Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Erica Kuligowski, Vice-Chancellor’s Senior Research Fellow, RMIT University

The 2001 World Trade Center disaster was the most significant high-rise evacuation in modern times, and the harrowing experiences of the thousands of survivors who successfully escaped the twin towers have had a significant influence on building codes and standards. One legacy of the 9/11 tragedy is that today’s skyscrapers can be emptied much more safely and easily in an emergency.

The 110-storey twin towers, constructed from 1966 to 1973, both had open-plan floor designs, with stairs and elevators located in the buildings’ core. Each tower had three staircases which, barring a few twists and turns, ran all the way from the top of the building down to the mezzanine level just above the ground floor. One of the stairways had steps 142 centimetres wide, but the other two measured just 112cm, which would not be permitted by today’s skyscraper building codes.

As a result of the twin towers’ system of “sky lobbies”, which was innovative for its time, the number of available elevators varied depending on the floor. The system was not designed to be used in an emergency, and today, many towers above a certain height are required to be fitted with dedicated emergency elevators or an additional staircase.

When the planes hit on the morning of September 11 2001, the twin towers were at less than half their full occupancy, with about 9,000 people in each tower. Many people who worked there had not yet arrived, partly because of a New York mayoral election scheduled for that day.

At 8:46am, American Airlines flight 11 slammed into the north face of the north tower, rendering all three staircases impassable for anyone above the 91st floor. Sixteen minutes later, and after one-third of its occupants had already evacuated, the south tower was hit by United Airlines flight 175, leaving only one staircase available for evacuees above the 78th floor.

Besides the problems posed by fires and damage on floors, and debris inside the stairways, people in both towers also faced issues with communication. The north tower’s public address system, which would have been used to make emergency announcements to the building’s occupants, was disabled by the crash.

In the south tower, three minutes before the impact, occupants were told via the public address system to stay in place and wait for further information. Two minutes later they were told they could evacuate if they wanted. This may have meant more people from higher floors were waiting at the sky lobby on floor 78 when the plane crashed into that floor.

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9/11 conspiracy theories debunked: 20 years later, engineering experts explain how the twin towers collapsed

In both towers, people had only limited information on which to base their decisions. For those closest to the impacts, the seriousness of the situation and the need to evacuate was clear. But for those further away, who may have witnessed only the lights flicker, the uncertainty was palpable. Many people delayed their evacuation to seek out extra information, whether by speaking with colleagues, making phone calls, sending emails or searching online for news updates.

Many lives were saved by the brave leadership of people who took control of the situation, urging others to evacuate and helping those who needed assistance. My PhD research revealed these were typically people who were used to taking charge: high-level managers, fire wardens and people with military experience.

Hazardous exit

Evacuees faced a dangerous and claustrophobic journey down to ground level. A subsequent US government investigation found 70% of evacuees encountered crowding on the stairs. Some people recalled having to leave the stairwell either because of overcrowding, being told to do so by fire or building officials, or because they needed a rest. Other problems included poor lighting, not knowing which direction to go, and finding the route unavoidably blocked by people with permanent or temporary disabilities.

While people are typically told not to use elevators in an emergency, 16% of those who escaped the south tower used the elevators to evacuate during the 16 minutes between the two impacts. Simulations of a hypothetical 9/11 in which elevators were unavailable showed that occupants’ use of elevators saved 3,000 lives in the south tower.

Not everyone was so lucky. The US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) investigation (on which I was an author) estimated that between 2,146 and 2,163 people were killed in the towers, and that more people died in the north tower, which was struck first. Most of those who died on 9/11 were on or above the floors hit by the planes.

Roughly 99% of people on floors below the impacts managed to evacuate successfully. For those who didn’t, the factors linked to their deaths included delaying their evacuation, performing emergency response duties, or being unable to leave their particular floor because of damage or debris. Had the buildings been fully occupied, the consequences would undoubtedly have been even worse.

À lire aussi :
20 years on, 9/11 responders are still sick and dying

Building better

The stories of those who experienced the terrifying evacuations have helped to shape important and life-saving changes in high-rise buildings. The NIST report made several recommendations that were eventually implemented in a range of building codes and standards around the world, notably the International Building Code.

Emergency stairs in skyscrapers must now be at least 137cm wide, and feature glow-in-the-dark markings on the stair treads that are visible even if the power fails.

What’s more, while elevator use is not typically encouraged during building fires, the International Building Code now requires a new “occupant-safe” elevator system or an additional staircase in buildings over 128 metres tall. These new elevator systems are designed to be safely used during fires, offering a vital escape route for people unable to use stairs.

The tragic events of 9/11 changed the world in all sorts of ways. But hopefully, when it comes to the design of today’s skyscrapers, it has changed things for the better.

Erica Kuligowski currently receives funding from the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) Measurement Science and Engineering Grants Program (as a subcontractor). She is affiliated with the Society of Fire Protection Engineers (SFPE) as a Section Editor for their Handbook of Fire Protection Engineering (Human Behaviour Section) and as a member of the Board of Governors for the SFPE Foundation. Also, from 2002 to 2020, Erica worked as a research engineer and social scientist in the Engineering Laboratory of the National Institute of Standards and Technology. While at NIST, Erica worked on NIST’s Technical Investigation of the 2001 WTC Disaster as a team member of Project 7: Occupant Behavior, Egress, and Emergency Communications. Finally, Erica gratefully acknowledges the UK WTC project HEED, funded by the UK EPSRC (grant EP/D507790/1) for providing access to the HEED database, which was used in her PhD thesis.

– ref. How the terrifying evacuations from the twin towers on 9/11 helped make today’s skyscrapers safer – https://theconversation.com/how-the-terrifying-evacuations-from-the-twin-towers-on-9-11-helped-make-todays-skyscrapers-safer-167698

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

Earlier this year, the Australian Greens proposed a wealth tax on billionaires straight out of the (former US presidential candidate) Elizabeth Warren playbook.

This week it added what it called a “tycoon tax” that would tax so-called super-profits made by companies with annual turnovers of more than A$100 million.

It might not be the winner it seems.

If Australian taxpayers want to get more tax from super-profitable companies there might be better ways to do it.

Under the Greens proposal some companies, even large ones, would escape the extra annual tax. It would apply only to that part of their post-tax profits that exceeded an “allowance for a corporate equity”.

The allowance would be 5% of the value of the company plus the long-term bond rate, which at present is 1.2%, meaning at the moment the threshold would be a post-tax return on capital of 6.2%

Extra profit — so-called super-profit above the threshold — would be taxed at 40%, meaning almost half of it would lost.

An idea with a backstory

The Greens system is the system (and the rate) recommended by the Henry Tax Review for taxing the larger-than-normal profits from mining, and it’s the system used since 1988 for the larger than normal profits from off-shore petroleum.

What the Greens propose would apply not only to the earnings of Australian companies but also to the share of a multinational’s operations in Australia.

The mining sector would be dealt with on a project-by-project basis rather a company-by-company basis, which is what happened with Labor’s short-lived minerals resource rent tax (also 40%) between 2012 and 2014.

Some years ago the idea was put forward by the Business Council of Australia as part of a plan to remove the tax on normal company profits (something the Greens are not proposing to do).

In its 2009 submission to the Henry Tax Review, the Business Council said taxing only returns that exceeded a “normal” return had the “potential to stimulate investment both for locally based companies and inbound investors”.

But there are problems with the idea, as the Business Council acknowledged.

It’s hard to get right

One problem is that it is hard to know where to set the threshold between “normal” profit and “super” profit (what economists call “economic rent” which is returns in excess of those needed to justify the activity).

The threshold is unlikely to be 5% plus the bond rate across the entire economy.

If we end up not only taxing excessive economic rents but also genuine needed returns we might damage the engine of the economy. We would be like an athlete who is burning muscle as well as fat.

Read more:
The resources tax: back to the future?

Investors take a risk when they put money into a business.

Sometimes the investment goes well, other times it will fail. Grabbing 40% of the extra upside, but leaving investors to wear all of the downside or accumulate losses to offset against future profits, would create an asymmetry.

It’d seem like “heads Adam Bandt wins, tails I lose”.

Many of the companies that make so-called super-profits would stay here grudgingly. The big five banks make profits way in excess of the threshold. Some multinational franchise operations probably make them as well.

We can’t be certain companies would stay

But other companies might decide to wind down their operations in Australia, redirecting investment to somewhere else. Jobs and wages might suffer.

Also it would be hard to measure the capital base of the the company to work out how to measure the return and calculate how much of it was above 6.2%.

The Greens did the right thing getting the independent Parliamentary Budget Office to assess how much the tax would raise.

The PBO’s best guess is that the mining component would raise $124.78 billion over 10 years and the non-mining component $213.9 billion.

Read more:
Coalition to axe mining tax, but petroleum will keep on giving

The costing of one of those components (the non-mining component) includes so-called “behavioural responses” which in this case means it assumes 20% less tax would be paid than calculated as companies restructured their affairs.

That might be too mild an assumption for such a big tax change.

The costing of the mining component has not been adjusted. Anyone who remembers Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan’s mining super-profits tax remembers the threats of big behavioural responses. They helped end Rudd’s prime ministership.

There are more promising ideas

On Monday at the ANU Crawford Leadership Forum, former Australian finance minister Mathias Cormann, who is now secretary general of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, outlined a more promising proposal.

The OECD has developed a worldwide plan to get multinationals with annual revenues of more than €750 million (about A$1.2 billion) to pay a minimum tax rate of at least 15% all over the world.

US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen wants to go further. She is working on a global minimum corporate rate of 21%.

They are ambitious plans, but they have a real chance of success.

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

– ref. Vital Signs: the Greens’ super-profits tax idea could end up burning muscle, not fat – https://theconversation.com/vital-signs-the-greens-super-profits-tax-idea-could-end-up-burning-muscle-not-fat-167363

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jessica Balanzategui, Senior Lecturer in Cinema and Screen Studies, Swinburne University of Technology

Australian kids’ TV show Round the Twist gained an international following when it was first broadcast in 1989-1990. Broadcast over four seasons up until 2001, young audiences were thrilled by the supernatural adventures of the lighthouse-dwelling Twist family.

As its original fans have grown up, a veritable cottage industry has emerged around Round the Twist nostalgia.

There is an ABC podcast devoted to tracking down the child actor who played Bronson in season one. A recap podcast covers each episode. Buzzfeed is filled with pieces such as “21 Of The Most WTF Moments From Round The Twist”.

In 2016, Netflix promoted one of its most successful Original series, Stranger Things, with a trailer in the style of the Round the Twist title sequence, including the iconic theme song. In creating this mash-up trailer, Netflix acknowledged the intergenerational appeal of these two often creepy dark fantasy shows.

In 2017, the Sydney Story Company staged a special cinema screening of Round the Twist featuring live commentary from two of the three actors who played Bronson. In 2018, the UK’s largest supermarket chain, Sainsbury’s, used the show’s theme song for their Halloween advertisements. The Australian band Tinpan Orange regularly perform a plaintive, haunting version of the song.

Earlier this year, every episode was released on Netflix Australia; and now a stage musical adaptation has been announced.

Read more:
Friday essay: when television hosts take their shows home they fuel nostalgia

Horror, but for children

The production house for Round the Twist, the Australian Children’s Television Foundation, had to fight to find a home for this horror-inflected children’s show. According to ACTF founder and the show’s producer Patricia Edgar, one French company who was in discussions to co-finance the show called it “disgusting”.

Round the Twist is remembered as a challenging, subversive show: one that combines horror, dark fantasy and the grotesque. Ghosts make frequent spooky appearances, but ultimately turn out to be friendly spirits needing the family’s help to finish their business and move on.

Skeletons come to life; Santa Claus becomes “Santa Claws”; love spells go wrong; and monsters really do live under the bed.

The show has evidently left a lasting impact on its former child viewers. Horror and dark fantasy for children often leaves an impression: TV tends to be how young viewers first encounter these genres.

New life through nostalgia

Round the Twist is what media scholar Kathleen Loock describes as a “dormant” TV show: shows that continue to be meaningful to the original audience or find new audiences long after they go off the air.

These dormant shows are a key part of Netflix’s business model, and part of the contemporary nostalgia wave operating across television and the internet.

Because Netflix is not dependent on high ratings or constricted by limited airtime, they can afford to license long-cancelled series like Round the Twist. Their hope is previous fans will re-watch the show and post about it on social media, attracting more subscribers.

By hosting these shows, Netflix is able to attract adult viewers who find the nostalgia appealing; but also adults who now have children of their own, and who want to introduce their children to shows they loved as a child.

Round the Twist is joined on the platform by other 1990s shows like Goosebumps and Spellbinder, and other series – like Lost in Space, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, and the Baby-Sitters Club – have been rebooted with a 21st century spin, soliciting an intergenerational conversation between existing adult and young new fans.

Nostalgia has also proven a potent tool in launching stage musicals. Simon Phillips, who is slated to direct Round the Twist, also directed the stage musical adaptations of Muriel’s Wedding in 2017, and Priscilla Queen of the Desert in 2006.

Just as Round the Twist’s release on Netflix caused a stir, nostalgia will surely draw in the crowds to the musical: the producers already have the advantage of the beloved theme song to entice fans who first watched the show more than 30 years ago – as well as a whole new generation who have discovered it on streaming.

Read more:
Muriel’s Wedding: the Musical is a deeply satisfying tribute to Australia’s most-loved dag

Our research project, Australian Children’s Television Cultures, aims to find out more about the kids’ TV shows we remember. Let us know which shows from your childhood have stuck in your mind the most. You can also follow us on Twitter.

Jessica Balanzategui receives funding from the Australian Children’s Television Foundation.

Djoymi Baker receives funding from the Australian Children’s Television Foundation (ACTF)

Joanna McIntyre receives funding from The Australian Children’s Television Foundation (ACTF).

Liam Burke receives funding from the Australian Children’s Television Foundation (ACTF)

– ref. Round the Twist’s fans grew up – and their love for the show grew with them – https://theconversation.com/round-the-twists-fans-grew-up-and-their-love-for-the-show-grew-with-them-167695

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Matthew Ahmadi, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Sydney

Many Australians are walking for their permitted fitness activity during lockdown. Some, emerging from winter hibernation, are taking part in STEPtember — a global initiative to raise money for cerebral palsy services and research.

The goal for participants is to reach 10,000 steps each day during the month of September. Indeed, 10,000 steps is the de-facto target around the world that many people associate with being fit, healthy and ageing well.

Now, a new study says a lower — and more achievable — daily goal of 7,000 steps will still yield substantial health benefits.

From marketing to medical advice

The 10,000 step benchmark originated from a marketing campaign rather than a specific health objective. A Japanese company (Yamasa Corporation) built a campaign for their new step-tracker off the momentum of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. The pedometer’s brand name — Manpo-Kei means 10,000 step meter in English — and a new phenomenon was born.

The new study from the US in 2,100 adults aged over 40 found that while 10,000 steps may well be an optimal health goal, adults can still achieve significant health benefits from only 7,000 steps per day.

The researchers in the new study collected data using wearable sensors (triaxial accelerometers similar to those used in smartwatches and phones) and followed participants over a period of around ten years. Researchers looked at the average step counts and analysed the risk of death (after controlling for other factors that might influence the result, like poor health, smoking, and diet).

Compared to adults who walked less than 7,000 steps per day on average, those who reached between 7,000 and 9,999 steps per day had a 60% to 70% lower risk of early death from any cause. The effect was the same for both men and women. But there wasn’t significant further reduction in the risk of early death for those who walked more than 10,000 steps.

