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

A Resolve poll for Nine newspapers, conducted August 17-21 from a sample of 1,607, gave the Coalition 40% of the primary vote (up two since August), Labor 32% (down three), the Greens 12% (steady), One Nation 2% (down two) and independents 10% (up three).

Resolve is not publishing a two party estimate, but analyst Kevin Bonham
estimated a 50-50 tie, a two-point gain for the Coalition since July. Given the continuing COVID lockdowns in NSW and Victoria, this poll is bad for Labor.

The last Newspoll in early August was 53-47 to Labor, and the last Morgan, in early to mid-August, was 54-46. Either there has been a shift back to the Coalition in the last week or so, or this poll is an outlier. There should be a Newspoll on Sunday night.

A plausible reason for a Coalition rebound is that the vaccination rollout pace has increased, particularly in NSW. In the UK, once there was some good news on vaccinations early this year, the Conservatives went from a near-tie to a high single digit lead that they have not yielded. The Coalition is also pushing for an end to the lockdowns once vaccination rates are above 70%.

Criticisms of Resolve poll

The Resolve poll can be criticised for only giving primary votes and not a two party estimate. While two party figures can be calculated from the primary votes by analysts, the media will focus on the primary votes. Australia uses preferential voting, not first past the post. Resolve should conform to our electoral system.

Another criticism is the very high vote for independents (10% in this poll). At the 2019 federal election, independents won 3.4% of the vote. With Resolve offering independent as an option in all seats, voters who are unsure who they will vote for are likely to park their votes with independents.

Read more:
Craig Kelly’s move to Palmer’s United Australia Party shows the need for urgent electoral law reform

Other results from this poll

46% thought Scott Morrison’s performance in recent weeks was good and 46% poor. After rounding, his net rating was -1, unchanged since July. Anthony Albanese’s net rating dropped three points to -19. Morrison led Albanese by 46-23 as preferred PM (45-24 in July).

The Liberals and Morrison led Labor and Albanese by 44-19 on economic management (41-25 in July). On COVID, the Liberals led by 37-22 (37-25 previously). This is the biggest Liberal lead on the economy since May.

By 62-24, voters wanted political leaders to stick to a national cabinet deal to ease COVID restrictions once vaccinations reach 70% and 80% targets of all Australians aged over 16. By 54-27, voters did not think we would be able to completely suppress the virus again. 12% (down nine since July and down 17 since May) said they were unlikely to get vaccinated.

Essential and Morgan polls

In last week’s Essential poll, 8% (down three since early August) said they’d never get vaccinated, and a further 24% (down one) said they’d get vaccinated, but not straight away. By 75-10, voters supported mandatory vaccination for workers in occupations with high COVID transmission risks, such as hospitals and education.

The federal government had a 41-35 good rating for its response to COVID, up from 38-35 good in early August, but down from 58-18 in late May, before any lockdowns.

The NSW government’s response was rated good by 42%, down five from early August and 27 since early June. Despite the current lockdown, the Victorian government’s good rating rose two points to 56%. Queensland and WA have been rewarded for keeping COVID out, with Queensland’s good rating up six to 66% and WA’s up five to 87%.

A Morgan poll, conducted August 7-8 and 14-15 from a sample of over 2,700, gave Labor a 54-46 lead, a 0.5% gain for Labor since late July. Primary votes were 37.5% Coalition (up 0.5%), 37.5% Labor (up 0.5%), 12.5% Greens (steady) and 3.5% One Nation (up 0.5%).

Victorian Labor increases lead in Resolve poll

In a Victorian state Resolve poll for The Age, Labor had 40% of the primary vote (up three since June), the Coalition 35% (down one), the Greens 10% (up one) and independents 9% (down three). Bonham estimated a 56-44 Labor lead after preferences, a two-point gain for Labor.

This poll would have been conducted with the federal July and August Resolve polls from a sample of 1,106. Incumbent Daniel Andrews led Opposition Leader Michael O’Brien by 50-24 as preferred premier (49-23 in June).

Labor’s increased lead in Victoria comes despite strict lockdowns that have still failed to contain the current Delta outbreak of COVID. It appears voters will support lockdowns until we reach the 70% fully vaccinated target.

However, the 62-24 national support for easing restrictions once vaccination targets are met indicates the federal government is on a winner with this strategy.

Read more:
View from The Hill: Achieving vaccine targets could be followed by a (pre-election) health ‘pinch point’

Biden’s ratings slump after Afghanistan withdrawal

I wrote for The Poll Bludger on Monday that US President Joe Biden’s ratings have slumped after the Afghanistan withdrawal. In the FiveThirtyEight aggregate, his ratings are now 47.6% approve, 46.9% disapprove (net just +0.7%). Biden had a +10 net rating in late July and +6 before Afghanistan.

Also covered: Canadian PM Justin Trudeau calls an election for September 20, two years early. And the Social Democrats surge in Germany, ahead of the September 26 election.

Adrian Beaumont 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. Coalition gains in federal Resolve poll, but Labor increases lead in Victoria – https://theconversation.com/coalition-gains-in-federal-resolve-poll-but-labor-increases-lead-in-victoria-166649

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dominic Dwyer, Director of Public Health Pathology, NSW Health Pathology, Westmead Hospital and University of Sydney, University of Sydney

SARS-CoV-2 has caused the greatest pandemic of the past 100 years. Understanding its origins is crucial for knowing what happened in late 2019 and for preparing for the next pandemic virus.

These studies take time, planning and cooperation. They must be driven by science — not politics or posturing. The investigation into the origins of SARS-CoV-2 has already taken too long. It has been more than 20 months since the first cases were recognised in Wuhan, China, in December 2019.

This week US President Joe Biden was briefed by United States intelligence agencies on their investigation into the origins of the virus responsible for COVID-19, according to media. Parts of the investigation’s report are expected to be publicly released within the next few days.

An early report from the New York Times suggests the investigation does not conclude whether the spread of the virus resulted from a lab leak, or if it emerged naturally in a spillover from animals to humans.

Read more:
How do viruses mutate and jump species? And why are ‘spillovers’ becoming more common?

While a possible lab leak is a line of inquiry (should scientific evidence emerge), it musn’t distract from where the current evidence tells us we should be directing most of our energy. The more time that passes, the less feasible it will become for experts to determine the biological origins of the virus.

Six recommendations

I was one of the experts who visited Wuhan earlier this year as part of the World Health Organisation’s investigation into SARS-CoV-2 origins. We found the evidence pointed to the pandemic starting as a result of zoonotic transmission of the virus, meaning a spillover from an animal to humans.

Our inquiry culminated in a report published in March which made a series of recommendations for further work. There is an urgent need to get on with designing studies to support these recommendations.

Today, myself and other independent authors of the WHO report have written to plead for this work to be accelerated. Crucial time is disappearing to work through the six priority areas, which include:

1. further trace-back studies based on early disease reports

2. SARS-CoV-2-specific antibody surveys in regions with early COVID-19 cases. This is important given a number of countries including Italy, France, Spain and the United Kingdom have often reported inconclusive evidence of early COVID-19 detection

3. trace-back and community surveys of the people involved with the wildlife farms that supplied animals to Wuhan markets

4. risk-targeted surveys of possible animal hosts. This could be either the primary host (such as bats), or secondary hosts or amplifiers

5. detailed risk-factor analyses of pockets of early cases, wherever these have occurred

6. and follow up of any credible new leads.

Race against the clock

The biological feasibility of some of these studies is time dependent. SARS-CoV-2 antibodies emerge a week or so after someone has become infected and recovered from the virus, or after being vaccinated.

But we know antibodies decrease over time — so samples collected now from people infected before or around December 2019 may be harder to examine accurately.

Using antibody studies to differentiate between vaccination, natural infection, or even second infection (especially if the initial infection occurred in 2019) in the general population is also problematic.

For example, after natural infection a range of SARS-CoV-2-specific antibodies, such as to the spike protein or nucleoprotein, can be detected for varying lengths of time and in varying concentrations and ability to neutralise the virus.

But depending on the vaccine used, antibodies to the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein may be all that is detected. These, too, drop with time.

There is also a need to have international consensus in the laboratory methods used to detect SARS-CoV-2-specific antibodies. Inconsistency in testing methods has led to arguments about data quality from many locations.

It takes time to come to agreement on laboratory techniques for serological and viral genomic studies, sample access and sharing (including addressing consent and privacy concerns). Securing funding also takes time — so time is not a resource we can waste.

Read more:
Coronavirus is evolving but so are our antibodies

Distance from potential sources

Moreover, many wildlife farms in Wuhan have closed down following the initial outbreak, generally in an unverified manner. And finding human or animal evidence of early coronavirus spillover is increasingly difficult as animals and humans disperse.

Fortunately, some studies can be done now. This includes reviews of early case studies, and blood donor studies in Wuhan and other cities in China (and anywhere else where there was early detection of viral genomes).

It is important to examine the progress or results of such studies by local and international experts, yet the mechanisms for such scientific cross-examination have not yet been put in place.

New evidence has come forward since our March report. These papers and the WHO report data have been reviewed by scientists independent of the WHO group. They have came to similar conclusions to the WHO report, identifying:

• the host reservoir for SARS-CoV-2 has not been found
• the key species in China (or elsewhere) may not have been tested
• and there is substantial scientific evidence supporting a zoonotic origin.

Teetering back and forth

While the possibility of a laboratory accident can’t be entirely dismissed, it is highly unlikely, given the repeated human-animal contact that occurs routinely in the wildlife trade.

Still, the “lab-leak” hypotheses continue to generate media interest over and above the available evidence. These more political discussions further slow the cooperation and agreement needed to progress with the WHO report’s phase two studies.

The World Health Organisation has called for a new committee to oversee future origins studies. This is laudable, but there is the risk of further delaying the necessary planning for the already outlined SARS-CoV-2 origins studies.

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

– ref. Why it will soon be too late to find out where the COVID-19 virus originated – https://theconversation.com/why-it-will-soon-be-too-late-to-find-out-where-the-covid-19-virus-originated-166743

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Renee Morrison, Lecturer in Curriculum Studies, University of Tasmania

At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, school closures meant more than 90% of the world’s learners had to study virtually or from home. The internet, already an invaluable educational tool, has therefore become even more important for students. One of students’ most common internet activities, both in schools and in home schooling, is online searching.

This means teachers, and those parents currently standing in for teachers, need to help students develop skills for searching online. So what can parents do to support their children when tasks sent home from school require them to search for information online? And what can they do to extend such work for gifted students or when the work sent home runs out?

Read more:
Schooling in lockdown isn’t home schooling – but we can learn from the real thing

Teachers and parents can have an influence on a child’s internet skills. Indeed, their search success is related to the amount of adult guidance and explicit instruction they receive.

Unfortunately, research suggests some teachers don’t offer such explicit instruction. Some also have trouble structuring (and providing support for) student online search tasks that go beyond lower-order skills. Evidence even exists of a lack of search skills among teachers and parents themselves.

The following three tips may help.

Focus on ‘learning to search’ as well as ‘searching to learn’

Making the “invisible” processes behind searches more visible improves the online information-seeking of both teachers and students. In this way, educators (be they temporary or professional) should design activities that foreground the search process itself. This makes students more aware of what goes on “behind the scenes” of a search and of their ability to affect these processes.

How might you do this? In one Queensland study, students were asked to sort 12 picture cards. The cards were designed so three “categories” – animals, transport modes and countries – were obvious at first.

Students easily sorted the cards into these categories. But they were then challenged to recognise any other sorting options, much like Google does every second of every day. When “kangaroo” was removed from the “animals” pile and placed alongside “Australia” instead, for example, students were quick to assemble the remaining cards in a similar fashion.

