expect to see further tweaks to this definition as it evolves.

Read more:
The mystery of ‘long COVID’: up to 1 in 3 people who catch the virus suffer for months. Here’s what we know so far

Yes, vaccination does reduce the risk of long COVID

Vaccination doesn’t prevent all COVID infections. “Breakthrough” infections in fully vaccinated people have been estimated to occur in a small proportion of people.

Breakthrough infections are more likely to have few or no symptoms, and are associated with lower levels of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

Read more:
Why are we seeing more COVID cases in fully vaccinated people? An expert explains

Is this important in preventing long COVID? The answer is probably yes.

Currently our understanding of what causes or predicts long COVID is limited, not least because it’s probably a “catch all” definition for several different conditions with underlying causes.

In most studies, there were two main predictors of getting long COVID.

One was the severity of the initial illness, and the second being female sex.

The first of these is very likely to be impacted by vaccination and a recent study published in The Lancet medical journal gives weight to this argument. It looked at symptoms reported after vaccination among users of the COVID Symptom Study app in the UK.

More than 1.2 million users of the app reported at least one vaccine dose and around 900,000 had two doses. A small proportion, less than 1%, of each of these groups subsequently developed COVID infection and tracked their symptoms.

The study found vaccinated people had a much-reduced risk of being hospitalised or having multiple symptoms in the first week of infection.

Importantly, the likelihood of having a long duration of symptoms (over 28 days) was approximately halved.

This would clearly be expected to translate into a lesser number of people with long COVID at 12 weeks and beyond, although data confirming this is presently lacking.

So, vaccination has benefit in limiting both severe acute COVID infection and long COVID.

A word of caution though – long COVID appears to have a variety of triggers and many people suffering this condition didn’t have an initial severe illness. Long COVID also appears to be more common in females and this association remains unexplained.

Read more:
Do kids get long COVID? And how often? A paediatrician looks at the data

If the virus does trigger a long-lasting abnormal immune response in some people, it’s too soon to understand whether this can still occur after breakthrough infection post-vaccination.

Further research is urgently needed to understand the reasons for long COVID and direct potential treatments.

In the meantime, the likely effect of vaccination in reducing the risk of long COVID is yet another reason for us to roll up our sleeves.

Gail Matthews is affiliated with The Kirby Institute, UNSW and St Vincent’s Hospital, Sydney.
The ADAPT study is supported by funding from The Curran Foundation and the St Vincents Clinic Foundation.
Gail Matthews is a member of the Australian National COVID-19 Evidence Taskforce

– ref. You’re much less likely to get long COVID if you’ve been vaccinated – https://theconversation.com/youre-much-less-likely-to-get-long-covid-if-youve-been-vaccinated-167189

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Christina Schallenberg, Research Fellow, University of Tasmania

In 2019 and 2020, bushfires razed more than 18 million hectares of land in Australia. For weeks, smoke choked major cities, leading to almost 450 deaths, and even circumnavigated the southern hemisphere.

As the aerosols billowed across the oceans many thousands of kilometres away from the fires, microscopic marine algae called phytoplankton had an unexpected windfall: they received a boost of iron.

Our research, published today in Nature, found this caused phytoplankton concentrations to double between New Zealand and South America, until the bloom area became bigger than Australia. And it lasted for four months.

This enormous, unprecedented algal bloom could have profound implications for carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere and for the marine ecosystem. But so far, the impact is still unclear.

Meanwhile, in another paper published alongside ours in Nature today, researchers from The Netherlands found the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by the fires that summer was more than double previous estimates.

Absorbing 680 million tonnes of carbon dioxide

Iron fertilises phytoplankton and helps them grow, in the same way nutrients added in soil help vegetables grow. And like plants on land, phytoplankton photosynthesise — they absorb CO₂ as they grow and produce oxygen for fish and other marine creatures.

We used satellite data to estimate that for phytoplankton to grow as much as they did in the Southern Ocean, they would have absorbed 680 million tonnes of CO₂. This means the phytoplankton absorbed roughly the same amount of CO₂ as released by the bushfires, according to the latest estimates released today.