The effective step target might be even lower in older women. A 2019 study of 16,741 women with a mean age of 72 years found those who averaged around 4,400 steps per day had significantly lower mortality rates when they were followed up more than four years later, compared with the least active women in the study.

Read more:
Do we really need to walk 10,000 steps a day?

Not such a need for speed

The researchers found health benefits were not affected by walking pace (based on the peak steps per minute over a 30-minute period) or intensity (the total time with over 100 steps per minute).

These findings corroborate a 2020 publication and further confirm the WHO’s 2020 physical activity report that tells us “every move counts”. Such messaging is echoed in Australia’s Move it campaign.

Research has shown walking to increase our individual speed could be more important than absolute speed — emphasising the goal to challenge ourselves while out walking for exercise.

What about during lockdown?

A large UK study shows prolonged lockdown conditions may limit our movement to 3,500 steps a day. And we know less physical activity not only affects physical health, but also mental health.

Exercise during lockdown is considered an essential activity by national and international authorities — as important as obtaining food and medical care.

For the millions of Australians in lockdown right now, this new study brings positive news and a more achievable goal for protecting their health.

There is no one-size fits all when it comes to fitness. And there are many different innovative ways to stay active while we’re at home.

Read more:
Home cooking means healthier eating – there’s an opportunity to change food habits for good

Just keep walking

For those people who don’t have mobility issues, walking provides therapeutic benefits and is an excellent activity for health. It is free of charge, expends energy at any pace, can be done all year round and is a habit forming activity.

While it is estimated more than a quarter of the world’s population is physically inactive, an easy and achievable solution might be right on our doorstep.

Whether we walk or do other physical activities, it is important we do so at a speed and intensity appropriate to our personal abilities and physical capacity.

More research is needed to understand the potential long-term health benefits across the lifespan of light-intensity activities such as household activities like gardening, watering the garden or vacuuming. But evidence continues to affirm that stepping to the beat of your own drum can ensure health benefits, prevent premature death and set attainable benchmarks to make us want to keep active and motivated to continue.

Public health messaging has emphasised the need to sit less and move more. Events like STEPtember add to heightened public awareness around the health benefits of physical activity and present an opportunity to focus on efficient ways to be active.

Whether you take 7,000 or more steps a day, the most important message is every single step counts.

Read more:
Why some people find it easier to stick to new habits they formed during lockdown

Matthew Ahmadi 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. Aiming for 10,000 steps? It turns out 7,000 could be enough to cut your risk of early death – https://theconversation.com/aiming-for-10-000-steps-it-turns-out-7-000-could-be-enough-to-cut-your-risk-of-early-death-167447

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

When I was a child, I was intrigued by the Queensland box (Lophostemon confertus) growing in our backyard. I noticed its leaves hung vertical after lunch in summer, and were more or less horizontal by the next morning.

This an example of heliotropism, which literally means moving in relation to the sun. We can see it most clearly as spring arrives and various species burst into flower — you might even get the feeling that some flowers are watching you as they move.

Many of us probably first got to know of heliotropism at home, kindergarten or primary school by watching the enormous yellow and black flowering heads of aptly name sunflowers, which moved as they grew.

These flowers track the course of the sun spectacularly on warm and sunny, spring or summer days. Sometimes they move through an arc of almost 180⁰ from morning to evening.

So with the return of sunny days and flowers in full bloom this season, let’s look at why this phenomenon is so interesting.

The mechanics of tracking the sun

A number flowering species display heliotropism, including alpine buttercups, arctic poppies, alfalfa, soybean and many of the daisy-type species. So why do they do it?

Flowers are really in the advertising game and will do anything they can to attract a suitable pollinator, as effectively and as efficiently as they can. There are several possible reasons why tracking the sun might have evolved to achieve more successful pollination.

By tracking the sun, flowers absorb more solar radiation and so remain warmer. The warmer temperature suits or even rewards insect pollinators that are more active when they have a higher body temperature.

Optimum flower warmth may also boost pollen development and germination, leading to a higher fertilisation rate and more seeds.

Read more:
Why there’s a lot more to love about jacarandas than just their purple flowers

So, the flowers are clearly moving. But how?

For many heliotropic flowering species, there’s a special layer of cells called the pulvinus just under the flower heads. These cells pump water across their cell membranes in a controlled way, so that cells can be fully pumped up like a balloon or become empty and flaccid. Changes in these cells allow the flower head to move.

When potassium from neighbouring plant cells is moved into the cells of the pulvinus, water follows and the cells inflate. When they move potassium out of the cells, they become flaccid.

These potassium pumps are involved in many other aspects of plant movement, too. This includes the opening and closing of stomata (tiny regulated leaf apertures), the rapid movement of mimosa leaves, or the closing of a fly trap.

But sunflowers dance differently

In 2016, scientists discovered that the pin-up example of heliotropism — the sun flower — had a different way of moving.

They found sunflower movement is due to significantly different growth rates on opposite sides of the flowering stem.

On the east-facing side, the cells grow and elongate quickly during the day, which slowly pushes the flower to face west as the daylight hours go by — following the sun. At night the west-side cells grow and elongate more rapidly, which pushes the flower back toward the east over night.

Everything is then set for the whole process to begin again at dawn next day, which is repeated daily until the flower stops growing and movement ceases.

Read more:
The secret life of puddles: their value to nature is subtle, but hugely important

While many people are aware of heliotropism in flowers, heliotropic movement of leaves is less commonly noticed or known. Plants with heliotropic flowers don’t necessarily have heliotropic leaves, and vice versa.

Heliotropism evolves in response to highly specific environmental conditions, and factors affecting flowers can be different from those impacting leaves.

For example, flowers are all about pollination and seed production. For leaves, it’s for maximising photosynthesis, avoiding over-heating on a hot day or even reducing water loss in harsh and arid conditions.

Some species, such as the Queensland box, arrange their leaves so they’re somewhat horizontal in the morning, capturing the full value of the available sunlight. But there are also instances where leaves align vertically to the sun in the middle of the day to minimise the risks of heat damage.

Plants are dynamic

It’s easy to think of plants as static organisms. But of course, they are forever changing, responding to their environments and growing. They are dynamic in their own way, and we tend to assume that when they do change, it will be at a very slow and steady pace.

Heliotropism shows us this is not necessarily the case. Plants changing daily can be a little unsettling in that we sense a change but may not be aware of what is causing our unease.

As for me, I still keep a watchful eye on those Queensland boxes!

Read more:
It is risen: the story of resurrection ferns and my late colleague who helped discover them in Australia

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

– ref. The daily dance of flowers tracking the sun is more fascinating than most of us realise – https://theconversation.com/the-daily-dance-of-flowers-tracking-the-sun-is-more-fascinating-than-most-of-us-realise-167374

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

Michelle Grattan discusses the week in politics with University of Canberra Associate Professor Caroline Fisher.

This week the pair discuss the National Summit on Women’s Safety, focusing on the prime minister’s opening address and the criticism it attracted. This criticism came at the same time that Scott Morrison attracted significant flack for travelling to Sydney from Canberra and back again over the weekend, to see his family on Father’s Day.

They also discuss the New South Wales roadmap to freedom, and revelations that Greg Hunt possibly could have secured more Pfizer in June of last year.

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

– ref. VIDEO: Michelle Grattan on the ‘roadmap to freedom’ – https://theconversation.com/video-michelle-grattan-on-the-roadmap-to-freedom-167696

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sophie Hindes, PhD Candidate – University of Melbourne, Monash University

This week’s Women’s Safety Summit brought together many voices calling for the government to take substantive action to address violence against women. This is happening ahead of the finalising of the next National Plan to Reduce Violence Against Women and Their Children in 2022.

However, the national safety summit failed to adequately include a significant part of our population: LGBTQ+ communities.

Research shows men are overwhelmingly the perpetrators of violence against women and children, and that women experience victimisation at greater rates than men.

However, research also shows LGBTQ+ people experience violence and abuse at similar, if not greater, rates than cisgender, heterosexual women. These rates are even higher for people who face multiple structural disadvantages, such as racism, the effects of colonisation, and ableism.

The Women’s Safety Summit did include a private round table discussion on LGBTQ+ issues, but LGBTQ+ people were not part of the public talks. Indeed, even the focus on “women’s safety” frames the issue in a fundamentally hetero-normative way.

And though the current national plan acknowledges LGBTQ+ people, this has been criticised as superficial.

So, how can we do better?

What we know about violence experienced by LGBTQ+ people

Rates of family, sexual and domestic violence in LGBTQ+ communities are under-researched in Australia. However, some data are emerging.

Notably, in a survey of the LGBTQ+ community conducted last year, researchers found over 40% of participants reported being in an abusive, intimate relationship in their lives. A similar percentage had suffered abuse from a family member (both chosen and family of origin).

A sexual health survey for trans and gender diverse people in 2018 also found that 53% of respondents had experienced sexual violence or coercion.

Other national surveys do not provide robust data. The census and the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ personal safety survey do not even collect information on sex, sexual orientation or gender diversity.

Read more:
LGBTIQ+ people are being ignored in the census again. Not only is this discriminatory, it’s bad public policy

The Pride in Prevention report released by La Trobe University researchers last year, meanwhile, sought to identify the specific drivers of violence and abuse in LGBTQ+ communities.

They found that while gender inequality was a driver of family violence, LGBTQ+ people can face additional discrimination based on their gender and sexuality, which can further fuel violence and abuse.

Barriers to help seeking

Research suggests that myths and stereotypes about sexual violence and LGBTQ people impact their ability to speak out about their experiences and get support. This also affects the way that sexual violence involving LGBTQ+ people is reported in the media, further perpetuating these stereotypes.

LGBTQ+ people frequently experience discrimination from some mainstream support services, or simply do not know if they will be met with a homophobic or transphobic response. In other cases, service workers may be supportive, but lack an understanding of queer relationships.

And in rural and remote areas, accessing LGBTQ+ specific services may not be possible or safe.

There is also a history of police violence and intolerance towards the LGBTQ+ community.

Research has found LGBTQ+ people in Australia are still reluctant to report to the police due to negative experiences and this historical policing of LGBTQ+ people.

Further, some LGBTQ+ people are politically opposed to engaging with the criminal justice system and want to reimagine ways of doing “justice”.

Read more:
New research shows how Indigenous LGBTIQ+ people don’t feel fully accepted by either community

How can LGBTQ+ people be included in the discussion?

The experiences of LGBTQ+ people must be urgently addressed in the next National Plan to Reduce Violence Against Women and Their Children. Our communities are diverse and we do not speak for everyone, however, we suggest some important starting points.

1) The next national plan must meaningfully include LGBTQ+ people beyond just acknowledging us as a minority group. To do so, it needs to build on the gendered drivers of domestic, sexual and family violence to include those outlined in the Pride in Prevention report. LGBTQ+ victim-survivors must be consulted widely to ensure the diversity of our voices are included.

2) There must be recognition of how LGBTQ+ identity intersects with other disadvantages (such as racism) and how this impacts experiences of violence.

3) There must be discussions of how support services can be better tailored and more sensitive to the specific needs of diverse genders and sexualities.

4) There should also be an emphasis on developing innovative, community-led justice responses to violence in the LGBTQ+ community, recognising the resistance from some in engaging with police and legal systems.

The exclusion of LGBTQ+ people from discussions like last week’s summit is also a missed opportunity, as we have insights that could be valuable.

For example, queer communities and organisations have been educating on sexual consent in an inclusive manner for decades.

Research has also found that LGBTQ+ people are often actively seeking more egalitarian ways of building intimate relationships.

And LGBTQ+ communities have built strong networks of care and support, which could help inform what community-based responses to family violence can look like.

Meaningfully including the experiences and knowledge of LGBTQ+ people and other diverse groups is not only important for those communities, but will likely strengthen responses and have benefits for all survivors.

Bianca Fileborn receives funding from the ARC and Women NSW.

Jessica Ison previously received funding from the Department of Social Services.

Sophie Hindes 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. LGBTQ+ people are being ignored in the national discussion on family and sexual violence – https://theconversation.com/lgbtq-people-are-being-ignored-in-the-national-discussion-on-family-and-sexual-violence-167634

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katie Attwell, Senior Lecturer, The University of Western Australia

Even before any COVID-19 vaccines were invented, vaccine passports for participation in public activities appeared likely.

Australia’s plagued vaccine rollout meant such requirements lay in a distant future — until now.

Australian political leaders have begun talking about a two-track future.

Proof of vaccination is already required in contexts around the globe by governments and private companies for people seeking to travel, dine and party.

We can expect a similar scenario here. So how will Australians be able to prove they’re fully vaccinated?

How can I prove I’m vaccinated?

NSW and Victoria are experiencing high new COVID case numbers. Both states have indicated reaching vaccination targets of 70-80% will be required for widespread easing of restrictions.

They’ve also suggested some freedoms will be only available to people who are fully vaccinated.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian yesterday announced freedoms for fully vaccinated people once 70% of the state’s eligible population are double dosed. These include being able to go to hospitality venues, hairdressers and gyms, and have five people to your home.

Attention is now turning to the ways in which these and other Australian governments will require proof of vaccination for entry into public and private spaces.

Currently, vaccinated Australians can access a COVID-19 digital certificate through MyGov or the Express Plus Medicare app.

Those needing proof of vaccination for overseas travel will soon have this linked to their passport chips, along with a smartphone compatible QR code.

For returned travellers, this technology is likely to inform the circumstances under which they quarantine. Fully vaccinated travellers may have less stringent requirements than those who are unvaccinated, so technology to demonstrate this will be necessary.

States are also preparing to require proof of vaccination for local participation in hospitality venues and events. This would very likely be different to the way you would prove your vaccination status for travelling overseas.

New South Wales is set to trial and then introduce a vaccine passport in October.

Vaccination data from the Australian Immunisation Register would be embedded in the Service NSW app, meeting hospitality industry demands for a simple process.

However, errors in the uploading and registration of data for vaccinated individuals will need resolving to avoid leaving them out in the cold.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews has announced the state will pursue its own version of a vaccine passport.

A “vaccinated economy” to be piloted in regional Victoria will allow only the double-dosed to access events, facilities and services. Again, the hospitality industry supports easy-to-use vaccine passports following their role in reopenings overseas.

What about people who can’t get vaccinated?

Currently, the only formal medical exemption in Australia for COVID-19 vaccines is available on a federal government form. Until now, this form has been used for the country’s “No Jab” policies.

Recently updated for COVID-19 vaccines, it lists a very narrow set of criteria for exemption and can be lodged only by specific medical practitioners.

All levels of government using vaccine passports will need to consider whether other types of exemptions are appropriate or necessary, including for people who have recently been infected with COVID and are advised not to vaccinate for up to six months.

Victoria’s human rights apparatus indicates a wider set of considerations or exemptions may be necessary for those unwilling or unable to vaccinate.

Governments will then need to work out how to manage these exemptions with the technologies they use.

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

One common way of managing people who are unvaccinated for any reason is to demand proof of a negative COVID-19 test.

Italy’s vaccination passport uses this alternative, and France’s Pass Sanitaire, or “health pass” has a similar option. Israel’s Green Pass system enables temporary passes for the uninfected, good for 72 hours.

Whether or how these negative tests would be integrated into Australian systems remains to be seen. Pending policies for nightclubs in England and Scotland are set to exclude the “negative test” opt out, meaning only the fully vaccinated will be able to access these venues.

Some Australian states and regions will be scrambling for technology if they want to go down the vaccine passport route.

The check-in app used in Queensland, Tasmania, the NT and the ACT lacks verification mechanisms and is not designed to hold a vaccine passport.