This activity encouraged discussions about just how many different ways not 12 but 200 million cards – or websites – could be sorted. It’s a reminder of how important it is to clearly specify what you want from Google, helping it to sort its 200 million websites.

Read more:
Digital learning is real-world learning. That’s why blended on-campus and online study is best

Become more critical users of the web

Educators sometimes set tasks that are too broad for students and likely to return millions of search results. Many will probably be irrelevent or inaccurate. Teachers may also set tasks that encourage students to use Google as a mere encyclopedia, which requires only passive lower-order learning.

If we instead want students to engage in higher-order thinking, greater structuring of search tasks is needed.

Educators can start this by setting specific requirements for the results students work with. Perhaps ask them to find one website from Australia (try adding “site:.au” to the end of queries) and one from England – this could be particularly interesting around the time The Ashes are played. Perhaps students are told to find some sources from before the year 2000 and others from the previous 12 months (select “Tools” then “Any time” in the dropdown menu).

Asking students to purposefully find websites with conflicting information and to describe how they decided which to believe requires that they compare, evaluate and analyse.

Read more:
There’s no such thing as ‘alternative facts’. 5 ways to spot misinformation and stop sharing it online

The number of results a search engine returns can help indicate the quality of your query and make finding reliable information more efficient. In school, students report that they typically don’t consider the number of results returned and have little experience in limiting or increasing these results. In Australian home-schooling too, parent-educators and students rank “limiting/expanding searches” as one of the hardest steps in search.

Now that students know a little more about how Google must sort websites, ask them to alter their query to rearrange the top five or ten results returned. Challenge them to reduce the (likely millions of) results returned to just 10,000, 1,000 or even ten.

Students explain that when it is only the final product or outcome of searching that “counts” or is graded, their focus is upon that and never the search process itself. This changes when tasks are more structured and specific requirements and guidance are given. Students then focus more upon gathering quality information.

Shift your thinking about search

Attitudes have proven more important than available resources or even teacher skill when it comes to increasing students’ authentic technology-enabled learning. Many limiting attitudes about search need to be turned around to ensure students get the most out of Google.

We can start switching attitudes about what to search for and how by using the tips above. But what if your child doesn’t want to listen to you during search? This is commonly reported.

Students don’t always see their teachers as good information sources during search either. And it’s true, some teachers and parents still have much to learn about using Google.

Read more:
Less than half of Australian adults know how to identify misinformation online

However, my study, which tested the “generational digital divide” concept among Australian home-schoolers, found the parent-educators (the older generation) were stronger searchers than their kids, the so-called “digital natives”. Perhaps students can learn more about search from their parents.

The answer is unlikely to be forcing your children to recognise your strengths and their weaknesses. Instead, shifting young people’s attitude to search, and encouraging them to realise it is sometimes hard and frustrating, can help.

When it comes to schoolwork, data from over 45,000 students in 12 countries tell us internet research is “by far the most frequently recorded use of ICT”. Educators who focus upon “learning to search” as well as “searching to learn”, who encourage critical use, and begin to challenge attitudes about Google will be better placed to help students capitalise on the unprecedented educational opportunities online search can provide.

Read more:
Don’t ‘just Google it’: 3 ways students can get the most from searching online

Renee Morrison works at the University of Tasmania. This research was conducted at Griffith University.

– ref. Learning from home is testing students’ online search skills. Here are 3 ways to improve them – https://theconversation.com/learning-from-home-is-testing-students-online-search-skills-here-are-3-ways-to-improve-them-165752

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Cassandra Pybus, Adjunct Professor in History, University of Tasmania

Review: Fatal Contact: How Epidemics Nearly Wiped Out Australia’s First Peoples by Peter Dowling (Monash University Publishing)

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this article contains images and names of deceased people.

As Peter Dowling reminds us in his introduction to this book, violence on the colonial frontier accounted for many thousands of deaths among the First Peoples — a truth unremembered in a process of historical amnesia labelled the “great Australian silence” by anthropologist W. E. H. Stanner.

Australia’s sense of its past in collective memory, Stanner said in his famous 1968 Boyer lectures, was:

a view from a window which has been carefully placed to exclude a whole quadrant of the landscape […] a cult of forgetfulness practised on a national scale.

A great deal has shifted in our understanding of the past since Stanner shocked the historical profession into a halting engagement with the truth of Australia’s settlement.

Yet, as historian Billy Griffiths pointed out in the anthology Fire, Flood and Plague, a key part of the “great Australian silence” has been our continued willingness to see pandemic disease that eliminated the great majority of the First People as “inevitable and apolitical”.

Read more:
Friday essay: the ‘great Australian silence’ 50 years on

In the face of the current pandemic, playing out on a global stage, Griffiths writes, we can observe that “it is not only about microbes; it is also about culture, politics and history”. The radically different consequences of this pandemic as experienced by different peoples has shown us we cannot blithely assume spread of disease is without responsibility.

This is what Dowling would have us understand in his timely and meticulous account of “the greatest human tragedy in the long history of Australia”. He examines the recurring outbreaks of fatal epidemics of smallpox, measles, syphilis, influenza and tuberculosis (TB), which “nearly wiped out Australia’s First Peoples”.

Catastrophic impact

At the time of colonisation, these diseases were so endemic in Britain that a high degree of immunity existed in the population, as well as medical strategies to control epidemic spread. But in the virgin-soil communities of Australia’s First Peoples, everyone was susceptible, with no-one spared. So there was no-one to provide basic needs for the sick.

The impact was catastrophic, as illustrated in the multiple accounts of the smallpox outbreak at Sydney Cove in 1789. This is widely known about now, but a wave of epidemics, including smallpox, continued to decimate the First Peoples well into the 20th century.

Alongside smallpox, syphilis also reached epidemic proportions in the Sydney region in the first few decades of settlement, gradually extending into every corner of the continent.

The scourge of syphilis was apparent in the early colony in Tasmania and a major contributor, along with influenza, to the rapid mortality that had all but eliminated the peoples of the south-eastern quadrant of the island by 1830.

It was in Victoria where the magnitude of the disease was most apparent. In 1839, a cohort of Aboriginal Protectors were appointed to various districts across Victoria. They all reported overwhelming syphilis infection, accounting for as many as “nine out of ten” of the many sick and dying.

One reported of the First People in his district “the most extensive ravages […] will render them extinct within a few years”.

Another despairingly complained “no medicine has been placed at my disposal”.

Worst in camps

Epidemics reached into isolated First People’s communities well out of sight of authorities — the Spanish Flu of 1918 managed to spread its deadly tentacles into communities of the Western Desert. However, outbreaks were much more likely in the government-supervised camps, reserves, missions and stations, where dispossessed First Peoples were forcibly relocated.

Uniformly, these places of concentration had overcrowded and inadequate housing, low nutritional diets and bad water supply, combined with individual distress and depression — conditions favourable to the incubation and spread of diseases.

The First People’s high susceptibility to disease, Dowling argues, was probably a consequence of chronic untreated TB among those forced into camps and settlements.

He examines the settlement on Flinders Island in Tasmania between 1832 and 1847, which became infamous for its horrendous death rate, mythologised by the colonists who had expelled these people simply due to their “pining away”.

The records examined by Dowling show these people actually died of either TB itself or an associated respiratory illness worsened by TB’s immunosuppressant effects.

TB was also known to have been an efficient killer in the Victorian settlements at Lake Hindmarsh and Coranderrk: the attributed cause of more than 30% of recorded deaths in those places between 1876 and 1900. At these same settlements, a measles epidemic in 1874-5 killed 20% of people.

It is no coincidence this was the same story as at the notorious concentration camps for dispossessed Boers the British created in South Africa at the end of the 19th century, where various epidemic diseases were allowed to rage.

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

As I write, I am acutely aware most communities of First Peoples have the lowest vaccination rates in the nation — even though the government has assured us repeatedly vaccination for these most vulnerable communities was their highest priority.

In despair, I repeat the mantra: the past is not even past.

Cassandra Pybus receives funding from the Australia Council

– ref. Book review: Fatal Contact is a timely account of how epidemics devastated our First Peoples – https://theconversation.com/book-review-fatal-contact-is-a-timely-account-of-how-epidemics-devastated-our-first-peoples-164071

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

Last week Qantas became the first major Australian public company to declare it would require all its staff to be vaccinated against COVID-19.

“Having a fully vaccinated workforce will safeguard our people against the virus but also protect our customers and the communities we fly to,” said Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce.

All the airline’s “frontline” workers — meaning its cabin crew, pilots and airport employees — must be fully vaccinated by November 15, and the rest by March 31 2022. There will be exemptions for those unable to be vaccinated for documented medical reasons. They will be accommodated with measures including social distancing, masks and testing.

Qantas’ announcement follows similar policies declared by Queensland regional air operator Alliance Airlines and Victorian fruit-canning company SPC Australia, which has said it will mandate vaccines (with medical exemptions) for all employees, contractors and visitors.

SPC’s chairman, Hussein Rifai, has said he is “obliged under Australian law to provide the safest workplace I can for my employees”. But his plan may be stymied by legal action by the Australian Manufacturers Workers Union, which has criticised the lack of consultation.

Qantas is on firmer ground, having determined the majority of employees support its move. But it might still face a legal storm if its policy is tested before a tribunal or court. Here’s why.

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

The legal framework

Legally the clearest way for employers to insist on vaccinations is where this is provided for by law, normally via state-based public health orders.

Four states — Queensland, Western Australia, New South Wales and South Australia — have introduced such orders for quarantine, transport, airport workers and certain health care professionals. States and territories have also agreed to similar orders for residential aged-care workers.

Without public health order, the validity of any employer mandating vaccination depends on assessing their right to issue “lawful and reasonable directions”.

Is is reasonable?

The Fair Work Ombudsman’s latest advice says the following circumstances ought to be considered to determine if mandatory vaccination policy is reasonable:

• the nature of the workplace — for example, the extent to which employees interact with the public, whether social distancing is possible and whether the business provides an essential service

• the extent of community transmission of COVID-19 in the location where the direction is given

• the effectiveness of vaccines in reducing the risk of transmission

• work health and safety obligations

• each employee’s duties and the risks associated with their work

• whether employees have a legitimate reason for refusing vaccination (for example, a medical reason)

• vaccine availability.

These considerations essentially align with three Fair Work Commission rulings in unfair dismissal cases involving employees refusing influenza vaccinations.

Four tiers of work

The Ombudsman’s advice also refers to four “tiers” of work for applying the reasonableness test:

Tier 1 work, where employees are required to interact with people with an increased risk of being infected with coronavirus (for example, hotel quarantine employees).

Tier 2 work, where employees are required to have close contact with people who are particularly vulnerable to the impacts of coronavirus (for example, health or aged-care employees).

Tier 3 work, where there is likely interaction between employees and customers, co-employees or the public.

Tier 4 work, where employees have minimal face-to-face interaction with others.

The advice notes an employer’s direction to Tier 1 or Tier 2 employees is “more likely to be reasonable”. Conversely, a direction to employees in Tier 4 is “unlikely to be reasonable”.

For employees in Tier 3, where no community transmission has occurred for some time in the relevant location, a direction to vaccinate is less likely to be reasonable.

Where do Qantas and SPC fit

If Qantas’ policy is challenged before a court or tribunal, it may well be found to be reasonable for front-line workers, including flight crew and pilots.

This is because they are likely to interact with travellers and fellow employees in environments with a higher risk of COVID-19 transmission and where social distancing is impossible.