The Dutch researchers found the bushfires released 715 million tonnes of CO₂ (or ranging 517–867 million tonnes) between November 2019 and January 2020. This surpasses Australia’s normal annual fire and fossil fuel emissions by 80%.

To put this into perspective, Australia’s anthropogenic CO₂ emissions in 2019 were much less, at 520 million tonnes.

Phytoplankton can have dramatic effects on climate

But that doesn’t mean the phytoplankton growth absorbed the bushfire’s CO₂ emissions permanently. Whether phytoplankton growth extracts and keeps CO₂ from the atmosphere depends on their fate.

If they sink to the deep ocean, then this represents a carbon sink for decades or even centuries — or even longer if phytoplankton are stored in ocean sediments.

But if they’re mostly eaten and decomposed near the ocean’s surface, then all that CO₂ they consumed comes straight back out, with no net effect on the carbon balance in the atmosphere.

In fact, phytoplankton have very likely played a role on millennial time scales in keeping atmospheric CO₂ concentrations down, and can affect the global climate in the long term.

For example, a 2014 study suggests iron-containing dust billowing over the Southern Ocean caused increased phytoplankton productivity, which contributed to reducing atmospheric CO₂ by about 100 parts per million. And this helped transition the planet to ice ages.

Read more:
Inside the world of tiny phytoplankton – microscopic algae that provide most of our oxygen

Phytoplankton blooms can also have a big impact on the marine ecosystem as they make excellent food for some marine creatures.

For example, more phytoplankton means more food for zooplankton that feed on phytoplankton, with effects up the food chain. It’s also worth noting this huge bloom occurred at a time of year when phytoplankton are usually in decline in this part of the ocean.

But whether there were any long-lasting effects from the bushfire-fuelled phytoplankton on the climate or ecosystem is unclear, because we still don’t know where they ended up.

Using revolutionary data

The link between fire aerosols and the increase in phytoplankton demonstrated in our study is particularly relevant given the intense fire activity around the globe.

Droughts and warming under global climate change are expected to increase the frequency and intensity of wildfires, and the impacts to land-based ecosystems, such as habitat loss and air pollution, will be dramatic. But as we now know, wildfires can also affect marine life thousands of kilometres away from land.

Previous models have predicted the iron-fertilising effect of bushfire aerosols, but this is the first time we’ve observed and demonstrated the connection at a large-scale.

Our study is mainly based on satellite data and observations from robotic floats that roam the oceans and collect data autonomously. These robotic floats are revolutionising our understanding of chemical cycling, oxygen variability and ocean acidification.

During the bushfire period, our smoke tracers reached concentrations at least 300% higher than what had ever been observed in the 22-year satellite record for the region.

Interestingly, you wouldn’t be able to observe the resulting phytoplankton growth in a true-colour satellite image. We instead used more sensitive ocean colour sensors on satellites to estimate phytoplankton concentrations.

Read more:
Tiny plankton drive processes in the ocean that capture twice as much carbon as scientists thought

So what’s next?

Of course, we need more research to determine the fate of the phytoplankton. But we also need more research to better predict when and where aerosol deposition (such as bushfire smoke) will boost phytoplankton growth.

For example, the Tasman Sea — between Australia and New Zealand — showed only mildly higher phytoplankton concentrations during the bushfire period, even though the smoke cloud was strongest there.

Was this because nutrients other than iron were lacking, or because there was less deposition? Or perhaps because the smoke didn’t stick around for as long?

Whatever the reason, it’s clear this is only the beginning of exciting new lines of research that link forests, wildfires, phytoplankton growth and Earth’s climate.

Read more:
Some animals have excellent tricks to evade bushfire. But flames might be reaching more animals naive to the dangers

Christina Schallenberg receives funding from the Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS) and is affiliated with the Australian Antarctic Program Partnership (AAPP). In the past, she received funding from the National Sciences Engineering and Research Council (NSERC) of Canada.

Jakob Weis receives funding from the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes.

Joan Llort receives funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 – MSCA program.