Western Australia is focused on vaccine requirements for interstate travellers and health-care workers, and so far has made no moves towards requiring vaccines for local activities; nor has South Australia.

Research suggests there’s public support for these kinds of measures in Australia, and there are good reasons to prefer governments introducing the terms of a vaccine mandate rather than private corporations.

However, there are issues of legality, viability and ethics to consider, with venue and individual compliance likely to remain a key issue.

Read more:
Would Australians support mandates for the COVID-19 vaccine? Our research suggests most would

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. Vaccine passports are coming to Australia. How will they work and what will you need them for? – https://theconversation.com/vaccine-passports-are-coming-to-australia-how-will-they-work-and-what-will-you-need-them-for-167531

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kurt Iveson, Associate Professor of Urban Geography and Research Lead, Sydney Policy Lab, University of Sydney

The dull roar of traffic, the barking of dogs in backyards and the screeching of cockatoos at dusk. The shattering of early morning quiet by the first plane overhead or the garbage truck on its rounds. The squealed delights and occasional fights of a children’s playground.

These sounds and many more create what Canadian composer R Murray Schafer famously called a “soundscape”. Schafer, who passed away last month, helped us realise we experience cities with our ears as well as our eyes.

In recent years, studies have confirmed these soundscapes affect the well-being of urban inhabitants — both human and non-human. But with much of the country back under lockdown, urban soundscapes have changed, sometimes bringing delight, but sometimes causing new distress.

So let’s take a moment to consider how soundscapes influence our lives, and the lives of urban wildlife.

When sounds become ‘noise’

Whether it’s housemates, traffic, or construction, we tend to respond to many urban sounds by defining them as “noise”, and try to shut them out. We do this using a range of techniques and technologies: building regulations on soundproofing, controls on the times for certain activities like construction, and planning measures.

But noise mapping efforts show such regulations tend to produce uneven urban soundscapes — some people are more exposed to loud or annoying sounds than others.

Housing quality is a major factor here, and noise problems are likely exacerbated under lockdown. A recent study of pandemic housing inequality in Sydney found increased exposure to noise during lockdown is significantly contributing to poor well-being.

For example, sounds travelling across internal and external walls of apartments were frequently a source of tension in pre-pandemic times. Now, with so many more people spending more time at home, these domestic sounds inevitably increase.

Read more:
Coronavirus reminds us how liveable neighbourhoods matter for our well-being

It’s not just humans whose lives are disrupted by city noise, as many animals use sound to communicate.

The ever-vigilant New Holland honeyeaters of Australian cities use their alarm calls to warn their friends and neighbours of danger, while the iconic chorus of banjo frogs in wetlands are the hopeful calls of males seeking mates.

Noisy environments can dramatically change how these animals behave. In some cases, animals adapt to their noisy environment. Some frogs, for example, overcome traffic noise disrupting their sex lives by calling at a higher pitch. Likewise, populations of bow-winged grasshoppers in Germany exposed to road noise sing at higher frequencies than those living in quieter areas.

For other animals, such as microbats in England, disruptive noise changes how they forage and move around their environments.

Read more:
How noise pollution is changing animal behaviour

In extreme cases, these human-associated noises can drive animals away from their homes, as the disruptions to their lives becomes untenable.

Urban black-tufted marmosets in Brazil have been shown to avoid areas with abundant food where noise may interfere with their vocal communication. And research shows intruding noise in stopovers for migratory birds in the United States reduces their diversity by 25%, with some species avoiding the stopovers altogether.

A new quiet?

The soundscape of cities in lockdown can be dramatically different from what we have come to accept as normal.

First, there are new noises. For example, in Sydney’s areas of concern subject to tighter lockdown restrictions, people are living with the frequent intrusive noise of police helicopters patrolling their neighbourhoods, making announcements over loudspeakers about compliance.

But in other cases, as our movements and activities are restricted, some city sounds associated with a negative impact on well-being are significantly reduced. People who live near major roads, aircraft flight paths, or construction sites will certainly be noticing the quiet as road traffic is greatly reduced and non-essential construction is paused.

But of course, while this silence might be golden for some, for others the sound of silence is the sound of lost work and income. This quietude may even be considered as unwelcome or even eerie — the sonic signature of isolation, confinement and loss.

Just as many animals adapt to or avoid noisy urban environments, there is a chance many will respond to this natural experiment playing out. Quieter urban environments may see the return of some of our more noise sensitive species, but this depends on the species.

The Brazilian marmosets mentioned earlier didn’t return to those locations even during quieter times, suggesting the noise left a disruptive legacy on their habitat choice, well after it was experienced. On the other hand, other experiments show some species of birds rapidly returned to sites after noise was removed from the landscape.

Read more:
Birdwatching increased tenfold last lockdown. Don’t stop, it’s a huge help for bushfire recovery

While it’s too early to confirm any early speculation about nature returning to quieter urban environments during lockdown, there is compelling evidence many people will benefit from engaging with local nature more actively than they did before.

Many more Australians are acting as urban field naturalists. Birdwatching, for example, increased tenfold in lockdown last year.

It’s clear people are seeing novelty and wonder in animals and plants that have survived and even thrived in our cities right beneath our noses the whole time. Our increased use of local greenspace during the pandemic has created new opportunities to find the extraordinary in the ordinary.

Rethinking post-pandemic soundscapes

What might we learn from this natural experiment about the soundscapes we take for granted and the soundscapes we actually want?

This is an invitation to think about whether we ought to do more to control sounds we consider “noise”. Yes, decibel levels of activities like car and air traffic matter. But it’s also an opportunity to think beyond controlling sounds, and consider how we might create soundscapes to enhance human and non-human well-being. This is easier said than done, given there’s no universal measure of what sounds give pleasure and what sounds are perceived as noise.

This aligns with the growing body of evidence on the need to reduce noise pollution and protect biodiversity when planning and managing our cities.

Like just about every other dimension of urban life, envisioning and creating an improved urban soundscape requires careful attention to spatial inequality and diversity – including of species – and a capacity to work through our differences in a fair and just way.

Read more:
Where the wild things are: how nature might respond as coronavirus keeps humans indoors

Dieter Hochuli receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the City of Sydney and the Inner West Council.

Kurt Iveson 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. How urban soundscapes affect humans and wildlife — and what may have changed in the hush of lockdown – https://theconversation.com/how-urban-soundscapes-affect-humans-and-wildlife-and-what-may-have-changed-in-the-hush-of-lockdown-166517

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Fischetti, Professor, Pro Vice-Chancellor of the College of Human and Social Futures, University of Newcastle

Victoria and New South Wales are in a scramble to plan for end-of-school exams. Vaccination targets may not be hit in time (for students or teachers), and there are other issues too — such as kids having missed weeks of face-to-face schooling.

NSW has postponed its HSC (Higher School Certificate) exams until November. And while Victoria postponed its General Achievement Test, it has made no changes to its HSC equivalent, the VCE.

Some critics believe postponing exams isn’t enough, and are calling on states to eliminate end-of-school exams altogether.

Both states have special consideration policies put in place for scores impacted by COVID, but is this enough? And does this unique circumstance give us an opportunity to change the way end-of-school assessments are done?

Two schools of thought

Opinions around this year’s exams fall into two main schools of thought.

The first is that year 12 students deserve to finish what they started. We have spent 12 years convincing them of the importance of this milestone. Many students are anxious, if exams are cancelled, their pathway to university and beyond will be jeopardised by using only their prior track records. Some students are advocating keeping exams for all these reasons.

The alternate school of thought is that we’ve known for years end-of-school exams can cause debilitating stress for many young people. The extraordinary pressure of the process has tipped over the breaking point this year with so much time missed in schools.

So we should take the pressure off our kids and work with vocational education and training providers, and universities, to accommodate them.

Read more:
‘How outrageous and impossible is that?’: factoring in how year 12 students coped in lockdown is a grading nightmare for teachers

There have always been alternative pathways to university and they have been expanding in recent years. We can use those already existing pathway which include subject-specific recruitment schemes, principal recommendations and portfolio entry.

There is already enough data in a student’s record to make an informed decision and allow admissions officers to move forward without this year’s exams. Perhaps we can even look toward eliminating them into the future with more lead time to do the calculations.

What is the rest of the world doing?

End-of-school exams were cancelled this year due to pandemic restrictions in the United States, France, Belgium, Ireland, the Netherlands and Germany. Exams were modified in Denmark, Israel and Austria, while Italy held oral only exams.

The United Kingdom cancelled its A-level exams for the last two years and, in Finland, students were allowed to sit their university entrance exams multiple times.

Most Asian countries have postponed their exams. Many pundits in Western countries are advocating for a major change to the high-stakes assessment process, noting universities adjusted their entry criteria in the first year of the pandemic and coped just fine.

What are Australia’s options?

Australian educational leaders and policy makers have three distinct options:

1. Keep the system we have and continue to improve it

The first option – supported by most education ministers and regulators in states and territories – is that our exams and curriculum are built on a high degree of excellence and rigour. They have been honed by years of experience and completed by millions of students.

Continuing to improve the assessments and the curriculum that feeds them will ensure high standards and credibility for excellence rather than promoting a “lowering of the bar”. Over time, we can evolve new courses and assessments, incorporating more technology-based assessments as they are tested and validated for the high-volume administrations of state exams.

2. Add a learner profile to the current system

A second option – that of “learning profiles” – is based on the idea we need to expand the skills we value in young people, beyond those in traditional academic subjects. Skills of the future include critical thinking, problem-solving and collaboration.

Digital platforms are being developed to house evidence of student engagement in the community and to store non-traditional forms of learning (including video and other media) in online tools, creating a learner profile to represent these authentic learning experiences. NSW says it will be trialling this next year, creating an “education passport” for students.

3. Transform the system with new designs for schooling and assessment

The Catholic Education Diocese of Parramatta is transforming the use of student progress data over the school years. Think of the dashboard of a car that has multiple dials and indicators and imagine using that same approach to aggregate data about students and their learning journeys.

These tools can reliably forecast student performance, allowing us to adjust our interventions to promote student success. With the use of predictive analytics, rather than waiting for end-of-school exam results, we can help students boost their future trajectories through immediate support and interventions.

The Paramatta Education Diocese is in the early days of re-designing its schools to promote personal pathways and allow students to align their passions to their emerging skillsets.

Read more:
We know by Year 11 what mark students will get in Year 12. Do we still need a stressful exam?

Stemming from a concept of “leaving to learn” Big Picture Learning Australia — a not-for-profit company transforming traditional education – features internships centred around the passions of students as the core of the secondary experience. Teachers run advisories that allow for transdisciplinary learning in lieu of traditional classes, all mapped to the syllabuses of the key curriculum learning areas.

Around 40+ schools across the country are in partnership with this model. Students develop portfolios of their learning to document their journeys, organising their projects and assignments to critical learning outcomes which are assessed in a cloud-based learner credential. Nearly 20 Australian universities already accept these portfolios and the credentual for admission in lieu of end-of-school exams.

Our education system is built on 20th century (or earlier) designs of teaching, learning and assessment. COVID gives us the chance to do what we could have done already — move forward with a modern assessment model based on our current knowledge of learning. The goal is for all our children to discover and reach their potential.

John Fischetti is affiliated as a volunteer, unpaid Board member of Big Picture Australia.

– ref. COVID gives us a chance to rethink traditional end-of-school exams, and move into the 21 century – https://theconversation.com/covid-gives-us-a-chance-to-rethink-traditional-end-of-school-exams-and-move-into-the-21-century-167038

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Yu Tao, Senior Lecturer in Chinese Studies, The University of Western Australia

The man widely known in the English language as Confucius was born around 551 BCE in today’s southern Shandong Province. Confucius is the phonic translation of the Chinese word Kong fuzi 孔夫子, in which Kong 孔 was his surname and fuzi is an honorific for learned men.

Widely credited for creating the system of thought we now call Confucianism, this learned man insisted he was “not a maker but a transmitter”, merely “believing in and loving the ancients”. In this, Confucius could be seen as acting modestly and humbly, virtues he thought of highly.

Or, as Kang Youwei — a leading reformer in modern China has argued — Confucius tactically framed his revolutionary ideas as lost ancient virtues so his arguments would be met with fewer criticisms and less hostility.

Confucius looked nothing like the great sage in his own time as he is widely known in ours. To his contemporaries, he was perhaps foremost an unemployed political adviser who wandered around different fiefdoms for some years, attempting to sell his political ideas to different rulers — but never able to strike a deal.

It seems Confucius would have preferred to live half a millennium earlier, when China — according to him — was united under benevolent, competent and virtuous rulers at the dawn of the Zhou dynasty. By his own time, China had become a divided land with hundreds of small fiefdoms, often ruled by greedy, cruel or mediocre lords frequently at war.

But this frustrated scholar’s ideas have profoundly shaped politics and ethics in and beyond China ever since his death in 479 BCE. The greatest and the most influential Chinese thinker, his concept of filial piety, remains highly valued among young people in China, despite rapid changes in the country’s demography.

Despite some doubts as to whether many Chinese people take his ideas seriously, the ideas of Confucius remain directly and closely relevant to contemporary China.

This situation perhaps is comparable to Christianity in Australia. Although institutional participation is in constant decline, Christian values and narratives remain influential on Australian politics and vital social matters.

The danger today is in Confucianism being considered the single reason behind China’s success or failure. The British author Martin Jacques, for example, recently asserted Confucianism was the “biggest single reason” for East Asia’s success in the handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, without giving any explanation or justification.

If Confucius were alive, he would probably not hesitate to call out this solitary root of triumph or disaster as being lazy, incorrect and unwise.

Political structure and mutual responsibilities

Confucius wanted to restore good political order by persuading rulers to reestablish moral standards, exemplify appropriate social relations, perform time-honoured rituals and provide social welfare.

He worked hard to promote his ideas but won few supporters. Almost every ruler saw punishment and military force as shortcuts to greater power.

It was not until 350 years later during the reign of the Emperor Wu of Han that Confucianism was installed as China’s state ideology.

But this state-sanctioned version of Confucianism was not an honest revitalisation of Confucius’ ideas. Instead, it absorbed many elements from rival schools of thought, notably legalism, which emerged in the latter half of China’s Warring States period (453–221 BCE). Legalism argued efficient governance relies on impersonal laws and regulations — rather than moral principles and rites.

Like most great thinkers of the Axial Age between the 8th and 3rd century BCE, Confucius did not believe everyone was created equal.

Similar to Plato (born over 100 years later), Confucius believed the ideal society followed a hierarchy. When asked by Duke Jing of Qi about government, Confucius famously replied:

let the ruler be a ruler; the minister, a minister; the father, a father; the son, a son.

However it would be a superficial reading of Confucius to believe he called for unconditional obedience to rulers or superiors. Confucius advised a disciple “not to deceive the ruler but to stand up to them”.

Confucius believed the legitimacy of a regime fundamentally relies on the confidence of the people. A ruler should tirelessly work hard and “lead by example”.

Like in a family, a good son listens to his father, and a good father wins respect not by imposing force or seniority but by offering heartfelt love, support, guidance and care.

In other words, Confucius saw a mutual relationship between the ruler and the ruled.

Love and respect for social harmony

To Confucius, the appropriate relations between family members are not merely metaphors for ideal political orders, but the basic fabrics of a harmonious society.

An essential family value in Confucius’ ideas is xiao 孝, or filial piety, a concept explained in at least 15 different ways in the Analects, a collection of the words from Confucius and his followers.