But looking to apply a “blanket” policy to all its employees, rather than specific subsets of workers in high-risk settings, is problematic. The Qantas workforce is likely to have a significant “mix”, with some performing “Tier 4” work in low-exposure settings.

So too SPC. Like Qantas, SPC’s management has argued the vaccination policy is necessary to discharge its statutory duty of care to the health and safety of its employees, most of whom work in close proximity of each other.

But an employee may argue there are other ways, short of vaccinations, to do this. This may include using personal protective equipment, testing and varying work patterns and procedures.

Read more:
Grattan on Friday: Vaccine passports are a better tool than mandating jabs for all jobs

Another important consideration will be vaccine access, noting that, in some states, certain employees may not yet have access to an ATAGI-approved vaccine for their age group.

A court or tribunal may also consider if the employer has provided adequate support, imposed reasonable deadlines, met consultation requirements or allowed alternative work arrangements for unvaccinated employees.

While the risk of transmission of COVID-19 remains high there is a good argument vaccination is an inherent requirement of all jobs involving face-to-face interactions. But regardless of the tier of work performed by employees, whether a vaccine mandate is reasonable needs to be assessed case by case.

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

– ref. Qantas has grounds to mandate vaccination, but most blanket policies won’t fly – https://theconversation.com/qantas-has-grounds-to-mandate-vaccination-but-most-blanket-policies-wont-fly-166416

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ivan Indriawan, Senior Lecturer in Finance, Auckland University of Technology

We like to think our purchase decisions are based on rational calculations and facts, but we know they are often driven by emotions, too. When we splurge on nice food, clothes or electronic gadgets, are we really thinking in terms of cost and benefit, or are we responding to stress, frustration, happiness or excitement?

The same can be asked of financial markets. The famous “efficient markets hypothesis” argues that stock prices are driven by rational calculations. But traders are human and humans are affected by emotions. Do these emotions feed through to the stock market?

Studying this question is difficult because people’s emotions aren’t observable. While emotions do manifest in observable actions, many such actions (aggressive behaviour or language, for example) are not captured by any data.

But what if there was a way to measure the overall mood of a country and relate that to the behaviour of financial markets? In the age of Spotify, this has become a real possibility.

Our research, published in the Journal of Financial Economics, uses the music people listen to as a measure of national sentiment affecting market behaviour. It builds on the concept of a “mood congruence” — that people’s music choices reflect their mood (sad songs at funerals, happy songs at parties and so on).

Spotify provides aggregated listening data across a country, as well as an algorithm that classifies the positivity or negativity of each song. Using these inputs, we calculate “music sentiment” — a measure of a country’s sentiment as expressed by the positivity of the songs its citizens listen to.

How is sentiment usually measured?

Investor sentiment is often defined as the general mood among investors regarding a particular market or asset. While this definition is widely accepted, it’s challenging to construct a pure measure of mood that isn’t complicated by economics.

Many natural measures – consumer confidence, GDP growth, unemployment, coronavirus cases and deaths – have direct economic effects. So, for example, if a high consumer confidence index sees the stock market rise, this doesn’t necessarily suggest emotions directly affect the stock market.

Rather, the rise could be a rational response to an improvement in the business and employment conditions the index is based on. One alternative, then, is to look for other “mood proxies” as viable indicators of national sentiment.

Read more:
Your Spotify history could help predict what’s going on with the economy

Previous research on investor sentiment has used shocks that affect the national mood but not the economy, such as the results of major sports tournaments.

However, other factors may affect mood – a country could lose a sports game but also enjoy falling COVID cases. Hence our proposed alternative way of capturing the mood of individuals using national Spotify data.

Using music to measure sentiment

One concern with music listening data is that people may choose music to neutralise their mood rather than reflect it — listening to upbeat music to cure a downbeat mood, for example.

We show this is not the case. Music sentiment is more positive during sunnier and lengthening days. Research has already shown these to be high mood periods, as are those times when COVID restrictions are lifted.

Read more:
Mood swings and the market: how to understand irrational investor behaviour

The novelty of our study, therefore, lies in finding a measure that reflects national mood. A citizen’s music choices reflect their mood regardless of what caused it — soccer results, COVID cases or anything else.

Indeed, Spotify listening data have been shown to predict consumer confidence more accurately than standard consumer confidence surveys.

Stock markets overreact to sentiment

Linking our sentiment measure with the stock markets, we find that higher music sentiment is associated with higher returns to a country’s stock market during the same week. It also leads to lower returns the next week, suggesting the initial reaction was a temporary one driven by sentiment.

One might argue these results show only a spurious correlation, similar to the “Superbowl effect” where the identity of the Superbowl winner predicts US stock markets, even though there is no rational or behavioural reason for that.

Read more:
It’s the ‘vibe’ of the thing: the critical art of measuring business and consumer confidence

But we show our result holds across 40 countries and is not driven by a couple of outliers skewing the data. We also show the result is robust across asset classes. While our main results consider stocks, we also find high music sentiment is associated with greater purchases of equity mutual funds.

High music sentiment is also correlated with lower returns to government bonds, indicating that investors switch out of safe bonds into risky stocks.

Why music sentiment matters

The point of our study is not to uncover a profitable trading strategy. We do not suggest investors should calculate music sentiment and use it to predict the stock market.

Instead, using a novel measure that reflects national sentiment and is available in 40 countries, we want to show emotions affect the stock market. This suggests investors should be wary of their own emotions when making investment decisions.

Read more:
From tulips and scrips to bitcoin and meme stocks – how the act of speculating became a financial mania

Our findings also imply that sentiment rather than fundamentals could drive rising stock prices – of electric vehicles or artificial intelligence products, for instance. Therefore, investors should be wary of buying into a bubble or selling in a crash.

Moreover, this study demonstrates the power of big data to reveal aggregate ongoing sentiment. Unlike sporting events, which are infrequent, music is enjoyed everywhere all the time. Being a universal language, music enables us to construct a comparative measure of national sentiment, in real time, around the world.

Ivan Indriawan receives funding from Auckland University of Technology, Faculty of Business, Economics and Law Research Grant (RP-2020).

Adrian Fernandez-Perez, Alex Edmans, and Alexandre Garel 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. Mood, music and money: what our Spotify playlists reveal about the emotional nature of financial markets – https://theconversation.com/mood-music-and-money-what-our-spotify-playlists-reveal-about-the-emotional-nature-of-financial-markets-166166

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jock Collins, Professor of Social Economics, UTS Business School, University of Technology Sydney

The shocking scenes at Kabul airport — reminiscent of the images of the fall of Saigon in 1975 — highlight the desperate situation many Afghans face following the unexpectedly quick Taliban victory.

In the 1970s, the Fraser government responded generously to the plight of the Vietnamese people seeking refuge in Australia, taking 15,000 refugees a year. In contrast, last week, Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced Australia will take in 3,000 Afghan refugees.

Read more:
No permanent settlement for Afghans who did not come ‘the right way’: Morrison

This comes from our existing annual intake of 13,750 humanitarian visas a year.

Our new research shows the government’s reluctance to take a more generous approach to Afghan refugees is not rooted in evidence about how they settle once they get to Australia.

Our research on Afghan refugee families

We have been doing a three-year study of recent refugees, examining what happens to them once they come to Australia. We followed Afghan, Syrian, and Iraqi refugee families who settled in metropolitan and regional NSW, Queensland and Victoria between 2018 and 2020. Most arrived in 2016 or 2017.

In this article, we present the results for the Afghan group, which involves 33 families. Many were Hazaras who fled persecution by the Taliban and many were in large, single female parent families who had arrived on women-at-risk visas.

Adults and young people aged five to 18 were interviewed and surveyed three times over three years.

They were asked a range of questions about their experience and life in Australia. This included how difficult it was to find accommodation, work, make friends, speak and read English, access good schools, and how they felt about their lives.

Feeling happy and safe

Overall, the adults we surveyed were optimistic and positive about their lives in Australia and felt welcome in their communities.

Just over half had no difficulty finding accommodation, while more than 70% said they found it “easy” to make friends. By 2020, 100% of respondents agreed they had access to good schools and felt safe in their neighbourhoods.

Some still struggled with English language ability, though this improved year on year. By 2020, more than half (55%) said they understood English “well to very well”.

At least 86% of respondents were “mostly to very happy” with their lives, over the three years of questioning. As a 20-year-old female respondent exlained:

Australia has given us safety, security, education, so we have to work for Australia’s improvement […] The Aussie people, they are very good […]Though our cultures are really different, but they respect us.

In addition to feeling safe, there was a recognition of equality:

Everybody is having the equal life. The biggest thing I can find here is equality. Here we cannot find any difference between girls and guys.

At least 96% were “mostly to very confident” about their children’s future. Meanwhile, 100% agreed Australia was a good place to raise children.

Finding a job

A significant improvement was seen in employment, although there is still room for more growth.

One of the biggest concerns Afghan adults mentioned in the first year of the study was getting a job and just 8% had paid work. By year two, this was up to 35% and then back to 26% in year three, when COVID hit.

Read more:
Afghan refugees can no longer wait — Australia must offer permanent protection now

A number of factors created barriers to employment, including a protracted work history due to war and moving from country to country seeking safety. Once in Australia, the immediate need to focus on learning English and the need to understand a new job market also delayed getting a job.

Opportunities to volunteer or take up internships helped break the catch-22 of “no job if you don’t have Australian employment experience”. While English language fluency created barriers to employment, employment was also key to learning English:

Yes, my English is getting better. Yes, working is good because I’m using English — people talk and I listen. Yes, that’s how I get better.“

‘Real Aussies’

As part of our research, we also spoke to young Afghan refugees. They were markedly positive about their lives in Australia. By 2020, 100% replied “very good to excellent” when asked how they were finding school or TAFE. One 13-year-old told us:

I have made lots of friends at school. I don’t go one day, I miss all of them.

They were also very confident about their English ability — 100% rated their speaking and listening at “very good to excellent”. More than 80% rated their reading and writing as “very good to excellent”.

More than 92% said they felt safe in their neighbourhoods and as though they belonged. As one 17 year-old boy said:

I do play soccer. Yes, I do play for the school team […] Do I do swimming? I do. Yes, I’ve become a real Aussie boy.

One 15 year-old respondent also described her work and study program, illustrating the ambition and work ethic of this young cohort.

There was a scholarship — it was from UQ [Queensland University]. Finally, I got accepted and it pays for four years of uni. Yes [I got a part-time job] […] Twelve hours a week. I’m also [a] Toowoomba regional youth leader.

Compelling practical reasons

Beyond the humanitarian and moral arguments for accepting more Afghan refugees in Australia, our research shows there are compelling practical reasons to increase our intake.

It demonstrates how Afghan refugees can overcome settlement challenges and achieve strong outcomes in terms of education and employment and belonging. This confirms findings of earlier research with Hazara boat people who set up successful businesses in Adelaide, many in partnership with those they met in detention centres.

This also ties with our current research with Syrian and Iraqi refugee families, which demonstrates their resilience and determination to create a better future in Australia for their children.

Jock Collins receives funding from the Australian Research Council for a Linkage Project with Industry Partners Settlement Services International, Multicultural Australia, Access Community Services and AMES.

Carol Reid receives funding from The Australian Research Council for a Linkage Project with Industry Partners Settlement Services International, Multicultural Australia, Access Community Services and AMES.