Peter Strutton receives funding from the Australian Research Council and Australia’s Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS), which is enabled by the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS).

Weiyi Tang receives funding from Princeton University and previously received funding from National Science Foundation.

– ref. Smoke from the Black Summer fires created an algal bloom bigger than Australia in the Southern Ocean – https://theconversation.com/smoke-from-the-black-summer-fires-created-an-algal-bloom-bigger-than-australia-in-the-southern-ocean-164564

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tahlia Pollock, PhD candidate, Monash University

Carnivorous animals come in all shapes and sizes, from the 500-gram quoll to the 500-kilogram polar bear. This disparate group of mammals shares a common feature: canine teeth at the front of their jaws.

Canine teeth are long and pointed, with a sharp tip and, in some cases, bladed edges. These fearsome weapons are what make carnivores such effective killers. In fact, our new research out today reveals how evolution has shaped canines into unique forms to suit each predator’s way of life.

We applied state-of-the-art 3D methods to measure the canine teeth of more than 60 predators including lions, cheetahs, grizzly bears, dingoes and Tasmanian devils. The research represents the first comprehensive analysis of canine tooth shape in predatory mammals.

We discovered canine teeth have evolved in special ways to help each species kill and eat their favourite prey – helping to make mammals some of nature’s most successful predators.

Born to kill

When carnivorous mammals snarl, they reveal four long canine teeth at the front of their jaws – two at the top and two at the bottom. These teeth are the first point of contact between predator and prey, and are used to stab, kill and dismember a catch.

Not all carnivores have the same diet. Grizzly bears eat meat, fruit and plants, while meerkats feed mostly on invertebrates like scorpions and beetles. Big cats, like cheetahs, stick to meat.

Carnivores can also kill in myriad ways. Tigers suffocate their prey with a targeted throat bite, while wolves use multiple slashing bites to tear apart their prey. Small canids such as the red fox snap up and violently shake their prey, while wolverines can kill with a single, crushing skull bite.

There’s been little research into the associations between canine tooth shape, function and evolution. Our research sought to determine what canine shapes are best for each predator diet.

Read more:
New research reveals animals are changing their body shapes to cope with climate change

A bite worse than its bark

We scanned and compared the canine teeth of more than 60 carnivores, including tigers, coyotes, polar bears, wolverines, raccoons and even quolls. We then looked at the association between canine shape and function.

We found tooth shape varies depending on the types of food a carnivore regularly bites into – just like we choose different kitchen knives depending on what we want to cut up.

Big cats such as lions, tigers and cheetahs have some of the sharpest canine teeth in the animal kingdom. These long, dagger-like weapons are used to stab – biting down deeply into the throats of prey to bring them down.

Take a 3D look at the canine teeth of a cheetah in the interactive below.

Other species, such as the coyote and red fox, have slender, curved canines. These teeth act as hooks to help hold small prey and prevent it slipping from the mouth when shaking.

Animals that eat a lot of “soft” prey, or those that deliver throat bites, often have sharp, slender canines. The sharp tips make a crack in the prey and as the animal bites down, the long, sharp edges of the tooth help penetrate deeply into the catch.

Species with a tougher or more varied diet have stout, robust teeth that don’t break when crunching bone or other hard foods. These species include scavengers such as the Tasmanian devil, and generalists such as the honey badger.

The bluntest upper canine tips we examined belong to the crab-eating mongoose. As the name suggests, the species feeds on crabs and other hard prey such as reptiles, snails and insects.

We also found canine teeth with blunt tips and edges were found in animals that kill prey with crushing bites to the skull, such as the American martin or wolverine. Blunt tips are better able than sharp tips to withstand the stresses produced by such heavy force.

Something to chew on

The research helps establish new links between tooth shape and ecology that may shed light on the diet and behaviour of extinct species.

For example, the thylacine (or Tasmanian tiger) had curved canines, which suggests it may have snapped up and shaken smaller prey. This supports recent research on thylacine skull shape which found that, contrary to previous theories, the thylacine likely hunted small rather than large prey.