Read more:
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Depending on the context, Confucius defined filial piety as respecting parents, as “never diverging” from parents, as not letting parents feel unnecessary anxiety, as serving parents with etiquette when they are alive, and as burying and commemorating parents with propriety after they pass away.

Confucius expected rulers to exemplify good family values. When Ji Kang Zi, the powerful prime minister of Confucius’ home state of Lu asked for advice on keeping people loyal to the realm, Confucius responded by asking the ruler to demonstrate filial piety and benignity (ci 慈).

Confucius viewed moral and ethical principles not merely as personal matters, but as social assets. He profoundly believed social harmony ultimately relies on virtuous citizens rather than sophisticated institutions.

In the ideas of Confucius, the most important moral principle is ren 仁, a concept that can hardly be translated into English without losing some of its meaning.

Like filial piety, ren is manifested in the love and respect one has for others. But ren is not restricted among family members and does not rely on blood or kinship. Ren guides people to follow their conscience. People with ren have strong compassion and empathy towards others.

Translators arguing for a single English equivalent for ren have attempted to interpret the concept as “benevolence”, “humanity”, “humanness” and “goodness”, none of which quite capture the full significance of the term.

The challenge in translating ren is not a linguistic one. Although the concept appears more than 100 times in the Analects, Confucius did not give one neat definition. Instead, he explained the term in many different ways.

As summarised by China historian Daniel Gardner, Confucius defined ren as:

to love others, to subdue the self and return to ritual propriety, to be respectful, tolerant, trustworthy, diligent, and kind, to be possessed of courage, to be free from worry, or to be resolute and firm.

Instead of searching for an explicit definition of ren, it is perhaps wise to view the concept as an ideal type of the highest and ultimate virtue Confucius believed good people should pursue.

Relevance in contemporary China

Confucius’ thinking hs had a profound impact on almost every great Chinese thinker since. Based upon his ideas, Mencius (372–289 BCE) and Xunzi (c310–c235 BCE) developed different schools of thought within the system of Confucianism.

Arguing against these ideas, Mohism (4th century BCE), Daoism (4th century BCE), Legalism (3rd century BCE) and many other influential systems of thought emerged in the 400 years after Confucius’ time, going on to shape many aspects of the Chinese civilisation in the last two millennia.

Modern China has a complicated relationship with Confucius and his ideas.

Since the early 20th century, many intellectuals influenced by western thought started denouncing Confucianism as the reason for China’s national humiliations since the first Opium War (1839-42).

Confucius received fierce criticism from both liberals and Marxists.

Hu Shih, a leader of China’s New Culture Movement in the 1910s and 1920s and an alumnus of Columbia University, advocated overthrowing the “House of Confucius”.

Mao Zedong, the founder of the People’s Republic of China, also repeatedly denounced Confucius and Confucianism. Between 1973 and 1975, Mao devoted the last political campaign in his life against Confucianism.

Read more:
To make sense of modern China, you simply can’t ignore Marxism

Despite these fierce criticisms and harsh persecutions, Confucius’ ideas remain in the minds and hearts of many Chinese people, both in and outside China.

One prominent example is PC Chang, another Chinese alumnus of Columbia University, who was instrumental in drafting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in Paris on December 10 1948. Thanks to Chang’s efforts, the spirit of some most essential Confucian ideas, such as ren, was deeply embedded in the Declaration.

Today, many Chinese parents, as well as the Chinese state, are keen children be provided a more Confucian education.

In 2004, the Chinese government named its initiative of promoting language and culture overseas after Confucius, and its leadership has been enthusiastically embracing Confucius’ lessons to consolidate their legitimacy and ruling in the 21st century.

Read more:
Explainer: what are Confucius Institutes and do they teach Chinese propaganda?

Yu Tao 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: an introduction to Confucius, his ideas and their lasting relevance – https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-an-introduction-to-confucius-his-ideas-and-their-lasting-relevance-160708

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

“The evidence is clear: climate change poses an existential threat to our lives, to our economy.”

Kevin Rudd, circa 2007? No, Joe Biden this week, as he toured areas hit by Hurricane Ida, which cost many lives and left a devastating trail of destruction.

The US president had a sharp message for climate sceptics and laggards. “The people […] who are yelling that we’re talking about interfering with free enterprise by doing something about climate change — they don’t live there.”

In this US summer alone, Biden said, communities with more than 100 million Americans had been struck by extreme weather. Looking to the November Glasgow climate conference, he reiterated that America was determined to deal with climate change and “we’ve got to move the rest of the world”.

The Biden speech was noted in Australian official circles.

Scott Morrison is beset by immediate health and economic issues, with COVID out of control in New South Wales and Victoria and worse to come as lockdowns are relaxed.

He said on Thursday: “It’s very important that our country lives with this virus. The next stage will be hard. We’re about to see that in New South Wales and we’re about to see it in Victoria. As they ease up, both states know hospitals will come under pressure, we’ll see case numbers rise, and that will be challenging.”

Apart from the continuing COVID crisis, which carries the risk of another technical recession, Morrison in the coming weeks will be focused on recrafting Australia’s climate policy ahead of Glasgow.

Time before the international climate conference is getting short. The Americans will be watching Australia’s policy progress, and turning the screws.

Climate was not mentioned in Biden’s phone call to Morrison last week, which was centred on Afghanistan, ANZUS and the coming QUAD meeting. But it is one of the items on the agenda when Defence Minister Peter Dutton and Foreign Minister Marise Payne meet US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin at next week’s AUSMIN talks in Washington.

The QUAD leaders meeting, also in Washington, involving the US, Australia, Japan and India, is expected to be later this month; the PM’s trip will give Biden an opportunity to talk to him about climate policy.

Morrison is wedged between the strong and increasing US pressure to boost Australia’s ambition on climate and the limited flexibility provided by the Nationals.

The Americans are not fooled by the federal government’s oft-repeated narrative that Australia has a good record on climate – that it keeps its word and meets and exceeds targets. The Americans’ response to Australia’s boast about bettering targets is along the lines of, “If you are going to exceed the target, why don’t you set the target higher?”

The US sees Australia as a poor performer and demands more. Firstly, it wants a firm commitment to net zero emissions by 2050, not Morrison’s current fudge of net zero as soon as possible, “preferably” by 2050. Secondly, it wants Australia’s current limited ambition for 2030 to be improved, which is an especially hard ask (although an alternative would be for Australia to talk about some other medium-term target – say 2035).

What Morrison signs up for in his Glasgow policy will come down in large part not just to what Deputy Prime Minister and Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce is willing to accept but what Joyce is able to deliver.

Sources say Joyce does not want to make Morrison’s position difficult for Glasgow. The two men are pragmatists; they are anxious to avoid friction in this pre-election period. But whether Morrison, who is autocratic by nature, fully understands the situation Joyce finds himself in is less clear.

Joyce won the Nationals leadership in part because his followers liked the way he thumbed his nose at things such as the 2050 target. They thought he was the man to stand up to the Liberals, in contrast to Michael McCormack, the leader he ousted.

Joyce also won, it should be noted, only narrowly and with a ragbag of followers, including a number who are not on board on climate change. Nor is a sizeable section of the party’s base, notwithstanding the concerns of many farmers and the position of farm organisations, who fully understand the implications of global warming for bushfires, droughts and floods and want robust action. Many of the “base” these days are in the mining areas.

Joyce has authority in his party, but not the near absolute control Morrison currently enjoys over the Liberals.

When Joyce keeps saying he is waiting to see a plan for getting to net zero emissions, the media and others rightly point out he’s sounding as though he’s outside government, rather than at the very heart of it.

What he means, however, is that while he and Morrison have had conversations about their general positions, he is waiting for the expert technical detail, and the costs, to be laid out.

The Nationals argue the rural sector carried most of the weight in the earlier cutting of emissions, where a major component was reducing land clearing.

They are insistent the regions should be protected in whatever policy is put forward for Glasgow.

On a more cynical level, there is the prospect of some big financial pay-off for the regions to get the Nationals across the line.

That may work. But from Joyce’s point of view, if fringe parties like One Nation creamed off some Nationals’ votes, particularly in Queensland, on the climate issue, a good financial deal could still be a negative electorally.

The Nationals’ Queensland seats are on inflated margins, thanks to a perfect storm of factors in 2019, but Queensland is a state of big swings. Joyce would have to be “adroit” (in the words of one Nationals source) in his campaigning in these areas when defending a firm 2050 target.

Joyce can’t afford to lose seats at the election. Of course a change of Nationals leader would be expected if the Coalition lost office, but even if the government is returned, Joyce’s leadership could be vulnerable if the Nationals’ numbers went backwards.

Some of his supporters (George Christensen, Sam McMahon) will not be in the next parliament, and the competent, smooth-talking David Littleproud, at present deputy leader, would be a very viable alternative, although others could also eye the job.

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: Morrison is wedged between Biden and Barnaby in forging climate policy for Glasgow – https://theconversation.com/grattan-on-friday-morrison-is-wedged-between-biden-and-barnaby-in-forging-climate-policy-for-glasgow-167641

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Toole, Professor of International Health, Burnet Institute

Since May, the Delta variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus has spread rapidly through most of Southeast Asia.

Of the ten member nations of ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations), all but Brunei have experienced recent surges, most of which have seen the highest number of cases since the pandemic began. However, these nine countries have experienced different COVID-19 trends.

Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam reported very low daily cases throughout 2020 but are all now experiencing record surges in cases. Vietnam and Thailand are reporting 13,000-14,000 cases daily.

Singapore had a huge first wave in early 2020, reaching 1,000 cases a day, mainly affecting migrant workers. The country has now fully vaccinated 79% of its entire population but is currently experiencing a spike in new cases.

Myanmar had a surge in late 2020 and a lethal second wave this July, and cases are once again increasing.

Read more:
How a perfect storm of events is turning Myanmar into a ‘super-spreader’ COVID state

The three outliers that have struggled throughout most of the pandemic are Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines. Indonesia’s massive third wave is now in steep decline but more than 80,000 deaths have occurred since early June.

Malaysia began to report an increase in cases in September 2020, which led to a peak in February and then to a huge ongoing third wave.

It’s now the Philippines that is cause for most concern in the region. The country has reported more than two million cases and 34,000 deaths. The daily case rate is the second highest in Southeast Asia, after Malaysia.

Read more:
Indonesia records its highest increase in COVID cases – and numbers are likely to rise again before they fall

The Philippines’ fourth wave

The Philippines has experienced four waves of COVID-19. The first wave was modest, reaching a peak seven-day rolling average of 316 in early April 2020.

From early June 2020, cases began to steadily increase leading into the second wave, which reached a peak of around 4,300 daily cases in late August.

The third wave reached a peak of 11,000 average daily cases in mid-April 2021.

However, it is the fourth wave, fuelled by the Delta variant, which is the most severe since the pandemic began and shows no sign of slowing. By September 8, the daily average had reached almost 19,000 cases.

How has the Philippines responded?

The Philippines government imposed strict restrictions early in the pandemic. In mid-March 2020, President Rodrigo Duterte ordered Metro Manila and adjacent provinces to be put under “enhanced community quarantine” (ECQ).

Under ECQ, mass gatherings were prohibited, government employees worked from home, school and university classes were suspended, only essential businesses stayed open, mass transportation was restricted, and people were ordered to observe social distancing.

When ECQ was imposed on March 15, the country had reported just 140 cases and 12 deaths. Despite the restrictions, the totals reached 5,453 cases and 349 deaths one month later.

The government relied heavily on the police and military to ensure all health protocols were followed. This led critics to denounce its militarist approach. Some civic groups providing assistance to communities faced harassment and attacks.

Others criticised the government for taking a war-like approach that focused on identifying and punishing those who breached the rules rather than working cooperatively with, and providing financial support to, affected communities.

The term “pasaway”, a Filipino word referring to a stubborn person, became a punitive target in government communications. Amid the lockdown, the term pasaway referred to people violating government-imposed health protocols.

At the end of May 2020, restrictions were gradually loosened, entailing the re-introduction of mass transportation and the opening of government offices and certain businesses. At this time, the average had risen to 578 daily cases, the highest since the pandemic began.

Read more:
Why is Delta such a worry? It’s more infectious, probably causes more severe disease, and challenges our vaccines

The easing of restrictions was driven by economic factors – the unemployment rate had risen to 17.7% and 26% of businesses had closed.

Amid the gradual easing of quarantine restrictions, the Philippines saw an accelerating increase of COVID-19 cases. By the end of July, 75% of beds in intensive care units, 82% of isolation beds and 85% of ward beds in Metro Manila were occupied.

The fourth lockdown

Fast forward to early August 2021 as daily cases surged past 8,000. A new lockdown was announced in the National Capital District, which comprises more than half the country’s economy.

By August 20, Manila and surrounding provinces had been in either ECQ (enhanced community quarantine) or modified community quarantine for a total of 170 days since the beginning of the pandemic.

On that day, restrictions were eased even as daily cases surged to a record high of 17,231 and 317 deaths. More than 26% of samples tested positive, the country’s highest positivity rate so far.

The Philippines is trying desperately to spur activity in an economy that contracted a record 9.5% last year.

However, this risks having the health system totally overwhelmed. Many hospitals fear a mass exodus of nurses who are overworked, underpaid and constantly exposed to the virus. Filipino nurses are paid the lowest salaries among nurses in Southeast Asia.

What’s needed now?

The response by the Philippines has often been among the strictest in the world. However, the imposition and lifting of restrictions have not always been based on the caseload. The easing of restrictions has been driven by a desire for economic revival.

With only 14% of the population fully vaccinated and case numbers continuing to soar, the country is unlikely to vaccinate itself out of this outbreak before the health system is overwhelmed.

With cases now occurring in all 17 provinces, a clear national “vaccine plus” policy needs to be urgently implemented to save both lives and livelihoods.

This means while accelerating the vaccine rollout, there also need to be other preventive measures, such as mask wearing, physical distancing, attention to indoor ventilation, an effective test-trace-isolate system and, when necessary, localised lockdowns.

Read more:
From ground zero to zero tolerance – how China learnt from its COVID response to quickly stamp out its latest outbreak

Michael Toole receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council.

– ref. The Philippines passes the 2 million mark as COVID-19 cases surge in Southeast Asia – https://theconversation.com/the-philippines-passes-the-2-million-mark-as-covid-19-cases-surge-in-southeast-asia-167186

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Toby Walsh, Professor of AI at UNSW, Research Group Leader, UNSW

South Australia has begun a trial of a new COVID app to monitor arrivals into the state. SA Premier Steven Marshall claimed “every South Australian should feel pretty proud that we are the national pilot for the home-based quarantine app”.

He then doubled down with the boast that he was “pretty sure the technology that we have developed within the South Australia government will become the national standard and will be rolled out across the country.”

Victoria too has announced impending “technologically supported” home quarantine, though details remain unclear. Home quarantine will also eventually be available for international arrivals, according to Prime Minister Scott Morrison.

The South Australian app has received little attention in Australia, but in the US the left-leaning Atlantic magazine called it “as Orwellian as any in the free world”. Right-wing outlets such as Fox News and Breitbart also joined the attack, and for once I find myself in agreement with them.

Location tracking and facial recognition

Despite the SA Premier’s claims, this isn’t the first such app to be used in Australia. A similar home-quarantine app is already in use for arrivals into WA, and in some cases the Northern Territory.

Both apps uses geolocation and facial recognition software to track and identify those in quarantine. Users are required to prove they are at home when randomly prompted by the application.

In SA, you have 15 minutes to get the face recognition software to verify you’re still at home. In WA, it is more of a race. You have just 5 minutes before you risk a knock on the door from the police.