Dimitria Groutsis receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Katherine Watson and Stuart Hughes 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 studied Afghan refugees for 3 years to find out what life is like for them in Australia – https://theconversation.com/we-studied-afghan-refugees-for-3-years-to-find-out-what-life-is-like-for-them-in-australia-166498

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Vasso Apostolopoulos, Professor of Immunology and Associate Provost, Research Partnerships, Victoria University

Colder weather has long been associated with coughs, colds and other respiratory illnesses. Seasonal influenza and common colds peak throughout the winter months in both hemispheres – usually around August in Australia.

Given many common colds are caused by coronaviruses, it seems logical that cases of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, would be driven upward as temperatures decline.

But while there are plausible biological explanations for why this occurs, we can’t be certain of the effect of temperature on SARS-CoV-2. There is too little data to make solid conclusions.

Behavioural factors, such as spending more time indoors where viruses are more easily transmitted, are also at play.

What does the data say?

COVID case numbers in Australia are at their highest now and were at their second-highest levels 12 months ago, in winter:

But this is not true for other countries, especially those in the Northern Hemisphere. In the United Kingdom, for instance, cases peaked last winter, and then again in summer with the Delta variant:

Why do cases often rise in winter? Biological explanations

Coronaviruses survive longer in environments of decreased sunlight, lower temperatures and lower relative humidity.

So the amount of active virus in the environment might be greater during the winter months, and in cold, dry climates.

In environments with low humidity, there is less water vapour in the air (in other words, the air is dry), and when a COVID-19 positive person coughs, aerosolised particles stay suspended for much longer in the air. This increases the potential exposure and transmission to other people.

One study from 2020 reported a link between COVID-19 and lower humidity. The researchers noted a 1% decrease in humidity could increase the number of COVID-19 cases by 6%.

Another recent study from the United States and China found higher temperatures and higher relative humidity potentially suppressed COVID-19 transmission.

In Sydney, humidity is lowest in winter, particularly in August, and highest in summer. The same is true for most coastal areas in Australia.

Read more:
Research shows coronavirus thrives in dry air (and August is coastal Australia’s least humid month)

It’s in the air

On April 30 this year, the World Health Organization updated it guidance on how COVID-19 was transmitted:

The virus can spread from an infected person’s mouth or nose in small liquid particles when they cough, sneeze, speak, sing or breathe. These particles range from larger respiratory droplets to smaller aerosols.

These aerosols can remain suspended in the air for up to 16 hours.

So, it’s the shared air that spreads the virus, and that’s why face masks are important.

Behavioural explanations

A range of other factors which coincide with winter are likely to have a greater impact on transmission than how the virus behaves in cold climates.

As the colder winter months arrive, we flee the outdoors, instead opting for indoor activities. Some indoor spaces – including shops, restaurants, homes – are poorly ventilated, allowing colds, flus and other respiratory illness such as COVID to spread more easily.

In the northern hemisphere, winter also coincides with the holiday season, which sees significant amounts of travel, both international and domestic, and a significant uptick in large social gatherings. In the United Kingdom in January this year, this caused a significant increase in COVID-19 transmission.

It’s unlikely due to vitamin D

Another potential factor in COVID-19 transmission centres on the seasonal change in population-wide vitamin D levels. But so far, this isn’t backed up by evidence.

Vitamin D has received significant attention throughout the pandemic for a potentially protective effect against COVID-19. This was after a number of observational studies identified poorer outcomes in geographical areas with high levels of vitamin D deficiency.

Read more:
Does vitamin D ward off coronavirus? Don’t reach for the supplements yet

Other initial studies also showed lower levels of vitamin D in those diagnosed with COVID-19. This was theorised to be due to the effect of vitamin D on the immune system, preventing some of the severe inflammatory impacts of the disease, and potentially improving the ability of the individual to combat the infection.

However, larger studies where one group was given vitamin D supplements and another weren’t have thrown doubt on these relationships, particularly in those who were not deficient.

Social distance and masks matter most

While there does seem to be an increase in COVID-19 cases in the winter months, the cause of this is multi-factorial.

While certainly something for health care and policymakers to be aware of, the effect of weather and climate on COVID-19 is unlikely to have significant impact overall, and is readily countered by control measures.

Importantly, social distancing and mask use help to limit other winter viral infections such as the seasonal influenza, which was drastically reduced in winter 2020.

Paying close attention to the public health advice, particularly when indoors, should counteract any increase in COVID-19 activity in the colder months.

Read more:
Is Delta defeating us? Here’s why the variant makes contact tracing so much harder

Vasso Apostolopoulos’ COVID-19 research has received internal funding from a Victoria University research grant and from philanthropic donations

Jack Feehan 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. Rates of COVID might increase in winter, but it’s not necessarily because the virus thrives in the cold – https://theconversation.com/rates-of-covid-might-increase-in-winter-but-its-not-necessarily-because-the-virus-thrives-in-the-cold-164776

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jacqueline Lau, Research Fellow, ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, James Cook University

There’s no shortage of evidence pointing to the need to act urgently on climate change. Most recently, a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change confirmed Earth has warmed 1.09℃ since pre-industrial times and many changes, such as sea-level rise and glacier melt, cannot be stopped.

Clearly, emissions reduction efforts to date have fallen abysmally short. But why, when the argument in favour of climate action is so compelling?

Decisions about climate change require judging what’s important, and how the world should be now and in future. Therefore, climate change decisions are inherently moral. The rule applies whether the decision is being made by an individual deciding what food to eat, or national governments setting goals at international climate negotiations.

Our research reviewed the most recent literature across the social and behavioural sciences to better understand the moral dimensions of climate decisions. We found some moral values, such as fairness, motivate action. Others, such as economic liberty, stoke inaction.

Morals as climate motivators

Our research uncovered a large body of research confirming people’s moral values are connected to their willingness to act on climate change.

Moral values are the yardstick through which we understand things to be right or wrong, good or bad. We develop personal moral values through our families in childhood and our social and cultural context.

But which moral values best motivate personal actions? Our research documents a study in the United States, which found the values of compassion and fairness were a strong predictor of someone’s willingness to act on climate change.

According to moral foundations theory, the value of compassion relates to humans’ evolution as mammals with attachment systems and an ability to feel and dislike the pain of others.

Fairness relates to the evolutionary process of “reciprocal altruism”. This describes a situation whereby an organism acts in a way that temporarily disadvantages itself while benefiting another, based on an expectation that the altruism will be reciprocated at a later time.

Read more:
Ordinary people, extraordinary change: addressing the climate emergency through ‘quiet activism’

Conversely, a study in Australia found people who put a lower value on fairness, compared to either the maintenance of social order or the right to economic freedom, were more likely to be sceptical about climate change.

People may also use moral “disengagement” to justify, and assuage guilt over, their own climate inaction. In other words, they convince themselves that ethical standards do not apply in a particular context.

For example, a longitudinal study of 1,355 Australians showed over time, people who became more morally disengaged became more sceptical about climate change, were less likely to feel responsible and were less likely to act.

Our research found the moral values driving efforts to reduce emissions (mitigation) were different to those driving climate change adaptation.

Research in the United Kingdom showed people emphasised the values of responsibility and respect for authorities, country and nature, when talking about mitigation. When evaluating adaptation options, they emphasised moral values such as protection from harm and fair distribution of economic costs.

Framing climate decisions

How government and private climate decisions are framed and communicated affects who they resonate with, and whether they’re seen as legitimate.

Research suggests climate change could be made morally relevant to more people if official climate decisions appealed to moral values associated with right-wing political leanings.

A US study found liberals interpreted climate change in moral terms related to harm and care, while conservatives did not. But when researchers reframed pro-environmental messages in terms of moral values that resonated with conservatives, such as defending the purity of nature, differences in the environmental attitudes of both groups narrowed.

Indeed, research shows moral reframing can change pro-environmental behaviours of different political groups, including recycling habits.

In the US, people were found to recycle more after the practice was reframed in moral terms that resonated with their political ideology. For conservatives, the messages appealed to their sense of civic duty and respect for authority. For liberals, the messages emphasised recycling as an act of fairness, care and reducing harm to others.

Read more:
Communicating climate change has never been so important, and this IPCC report pulls no punches

When moralising backfires

Clearly, morals are central to decision-making about the environment. In some cases, this can extend to people adopting – or being seen to adopt – a social identity with moral associations such as “zero-wasters”, “voluntary simplifiers” and cyclists.

People may take on these identities overtly, such as by posting about their actions on social media. In other cases, a practice someone adopts, such as cycling to work, can be construed by others as a moral action.

Being seen to hold a social identity based on a set of morals may actually have unintended effects. Research has found so-called “do-gooders” can be perceived by others as irritating rather than inspiring. They may also trigger feelings of inadequacy in others who, as a self-defense mechanism, might then dismiss the sustainable choices of the “do-gooder”.

For example, sociologists have theorised that some non-vegans avoid eating a more plant-based diet because they don’t want to be associated with the social identity of veganism.

It makes sense, then, that gentle encouragement such as “meat-free Mondays” is likely more effective at reducing meat consumption than encouraging people to “go vegan” and eliminate meat altogether.

Looking ahead

Personal climate decisions come with a host of moral values and quandaries. Understanding and navigating this moral dimension will be critical in the years ahead.

When making climate-related decisions, governments should consider the moral values of citizens. This can be achieved through procedures like deliberative democracy and citizen’s forums, in which everyday people are given the chance to discuss and debate the issues, and communicate to government what matters most to them.

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

Jacqueline Lau is affiliated with WorldFish—an international, not for profit research organization and part of the CGIAR that seeks to deliver research for a more food secure world, particularly for societies most vulnerable women and men. This research was supported by the ARC Centre for Excellence in Coral Reef Studies, and the CGIAR Research Program on Fish Agri-Food Systems.

Andrew Song receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Jessica Blythe receives funding from the Social Science Research Council (SSHRC).

– ref. ‘Do-gooders’, conservatives and reluctant recyclers: how personal morals can be harnessed for climate action – https://theconversation.com/do-gooders-conservatives-and-reluctant-recyclers-how-personal-morals-can-be-harnessed-for-climate-action-164599

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adam Brumm, Professor, Griffith University

In 2015, archaeologists from the University of Hasanuddin in Makassar, on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, uncovered the skeleton of a woman buried in a limestone cave. Studies revealed the person from Leang Panninge, or “Bat Cave”, was 17 or 18 years old when she died some 7,200 years ago.

Her discoverers dubbed her Bessé’ (pronounced bur-sek¹) — a nickname bestowed on newborn princesses among the Bugis people who now live in southern Sulawesi. The name denotes the great esteem local archaeologists have for this ancient woman.

She represents the only known skeleton of one of the Toalean people. These enigmatic hunter-gatherers inhabited the island before Neolithic farmers from mainland Asia (“Austronesians”) spread into Indonesia around 3,500 years ago.

Our team found ancient DNA that survived inside the inner ear bone of Bessé’, furnishing us with the first direct genetic evidence of the Toaleans. This is also the first time ancient human DNA has been reported from Wallacea, the vast group of islands between Borneo and New Guinea, of which Sulawesi is the largest.

Genomic analysis shows Bessé’ belonged to a population with a previously unknown ancestral composition. She shares about half of her genetic makeup with present-day Indigenous Australians and people in New Guinea and the Western Pacific. This includes DNA inherited from the now-extinct Denisovans, who were distant cousins of Neanderthals.

In fact, relative to other ancient and present-day groups in the region, the proportion of Denisovan DNA in Bessé’ could indicate the main meeting point between our species and Denisovans was in Sulawesi itself (or perhaps a nearby Wallacean island).

Read more:
Evolutionary study suggests prehistoric human fossils ‘hiding in plain sight’ in Southeast Asia

The ancestry of this pre-Neolithic woman provides fascinating insight into the little-known population history and genetic diversity of early modern humans in the Wallacean islands — the gateway to the continent of Australia.