By studying canine teeth up close, we’ve discovered just how well evolution shaped even the smallest animal features to suit the niches they fill in nature.

Read more:
Who would win in a fight between a wedge-tailed eagle and a bald eagle? It’s a close call for two nationally revered birds

Tahlia Pollock receives funding from the Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship (RTP stipend), the Monash Graduate Excellence Scholarship (MGE), and the Monash Graduate Research Completion Award (GRCA).

Alistair Evans receives funding from the Australian Research Council and Monash University, and is an Honorary Research Affiliate with Museums Victoria.

David Hocking has received funding from the Australian Research Council and Monash University. He is the Senior Curator of Vertebrate Zoology at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery and is an adjunct research associate with Monash University.

– ref. Jaws of death: how the canine teeth of carnivorous mammals evolved to make them super-killers – https://theconversation.com/jaws-of-death-how-the-canine-teeth-of-carnivorous-mammals-evolved-to-make-them-super-killers-166029

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lauren Roman, Postdoctoral Researcher, Oceans and Atmosphere, CSIRO

Coastal litter is a big environmental problem. But how does this litter differ around the world, and why? In the first global analysis of its kind, we set out to answer those questions using data collected by thousands of citizen scientists.

Our analysis, released today, discovered litter hotspots on every inhabited continent, including Australia. This finding busts two persistent myths: that most of the world’s plastic pollution comes from just a few major rivers, and that countries in the Global South are largely to blame for the marine plastic problem.

Single-use plastics formed the majority of litter in this study. And in general, litter hotspots were associated with socioeconomic factors such as a concentration of built infrastructure, less national wealth, and a high level of lighting at night.

Our insights reveal the complex patterns driving coastal pollution, and suggest there is no “one size fits all” solution to cleaning up the world’s oceans. In fact, the best solution is to stop the waste problem long before it reaches the sea.

A complex picture

We are scientists from the CSIRO’s Marine Debris Research team. Our study involved working closely with Ocean Conservancy and the PADI AWARE Foundation, which together hold the world’s most comprehensive litter data sets gathered by citizen scientists.

We analysed hundreds of thousands of items from 22,508 clean-ups on land (at beaches and the edge of rivers and lakes) as well as 7,290 seafloor clean-ups. The clean-ups spanned 116 and 118 countries, respectively, and involved participants recording counts for each item collected.

The analysis showed a huge diversity in the location and scale of plastic pollution hotspots. They were not limited to single countries or rivers – instead, the hotspots occurred in all inhabited continents and across many countries. In many places, litter patterns between neighbouring locations were vastly different.

Read more:
For decades, scientists puzzled over the plastic ‘missing’ from our oceans – but now it’s been found

Most litter comprised single-use items: cigarette butts, fishing line, food wrappers, and plastic bottles and bags.

In general, places with more overall litter tended to have:

• more built infrastructure

• less national wealth

• bright lighting at night (which indicated urban density).

Cities and other dense urban areas around the world were linked with hotspots of “convenience” single-use plastic items, such as plastic bags, food wrappers, drink bottles, take-away containers, straws, plastic cutlery and lids. These hotspots are represented in the infographic below.

However, not all litter items followed this pattern. For example, cigarette butts followed a regional pattern and were more common in Southern Europe and North Africa.

Fishing line was most abundant in wealthier countries where recreational fishing is a popular pastime. Hotspots included Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Clusters of hotspots were often associated with partially enclosed bays, seas and lakes. These included areas such as the Mediterranean Sea, the Bay of Bengal, the South China and Philippine seas, the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean Sea, Lake Malawi and the Great Lakes of North America.

Plastic accumulation in these areas is likely due to factors such as high local littering combined with relatively contained bodies of water.

Plastic bottle hotspots were more common in tropical countries such as Costa Rica and Jamaica, among others. Plastic food wrappers were abundant in the island nations of Southeast Asia, particularly around Indonesia and the Philippines.

Read more:
It might be the world’s biggest ocean, but the mighty Pacific is in peril

Cleaning up our coasts

Ultimately, our study reveals the diversity and complexity of the plastic pollution issue. We hope it helps governments make waste policy decisions based on sound scientific evidence.