Another difference is that the SA app is opt-in. Currently. The WA app is already mandatory for arrivals from high risk areas like Victoria. For extreme risk areas like NSW, it’s straight into a quarantine hotel.

Reasons for concern

But why are we developing such home-quarantine apps in the first place, when we already have a cheap technology to do this? If we want to monitor that people are at home (and that’s a big if), wouldn’t one of the ankle tags already used by our corrective services for home detention be much simpler, safer and more robust?

There are many reasons to be concerned about home-quarantine apps.

First, they’ll likely be much easier to hack than ankle tags. How many of us have hacked geo-blocks to access Netflix in the US, or to watch other digital content from another country? Faking GPS location on a smartphone is not much more difficult.

Second, facial recognition software is often flawed, and is frequently biased against people of colour and against women. The documentary Coded Bias does a great job unpicking these biases.

Despite years of effort, even the big tech giants like Google and Amazon have been unable to eliminate these biases from their software. I have little hope the SA government or the WA company GenVis, the developers of the two Australian home-quarantine apps, will have done better.

Indeed, the Australian Human Rights Commission has called for a moratorium on the use of facial recognition software in high-risk settings such as policing until better regulation is in place to protect human rights and privacy.

Third, there needs to be a much more detailed and public debate around issues like privacy, and safeguards put in place based on this discussion, in advance of the technology being used.

With COVID check-in apps, we were promised the data would only be used for public health purposes. But police forces around Australia have accessed this information for other ends on at least six occasions. This severely undermines the public’s confidence and use of such apps.

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

Before it was launched, the Commonwealth’s COVIDSafe app had legislative prohibitions put in place on the use of the data collected for anything but contact tracing. This perhaps gave us a false sense of security as the state-produced COVID check-in apps did not have any such legal safeguards. Only some states have retrospectively introduced legislation to provide such protections.

Fourth, we have to worry about how software like this legitimises technologies like facial recognition that ultimately erode fundamental rights such as the right to privacy.

If home-quarantine apps work successfully, will they open the door to facial recognition being used in other settings? To identify shop lifters? To provide access to welfare? Or to healthcare? What Orwellian world will this take us to?

The perils of facial recognition

In China, we have already seen facial recognition software used to monitor and persecute the Uighur minority. In the US, at least three Black people have already wrongly ended up in jail due to facial recognition errors.

Facial recognition is a technology that is dangerous if it doesn’t work (as it often the case). And dangerous if it does. It changes the speed, scale and cost of surveillance.

With facial recognition software behind the CCTV cameras found on many street corners, you can be tracked 24/7. You are no longer anonymous when you go out to the shops. Or when you protest about Black lives mattering or the climate emergency.

High technology is not the solution

High tech software like facial recognition isn’t a fix for the problems that have plagued Australia’s response to the pandemic. It can’t remedy the failure to buy enough vaccines, the failure to build dedicated quarantine facilities, or the in-fighting and point-scoring between states and with the Commonwealth.

I never thought I’d say this but, all in all, I think I’d prefer an ankle tag. And if the image of the ankle tag seems too unsettling for you, we could do what Hong Kong has done and make it a wristband.

Toby Walsh 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. I’d prefer an ankle tag: why home quarantine apps are a bad idea – https://theconversation.com/id-prefer-an-ankle-tag-why-home-quarantine-apps-are-a-bad-idea-167533

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Will W Dobud, Social Work Lecturer, Charles Sturt University

If you peered through the keyhole of any psychotherapy session, chances are they would all look very similar.

There may be nearly 1,000 types of therapies — such as cognitive behavioural and family therapy — but you will typically find a client and practitioner in a room, sitting opposite each other, talking.

Even if you travelled back in time to the 1960s, the 1940s, or even visited Sigmund Freud at the turn of the 20th century, things would also appear similar.

But this is starting to change.

What is outdoor therapy?

During COVID, many therapists took their sessions online. But others went outside, sitting on a park bench with their clients or taking a leisurely stroll through a nearby park.

This added to the existing use of the outdoors for therapeutic purposes, including camping trips, canoeing, rock climbing, gardening, and simple walk-and-talk therapy sessions.

Outdoor therapies use outdoor excursions to address behavioural and mental health issues. Whether with individuals or in groups, practitioners combine outdoor activity with talking therapies.

We are also seeing increasing evidence outdoor therapy can improve well-being, decrease symptoms of post-traumatic stress and increase the quality of people’s participation for those who have experienced multiple therapy treatment failures.

Recipients of outdoor therapy have reported enjoying the shared adventure of being outside with their therapist. The time in nature, with its own remedial effects, also boosts the restorative potential of the sessions.

Not just a crisis response

Of course, using outdoor settings for healing is nothing new — First Nations people have appreciated the benefits of this for tens of thousands of years.

In the western world, there is also a tradition of outdoor healing. In 1901 Manhattan State Hospital developed “tent therapy” when patients in the psychiatric units developed tuberculosis.

Read more:
To safeguard children’s mental health during COVID-19, parents must look after their own

Five years later, an earthquake damaged the San Francisco Agnew Asylum requiring patients to live in outdoor settings. Adapting to these unforeseen circumstances facilitated improvements in mental and physical health, and reductions in violent behaviour.

But outdoor therapy should not just be a crisis response, it should be as accessible as sitting on a counsellor’s couch or engaging in telehealth services.

Help for veterans, people with disability

Previously, outdoor therapies have been considered as something just to help troubled young people (which has been accompanied by some valid ethical and safety concerns in cases where “tough love” has been pushed too far). But there is growing evidence it can be applied more broadly.

Read more:
Hairdressers in rural Australia end up being counsellors too

Combat veterans, Indigenous populations, people with disabilities, people with terminal illnesses are among those who have shown benefit from outdoor therapy.

For some people, traditional talk therapy does not suit. Sitting across from a therapist may seem too confrontational, or there is an expectation that business-as-usual therapy is ineffective. For example, we know that for many young people, therapy attempts fail. Taking therapy outdoors has demonstrated outcomes on par with tightly-controlled clinical trials, with regards to improved well-being and symptom reduction.

Increasing options and access

But there are compelling reasons why we should expand this option to anyone seeking psychological help. Beyond the therapeutic benefits, there are access benefits as well.

While there is no doubt what many experience in psychotherapists’ offices is effective — and online therapy can also work — the small take up rate of therapies combined with the high indicators of mental health in society show that we have an engagement problem.

According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, around 20% of Australians experienced diagnosable mental health concerns each year, but only about 11% received a Medicare-subsidised mental health service in 2019-20.

Access is clearly an issue. Sometimes this is because costs of treatment are high, despite subsidies, and waitlists are long (something that has become an even greater problem during COVID).

We also know that different people may need different treatment options. In the United Kingdom, a huge investment in mental health care in 2008 saw 56% of those who accessed a service stop using it after a single visit. Even when therapy was free and accessible, engagement was a serious issue.

Increasing accessibility

A common concern regarding therapy outdoors is confidentiality. What happens if someone sees your client during a walk in the park?

But taking therapy outside can actually appear less visible as there is no need to walk into the local psychotherapy clinic from the street to sit in a small, crowded waiting room.

If we want more people to seek help for their mental health, get that help and stick with it, we need more options.

And an obvious one begins with opening the counselling room door.

If this article has raised issues for you or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call Lifeline on 13 11 14 or beyondblue on 1300 22 4636.

_This piece was produced as part of Social Sciences Week, running 6-12 September. A full list of 70 events can be found here. _

Will W Dobud 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. Counselling almost always happens in a room — what if more people had the option of going outside? – https://theconversation.com/counselling-almost-always-happens-in-a-room-what-if-more-people-had-the-option-of-going-outside-166503

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Frank Jotzo, Professor, Crawford School of Public Policy and Head of Energy, Institute for Climate Energy and Disaster Solutions, Australian National University

A study out today says the vast majority of Earth’s coal, including 95% of Australia’s, cannot be burned if global warming is to be limited to 1.5℃ this century. The findings are undoubtedly true. But examining how much fossil fuel the world can still use is not the question we should be asking.

Instead, the most useful questions are: how do we advance Australia’s economic future outside high-emissions industries? And how can we seize the opportunities presented by the declines of coal, and then gas, rather than watching the economy go underwater as we try to stem an unstoppable tide?

The world is moving away fossil fuels, and there’s nothing Australia can do about it. Racing to dig up and sell whatever fossil fuels we can before the timer stops is not a future-proof strategy. We need to prepare for the change and diversify the economy.

How much coal must remain in the ground is beside the point. Instead, we should grasp this moment – turning it into a positive step for the world community and future generations.

The numbers game

The new study by researchers at University College London examines how much fossil fuel can still be burned if we hope to keep the global average temperature rises to within 1.5℃ – the ambitious end of the Paris Agreement goals. It compares this “budget” with the known stores of coal, oil and gas in various parts of the world.

The study finds the vast majority of remaining fossil fuels must remain in the ground – specifically 89% of coal, 59% of gas and 58% of oil. For Australia, that equates to 95% of our coal reserves and 35% of our gas.

The research is a follow-up to a well-known 2015 study based on the 2℃ warming scenario. Similar findings have also been made in other research.

While it’s long been clear that much of Earth’s fossil fuel deposits must stay in the ground, there are uncertainties around the numbers. These come from varying assumptions about:

• the exact size of the remaining global carbon budget for any particular temperature increase

• how the carbon budget might be distributed between coal, oil and gas (which depends on technology choices and costs)

• the extent of carbon capture and storage (or carbon use) and removal of carbon dioxide (CO₂) from the atmosphere

• how much fossil fuel would be available for extraction.

The study released overnight offers results only from a single model and data set. The results remind us how little time remains to keep using fossil fuels, but we should not focus unduly on the headline numbers the study produced.

Read more:
Yes, it is entirely possible for Australia to phase out thermal coal within a decade

3 lenses on the end of the fossil fuel age

Just as the Stone Age didn’t end for a lack of stones, the fossil fuel age won’t end for a lack of coal, gas or oil.

So while humanity is not running out of fossil fuels, we are running out of options for the waste product, carbon dioxide – and running out of time to deal with it.

Countries that produce and export large amounts of fossil fuels must address this undeniable reality. We characterise three different ways they can do this.

The first is the “hell-for-leather” approach: extract, use and sell whatever fossil fuels you can while there’s still a market, and promote the global use of fossil fuels to extend the ride. This is the natural stance for companies focused solely on fossil fuel production.

Some countries that export fossil fuels are pursuing such strategies. In Australia, a statement by federal Resources Minister Keith Pitt this week can be interpreted along such lines.

In this mindset, remaining fossil fuel deposits should be exploited to the maximum, at whatever cost. It emphasises specific business interests, while defining national interests in narrow and short-sighted terms.

It also disregards the global climate change objective and international relations with countries that emphasise climate concerns. In short, it risks train wrecks down the track.

Read more:
As the world battles to slash carbon emissions, Australia considers paying dirty coal stations to stay open longer

A second approach is to concede fossil fuels are on a long-term downward trajectory, due to climate change concerns and rapid improvements in clean technologies. It accepts this change is driven by consumers and there is nothing fossil fuel exporters can do about it.

The logical consequence is to prepare for the inevitable decline and cushion the transition. That could include using some revenue from fossil fuels to invest in a socially and environmentally sensitive transition.

Under this approach, the amount of fossil fuel available underground is simply irrelevant. The deposits are redundant – just like all those stones were at the end of the Stone Age. The question of what proportion must remain unexploited is of no particular interest.

A third option is to understand the challenge as a positive one: take the global shift away from fossil fuels as an opportunity to modernise and massively diversify the economy.

Taking this perspective, leaving coal in the ground is a positive step that helps nations and regions evolve in desirable ways and helps the world community, and future generations, deal with climate change. Not mining coal, then, takes on an ethical dimension – perhaps it can be seen as “ethi-coal”.

Read more:
Climate change has already hit Australia. Unless we act now, a hotter, drier and more dangerous future awaits, IPCC warns

Preparing for a post-fossil future

Whichever lens one chooses to look through, clean technologies will displace the burning of coal, oil and gas.

In Australia, large corporations (and to a lesser extent, some employees and public finances) have done well out of coal and gas. But that’s far from the only way we can derive large export revenues.

Australia is exceptionally well placed to build up an energy and processing industry based on its practically limitless renewable energy potential, coupled with experience with and predisposition towards large resource industries. This could include clean hydrogen and even green steel.

But to once again become dependent on just a few large industries, such as minerals or energy, should not be the goal here. Rather, we should use the global low-carbon transition as a platform for a large range of new industries. There are many opportunities in new technologies and practices.

So let’s keep our eye on the big picture: diversifying the economy into a broad range of activities with low environmental footprints, underpinned by modern infrastructure, top quality education and a strong social and health system.

Therein lies a desirable and economically sound future for Australia – one where we won’t be worrying one bit about all the coal left in the ground.

Frank Jotzo leads and has led research projects funded by a variety of funders. None present a conflict of interest on this topic.

Mark Howden 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. A promising new dawn is ours for the taking – so let’s stop counting the coal Australia must leave in the ground – https://theconversation.com/a-promising-new-dawn-is-ours-for-the-taking-so-lets-stop-counting-the-coal-australia-must-leave-in-the-ground-167527

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ernesta Sofija, Lecturer, public health and health promotion, Griffith University

Most people want to do the “right thing” when it comes to following public health measures, such as wearing a mask or not mixing with friends and family.

Yet after what feels like a never-ending 18 months of lockdowns and COVID-19 saturated government messages, we’re all just a bit over it.

So government communications must adapt to our changing needs and emotions to reach people suffering pandemic fatigue. Here’s how government messaging needs to change at this stage of the pandemic.

Read more:
Sick of COVID-19? Here’s why you might have pandemic fatigue

Pandemic fatigue is real

Pandemic fatigue describes how, over time, we can naturally lose motivation or become complacent about following COVID-19 public health advice or seeking information about it.

Certain groups — such as health-care workers and young males — are already experiencing it. You might be feeling it too.

Gradual exhaustion and ability to engage with government public health messaging is not unusual and is part of a complex interplay of factors, including those relating to risk and control.

Perception of risk

First, someone’s motivation to follow COVID-19 health advice relates to how likely they think they’ll be infected or have serious disease.

Despite increasing rates of the disease in the community, as time goes on, some people start to consider the personal, social and economic consequences of restrictions greater than the actual risk related to the virus.

A degree of control

Second, the need for self-determination, or controlling what happens in your life, begins to set in. The urge for freedom may incite certain groups to act out.

Read more:
Public protest or selfish ratbaggery? Why free speech doesn’t give you the right to endanger other people’s health

Pandemic fatigue is a concern

Pandemic fatigue is a concern as people are more tempted to cut corners, putting themselves and others at risk. So governments must recognise the potential consequence of monotonous messaging, making it all too easy for people to switch off.

They must acknowledge what makes it hard or easy for people to adopt protective behaviours.

And as pandemic fatigue sets in, we also need to see some light at the end of the tunnel. Governments can provide this by explaining how specific actions taken can make a difference to overall outcomes.

Without fostering hope, the public’s commitment to limiting the impact of this crisis is likely to continue to slide.

Here are four ways government messaging needs to change to stave off pandemic fatigue.

1. Understand people

Governments must identify and understand population groups who have notable pandemic fatigue, such as people with lower education, young males or health-care workers.

Then they need to tailor and test new evidence-based messages with these target groups. It’s best to have fewer quality messages hitting the right spot than many lower quality messages distributed widely.