Toalean culture

The archaeological story of the Toaleans began more than a century ago. In 1902, the Swiss naturalists Paul and Fritz Sarasin excavated several caves in the highlands of southern Sulawesi.

Their digs unearthed small, finely crafted stone arrowheads known as Maros points. They also found other distinctive stone implements and tools fashioned from bone, which they attributed to the original inhabitants of Sulawesi — the prehistoric “Toalien” people (now spelled Toalean).

Some Toalean cave sites have since been excavated to a higher scientific standard, yet our understanding of this culture is at an early stage. The oldest known Maros points and other Toalean artefacts date to about 8,000 years ago.

Excavated findings from caves suggest the Toaleans were hunter-gatherers who preyed heavily on wild endemic warty pigs and harvested edible shellfish from creeks and estuaries. So far, evidence for the group has only been found in one part of southern Sulawesi.

Toalean artefacts disappear from the archaeological record by the fifth century AD — a few thousand years after the first Neolithic settlements emerged on the island.

Prehistorians have long sought to determine who the Toaleans were, but efforts have been impeded by a lack of securely-dated human remains. This all changed with the discovery of Bessé’ and the ancient DNA in her bones.

The ancestral story of Bessé’

Our results mean we can now confirm existing presumptions the Toaleans were related to the first modern humans to enter Wallacea some 65,000 years ago or more. These seafaring hunter-gatherers were the ancestors of Aboriginal Australians and Papuans.

They were also the earliest inhabitants of Sahul, the supercontinent that emerged during the Pleistocene (ice age) when global sea levels fell, exposing a land bridge between Australia and New Guinea. To reach Sahul, these pioneering humans made ocean crossings through Wallacea, but little about their journeys is known.

Read more:
Island-hopping study shows the most likely route the first people took to Australia

It is conceivable the ancestors of Bessé’ were among the first people to reach Wallacea. Instead of island-hopping to Sahul, however, they remained in Sulawesi.

But our analyses also revealed a deep ancestral signature from an early modern human population that originated somewhere in continental Asia. These ancestors of Bessé’ did not intermix with the forebears of Aboriginal Australians and Papuans, suggesting they may have entered the region after the initial peopling of Sahul — but long before the Austronesian expansion.

Who were these people? When did they arrive in the region and how widespread were they? It’s unlikely we will have answers to these questions until we have more ancient human DNA samples and pre-Neolithic fossils from Wallacea. This unexpected finding shows us how little we know about the early human story in our region.

A new look at the Toaleans

With funds awarded by the Australian Research Council’s Discovery program we are initiating a new project that will explore the Toalean world in greater detail. Through archaeological excavations at Leang Panninge we hope to learn more about the development of this unique hunter-gatherer culture.

We also wish to address longstanding questions about Toalean social organisation and ways of life. For example, some scholars have inferred the Toaleans became so populous that these hitherto small and scattered groups of foragers began to settle down in large sedentary communities, and possibly even domesticated wild pigs.

It has also recently been speculated Toaleans were the mysterious Asian seafarers who visited Australia in ancient times, introducing the dingo (or more accurately, the domesticated ancestor of this now-wild canid). There is clearly much left to uncover about the long island story of Bessé’ and her kin.

¹The “bur” syllable is pronounced as in the English word “bursary”. The “k” is essentially a strangulated stop in the throat, akin to the “t” in the Cockney “bo’ol”, for bottle. (With thanks to Professor Campbell Macknight).

Adam Brumm receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Adhi Agus Oktaviana is a PhD candidate in Place, Evolution and Rock Art Heritage Unit, Griffith University, Australia.

Akin Duli receives funding from Universitas Hasanuddin and Universiti Sains Malaysia. He is affiliated with Archaeology Department, Universitas Hasanuddin.

Basran Burhan is a PhD student at Griffith University

Selina Carlhoff receives funding from the European Research Council and the Max Planck Society.

Cosimo Posth 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. Who were the Toaleans? Ancient woman’s DNA provides first evidence for the origin of a mysterious lost culture – https://theconversation.com/who-were-the-toaleans-ancient-womans-dna-provides-first-evidence-for-the-origin-of-a-mysterious-lost-culture-166565

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Greg Barton, Chair in Global Islamic Politics, Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Deakin University

Spoiler alert: we are not winning the global war on terror. If the past 20 years of fighting terrorism by military means have shown us anything, it is that going to war makes things worse.

The direct costs in terms of human suffering – lives lost, societies destroyed and trillions of dollars spent – are multiplied by unintended consequences and cascading problems.

Invading Iraq in 2003 created a vacuum quickly filled with violent insurgencies that led directly to the rise of Islamic State and indirectly to a devastating decade of civil war in Syria. It did not make sense at the time and it certainly does not make sense now.

Launching a military campaign in Afghanistan weeks after the attacks of September 11, however, started out looking like a sensible response. Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda had planned and directed the attacks from the mountains of eastern Afghanistan.

It was there in the late 1980s, during the struggle of the Afghan mujahideen against the Soviet military, that al-Qaeda – “the base” – had been formed to support foreign mujahideen. The mission was to further radicalise and equip them to take jihad to the world.

The initial US special forces operation, which then Prime Minister John Howard insisted Australia join, had the goal of capturing or killing bin Laden and the al-Qaeda leadership. It also aimed to deny al-Qaeda a safe haven in Afghanistan to launch further attacks.

The Taliban regime that had come to power in Kabul five years earlier chose to protect al-Qaeda and suffered the consequences. Mullah Baradar and other Taliban leaders yielded power in Kabul in November, much more quickly than anyone had anticipated. They then staged a strategic retreat to insurgent mode.

Read more:
World politics explainer: The twin-tower bombings (9/11)

In 2002, mission creep saw an international coalition doing what many said should have been done a decade earlier when the Soviets left. For a moment, nation-building seemed to be working, but then attention turned to invading Iraq.

Even without the distraction of marching on Baghdad and sinking into a rapidly expanding quagmire of our own making, pretty much every mistake in counter-insurgency and nation-building that could be made in Afghanistan was made. A brittle, corrupt, incompetent and highly centralised government in Kabul presented opportunities on all fronts to the Taliban insurgency.

Even after a massive military surge early in the second decade of the 21st century that saw 140,000 International Security Assistance Force NATO troops enter the conflict, the patient Taliban remained. Then, after the sharp drawn-down of international troops in 2014, the Taliban insurgency expanded.

Long story short, the war on terror, and fighting terrorism by military means, has been a largely unmitigated failure. Even in Africa, where failing states and jihadi insurgencies have demanded military responses, victories have been short-lived. At best, as in Somalia, they have resulted in costly stalemates.

Read more:
Afghanistan: assessing the terror threat in the west as the Taliban returns

Military interventions have been costly and counter-productive

This is not to say the struggle against global terrorism has been completely without result. Elaborate terror plots targeting cities around the globe, first by al-Qaeda and then by IS, have been defeated and prevented on an impressive scale. But this has been achieved primarily by police-led counter-terrorism intelligence operations, working with communities, intercepting communications in terrorist networks and disrupting plots.

Military successes, such as the destruction of the IS caliphate in Syria and Iraq, have come not only at enormous cost, but also as corrections to problems created by military interventions.

Now in Afghanistan there is only failure. Two decades of significant achievement in transforming Afghan society, if not building robust government, have been washed away.

Not only that, the original success in defeating jihadi terrorism is also at an end, with the return of the Taliban and the success of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan project.

Developments in Afghanistan will be significant for at least three key reasons.

First, the triumph of the Taliban after two decades of struggle against the combined forces of NATO and the US is being seized on as evidence of divine approval for the global jihadist cause.

Ironically, although declaring a global war on terror proved to be a monumental mistake, jihadi movements such as al-Qaeda, the Taliban and IS are defined by their commitment to what they claim to be a holy war. That is why the success of Taliban, after 20 years of struggle, resounds around the world. And that is why, for all of their post-victory rebranding and social media information campaign, the Taliban, as a jihadi movement, remains bound to al-Qaeda.

Second, the mountains of Afghanistan will once again become home to mujahideen from across Asia and around the world. Jihadi camps in Afghanistan will return to making a significant contribution to the recruitment, radicalisation, training and networking of new generations of jihadi fighters and movements in South-East Asia.

The Taliban regime in Kabul (or Kandahar) will, despite the Taliban’s existential commitment to global jihad, likely seek to distance itself from such camps. It will exploit plausible deniability, as it focuses on rehabilitating and reinventing its international reputation and securing the long-term viability of the Islamic emirate. This will potentially have the not insignificant benefit of restraining the Taliban from some of the brutal excesses of the past, particularly with respect to the oppression of women and the persecution of minority groups like the Hazara.

Read more:
As the Taliban surges across Afghanistan, al-Qaeda is poised for a swift return

But it will also contribute to a third, more insidious challenge. As world powers like China and Russia, neighbours like Iran and Pakistan, and Muslim nations like Indonesia and Malaysia seek to engage with the emirate in order to moderate the Taliban regime, local Islamist groups will exploit the opportunity to push the boundaries of the permissible in South-East Asia. This is already on display with statements congratulating “our brothers the Taliban” from radical Islamist political groups such as the Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS).

The threat in southeast Asia

Over the past two decades, jihadi extremism with origins in the Afghan alumni – mujahideen trained and radicalised in Afghanistan in the 1980s and 1990s, and groups formed in Afghanistan such as Jemaah Islamiyah and the Abu Sayyaf Group – has been foundational to violent extremism in our region. This was amplified by a new generation of South-East Asian mujahideen returning from Syria and Iraq.

The stage is set for a new era of terrorist growth in South-East Asia and around the world. The IS motto of “remaining and expanding” rang hollow in the wake of the destruction of the caliphate.

Now, as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan is set to eclipse the caliphate in scale and longevity, the jihadi catch-cry appears to have been met with divine vindication.

Greg Barton receives funding from the Australian Research Council. And he is engaged in a range of projects working to understand and counter violent extremism in Australia and in Southeast Asia that are funded by the Australian government.

– ref. Remaining and expanding: what the Taliban’s return will mean for jihadi terrorism – https://theconversation.com/remaining-and-expanding-what-the-talibans-return-will-mean-for-jihadi-terrorism-166488

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Darcy Watchorn, PhD Candidate, Deakin University

In just five years, greater gliders — fluffy-eared, tree-dwelling marsupials — could go from vulnerable to endangered, because Australia’s environmental laws have failed to protect them and other threatened native species.

Our new research found that after the greater glider was listed as vulnerable to extinction under national environment law in 2016, habitat destruction actually increased in some states, driving the species closer to the brink. Now, they meet the criteria to be listed as endangered.

Despite this, the federal government has put forward a bill that would further weaken Australia’s environment laws.

If Australia wants to ditch its shameful reputation as a global extinction leader, our environmental laws must be significantly strengthened, not weakened.

Why is the greater glider losing its home?

At about the size of a cat, greater gliders are the largest gliding marsupial in the world, and can glide up to 100 metres through the forest canopy. They nest in the hollows of big old trees and, just like koalas, they mostly eat eucalypt leaves.

Greater gliders were once common throughout the forests of Queensland, New South Wales, and Victoria. However, destructive practices, such as logging and urban development, have cut down the trees they call home. The rapidly warming climate and increasingly frequent and severe bushfires are also a major threat.

Together, these threats are causing the greater glider to rapidly disappear.