The findings suggest programs to tackle ocean litter should be rolled out at the grassroots level, or within one part of a country, as well as nationally.

In Australia, for example, Zoos Victoria’s Seal The Loop program aims to tackle localised fishing line waste at locations where the pastime is common. The program includes fishing line bins placed on piers and at boat ramps to encourage responsible waste disposal.

And in Malawi and 15 other countries in southern Africa, national bans on plastic bags target this locally problematic item.

Our analysis shows much non-degradable waste found in the environment comes from pre-packaged food and beverages. So regulations specifically addressing this type of packaging can be useful.

In Australia, for example, Hobart is aiming to become the first Australian city to ban single-use plastic takeaway food packaging, as part of an ambitious goal of zero-waste to landfill by 2030.

Other strategies known to change litter behaviour include recycling incentives such as container deposit schemes, particularly in lower socioeconomic areas where littering is highest, as well as education campaigns. And levies on plastic items could also help stop litter entering the environment.

This Saturday September 18, Ocean Conservancy is holding its annual International Coastal Cleanup – come along if you can and if COVID restrictions allow. You’ll be helping your local environment and collecting data to inform tomorrow’s waste management policies.

The authors would like to acknowledge the tireless volunteers from the International Coastal Cleanup and Dive Against Debris, and collaborators; Ocean Conservancy’s Dr George H. Leonard and Nicholas Mallos, and PADI AWARE Foundation’s Hannah Pragnell-Raasch and Ian Campbell.

Lauren Roman received funding from this work from Ocean Conservancy, PADI AWARE and CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere.

Britta Denise Hardesty receives funding for this work from Ocean Conservancy, PADI Aware, and CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere. She also receives funding from Oak Family Foundation and PM Angell Foundation for related research.

Chris Wilcox receives funding for this work from Ocean Conservancy, PADI Aware, and CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere. He also receives funding from Oak Family Foundation and PM Angell Foundation for related research.

– ref. We analysed data from 29,798 clean-ups around the world to uncover some of the worst litter hotspots – https://theconversation.com/we-analysed-data-from-29-798-clean-ups-around-the-world-to-uncover-some-of-the-worst-litter-hotspots-167280

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Evan Smith, Research Fellow in History, Flinders University

Often when historians visit an archive or conduct research, we are not sure what we’ll find. With the help of archivists and librarians, we may know broadly what is contained in an archival record or a database, but we never know what may or may not be useful to us. Approaching our research material with a particular set of questions or analytical framework, what we actually find may leave us surprised, confused or taken aback in another way.

On Twitter, I asked a simple question: Historians, what is the thing that made you go ‘wait, wut?’ in the archives or in your research? The response was overwhelming – over 300 replies and 450 quote tweets at last count.

Historians, archivists and other researchers got in touch with great stories of their archival finds and tales of bizarre research moments. These ranged from the quirky to the disturbing to the profound.

Below I have chosen a handful that fall into each category to give an idea of the wide spectrum of what historians have come across in the field.

The quirky

Many of those who responded told stories of bizarre (and sometimes amusing) finds in the archives. Some were actual objects, such as Robert Cribb finding “17 tubes of processed opium, ready for smoking, in the Dutch archives from 1946 Indonesia”, Daniel McKay coming across “negatives of an early Australian prime minister naked on holiday”, and “300 love letters from woman to woman around 1760, partly written in blood”, located by Susanne Wosnitzka.

Others found interesting correspondence. A.J. Bauer gave the example of transcripts of phone-sex calls in the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, after a politician wrote to Reagan to intervene against “dial-a-porn”. Yasmin Dualeh uncovered a “letter from Prof Phillip Hitti calling out his Princeton colleague Albert Einstein for spreading false rumours about him to students”. Maurice Casey told of a letter written to Soviet leader Josef Stalin by a New York University debating team “seeking help with their upcoming debate on capitalism”.