Read more:
Why telling stories could be a more powerful way of convincing some people to take a COVID vaccine than just the facts

2. Engage people as part of the solution

We know one of the main drivers of resistance to following government public health messages is the need to feel in control and have a sense of autonomy. Governments must engage people by reframing messages as much as possible to be positive and hopeful.

By using personal stories as motivators, collective words like “we”, a two-way dialogue and trusted voices in the community, governments can engage and inspire communities to have self-determination.

When we studied Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s communications during the first wave of the pandemic, we found he used limited personal stories and empathetic language.

But Norway’s government recognised the community as experts of their own lives and engaged them in creating solutions, for example, flexible ways of reopening kindergartens.

Read more:
Even with a vaccine, we need to adjust our mindset to playing the COVID-19 long game

3. Allow people to live their lives but reduce risk

As the pandemic progresses, the “all or nothing” approach to public health advice may be overly daunting, and risks alienating and demotivating people.

So government messaging should move beyond “do not” to “doing things differently”, allowing us to incorporate the things we value into our “new” way of living.

This acknowledges people will want to hug others and celebrate birthdays, and advises how to minimise the risks when doing so.

For instance, the Netherlands government released specific guidance for people seeking intimacy during the pandemic, advising people find a “cuddle buddy” rather than being intimate with several partners.

This harm reduction approach recognises abstinence is not an option for many.

4. Acknowledge and address people’s hardship

While lockdowns and other stringent measures are crucial to control the spread of virus, they have taken a toll on the mental health and well-being of populations across the globe and affected everyday life through loss of jobs and security.

Governments should acknowledge this hardship through messages of empathy and hope. They should also create opportunities to ease the feelings of life being put on hold.

Norway’s health minister provided a great example of this, where he acknowledged the hardship young people faced, thanking them for their contribution to society. He also called on them to come up with safe solutions for university events.

This seemed to have had a positive impact with young people in Norway more likely to follow COVID-19 restrictions than those over 50.

Yes, communicating in a pandemic is hard

During such a prolonged crisis, there is no “one size fits all” communication strategy. An initial analysis of national pandemic responses around the world showed many leaders found it hard to balance communicating public health measures with the growing impatience to return to some sense of normalcy.

And by the end of Australia’s first wave, we showed Morrison’s communication was dominated by political and economic actions. Repeating the same old themes may contribute to pandemic fatigue.

Now it’s time for government messaging to adapt and adjust to our level of fatigue, taking into account ways in which current methods may actually be contributing to levels of disengagement.

If governments don’t do this, people may miss or purposefully avoid public health advice. And that makes it harder for us to ever recover.

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

– ref. We’re sick of COVID. So government messaging needs to change if it’s to cut through – https://theconversation.com/were-sick-of-covid-so-government-messaging-needs-to-change-if-its-to-cut-through-166891

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Justine Nolan, Professor of Law and Justice and Director of the Australian Human Rights Institute, UNSW

The Morrison government’s handpicked appointment of a new human rights commissioner, Lorraine Finlay, threatens to undermine the independence and legitimacy of the Australian Human Rights Commission itself.

It could also damage Australia’s credibility on the international stage and lead to a downgrading of our commission by the body that serves as a watchdog for human rights commissions around the world.

National human rights institutions are independent, legal bodies established by parliaments, which use the powers of the state to promote and protect human rights.

The maintenance of this independence is critical. Human rights commissions often tread a fine line in ensuring they have support and adequate funding from governments, while also maintaining the ability to freely criticise them.

If these bodies are to do their jobs well, their leaders must be prepared to offend their governments and have the independence to do so.

This is less likely to happen if the senior appointments within the institution are politically engineered, rather than the result of an open and competitive process. The Coalition government has a poor track record on this, and Finlay’s appointment is just the latest example of this.

Guiding principles for human rights bodies

The first independent human rights bodies were established in the late 1970s and early 1980s in New Zealand, Canada and Australia. By the early 1990s, there were about 20 of them around the world claiming to be independent.

The United Nations sponsored the first gathering of these institutions in Paris in October 1991. They drafted and adopted what became known as the Paris Principles, which set minimum standards for national human rights institutions.

Read more:
Do we need a new human rights commissioner? Yes, but it’s complicated …

The principles require these bodies to be independent from government. They also highlight the importance of a clear, transparent and participatory process for appointments, which allows for representation from broader society.

As such, the principles became a test for the credibility and legitimacy of national human rights institutions around the world.

One of the greatest challenges for international human rights is not the process of lawmaking but implementation. That’s why the principles are so important — they help ensure these bodies operate independently to hold governments to account.

Australia’s ‘A’ rating is now in jeopardy

Today, there are scores of national human rights institutions around the world, including in countries with dubious human rights records such as Russia and Iran.

Not all of them have been accredited by the Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions (GANHRI). This organisation was set up to periodically review and analyse these national human rights bodies to ensure they are complying with the Paris Principles.

Australia’s Human Rights Commission is currently classified as an “A status” institution, meaning it has full participation rights at the UN Human Rights Council (the right to attend and speak up at UN meetings) and can take part in the governance of GANHRI (including voting rights).

Partially compliant human rights commissions are given “B status” and may only participate as observers. They are essentially works in progress. Among the countries in this class are Myanmar, Venezuela, Chad, Libya and Bahrain.

In 2015, Thailand’s Human Rights Commission was downgraded to “B status” for its consistent shortcomings, which included the selection and appointment process of commissioners and serious issues around independence and neutrality.

Australia is due for its accreditation review in early 2022, and its “A status” is now in jeopardy, thanks to its handpicked new human rights commissioner.

A status downgrade can severely damage the legitimacy of the Australian Human Rights Commission and people’s confidence in its long-term ability to effectively protect human rights.

A pattern of political appointments

This is not the first time an Australian human rights commissioner was handpicked by the government. In 2013, the Abbott government sparked enormous controversy by appointing Tim Wilson as commissioner — a vocal critic of the Human Rights Commission and its work.

Following this move, the Australian Human Rights Commission was criticised by GANHRI in its 2016 review for not “following the merit-based selection process”. It said such an

appointment has the potential to bring into question the legitimacy of the appointees and the independence of the [Human Rights Commission].

The next three appointments for senior roles in 2016 were then done in a competitive process, including Ed Santow as human rights commissioner.

However, Finlay’s appointment as the new human rights commissioner, as well as the 2019 appointment of Ben Gauntlett as the disability commissioner, were not conducted transparently. Neither process was open or competitive.

Why this matters

Australia has long been a leader in promoting the Paris Principles, affirming the importance of strong, independent human rights institutions around the globe.

The government should agree to and mandate a legislated appointment process for all senior leadership roles. This is not a radical approach.

When GANHRI criticised Australia in 2016, it expressly called for future selection processes to be transparent and competitive. This process should involve publicising vacancies to maximise the number of potential candidates and promoting broad consultation from the outside community and subject matter experts.

Read more:
UN slams Australia’s human rights record

Candidates should also be assessed on the basis of pre-determined, objective and publicly available criteria. And newly appointed commissioners should not be representatives of any other organisations.

An open process that promotes merit-based selection is necessary to preserve the Human Rights Commission’s independence. It is also critical to enabling the commission to do its work both at home and abroad.

If we cannot ensure the process to appoint a human rights commissioner is fair, what does this say about the fate of human rights in this country?

Justine Nolan 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. Australia’s ‘A’ rating on human rights is under threat with a handpicked, politically engineered commissioner – https://theconversation.com/australias-a-rating-on-human-rights-is-under-threat-with-a-handpicked-politically-engineered-commissioner-167626

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Geoff Hanmer, Honorary Professional Fellow, Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building, University of Technology Sydney

Universities have had few sources of capital funds since the Abbott government sidelined the Education Investment Fund in 2014. The loss of an estimated A$16 billion of income by 2023 due to the COVID-19 pandemic has simply added to this problem.

The City Deals process is one option, but for most universities it’s a poisoned chalice. A university will have to make a large financial contribution to the project and bears the risk of any cost overruns. These deals were conceived in the salad days prior to 2020 and now look decidedly wilted.

Read more:
Think big. Why the future of uni campuses lies beyond the CBD

How do these City Deals work?

The Perth City Deal, for example, includes a $695 million project for Edith Cowan University. With the Commonwealth providing $245 million and the state government $150 million, ECU must stump up $300 million and hand over its perfectly serviceable Mount Lawley campus to the state government. The upshot is that the university will spend much more than would be needed to upgrade that campus for the dubious benefit of moving it 6km to the CBD.

The Australian Department of Infrastructure describes City Deals as “a genuine partnership between the three levels of government and the community to work towards a shared vision for productive and liveable cities”. The Perth deal is clearly a boost for the CBD and the Western Australian construction industry. The benefits to teaching or research at ECU are less easy to identify.

The Darwin City Deal commits Charles Darwin University (CDU) to a new campus in the Darwin CBD. CDU teaches 70% of its student load online, but it will end up with four campuses in Darwin with a combined capacity of well over 10,000 students to teach the 4,000 enrolled for on-campus study. The prospect of more students from China, which was a key component in planning for the project, has disappeared.

The deal required CDU to take out a $151.5 million loan from the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility (NAIF). While the interest rate is low, the capital component must be paid back.

Again, this project is a boost for the Northern Territory construction industry, but it may well reduce CDU’s capacity to spend on teaching and research. As a result of longstanding financial pressures, CDU has already sacked 77 staff and scrapped courses.

Read more:
A fad, not a solution: ‘city deals’ are pushing universities into high-rise buildings

Another option is to spend nothing on infrastructure. The University of Adelaide has announced a complete halt to such spending for the foreseeable future. It still plans to attract “top talent” with its ageing facilities. Quite how this will work is unexplained.

Developers are in it for the profits

Other universities have struck deals with developers. These can range from selling university assets and leasing them back, or signing up to a long-term lease on new purpose-built space using a special purpose vehicle (SPV), doing developments using university land, or other financial wizardry.

Charter Hall, a real estate investment company, has signed up Western Sydney University to several deals with a combined value of around a billion dollars. A new $350 million campus is being built in the CBD of Bankstown.

Charter Hall has openly said its aim is to create a new asset class in university buildings and campuses. This approach effectively privatises campus assets, nearly all of which were paid for with public money and charitable donations.

Western Sydney University is selling a newly built neighbourhood shopping centre and an adjoining residential development site. This was developed with Charter Hall on land controlled by the university, which says: “The Caddens Corner project is part of the Western Growth strategy, reshaping the University’s campus network, and allowing the University to maximise its investment in the core university activities of teaching, engagement and research.”

This is an interesting proposition, as teaching, engagement and research are all essentially operational, not capital, costs. In other words, the university is selling public assets to fund recurrent costs while planning to have 13 campuses to educate not many more students than Macquarie University, which has one.

Read more:
3 planning strategies for Western Sydney jobs, but do they add up?

In Melbourne, Swinburne University has put a seven-storey office building on Flinders Lane back on the market just one year after buying it for $44 million. In June, RMIT University in Melbourne brought forward plans to offload a 14-storey strata property on Bourke Street for more than $120 million and lease it back for five years.

A good time to borrow and build

Certainly, getting a developer to build a facility and lease it back to the university will reduce the need for capital. For similar reasons, a low-income household might choose a rental purchase arrangement to get a flat-screen TV. But like any rental purchase agreement, the short-term benefits pale in comparison to the long-term costs.

And universities are certainly about the long term. Four universities in Australia are more than 125 years old and they are youngsters compared to Harvard (385), Leiden (436), Oxford (925) or Bologna (933).

Read more:
A century that profoundly changed universities and their campuses

Another option for universities is to borrow money from a bank. If the universities can’t afford to do that, then they can’t afford to get developers to borrow money on their behalf and build them buildings while the developers also make a profit. There is no secret sauce and definitely no magic pudding.

Borrowing to fund the replacement or refurbishment of buildings at the end of their economic life is financially prudent providing benefits outweigh costs. University leaders might need to learn how to resist the temptation to make every building an “icon”, but capital investments to support teaching and research are rational and responsible. With interest rates as low as they will ever be and building costs a long way below the peak of the next cycle, now is an ideal time to build.

Geoff Hanmer is managing director of ARINA and a member of the Australian Institute of Architects, the Association of Consulting Architects, the Architectural Association and SAHANZ.

– ref. Why universities may come to regret the costs of City Deals and private sector ‘solutions’ – https://theconversation.com/why-universities-may-come-to-regret-the-costs-of-city-deals-and-private-sector-solutions-166670

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tadgh McMahon, Adjunct Lecturer, College of Medicine and Public Health, Flinders University

As evacuees and refugees from Afghanistan start their new lives in Australia, their ability to navigate the digital world will be crucial. Our research, published today, reveals how newly arrived refugees use digital technologies as they begin this new chapter.

Importantly, new arrivals will need some level of digital know-how to participate in QR code-based contact tracing, to access COVID testing, book vaccination appointments and prove their vaccination status.

Our report shows strong rates of technology use and access among newly-arrived refugees, and particularly for communication. But gaps remain in other aspects of digital inclusion, especially for women and children.

Digital inclusion, settlement and refugees

Digital access and skills are becoming increasingly important for refugees settling in Australia, particularly with our increased dependence on technology as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Aside from COVID-related reasons, digital devices at home are now vital for children to participate in education — and for adults wanting to learn English, or seek further education or work opportunities.

Our latest research, Foundations for Belonging 2021, is led by Settlement Services International (SSI) and researchers at Western Sydney University. It is the second of a series exploring the social and civic participation of new refugees in Australia, and their sense of belonging.

In our previous work, conducted in late 2019, refugees reported engaging in high levels of digital communication to maintain ties with friends, family and community locally and overseas.

At the same time refugees — especially women — cited difficulty with online navigation as one of the most common barriers to accessing essential services such as MyGov and Medicare — alongside language difficulties.

For our latest work, we held focus groups with refugee women from different language backgrounds to get a clearer picture of their digital lives.

The 418 people in our representative sample had lived in Australia for an average of 24 months, with about half (49%) having arrived in 2018.

The countries they arrived from reflected Australia’s humanitarian intake at that time, with a focus on Syria and Iraq. Afghanistan was the fourth most common country of origin.

Having a diverse group allowed us to compare responses based on factors such as gender, age and household composition.

Online access and smartphone use is high

Our study found 95% of newly arrived refugee households have access to the internet at home. And 88% also reported having sufficient data allowance, and using the internet at similar rates to the wider community.

Interestingly, there were no noticeable differences based on gender, household composition or country of birth.

Refugee households also had a higher than average number of mobiles or smartphones. This is reinforced by other global research which has demonstrated the importance of mobile phones for refugees to seek and share information, and stay in touch with loved ones.

Gaps remain for women and children

However, refugee households were less likely than other households to have laptops, desktops and digital tablets. And households with children under age 15 had fewer laptops or desktops (1.1 devices on average) than households without (1.6 devices on average).

This is worrying, considering these devices are often necessary for school education. It’s also the opposite to the trend in other Australian households — wherein having children under 15 is linked to having more laptops and tablets on average.

Refugee families consistently report having to juggle a limited number of laptops, computers and tablets. This causes both children and parents to struggle with access to learning.

Our research also found a small but persistent gender gap in digital skills. Women reported less internet use than men across all online activities including banking, education, health services and social services.

They were significantly more likely to struggle with navigating digital modes of support, and online essential services (although younger women and those with children under 18 struggled less).

Yet women were more likely than men to maintain ties with friends and family in Australia and overseas through digital communication.

Digital enablers

Finding assistance in accessing and using technology was a frequent topic in our focus groups. For example, women discussed borrowing laptops, or asking a friend to help them fill out an online form.