For our new study, we calculated the amount of greater glider habitat destroyed in the two years before the species was listed as vulnerable under Australia’s environment law, the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act (EPBC) Act. We then compared this to the amount of habitat destroyed in the two years after listing.

In Victoria, we measured the amount of habitat that was logged. In Queensland and NSW, we measured the amount of habitat cleared for all purposes, including logging, agriculture, and development projects.

What we found

The amount of greater glider habitat logged in Victoria remained consistently high, with a total of 4,917 hectares logged before listing compared to 4,759 hectares after listing. And of all forest logged in Victoria after listing, more than 45% was mapped as greater glider habitat by the federal government, according to our research paper.

State-owned forestry company VicForests is responsible for the lion’s share of native forest logging in Victoria. The Conversation contacted VicForests to respond to the arguments in this article. A spokesperson said:

There are 3.7 million hectares of potential Greater Glider habitat in Victoria under the official habitat model. The most valuable areas of this habitat are set aside in conservation reserves that can never be harvested.

The total area harvested by VicForests in any year is around 0.04% of this total potential habitat.

In Queensland, habitat clearing increased by almost 300%, from a total of 3,002 hectares before listing compared to 11,838 hectares after listing. The amount of habitat cleared in NSW increased by about 5%, from a total of 15,204 hectares to 15,890 hectares.

We also quantified how much greater glider habitat was affected by the 2019-2020 Black Summer bushfires, and found approximately 29% of greater glider habitat was burnt. Almost 40% of this burnt at high severity, which means few gliders are likely to persist in, or rapidly return to, these areas.

As a result, earlier this year — just five years after listing — an assessment by the Threatened Species Scientific Committee found the greater glider is potentially eligible for up-listing from vulnerable to endangered.

Why was habitat allowed to be cleared?

Development projects can take decades to be implemented after they’ve been approved under the EPBC Act. Therefore, a lot of the habitat cleared in NSW and Queensland was likely to have been approved before the greater glider was listed as vulnerable, and before the 2019-2020 bushfires.

Once a project is approved, it is not reassessed, even if a species becomes vulnerable and a wildfire burns much of its habitat.

This means the impact of clearing native vegetation can be far greater than when initially approved. It also means it can take many years after a species is listed until its habitat is finally safe.

In Victoria and parts of NSW, the forestry industry is allowed to log greater glider habitat under “regional forest agreements”. These agreements allow logging to operate under a special set of rules that bypasses federal environmental scrutiny under the EPBC Act.

The logging industry is required to comply only with state regulations for threatened species protection, which are are often inadequate.

Read more:
A major report excoriated Australia’s environment laws. Sussan Ley’s response is confused and risky

In 2019, the Victorian government updated the protection measures for greater gliders in logged forests. However, these still allow logging of up to 60% of a forested area authorised for harvest, even when greater gliders are present at high densities.

The spokesperson for VicForests said the company prioritises live, hollow-bearing trees wherever there are five or more greater gliders per spotlight kilometre (a 1 kilometre stretch of forest surveyed with torches). But this level of protection is limited and is unlikely to halt greater glider decline, as the species is highly sensitive to disturbance.

In May 2020 the Federal Court found VicForests breached state environmental laws when they failed to implement protection measures and destroyed critically endangered Leadbeater’s possum and greater glider habitat.

Despite this, earlier this year, the Federal Court upheld an appeal by VicForests to retain their exemption from the EPBC Act. This ruling means VicForests will not be held accountable for destroying threatened species habitat, even when it is found in breach of state requirements.

Read more:
A Victorian logging company just won a controversial court appeal. Here’s what it means for forest wildlife

The spokesperson for VicForests said the company takes sustainable harvesting seriously.

VicForests operations are subject to Victorian laws, and enforced by the Office of the Conservation Regulator (OCR) and Victorian courts when necessary. The recent federal court appeal decision has not changed that fact.

They add that VicForests surveys show greater gliders continue to persist in recently harvested areas, under its current practices.

VicForests has not seen any evidence that even a single Greater Glider has died as a result of our new harvesting approach.

The government isn’t learning its lesson

The EPBC Act is currently undergoing a once in a decade assessment that considers how well it’s operating, with a recent independent review criticising the EPBC Act for no longer being fit for purpose. Our new research reinforces this, by showing the act has failed to protect one of Australia’s most iconic and unique animals.

And yet, the federal government wants to weaken the act further by implementing a streamlined model, which would rely on state governments to approve actions that would impact threatened species.

There’s a raft of reasons why this would be problematic.

Read more:
Death by 775 cuts: how conservation law is failing the black-throated finch

For one, state environmental laws operate independently, and don’t consider what developments have been approved in other states. Cutting down trees may seem insignificant in certain areas, but without considering the broader impacts, many small losses can accumulate into massive declines, like a death by a thousand cuts.

As a case in point, despite the devastation of greater glider habitat from the Black Summer fires in NSW, the Queensland government have recently approved a new coal mine, which will destroy over 5,500 hectares of greater glider and koala habitat.

What needs to change?

The greater glider is edging towards extinction, but there is still no recovery plan for this iconic marsupial. Adding to this, new research suggests there are actually three species of greater glider we could be losing, rather than just one as was previously thought. Significant effort must be invested to create a clear plan for their recovery.

Because Australia has such a rich diversity of wildlife, we have a great responsibility to protect it. Australia must make important changes now to strengthen — not weaken — its environmental laws, before greater gliders, and many other species, are gone forever.

Darcy Watchorn receives funding from the Hermon Slade Foundation, Parks Victoria, the Conservation and Wildlife Research Trust, the Ecological Society of Australia, the Victorian Environmental Assessment Council, and the Geelong Naturalists Field Club. He is a member of the Ecological Society of Australia and the Society for Conservation Biology Oceania.

Kita Ashman works for WWF Australia.

– ref. Australia has failed greater gliders: since they were listed as ‘vulnerable’ we’ve destroyed more of their habitat – https://theconversation.com/australia-has-failed-greater-gliders-since-they-were-listed-as-vulnerable-weve-destroyed-more-of-their-habitat-164872

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rebecca English, Senior Lecturer in Education, Queensland University of Technology

Let’s face it, none of us actually enjoys wearing a mask. And it’s even harder when you’re a parent trying to get your kids masked up, as well as yourself.

Victoria, New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory now require everyone over the age of 12 to wear a mask whenever they leave their home, unless they are exercising. This mandate includes in high schools in NSW and Victoria.

In parts of Queensland and South Australia, children 12 to 17 years also need to wear a face mask if they’re indoors and can’t socially distance.

Children should not wear masks while exercising. And children under two years old should also not wear masks, as they are a choking and suffocation risk.

Parents can decide if children between the ages of five and 12 should wear a mask. But, the World Health Organization says children under five years old should not be required to wear masks.

There is ample evidence showing masks help keep children and young people safe. Plus, unlike the earlier stages of the pandemic when kids weren’t contracting or transmitting the virus as much as adults, we are now seeing many cases in children of the Delta variant. Although, thankfully, serious disease among young people is still rare.

Read more:
Under-12s are increasingly catching COVID-19. How sick are they getting and when will we be able to vaccinate them?

Here are five things you can do to encourage your kids to wear a mask.

1. Model wearing one

One of the best things you can do to encourage your kids to mask up is to model mask wearing. Show your child it is OK to wear a mask; it is “normal”.

2. Empathise with their feelings

If your child is reluctant to wear a mask, you can empathise with their feelings. Nobody likes wearing masks. Children rely on facial gestures to communicate, and many have sensory issues that can make wearing masks uncomfortable. Reflecting back to your child that you know this is hard for them helps them feel understood.

Find out why they don’t want to wear a mask. It might be they get sore ears or a headache. If so, masks that tie behind the head can be helpful. If it’s fogged glasses, a better fitting mask, or a mask clip, may help.

The internet is full of mask hacks to help make masks more comfortable. Some are as simple as using hair clips in the loops to extend the length of the mask.

Read more:
13 insider tips on how to wear a mask without your glasses fogging up, getting short of breath or your ears hurting

3. Help them understand the science

Kids may be more willing to wear a mask if they understand why they need to. When children understand why a behaviour is important to their health, they are more likely to comply. Older children may be interested in the science of mask wearing.

There are many resources — including easy to understand YouTube videos — that can help.

Remind your kids that doing things they want, like seeing their friends at school, relies on them wearing a mask.

4. Make it a game

Younger children may be helped by making the mask wearing a bit of a game, which can include making up silly poems about wearing masks. Or you could encourage your child to see themselves as a superhero protecting others by wearing a mask.

You could also give your child the chance to choose a mask or decorate their own, turning it into a craft activity. This will make the child comfortable with the mask and give them a sense of ownership over it.

Read more:
Tinker Bell, Batman, Ben 10… if your kids are in character, they’re more likely to help around the house

5. Ask others for help

Children require good fine motor skills to put on, and keep on, a mask. If you want your child to be wearing a mask at school, you could talk to the teacher, teacher aide or guidance officer to see if they can help.

Teachers can make sure the mask is on properly, and help your child to adjust the mask as needed.

For children with a disability

If your child has a learning disability, developmental delay or is on the autism spectrum, asking them to wear a mask, and keep it on, may be harder.

Making it a game or making it fun may also work for these children. And there’s evidence that tolerance training, where you gradually expose your child to mask wearing providing praise when the child is able to complete a step, can help.

But it may be impossible to force compliance and it may be dangerous in some circumstances. There are exemptions for people who have any medical condition that makes wearing masks unsuitable.

Lastly, ask yourself these questions

If your child isn’t legally required to wear a mask, but you’re still wondering, ask yourself these questions:

• are there high levels of virus in my community?

• is my child going to be indoors with poor ventilation and lots of people?

• does my child have a medical condition that might make COVID-19 more risky for them or are they going to be around people who have a medical condition that makes them more susceptible to COVID-19?

If the answers to any of these questions are “yes”, that would lend weight to encouraging mask wearing.

If the answers to any of these questions are “no”, this would lend weight towards not requiring mask wearing.

Read more:
Children need playgrounds now, more than ever. We can reduce COVID risk and keep them open

But if your child is under 12, or has a developmental or another kind of disability, it’s also important to consider whether they can put the mask on and take it off safely by themselves, and whether you or someone else can supervise them while they are wearing a mask. If not, it may be better they don’t wear one.

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

– ref. Can’t get your kid to wear a mask? Here are 5 things you can try – https://theconversation.com/cant-get-your-kid-to-wear-a-mask-here-are-5-things-you-can-try-166648

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ross Buckley, Professor, Faculty of Law, UNSW

There’s a revolution under way in commerce. Within five years, the consumer data right will have transformed competition and simplified the way we live.

Yet most of us know little about it, or think it is restricted to banking.

It’s the brainchild of former Productivity Commission chief Peter Harris and Scott Morrison when he was treasurer.

Read more:
How open banking could transform financial services

The Productivity Commission was asked to inquire into the use of big data.

It made all sorts of recommendations about how the government could use data better, but only after first delivering an overarching recommendation that would deliver ownership of consumer data to the consumers who provided it.

The recommendation would give consumers and businesses not just theoretical ownership of the data they gave to other businesses, but also practical access in the form of machine-readable code that they could take to a competitor or a firm that would help them pick a better service provider.

It’s easy to see how it will work for music streaming.

A customer might want to switch to another service, but would find it hard because the one they were with had years of their data — favourites, playlists etc.

Under the legislation that flowed from the report, the old provider would have to provide the information in machine-readable code to the new one to make the transition effortless.

Or the consumer could take their data to a service which would analyse their listening history and determine the right provider for them.

The right has first been rolled out to banking, where it is called Open Banking.