More strange tales emerged from newspaper reports and transcripts of speeches that historians discovered in their research. Xesc Mainzer mentioned a 1970s story in a Majorcan newspaper of “an elderly Belgian woman loosing [sic] her denture when she bit a policeman’s leg”. In the Gerald Ford Presidential Library and Museum, Dustin Jones “came across a speech given by John Wayne at a charity dinner Ford also attended making absolutely one of the least accurate predictions I saw in my studies”. What was the movie actor’s prediction? That “Watergate will be a footnote” in future history books.

The disturbing

Historians also attested to the disturbing material that astounded them in their research, with the often bureaucratic and sterile nature of archival documents belying the troubling matter unearthed.

Lachlan Clohesy found notes of a talk by British nuclear physicist Sir Ernest Titterton about Australia’s potential nuclear arsenal. This talk “included making the point that if we had nuclear weapons, the cost of killing per man, woman and child would be cheaper than conventional warfare”. Clohesy added that Titterton’s notes included the actual prices.

On a similar topic, Stephen Schwartz found that US Army Lieutenant General James M. Gavin had told Congress in 1957 that to win a nuclear war, the United States would need 151,000 nuclear weapons. Also on the topic of calculating deaths, Pépé Roswaldy came across a Dutch colonial magazine promoting native land resettlement in Indonesia in the 1930s (which resulted in a number of deaths) and reporting an officer as saying: “The death number is just okay, nothing unusual.”

There were also more gruesome discoveries. Gabe Moshenska told of finding a description by famous Egyptologist Sir John Gardner Wilkinson of “his own diseased penis” in the papers of Thomas Pettigrew at Yale. Narrelle Morris mentioned an encounter in the National Archives of Australia with “a rusty razor that a Japanese suspected war criminal tried to commit suicide with”, stating: “I drew it to the archivist’s attention.”

The profound

There were also the surprising finds that were of particular importance to the historians and to our understanding of the past. Becky Erbelding from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum came across the only known photos of Nazi doctor Josef Mengele at Auschwitz-Birkenau, when a photo album was sent to the museum.

Peter Job told of a document that Indonesian intelligence provided to an Australian diplomat in Jakarta in 1975. This document, Job explains, was a list of members of Fretilin, the East Timorese independence group, to be targeted after an Indonesian invasion. Job argues that this “[s]hows level of pre-invasion complicity” by Australia.

For Adam Rothman, it was an 1866 US Senate report on “rumors that newly freed people in the US were being kidnapped and sold into slavery in Cuba and Brazil”. This led to Rothman writing a whole book based on this realisation.

Other historians also revealed that a chance find led them to new research projects. For example, Anna Hájková heard of a story of a forced relationship between a German women’s guard and a young female prisoner during the final year of the second world war. Intrigued by a tale from an oral history recording, Hájková developed this story into a ground-breaking work of queer history.

These are only a few of the many stories that people revealed in reply to my tweet. As we do research into the past, historians are often confronted or surprised by what we come across. Some findings can be amusing titbits on the side of our research. Others greatly shift our knowledge of certain events or people.

Nearly every historian has a story of a research find that made them pause and, via Twitter, we were able to hear of so many.

Evan Smith has in the past received funding from the Australian Academy of the Humanities, the Museum of Australian Democracy and the Australian Research Council.

– ref. I asked historians what find made them go ‘wait, wut?’ Here’s a taste of the hundreds of replies – https://theconversation.com/i-asked-historians-what-find-made-them-go-wait-wut-heres-a-taste-of-the-hundreds-of-replies-167176

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Cantrell, Lecturer in Writing, Editing, and Publishing, University of Southern Queensland

The stage adaptation of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory has opened in Brisbane. Charlie, like all of Roald Dahl’s novels for children, celebrates courage, resilience and the creative power of childhood.

Charlie Bucket is literally starving to death by the time he arrives at Willy Wonka’s factory. Yet his steely determination to find the last golden ticket, combined with his strong moral compass, sees him emerge as Wonka’s heir, his family’s hero, and the architect of his fate.