Younger refugee women also often acted as “digital enablers” by assisting older relatives with digital tasks. And older women were motivated to build their digital skills — pointing to the potential for formal and informal learning to facilitate womens’ digital independence.

Still, the onus of narrowing the digital divide should not be on refugees. Our research underscores the need for stronger digital inclusion in settlement policy and programs, with a particular focus on access to devices for learning and education.

Read more:
Seniors struggle with technology, and often their kids won’t help

Tadgh McMahon works for Settlement Services International which is funded to provide services to refugees and migrants.

Shanthi Robertson receives funding from the Australian Research Council and from Settlement Services International.

– ref. Technology is key for refugees starting new lives in Australia. But women and children don’t have equal access – https://theconversation.com/technology-is-key-for-refugees-starting-new-lives-in-australia-but-women-and-children-dont-have-equal-access-167272

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Debra Wilson, Associate Professor, School of Law, University of Canterbury

Children born through surrogacy are much wanted and much loved. Under the current law, however, they can spend at least their first months of life in a kind of legal limbo.

This is because of the way several separate pieces of legislation cover the two types of surrogacy: gestational, where the child is not genetically related to the surrogate parent; and traditional, where the child is genetically related.

The resulting legal confusion is now the subject of a Law Commission review, which proposes significant reform based on the guiding principle that “the best interests of the child should be paramount”.

Right now, that cannot be said of the way surrogate children and their parents are treated under law that even judges have described as “creaky” and “inadequate”.

Who are the legal parents?

Surrogacy is regulated through the Human Assisted Reproductive Technology Act, which prohibits commercial surrogacy and requires gestational surrogacy to be approved by an ethics committee.

But that act is silent on the legal parentage of the child, leaving this to be determined by the Status of Children Act. Effectively, the woman who gives birth and her partner (if the partner consents to the assisted reproduction) are the child’s legal parents.

This means the intended parents have no legal rights to the child – even if they are the genetic parents – until they adopt the child under the Adoption Act.

But legal parentage is important. Legal parents transfer citizenship to their children and act on their behalf, such as giving consent to medical treatment or travel.

Costly, burdensome and time-consuming

All children, independently of their method of birth, have the right to an identity, citizenship, health, education and to be cared for by their parents. However, the uncertainty regarding the legal parentage of surrogate-born children compromises those rights and the ability of intended parents to take care of their children.

The best interests of the child are not served by imposing on intended parents the duty to adopt their children from surrogate parents who never meant to be the legal parents or raise the children.

In particular, when one or both intended parents are the child’s biological parents, adoption distorts the child’s identity forever, engendering an unnecessary legal fiction.

Read more:
When women are surrogate mothers: Is that work?

This is confusing for intended parents, lawyers and members of the public, particularly where the child is genetically related to the intended parents.

Furthermore, the adoption process is seen as costly, burdensome and time-consuming because lawyers and judges are involved. It can take months to get a hearing.

It can also be invasive because Oranga Tamariki has to write reports on the suitability of the parents for parenthood.

For those engaging in international surrogacy, there are further problems. Oranga Tamariki needs to see the child in their new home to write the report for adoption, but the child cannot travel to New Zealand with adults who are not the legal parents without additional red tape (involving both countries granting discretionary visas).

When is parentage transferred?

While the UK and Australia have considered updating their laws to meet the increasing demand for surrogacy, New Zealand has failed to revisit this important law until now.

Two members’ bills by Kevin Hague in 2018 and Tamati Coffey in 2019 were never drawn from the parliamentary ballot. Coffey’s bill was re-entered into the ballot in 2021 but has not yet been drawn.

So the Law Commission review is both welcome and overdue. In particular, the complex decisions around legal parenthood in a surrogacy relationship need careful attention.

Read more:
Commercial surrogacy: lifting legal restrictions is the moral thing to do to help people trying to have babies

Current law states that egg or sperm donors are not legal parents. This leaves four potential legal parents: the surrogate, her partner and the intended parent or parents.

While a simple approach might be to designate the intended parents as the legal parents, it is crucial the surrogate has the right to make all medical decisions during the pregnancy, including abortion if necessary.

Legal parentage must therefore be transferred to the intended parents after the birth to respect the rights of the surrogate.

Read more:
Making commercial surrogacy illegal only makes aspiring parents go elsewhere

Greater certainty for families

This crucial process raises complicated questions of when and how this transfer happens, including whether time is allowed for the surrogate to change her mind.

The Law Commission proposes a “dual pathway” reform. The first provides that transfer of parentage should occur through a simple administrative process, provided the ethics committee has approved the surrogacy and the surrogate confirms her consent after birth to the transfer of parentage.

For more complicated cases, the Family Court would be able to make a post-birth order (which differs from an adoption order).

By giving due consideration to all these ethical issues, the Law Commission’s proposals appear to reconcile the interests of all parties, giving greater legal certainty to families while making babies’ lives a little easier.

The Law Commission is seeking submissions on its proposals until September 23.

Debra Wilson received funding from the New Zealand Law Foundation to research legal issues relating to surrogacy.
She is a member of the Expert Advisory Group for the Law Commission Surrogacy Project

Annick Masselot received funding from the New Zealand Law Foundation to research legal issues relating to surrogacy.

Martha Ceballos receives funding from the New Zealand Law Foundation to research legal issues relating to surrogacy.

– ref. Who are my parents? Why New Zealand’s ‘creaky’ surrogacy laws are overdue for major reform – https://theconversation.com/who-are-my-parents-why-new-zealands-creaky-surrogacy-laws-are-overdue-for-major-reform-166745

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anthony Forsyth, Professor of Workplace Law, RMIT University

Qantas has tugged at many Australians’ heart strings with its advertising campaign about reuniting family and friends. It dangles the prospect of travelling overseas, and of thousands of Australians still stranded overseas coming home.

But the airline is fighting hard to not bring back thousands of jobs it unlawfully outsourced during the pandemic. After losing a Federal Court case over sacking of 2,000 ground crew in 2020, it continues to vigorously oppose reinstating the workers, with an appeal in the works.

Its marketing may be heartwarming, but its approach to its workforce is hardheaded.

Granted, its business has been clobbered by border closures and travel restrictions. Last month it announced a loss for 2020-21 of A$1.73 billion. Just as it was getting its domestic operations back into gear, most interstate travel was halted by the Delta outbreak.

But many businesses have faced similar dilemmas since the pandemic began 18 months ago. Few have been as harsh as Qantas in dealing with employees.

A confrontational approach

Since standing down 20,000 of its 30,000 staff in March 2020, Qantas has taken a typically confrontational approach to wages and entitlements.

For example, it precluded stood-down workers from accessing their sick leave, even if they had contracted coronavirus while working, and then vigorously defended this decision in the courts.

It adopted a narrow interpretation of its payment obligations to employees under the JobKeeper scheme. It has also taken a top-down approach to mandating COVID-19 vaccinations for staff, in contrast to the more consultative approach of rival Virgin Australia.

Read more:
Qantas has grounds to mandate vaccination, but most blanket policies won’t fly

But its most grievous action has been to use the opportunity of the pandemic to permanently shed itself of about 2,000 mostly unionised workers.

This move came in the context of making 8,500 jobs redundant. In the case of the 2,000 jobs carried out by baggage handlers, tug drivers and cleaners, however, their work wasn’t disappearing; it was being outsourced to third-party providers at ten Australian airports.

The fact Qantas undertook these mass sackings while receiving JobKeeper, a program designed to ensure businesses retained their employees, ensured controversy would attend its decision.

Read more:
Qantas cutbacks signal hard years before airlines recover

Breach of the Fair Work Act

On behalf of the 2,000 employees who lost their jobs, the Transport Workers Union challenged the airline’s decision to outsource ground-handling staff in the Federal Court.

To make its case, the union hired Maurice Blackburn employment lawyer Josh Bornstein, who helped the Maritime Union of Australia win the waterfront dispute of 1998, when stevedoring company Patrick Corporation locked out and sacked union members en masse.

Relying on statutory provisions similar to those used to great effect in the waterfront dispute, the union argued Qantas had seized a “vanishing window of opportunity” provided by the pandemic to outsource all ground staff.

The Federal Court’s ruling, made on July 30, largely agreed with the union. It found a reason for the airline’s decision to outsource the workers was to prevent them from exercising important workplace rights; namely the right to engage in collective bargaining and to take protected industrial action.

This placed Qantas in breach of the Fair Work Act.

Opposing reinstatement

The legal battle is far from over. The Transport Workers’ Union has asking the Federal Court to order the reinstatement of the 2,000 ground crew employees and compensate them for losses suffered as a result of Qantas’s unlawful conduct.

Qantas has other ideas. At a case hearing on Wednesday, Qantas continued to vigorously oppose reinstatement. It also lodged an application for leave to appeal the Federal Court’s July decision, and wants the court to halt any further consideration of reinstatement until an appeal is determined.

This makes the prospect of the sacked workers getting their jobs back in the near future unlikely.

But even though this case has a long way to play out, the Federal Court’s ruling against Qantas represents an important and overdue check on decades of business outsourcing initiatives that have undermined workers’ job security and driven down wages. Such business strategies eliminate the need for management to negotiate wages with workers.

Read more:
The airline industry hasn’t collapsed, but that’s the only good news for overseas travel

Through outsourcing, a company can unilaterally set the price it is willing to pay for the work. It can advise a labour hire provider that, if the price isn’t acceptable, it will seek competitive tenders. The downward pressure is ultimately borne by the workers.

We’ll have to wait to see if the Qantas workers get their jobs back. But in the meantime the ruling should give any other employer tempted to take advantage of COVID reason to think again.

Anthony Forsyth receives funding from the Australian Research Council. He is a member of the Advisory Committees of the Centre for Future Work (Australia Institute) and the Carmichael Centre (Australia Institute).

– ref. Qantas fights on against court ruling it unlawfully sacked 2,000 workers – https://theconversation.com/qantas-fights-on-against-court-ruling-it-unlawfully-sacked-2-000-workers-167434

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Oswald, Senior Lecturer in Construction, RMIT University

The collapse of the World Trade Center has been subject to intense public scrutiny over the 20 years since the centre’s twin towers were struck by aircraft hijacked by terrorists. Both collapsed within two hours of impact, prompting several investigations and spawning a variety of conspiracy theories.

Construction on the World Trade Center 1 (the North Tower) and World Trade Center 2 (the South Tower) began in the 1960s. They were constructed from steel and concrete, using a design that was groundbreaking at the time. Most high-rise buildings since have used a similar structure.

The investigatory reports into the events of September 11, 2001 were undertaken by the US Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

FEMA’s report was published in 2002. This was followed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s three-year investigation, funded by the US Federal Government and published in 2005.

Some conspiracy theorists seized on the fact the NIST investigation was funded by the federal government — believing the government itself had caused the twin towers’ collapse, or was aware it would happen and deliberately didn’t act.

While there have been critics of both reports (and the investigations behind them weren’t flawless) — their explanation for the buildings’ collapse is widely accepted. They conclude it was not caused by direct impact by the aircraft, or the use of explosives, but by fires that burned inside the buildings after impact.

Why did the towers collapse as they did?

Some have questioned why the buildings did not “topple over” after being struck side-on by aircraft. But the answer becomes clear once you consider the details.

Aircraft are made from lightweight materials, such as aluminium. If you compare the mass of an aircraft with that of a skyscraper more than 400 metres tall and built from steel and concrete, it makes sense the building would not topple over.

The towers would have been more than 1,000 times the mass of the aircraft, and designed to resist steady wind loads more than 30 times the aircrafts’ weight.

That said, the aircraft did dislodge fireproofing material within the towers, which was coated on the steel columns and on the steel floor trusses (underneath the concrete slab). The lack of fireproofing left the steel unprotected.

As such, the impact also structurally damaged the supporting steel columns. When a few columns become damaged, the load they carry is transferred to other columns. This is why both towers withstood the initial impacts and didn’t collapse immediately.

Read more:
9/11: the controversial story of the remains of the World Trade Center

Progressive collapse

This fact also spawned one of the most common conspiracy theories surrounding 9/11: that a bomb or explosives must have been detonated somewhere within the buildings.

These theories have developed from video footage showing the towers rapidly collapsing downwards some time after impact, similar to a controlled demolition. But it is possible for them to have collapsed this way without explosives.

It was fire that caused this. And this fire is believed to have come from the burning of remaining aircraft fuel.

According to the FEMA report, fire within the buildings caused thermal expansion of the floors in a horizontal and outwards direction, pushing against the rigid steel columns, which then deflected to an extent but resisted further movement.

With the columns resisting movement there was nowhere else for the concrete floors to expand. This led to an increased buildup of stress in the sagging floors, until the floor framing and connections gave in.

The floors’ failure pulled the columns back inwards, eventually leading to them buckling, and the floors collapsing. The collapsing floors then fell on more floors below, leading to a progressive collapse.

This explanation, documented in the official reports, is widely accepted by experts as the cause of the twin towers’ collapse. It is understood the South Tower collapsed sooner because it suffered more damage from the initial aircraft impact, which also dislodged more fireproofing material.

The debris from the collapse of the North Tower set at least ten floors alight in the nearby World Trade Center 7, or “Building 7”, which also collapsed about seven hours later.

While there are different theories regarding how the progressive collapse of Building 7 was initiated, there is consensus among investigators fire was the primary cause of failure.

Both official reports made a range of fire safety recommendations for other high-rise buildings, including to improve evacuation and emergency response. In 2007, the National Institute of Standards and Technology also published a best practice guide recommending risk-reducing solutions for progressive collapse.

What does this mean for high-rise buildings?

Before 9/11, progressive collapse was not well understood by engineers. The disaster highlighted the importance of having a “global view” of fire safety for a building, as opposed to focusing on individual elements.

There have since been changes to building codes and standards on improving the structural performance of buildings on fire, as well as opportunities to escape (such as added stairwell requirements).

At the same time, the collapse of the twin towers demonstrated the very real dangers of fire in high-rise buildings. In the decades since the World Trade Center was designed, buildings have become taller and more complex, as societies demand sustainable and cost-effective housing in large cities.

Some 86 of the current 100 tallest buildings in the world were built since 9/11. This has coincided with a significant increase in building façade fires globally, which have gone up sevenfold over the past three decades.

This increase can be partly attributed to the wide use of flammable cladding. It is marketed as an innovative, cost-effective and sustainable material, yet it has shown significant shortcomings in terms of fire safety, as witnessed in the 2017 Grenfell Disaster.

The Grenfell fire (and similar cladding fires) are proof fire safety in tall buildings is still a problem. And as structures get taller and more complex, with new and innovative designs and materials, questions around fire safety will only become more difficult to answer.

The events of 9/11 may have been challenging to foresee, but the fires that led to the towers’ collapse could have been better prepared for.

Read more:
Cladding fire risks have been known for years. Lives depend on acting now, with no more delays

David Oswald has received funding from various organisations including the Association of Researchers in Construction Management and the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute. He is affiliated with The Institute of Civil Engineers acting as a journal Associate Editor.

Erica Kuligowski currently receives funding from the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) Measurement Science and Engineering Grants Program (as a subcontractor). She is affiliated with the Society of Fire Protection Engineers (SFPE) as a Section Editor for their Handbook of Fire Protection Engineering (Human Behaviour Section) and as a member of the Board of Governors for the SFPE Foundation. Also, from 2002 to 2020, Erica worked as a research engineer and social scientist in the Engineering Laboratory of the National Institute of Standards and Technology. While at NIST, Erica worked on NIST’s Technical Investigation of the 2001 WTC Disaster as a team member of Project 7: Occupant Behavior, Egress, and Emergency Communications.