Since July 2020 bank customers have been able to give permission to accredited third parties to access their savings and credit card data.

Since November customers have also been able to give permission to accredited third parties to access mortgage, personal loan and joint bank account data.

It’ll help customers search for better deals and keep track of their finances.

Firms will no longer own customers data

Historically, banks thought of this information as their data, inside knowledge about their customers that gave them an edge on the competition.

Progress has been slow for two reasons, both of them good ones.

One is that the government is insisting that industry determines the standards on which the regime will run. This will help. Government-mandated standards don’t often work well.

The other reason, learnt the hard way from the less than perfect introduction of My Health Record is that data reforms need to be done right, the first time. If there are data leaks, from one provider to another, trust will evaporate.

Read more:
Soft terms like ‘open’ and ‘sharing’ don’t tell the true story of your data

The choice of banking to start the rollout has clouded the message.

It has meant that where people know about the new right at all, many think it is limited to banking. But in time it will apply almost everywhere — to energy, communications, superannuation among other services.

To my mind energy provides an even better example of the power of the reform than banking. I pay too much for my electricity, yet every time someone rings to offer me a better energy plan, I say no. I am usually too busy and it would take time to compare the offers.

Switching providers might be as simple as a click

But once the consumer data right is in place, I won’t have to do that maths. I will be able to simply click on a button on a website or email to direct my data to the other supplier. That supplier will be able to set out what I am paying today against what I would be paying if I switched. The same with mobile phone plans.

I won’t even need to contact my old provider to switch. This will deny my old provider the opportunity to reclaim me by offering a better deal when I call to cancel my contract. It will be too late. My current provider will be forced to treat me fairly upfront – or risk losing me.

Firms might have treat their customers well

Banks today routinely offer new customers better terms than existing customers.

Thirty years ago most Australian businesses thought charging existing customers more than new customers was unfair. Those standards have fallen away.

In many contexts, the consumer data right will bring them back.

It’s a work in progress, but it is set to improve our lives and the services we use for decades to come.

Ross Buckley receives funding from the Australian Research Council Laureate Program to research a wide range of data-related topics, including this one.

– ref. More than banking done right, consumer data rights are set to transform our lives – https://theconversation.com/more-than-banking-done-right-consumer-data-rights-are-set-to-transform-our-lives-166036

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Arrow, Professor of History, Macquarie University

Our writers nominate the TV series keeping them entertained during a time of COVID.

In our household, watching comedy in the evenings has been a crucial part of our lockdown survival strategy. We powered through a lot of comedy series last year, and watched some more than once. (I’m looking at you, Schitt’s Creek). Stuck in lockdown for the foreseeable future, I suggested we might re-watch those Fountain Gate foxymorons, Kath and Kim, and my 12-year-old daughter’s eyes lit up.

She’s not alone. When Netflix added Kath and Kim to its service in 2019, it introduced the show to a generation born well after its early 2000s heyday. Its renewed popularity has spawned Tik Tok challenges and Instagram fan accounts. The resurgence of 80s fashion (especially so-called “mum jeans”) means many Gen Z’s share Kath’s fondness for a “foot-long fly” and acid wash denim.

A suburban sitcom about Kath Day, that “high maintenance” foxy lady, her “hornbag” daughter Kim, and Kim’s “second best friend” Sharon Strezlecki, Kath and Kim remains one of Australia’s best loved comedy series. Premiering in 2002 on the ABC, it was the top-rating series on television in 2003-2004.

Creators Jane Turner and Gina Riley moved to Channel 7 for the show’s final season in 2007, and produced a telemovie, Da Kath and Kim Code (2005) and a feature film, Kath and Kimderella (2012).

For decades, Australian television comedy typically relegated women to the sidelines, as objects to ogle or as sidekicks to male characters. Kath and Kim was an amazing showcase for Riley, Turner and Magda Szubanski. The male performers (Peter Rowsthorn and Glenn Robbins) are terrific but the women are the stars.

The trio were popular cast members of the late 1980s Channel 7 comedy series Fast Forward, revealing a talent for parodying media culture, precise observations of Australian women’s speech, and an utter lack of vanity. Kath, Kim and Sharon’s characters first appeared in a series of sketches called “Kim’s Wedding” in their comedy series Big Girl’s Blouse, which ran for a single season in 1994.

Big Girl’s Blouse was ground-breaking because it emerged from a female, even feminist perspective. In Midweek Ladies, a brilliant “documentary” about the leadership turmoil in a ladies tennis club, the trio parodied the self-seriousness of men’s political machinations on the national stage, while also hinting at smaller but no less meaningful dramas playing out in women’s lives across Australia.

Female-centred satire

Australian culture has a long history of satirising, or looking down on, suburbia. From Robin Boyd’s Australian Ugliness to Barry Humphries’s Mrs Edna Everage, many of these critiques were created by men.

Riley and Turner understood the broad appeal of poking fun at suburbia, the place where so many of us grew up. Their humour is broad and specific (or “pacific”, as Kath would say) at the same time, but it always emanated from a keenly observed, female perspective. Only women of a certain age and class could make a joke about Kim being a “Country Road size ten”.

Among the bigger comedic moments (Kath’s wedding, any scene featuring Kath and Kel’s dancing) were dozens of small, well observed details: the squeaky back door of Kath’s house, or Kath sneaking extra rubbish into her neighbour’s bins.

Kath and Kim has endured partly because of its quotable scripts and catchphrases. Most of us like to imagine we’re more sophisticated than we really are, and it is this gap between self-perception and reality that fuels Kath and Kim’s malapropisms.

Read more:
The horror and pleasure of misused words: from mispronunciation to malapropisms

Kath announces her engagement by telling Kim that “Kel and I have decided to make our beautiful, sensual relationship a mere formality”; Kim decides she will spend some time “sowing her rolled oats” rather than return to her husband, Brett.

As an historian, I find the show fascinating for its commentary on what Hugh Mackay called the “dreamy period” of the early 2000s, when a combination of increasing prosperity and anxiety about security meant

Australians […] disengaged from the issues that had been preoccupying them; they shut down, or at least went into retreat.

When Kath and Kim was at the peak of its ratings success in 2003, it was jostling with renovation reality shows, The Block and Backyard Blitz. It was also the era of Big Brother and Australian Idol, and the last gasp of tabloid magazine culture before it was swallowed up by the internet.

Class and ‘effluence’

Kath and Kim were true to the spirit of the Howard era in their aspirations to be, in Kim’s words, “effluent”. As she tells her daughter,

you are effluent, Kim. I mean look at what you’ve got, a Hyundai to hightail it round in, a half share in a home unit, a DVD player, a mobile. I mean, what else is there?

Yet the series not only poked fun at “aspirationals”, but at the wealthy as well. Prue and Trude, the grey-bobbed homewares store employees, with “jojoba leftover from October”, highlighted the myth of Australia’s “classless” society.

In 2021, with our horizons reduced by COVID lockdowns and more time spent at home, perhaps the tiny domestic dramas of Kath and Kim (“that was my last fat-free fruche, Sharon!”) are a little more relatable than they used to be.

Certainly, my daughter and I have had time to work on our Kath and Kim impersonations. That’s noice, different, unusual.

Kath and Kim is streaming on Netflix.

Michelle Arrow receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. Noice. Different. Unusual. Watching Kath and Kim as a (locked down) historian – https://theconversation.com/noice-different-unusual-watching-kath-and-kim-as-a-locked-down-historian-166261

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Julie Sonnemann, Fellow, School Education, Grattan Institute

The early NAPLAN results for 2021 released today suggest the average impact of COVID school closures on literacy and numeracy in 2020 has been relatively small.

This was the first NAPLAN test since students moved to remote learning, and involved 1.2 million students in years 3, 5, 7 and 9.

The results show the national average for literacy and numeracy in 2021 has held up fairly well despite last year’s disruptions. There has been little change in the NAPLAN average results in 2021 compared to 2019 in all states and territories, including Victoria, which had the longest period of remote schooling in 2020.

To understand how well children are doing at school, it is important to look at the progress of students’ learning over time, not just where they are at any one point in time.

According to our student progress metric for NAPLAN, Victoria’s progress in literacy and numeracy is generally in line with the national average over 2019-21. We can also see progress at a national level for 2019-21 was similar to historical rates of progress.

These results are a testament to the hard work of students, parents, teachers and school leaders around the country. But it is too early to claim victory.

We will have to wait until the full NAPLAN data is released in December to understand what the impact has been on vulnerable students, in particular.

It’s also important to remember that NAPLAN only tests literacy and numeracy. Gaps that may have emerged in other parts of the curriculum, such as science and the humanities, aren’t picked up in this data.

Nor do these results help us understand the impact of school closures on broader students’ social development and mental health.

They don’t change the fact governments should be carefully planning how to get kids back to class safely, and as soon as possible.

Disadvantaged students may have fared worse

Students around the country missed a significant amount of school in 2020, especially in Melbourne where some students missed around 21 weeks of school. In New South Wales, schools were closed for around seven weeks.

Many disadvantaged students are likely to have found remote schooling harder than other groups. Our 2020 report estimated the achievement gap between advantaged and disadvantaged students widens at up to triple the rate when kids are trying to learn at home rather than in regular class.

Read more:
Disadvantaged students may have lost 1 month of learning during COVID-19 shutdown. But the government can fix it

Students most likely to be impacted by remote learning are those from low socio-economic families, Indigenous backgrounds or remote communities, as well as those with poor mental health, disabilities and special learning needs.

Students in the early years who are still developing foundational skills in reading and writing are also at risk of falling behind.

Emerging international data suggests COVID school closures have had significant negative impacts on student learning in some countries and that disadvantaged students have suffered most. The findings of different studies vary, but one study from Holland estimates learning loss is 60% greater for struggling students.

Given the potential negative impacts for vulnerable students, the NSW and Victorian governments made significant investments in new tutoring programs to help these students catch up. These programs have been in place since the start of 2021.

Read more:
Victoria and NSW are funding extra tutors to help struggling students. Here’s what parents need to know about the schemes

Opening schools safely should be a national priority

The early NAPLAN data is promising, but our leaders need to stay focused on getting children back to school.

For disadvantaged students in particular, there may be other negative impacts on learning we don’t yet know about.

Academic performance aside, there are broader implications of sustained school closures. There are real concerns about the potential impacts on students’ mental health and social development.

Nor is it clear what the cumulative effects of school closures may be on students or teachers. As remote schooling continues in Victoria and NSW and now the ACT, fatigue is setting in.

The Murdoch Children’s Research Institute has shown closures are associated with increased harm to children’s physical and mental health – and welfare – due to social isolation, increased anxiety, neglect, or even abuse. These findings are reinforced by growing overseas evidence.

Read more:
Are the kids alright? Social isolation can take a toll, but play can help

The COVID pandemic continues to upend the daily school routines for millions of young Australians, interrupting their learning, development and friendships.

The NAPLAN results give us reason to hope that with hard work from students, families and teachers – along with targeted supports when schools reopen – we can keep students’ learning on track, despite the odds.

But we must ensure the students who have struggled the most get the help they need to remain engaged in school and to keep progressing in their learning. Getting all children back to school, safely, should be a national priority.

Grattan Institute received funding from Origin Energy Foundation to support our report Covid catch-up: helping disadvantaged students close the equity gap.

Julie Sonnemann 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. Early NAPLAN results show promise, but we don’t know the full impact of COVID school closures yet – https://theconversation.com/early-naplan-results-show-promise-but-we-dont-know-the-full-impact-of-covid-school-closures-yet-166737

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Duckett, Director, Health and Aged Care Program, Grattan Institute

One consequence of the escalating COVID outbreak in New South Wales has been increased political tension around the “national plan” for COVID reopening.