But there is a troubling aspect to this story. In the first edition of Charlie (1964), the Oompa-Loompas are black pygmies who Wonka imports from “the deepest and darkest part of the African jungle” and enslaves in his factory.

In this latest stage production, the Oompa-Loompas are transformed into “humanettes” (living dolls that are part human, part puppet). Their recent manifestation raises a number of questions. What do the Oompa-Loompas represent? And how should they be portrayed in modern-day adaptations?

Read more:
Abused, neglected, abandoned — did Roald Dahl hate children as much as the witches did?

Servitude

In the original novel, the Oompa-Loompas work (in lieu of money) in exchange for cocoa beans, the only currency they understand. Wonka explains,

You only had to mention the word ‘cacao’ to an Oompa-Loompa and they would start dribbling at the mouth.

As a messianic figure, Wonka believes he has “rescued” the Oompa-Loompas from certain death. Saving his tiny “helpers” from near starvation, he offers them shelter from their predators, the Snozzwangers and Whangdoodles.

Their servitude, Wonka insists, is a special privilege, a pro-slavery sentiment that echoes the “positive good” defence of the Atlantic Slave Trade.

The novel reflects cultural anxieties that emerged in the United Kingdom in the 1960s when the labour market opened to New Commonwealth citizens from India and the Caribbean. Grandpa Joe, a former Wonka employee who is laid off, represents the concerns of white British workers who saw immigrants as rivals for what they believed were rightfully white British jobs.

When Wonka’s factory re-opens with a secret workforce, Charlie says to Grandpa Joe, “But there must be people working there”, and Grandpa Joe responds, “Not people, Charlie. Not ordinary people, anyway”.

Read more:
Gobsmacked by Aldi’s Revolting Rhymes ban? Try this instead

Whitewashing

In the late 1960s, under mounting pressure to rewrite the Oompa-Loompas, Dahl agreed, in his words, to “de-Negro” his characters.

Mel Stuart’s 1971 film adaptation, released in the immediate aftermath of the civil rights movement, recast the Oompa-Loompas as little people with green hair and orange skin. Their homeland is now Loompaland rather than Africa, and they are “transported” to Wonka’s factory rather than “imported”.

This transformation is a textual whitewashing that obscures the power dynamic between Wonka as factory owner and the Oompa-Loompas as his exploited workforce.

Before the film’s release, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in the US threatened to boycott cinemas, while the producers worried if they represented black characters in a derogatory way, they would lose revenue.

Dahl eventually buckled to public criticism. In a revised 1973 edition of the book, he reimagined the Oompa-Loompas as “little fantasy creatures”.

In this new edition, the Oompa-Loompas are hippies. Their skin is rosy white; their unkempt hair is golden brown; they frolick in the factory gardens, picking wildflowers, playing hand drums, and chasing butterflies. They symbolise 1970s counterculture and its rejection of materialism, conservative values, and social and political conflict.

Digital clones

In 2005, Tim Burton produced the second cinematic adaptation of Charlie. In Burton’s revision, the Oompa-Loompas are played by a single actor (Gurdeep Roy) who is digitally cloned to create the illusion of a sizeable workforce.

For the first time, the Oompa-Loompas use information technology to communicate wirelessly, enlisting supercomputers to improve their productivity and profits.

In a 2005 interview, Roy recalled Burton’s confirmation that “the Oompas were strictly programmed like robots — all they do is work, work, work.”

Burton’s adaptation, a commentary on exploited labour in the digital age, shares several thematic concerns with the musical version.

Read more:
Cat in a spat: scrapping Dr Seuss books is not cancel culture

Pulling strings

In the Brisbane season, the Oompa-Loompas form a chorus line of hybrid creatures in red curled wigs and identical suits branded with the “W” of Wonka, a stamp marking them as property rather than people.

Each Oompa-Loompa is part human (head and hands) and part puppet (body and legs). The puppeteer manipulates the body and legs to bring the puppet to life.

The result is a bizarre distortion of proportions, in which the Oompa-Loompas burst onto the stage in choreographed song and dance. The theatrical effect is of a stunted character, suspended in space, able to perform gravity-defying dance moves and circus-like tricks.