Kate Nguyen receives funding from the Australian Research Council and other government/industry-funded programs. She is a member of the Society of Fire Safety, Engineers Australia. The view and opinion that she has in this article is her personal view and does not represent her employer’s opinion.

– ref. 9/11 conspiracy theories debunked: 20 years later, engineering experts explain how the twin towers collapsed – https://theconversation.com/9-11-conspiracy-theories-debunked-20-years-later-engineering-experts-explain-how-the-twin-towers-collapsed-167353

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Erin Smith, Associate Professor in Disaster and Emergency Response, School of Medical and Health Sciences, Edith Cowan University

Emergency workers and clean-up crew are among 9/11 responders still suffering significant health issues 20 years after the terrorist attacks.

More than 91,000 workers and volunteers were exposed to a range of hazards during the rescue, recovery and clean-up operations.

By March 2021, some 80,785 of these responders had enrolled in the World Trade Center Health Program, which was set up after the attacks to monitor their health and treat them.

Now our published research, which is based on examining these health records, shows the range of physical and mental health issues responders still face.

Breathing problems, cancer, mental illness

We found 45% of responders in the health program have aerodigestive illness (conditions that affect the airways and upper digestive tract). A total of 16% have cancer and another 16% have mental health illness. Just under 40% of responders with health issues are aged 45-64; 83% are male.

Our analysis shows 3,439 of responders in the health program are now dead — far more than the 412 first responders who died on the day of the attacks.

Respiratory and upper digestive tract disorders are the number one cause of death (34%), ahead of cancer (30%) and mental health issues (15%).

Deaths attributed to these three factors, as well as musculoskeletal and acute traumatic injuries, have increased six-fold since the start of 2016.

Read more:
How the pain of 9/11 still stays with a generation

An ongoing battle

The number of responders enrolling in the health program with emerging health issues rises each year. More than 16,000 responders have enrolled in the past five years.

Cancer is up 185% over the past five years, with leukaemia emerging as particularly common, overtaking colon and bladder cancer in the rankings.

This equates to an increase of 175% in leukaemia cases over a five-year period, which is not surprising. There is a proven link between benzene exposure and acute myeloid leukaemia. Benzene is found in jet fuel, one of the toxic exposures at the World Trade Center. And acute myeloid leukaemia is one of the main types of leukaemia reported not only by responders, but by residents of lower Manhattan, who also have higher-than-normal rates.

Prostate cancer is also common, increasing 181% since 2016. Although this fits with the age profile of many of the health program’s participants, some responders are developing an aggressive, fast-growing form of prostate cancer.

Inhaling the toxic dust at the World Trade Center site may trigger a cascading series of cellular events, increasing the number of inflammatory T-cells (a type of immune cell) in some of the responders. This increased inflammation may eventually lead to prostate cancer.

There may also be a significant link between greater exposure at the World Trade Center and a higher risk of long-term cardiovascular disease (disease affecting the heart and blood vessels). Firefighters who responded to the World Trade Center on the morning of the attacks were 44% more likely to develop cardiovascular disease than those who arrived the next day.

Read more:
Air pollution causes cancer, so let’s do something about it

The mental health effects

About 15-20% of responders are estimated to be living with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms — roughly four times the rate of the general population.

Despite 20 years having passed, PTSD is a growing problem for responders. Almost half of all responders report they need ongoing mental health care for a range of mental health issues including PTSD, anxiety, depression and survivor guilt.

Read more:
9/11 anniversary: a watershed for psychological response to disasters

Researchers have also found brain scans of some responders indicate the onset of early-stage dementia. This is consistent with previous work noting cognitive impairment among responders occurs at about twice the rate of people 10-20 years older.

COVID-19 and other emerging threats

Responders’ underlying health conditions, such as cancer and respiratory ailments, have also left them vulnerable to COVID-19. By the end of August 2020, some 1,172 responders had confirmed COVID-19.

Even among responders who have not been infected, the pandemic has exacerbated one of the key conditions caused by search and rescue, and recovery after terrorist attacks — PTSD.

More than 100 responders have died due to complications from the virus, which has also exacerbated other responders’ PTSD symptoms.

The number of responders with cancers associated with asbestos exposure at the World Trade Center is expected to rise in coming years. This is because mesothelioma (a type of cancer caused by asbestos) usually takes 20-50 years to develop.

As of 2016, at least 352 responders had been diagnosed with the lung condition asbestosis, and at least 444 had been diagnosed with another lung condition, pulmonary fibrosis. Exposure to asbestos and other fibres in the toxic dust may have contributed.

Read more:
Health harms of asbestos won’t be known for decades

Lessons learned

Our research involved analysing data from existing databases. So we cannot make direct links between exposure at the World Trade Center site, length of time there, and the risk of illness.

Differences in age, sex, ethnicity, smoking status and other factors between responders and non-responders should also be considered.

Increased rates of some cancers in some responders may also be associated with heightened surveillance rather than an increase in disease.

Nevertheless, we are now beginning to understand the long-term effects of responding to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Exposure is still having both a physical and mental health impact and it’s likely responders are still developing illnesses related to their exposures.

Ongoing monitoring of responders’ health remains a priority, especially considering the looming threat of new asbestos-related cancers.

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

– ref. 20 years on, 9/11 responders are still sick and dying – https://theconversation.com/20-years-on-9-11-responders-are-still-sick-and-dying-166033

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

Australia has received seemingly contradictory messages about coal this week.

In a UK study published today in Nature, scientists found Australia must keep 95% of coal in the ground if we have any hope of stopping the planet warming beyond the crucial limit of 1.5℃.

These findings echo the message of senior United Nations official Selwin Hart, who earlier this week urged Australia to end the use of coal by 2030. He warned if the world doesn’t boost climate action urgently, Australia can expect more frequent and severe climate disasters such as droughts, heatwaves, fires and floods.

Meanwhile, markets for coal seem to be sending the opposite message.

The price of Newcastle thermal coal recently reached a record high of US$180 per tonne due to rising electricity demand in India, China and other Asian countries. That seems to suggest whatever the consequences, Australia and the world are not going to give up on coal or other carbon-based fuels.

But it’s a mistake to place too much weight on fluctuations in coal markets. Earlier this year, the price was about US$50 per tonne and seemed likely to fall further. The current price tells us nothing about the choices we face in reducing emissions by 2030.

It’s entirely feasible for Australia to phase out thermal coal by 2030 — we just need political will.

World economies must decarbonise

The authors of the new modelling study in Nature examined the world’s reserves of oil, gas and coal, and determined how much would have to be left untouched for at least a 50% chance of limiting global warming to 1.5℃.

Overall, it found nearly 60% of the world’s oil and fossil methane gas, and 90% of coal must remain unextracted by 2050. But the estimate for exporters like Australia is even higher.

This means production in most regions must peak now, or in the next decade, and that stronger policies are needed to restrict production and reduce demand.

The study reinforces how urgent it is to decarbonise economies. As Selwin Hart, the Special Advisor to the UN Secretary-General on Climate Action, noted in his speech to the Crawford Leadership Forum:

Decarbonisation of the global economy is quickly gathering pace. And there are huge opportunities to create more jobs, better health, and a stronger and fairer economy for those countries and companies that move first and fastest.

Is an end to coal feasible?

But would it really be possible for Australia to phase out coal by 2030, as Hart insists?

To consider this, it’s important to first distinguish between thermal coal and metallurgical coal. Thermal coal is used to generate electricity, while metallurgical coal is used in steelmaking.

Blast furnaces using metallurgical coal will ultimately be replaced by alternative technologies, such as using “green” hydrogen produced using clean electricity.

Read more:
‘Green steel’ is hailed as the next big thing in Australian industry. Here’s what the hype is all about

That process has begun, but it will take a long time, and can’t start until electricity generation is decarbonised. So, it makes sense to focus on phasing out thermal coal first.

But if decarbonisation of the global economy requires a rapid end to the use of thermal coal, why has its price suddenly surged?

A number of factors determine the thermal coal market, and fluctuations don’t tell us much about what the coal market will look like in 2030.

The recent increase in prices was caused by a combination of the rapid recovery from the pandemic recession, rising gas prices, weather-related disruptions to coal supply from Indonesia, and drought in China. It’s worth noting that despite high prices, the volume of seaborne thermal coal has actually declined.

Ending thermal coal in Australia would be easy

Given a modest amount of political will, or just the end of obstructionism from the federal government, Australia could easily replace coal-fired electricity generation with a combination of solar and wind, backed by storage.

Most of Australia’s coal-fired power plants were commissioned in the 20th century with obsolete sub-critical technology, and would be approaching the end of their operational lives even in the absence of climate change concerns.

Bringing those dates forward to 2030 or earlier could be almost costless. We could easily double our current rate of installation of utility-scale solar and wind generation, if the federal government got out of the way and let the states tackle the job.

Read more:
Australia’s states are forging ahead with ambitious emissions reductions. Imagine if they worked together

Only five coal plants have been commissioned this century. The Bluewater plant in Western Australia has already been written off as worthless because of competition from solar and wind power.

The remaining four, all in Queensland, have a total capacity of less than 3 gigawatts. Allowing for the fact solar photovoltaic (PV) only operates in daylight hours, this is about the same as one million 10-kilowatt rooftop solar installations (about average for new installations). Queensland already has more than 750,000 solar rooftops, and capacity for another million.

More notably, the cost of decarbonising electricity supply is a fraction of the amount we have collectively spent to respond to the problem of the COVID-19 pandemic. Not only is COVID a smaller threat in the long run than climate change but a comprehensive response to pandemics requires us to stabilise the climate and stop the destruction of natural environments.

Read more:
How to transition from coal: 4 lessons for Australia from around the world

Managing the transition for the coal workforce would be more challenging, but still entirely feasible, as countries such as Spain and Germany have shown.

In a report I prepared for the Australia Institute last year, I found Australia could successfully transition the workforce with a mixture of measures including early retirement, retraining, and investments in renewable energy targeted at coal-dependent regions.

The cost of this would be around A$50 million a year, over ten years. That’s less than the estimated cost of a week of COVID lockdown in Sydney.

But would this condemn developing countries to energy poverty?

The reality is it makes economic and environmental sense for all countries to shift away from coal.

The central government in China has committed to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2060. But many provincial governments still see investment in coal plants and other polluting industries as an engine of growth, not to mention a lucrative source of kickbacks and donations.

Read more:
China just stunned the world with its step-up on climate action – and the implications for Australia may be huge

The picture in India is similarly complex. Coal remains the main source of electricity, but most electricity generation businesses have abandoned new investments in coal-fired power and many have stopped bidding for access to domestic coal supplies.

We can’t do much to influence energy policy in China and India. But a commitment to reduce and ultimately eliminate exports of thermal coal would not, as some have suggested, condemn these and other developing countries to poverty.

Rather, it would strengthen the hand of advocates of clean energy against the established interest groups that defend coal.

John Quiggin is the author of Getting off coal: Economic and Social Policies to Manage the Phase-out of Thermal Coal in Australia, a report to the Australia Institute

– ref. Yes, it is entirely possible for Australia to phase out thermal coal within a decade – https://theconversation.com/yes-it-is-entirely-possible-for-australia-to-phase-out-thermal-coal-within-a-decade-167366

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Steven Greenland, Professor in Marketing, Charles Darwin University

The COVID-19 pandemic is changing the face of international higher education. The sector, previously dominated by the US, UK and Australia, is losing billions to falling international student enrolments. However, our research identifies a golden opportunity for Australia to rebound as a top international study destination – but that depends on an urgent and proactive response to the pandemic’s challenges.

Federal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said this week achieving 70% and 80% vaccination targets for Australia would create a “real opportunity” by allowing borders to reopen to international students. “It means a lot to our economy, it means a lot to our universities,” he said. The sector was worth an estimated A$40 billion to the economy, including about $10 billion in university fee revenue, but has shrunk during the pandemic.

Read more:
As hopes of international students’ return fade, closed borders could cost $20bn a year in 2022 – half the sector’s value

Students still want to study abroad. The countries that respond best to the pandemic can gain competitive advantage and capture major shares of this lucrative global market. The key to seizing this opportunity is understanding COVID-19’s impact on international students and their changing needs, and moving swiftly to meet these needs.

For our recently published research we investigated COVID-19’s impact on international students. This was conducted in the second half of 2020 with international students in the Asia Pacific College of Business and Law at Charles Darwin University. CDU is the only university to have brought international students into Australia since the pandemic began.

Read more:
Australia’s international education market share is shrinking fast. Recovery depends on unis offering students a better deal

What did the study reveal?

Our online survey revealed favourable ratings of the Australian government’s and the university’s pandemic responses. Both CDU and the government performed well in supporting student well-being, promoting hygiene and social distancing, and effective communication.

However, international students needed more financial assistance. Many lost their local jobs, as well as financial support from their home countries. This caused stress and mental health issues.

In-depth interviews with international students revealed the criteria they used for choosing their study destination were in a state of flux. New pandemic-related priorities include country infection and vaccination rates, border closures and diplomatic relations, as well as support interventions. These interventions are designed to help students continue their studies and deal with the impacts of COVID-19.

For example, like many Australian universities, CDU has intermittently switched to online teaching when required due to lockdowns, as well as promoting student hygiene. Among other things, it has also provided:

• free counselling and financial aid including grants of up to $2,000 for those in financial hardship
• groceries and meals to students who lost their jobs
• assistance with fees
• payment instalment options.

Read more:
‘No one would even know if I had died in my room’: coronavirus leaves international students in dire straits

The students thought Australia had managed COVID-19 well compared to other countries. They also recommended CDU and Australia to friends whose studies had been disrupted in the US and UK.

Hopes of return put on hold

In November 2020 a CDU charter flight brought international students to Australia for the first (and only) time since the pandemic began. They arrived safely without any COVID-19 incidents via the Howard Springs quarantine facility (also known locally as Corona Springs).

These students were “very satisfied” and relieved they could continue their studies in Australia despite COVID-19. As one student said:

“This historical success absolutely gives international students confidence.”

Australia’s COVID-19 response and the international student arrivals last November gave hope to the whole Australian higher education sector. However, the promising initial response has stalled in 2021.

The government has stopped the arrival of further international students. Prioritising the return of Australians stranded abroad was the reason given. Meanwhile, Howard Springs has been underutilised, wasting an opportunity to quarantine international student arrivals.

Read more:
We have so many good reasons to give international students hope, so why the lack of government urgency?

Competitors will take advantage

In 2021 Australia’s higher education sector finds itself at a disadvantage compared to other countries, such as the UK, which remain open.

The stakes for Australian higher education could hardly be higher. The sector faces increasing losses in 2022 as the international students already in the system finish their degrees.

Other countries, including China and other Asian nations, are looking to capitalise on the situation. They are moving swiftly to try to capture the international students who would have come to Australia, but who are now seeking other study destinations.

Read more:
How China has been transforming international education to become a leading host of students

Australia can still be the number one choice for international study. But that outcome depends on a clear and proactive COVID-19 strategy. This includes the careful reopening of borders and optimising the use of proven quarantine facilities.

Without a clear strategy Australia risks relegation to the minor leagues of the international higher education market. This would lose the billions of dollars in annual foreign income enjoyed before the pandemic. It would also waste the decades of effort and investment that built Australia’s reputation for international education excellence.

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

– ref. Australia can rebound to be international students’ destination of choice when borders reopen – https://theconversation.com/australia-can-rebound-to-be-international-students-destination-of-choice-when-borders-reopen-167347