While the inventive blend of performers and puppets is clever, the puppetry reinstates the power imbalance: Oompa-Loompas are material objects controlled by others.

In attempting to conceal their exploitation, the show’s producers only draw attention to the controversy they are trying to avoid. The fact Wonka’s privilege is never questioned is evidenced by the fact he always remains the same: white, wealthy, and in control.

Using puppets as a way to obfuscate conversation around race has a problematic history in Western theatre. Some theatre-makers insist puppets are essentially “raceless”, but this claim can erase the subject’s potential humanity. An audience isn’t excepted to see puppets as anything other than figures of entertainment.

The fraught history of the Oompa-Loompas captures the irresolvable tension at the heart of children’s literature and theatre: it is impossible to separate children’s stories from the ideological fabric of our world, the power structures that privilege adults, and the particular historical moment in which stories are produced.

Any re-imagining of this classic tale will always be placed in a precarious position.

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. From pygmies to puppets: what to do with Roald Dahl’s enslaved Oompa-Loompas in modern adaptations? – https://theconversation.com/from-pygmies-to-puppets-what-to-do-with-roald-dahls-enslaved-oompa-loompas-in-modern-adaptations-166967

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

Christian Porter’s ministerial future is again on the line, with Scott Morrison seeking advice on whether his receiving money for his legal bills from a “blind trust” breaches the ministerial standards code.

Morrison discussed the arrangement, which has attracted a storm of controversy, with Porter on Wednesday.

On Tuesday 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”.

“As a potential beneficiary I have no access to information about the conduct and funding of the trust,” he said in the update.

The defamation action followed the ABC reporting a historical rape allegation against an unnamed cabinet minister. Porter, attorney-general at the time, later identified himself as the minister and strongly denied the allegation.

He was subsequently moved from attorney-general to the industry ministry.

A spokesperson for Morrison said late Wednesday: “The Prime Minister is taking this matter seriously and has discussed the matter with the minister today.

“The Prime Minister is seeking advice from his department on any implications for the Ministerial Standards and any actions the minister must take to ensure that he meets the Standards.”

The advice will come from the secretary of the Prime Minister’s department, Phil Gaetjens, and Stephanie Foster, deputy secretary for governance.

If Porter is not meeting the ministerial standard one course would be for him to return the money.

Earlier on Wednesday, former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull said he was “staggered that Porter thought he could get away with it and I will be even more staggered if the prime minister allows this to stand.

“It is a shocking affront to transparency,” Turnbull told the ABC.

“Basically what Porter is saying is that it is okay for an Australian cabinet minister, a former attorney-general – not just of Australia, but of Western Australia – to take a large donation, a large gift to himself, without disclosing who the donor was and apparently without him knowing who the donor was either. It is so wrong.”

Turnbull said it was “like saying ‘my legal fees were paid by a guy in a mask who dropped off a chaff bag full of cash’”.

Opposition leader Anthony Albanese ridiculed the proposition that Porter didn’t know the identity of his benefactors.

“The idea that he doesn’t know, that just somehow out there random people are discovering this trust, finding out for themselves where to put the money and depositing the money with no knowledge to him, is, quite frankly, just unbelievable and absurd,” Albanese said.

Albanese said this was “yet another reason why we need a national anti-corruption commission.

“If there was a national anti-corruption commission, it’d be up this like a rat up a drainpipe.”

Shadow attorney-general Mark Dreyfus said the PM seeking advice was “another farcical ‘inquiry’ by Scott Morrison’s right-hand man” which “follows yet another outrageous scandal in Mr Morrison’s government”.

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg defended Porter, telling Sky that he “has disclosed in accordance with the requirements of parliamentarians on their register of interest”.

“The point about Christian Porter’s legal defence is that he did not use taxpayers’ money, and that is very important,” Frydenberg said.

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’s ministerial future on the line as Morrison seeks advice on ‘blind trust’ – https://theconversation.com/christian-porters-ministerial-future-on-the-line-as-morrison-seeks-advice-on-blind-trust-168011