The prime minister has argued that states signed up to the plan – albeit “in principle”, whatever that means – and they should do whatever the plan says, whenever the plan says to do it.

Some premiers are now pushing back, arguing the Doherty Institute modelling was based on certain assumptions which no longer hold true so the previous agreement no longer stands.

There are three distinct questions at issue here. Is the Doherty Institute modelling still applicable? How does the national plan stack up? And what should happen next?

1. Is the Doherty Institute modelling still applicable?

The Doherty Institute was given a very specific remit. It was asked “to define a target level of vaccine coverage for transition to Phase B of the national plan”, where lockdowns would be “less likely, but possible”.

Read more:
Australia has a new four-phase plan for a return to normality. Here’s what we know so far

In identifying the vaccination coverage target for the transition to Phase B, Doherty’s experts assumed that testing, tracing, isolation, and quarantine (TTIQ), would be central to maintaining lower case numbers.

They highlighted two scenarios in terms of testing-tracing-isolation-quarantine capacity – an “optimal” scenario and a “partially effective” scenario – summarised in the table below.

Doherty Institute modelling outcomes

While these numbers may look acceptable, the assumptions underlying them are now hanging by a thread.

Case numbers have been rising rapidly, putting significant pressure on testing-tracing-isolation-quarantine capacity.

Doherty Institute described its assumptions thus:

We assume that once community transmission becomes established leading to high caseloads, TTIQ [testing-tracing-isolation-quarantine] is less efficacious than the optimal levels observed in Australia because public health response capacity is finite.

This tells us that given our current high case numbers, we can probably only assume, at best, “partially effective” testing-tracing-isolation-quarantine capacity.

It’s also important to note the Doherty modelling did not incorporate scenarios where the virus was in uncontrolled spread after target vaccination levels are achieved.

But it now seems unlikely that NSW – and maybe even Victoria – will be able to suppress COVID down to zero before any vaccination target is reached.

If lockdowns are eased according to the modelled targets, while there is still substantial community transmission, testing-tracing-isolation-quarantine is unlikely to be enough to suppress further spread sufficiently, potentially resulting in higher numbers of hospitalisations and deaths than initially modelled.

2. How does the national plan stack-up?

The federal government used the Doherty Institute report’s findings as the basis of the “national plan” it put to National Cabinet.

But it glossed over the options, scenarios, and caveats in the Doherty modelling, and assumed the most optimistic testing-tracing-isolation-quarantine scenario: that everything would be rosy if Australia started opening up once 70% of adults (equivalent to only just over half the population) are vaccinated.

Read more:
National Cabinet’s plan out of COVID aims too low on vaccinations and leaves crucial questions unanswered

The transition to Phase C, where lockdowns would be targeted and vaccinated people would be exempt from restrictions, was also optimistically adopted at 80% adult vaccination, despite the lack of modelling for this scenario in the Doherty report.

In a bid to make it appear convincing – but also realistic, given all the uncertainty – a veil of vagueness was cast over the national plan. The document is full of weasel-words and caveats, which means it is impossible for anyone to be held to account.

The equivocal “in-principle” condition on National Cabinet’s approval makes it even harder to know exactly what premiers signed up to.

But the severity of the New South Wales outbreak has forced some of our leaders to take off the rose-coloured glasses and adopt a more realistic view. Premiers are now saying they did not sign up to high death tolls.

According to Doherty modelling, deaths could reach 1,500 within six months of implementing Phase B. Agreeing to such a scenario is politically untenable for states that currently have zero cases.

3. So, what should happen next?

With states divided over the national plan, and the modelling potentially out of date, it’s time for National Cabinet to come back with a new approach. We need a revised national plan – one that all states can sign up to, one that is not full of caveats and conditions.

This should include a realistic plan for scaling up testing-tracing-isolation-quarantine capacity so that it can manage in a feasible way when each infected person could have at least ten new contacts per day.

And it should include a plan to protect primary schools and childcare centres while a vaccine remains unavailable for younger children.

Grattan Institute has also done its own modelling.

But our model was about Phase D – what Australia needs to do to avoid obtrusive restrictions such as lockdowns altogether – which was not modelled by the Doherty Institute.

We argued that it is only safe to open the borders, to lift restrictions, and to manage without lockdowns and use only unobtrusive measures such as masks on public transport, if we vaccinate at least 80% of the total population and continue the vaccination rollout to 90% throughout 2022.

Recent modelling from other academics has come to similar conclusions, with some even suggesting a slightly higher threshold for safe re-opening.

Governments cannot keep making unrealistic promises about easing restrictions at 70% and 80% adult vaccination, a plan that relied on optimistic scenarios in the first place, and one that now bears little relation to the real world. It is irresponsible to build public momentum and hope around targets that are unlikely going to be enough.

Australia needs the National Cabinet to come clean and accept that the changing circumstances require a change in the plan.

Grattan Institute began with contributions to its endowment from each of the Federal and Victorian Governments, BHP Billiton, and NAB. In order to safeguard its independence, Grattan Institute’s board controls this endowment. Grattan Institute also receives funding from corporates, foundations, and individuals to support its general activities as disclosed on its website.

Anika Stobart 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. Opening with 70% of adults vaccinated, the Doherty report predicts 1.5K deaths in 6 months. We need a revised plan – https://theconversation.com/opening-with-70-of-adults-vaccinated-the-doherty-report-predicts-1-5k-deaths-in-6-months-we-need-a-revised-plan-166659

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katrina McLean, Assistant Professor, Medicine, Bond University

Last year in the COVID-19 pandemic, children were not catching or spreading the virus much. The main focus was on protecting our elderly and vulnerable.

But the Delta strain has changed things. Children around the world are contracting Delta in high numbers and some frontline doctors believe they may also be getting sicker from this strain.

Many parents and schools have concerns about how to best protect children from COVID-19. There’s also the worry children will catch the virus at school and take it back to their families and communities.

While many children are now well-accustomed to washing and sanitising their hands, this is simply not enough to tackle the spread of COVID-19, especially now we know the virus is airborne. We need a whole toolbox of strategies.

There are three key areas to focus on that we believe are evidence-based, easy to implement and will help protect our children: masks, ventilation and vaccination.

1. Masks

In certain Australian states, children aged 12 and above are currently required to wear a mask in public areas (schools included).

Meanwhile, Victoria’s chief health officer Brett Sutton has recommended children aged five and up wear masks in the face of rising Delta transmission among children.

As GPs, parents often ask us if it’s safe for children to wear masks. While we understand concern from parents, we reassure them masks have been found to cause no harm in children over the age of two. When children wear masks it doesn’t affect their breathing or reduce their oxygen levels.

Importantly, when worn properly, masks are effective at reducing the spread of COVID-19, for adults and children alike.

Read more:
Under-12s are increasingly catching COVID-19. How sick are they getting and when will we be able to vaccinate them?

A few quick tips. Fabric masks should be treated like underwear: wash them regularly, ensure they cover everything, and don’t share. These are a better option for the environment.

Label fabric masks like school hats — they will go missing!

Surgical/disposable masks are single use. Like using a tissue to blow your nose, make sure it goes in the bin once used and then wash your hands.

And masks should fit snugly — the less gaps there are the better they will work.

Like anything new, getting used to masks can take time. Children may initially be anxious, especially if their parents are too. Though most kids adapt really quickly (much quicker than adults, in our experience).

While the majority of children will adapt quickly there will be some who have specific and legitimate concerns, for example disabilities and sensory issues. GPs and paediatricians can help work out what the safest approach is for these children.

2. Ventilation

SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, can float in the air like smoke. If you’re inside in a small enclosed room with other people and the ventilation is poor, it will only be a matter of time before you’re all breathing in each other’s air.

Schools have lots of children inside enclosed classrooms, often for hours, so what can be done?

Ventilation is something schools can and should address. Some simple strategies include:

• get outside as often as is practical. Call children into the classroom only once the day has started. Hold some lessons outside the classroom. During breaks and lunch time children should be outside whenever possible too

• open doors and windows

• set air conditioning or heating systems to bring in as much outdoor air as possible

• check the air with carbon dioxide monitors. This is occurring overseas.

Why do we care about CO₂? Well, we breathe in oxygen and breathe out CO₂. In confined spaces with lots of air that has been “breathed out”, monitors will detect higher levels of CO₂.

All that “breathed out” air could be full of viral particles, so if the monitor is measuring high, airflow needs to be improved immediately by opening a door or window.

In stuffy rooms, or rooms that measure high for CO₂ (indicating the ventilation is poor), a longer-term plan to clean the air should be considered. What’s encouraging is that the technology already exists to address this.

Air cleaners, also known as air purifiers, scrubbers, or HEPA filters, can actually help to “clean” the air we breathe. Lots of schools around the world are now actively improving ventilation systems and air quality monitoring.

Improving the air quality in schools may also prevent some of the other colds and flus kids pick up at school, and reduce asthma and allergy symptoms.

3. Vaccination

At this stage in Australia the Pfizer vaccine is recommended for vulnerable children aged 12-15, including those registered on the National Disability Insurance Scheme.

Vaccinations for all children 12 and over are now under way in New Zealand.

Many other countries have been giving vaccines to children for several months now. For example, in the United States, more than one-third of 12 to 15-year-olds are fully vaccinated and nearly 50% have had at least one dose.

We know the vaccines work well in this age group and just like in adults, there is very close monitoring of adverse events from these vaccines in children. It’s reassuring to see very few serious reactions, and even those that are (for example myocarditis — inflammation of the heart) are treatable.

Vaccine trials are under way in children under 12 in the US (for Pfizer and Moderna), and once we have the safety and efficacy data we can start making decisions around vaccinating them too.

Read more:
We should install air purifiers with HEPA filters in every classroom. It could help with COVID, bushfire smoke and asthma

Katrina McLean is a Fellow of the RACGP and current Chair of General Practice Gold Coast

Natasha Yates is a Fellow of the RACGP and Deputy Lead of General Practice, Bond University

– ref. Masks, ventilation, vaccination: 3 ways to protect our kids against the Delta variant – https://theconversation.com/masks-ventilation-vaccination-3-ways-to-protect-our-kids-against-the-delta-variant-166413

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kyla Raby, PhD Candidate researching the role of consumers in eradicating modern slavery in supply chains, University of South Australia

When the Australian government introduced its Modern Slavery Bill to parliament in 2018, it heralded it as the start of a “race to the top”.

But it has turned out to be less a race than a meander.

The bill required companies with annual revenues greater than $100 million to report on action they take to ensure their supply chains are free of slave labour. The premise was that transparency and accountability were enough to drive reform.

“Business feedback indicates the primary driver for compliance will be investor pressure and reputational costs and benefits,” a government spokeswoman said at the time. “This will drive compliance more effectively than legislated penalties and encourage a business-led race to the top”.

That bill was passed in December 2018.
But so far, according to research published last month by the Australian Council of Superannuation Investors, most companies are engaged in a “race to the middle”, disclosing only the minimum and not wishing to reveal more than their key peers.

Could more be done?

Yes — but the possibilities and pitfalls are shown by a private member’s bill that passed the Senate this week.

Proposed by South Australian independent senator Rex Patrick, the Customs Amendment (Banning Goods Produced By Forced Labour) Bill 2021 would amend federal customs regulations to prohibit the import of any goods made using forced labour.

It passed the Senate on Monday with support from the Labor Party, the Greens and One Nation senators. But Coalition senators voted against the bill. This was despite it reflecting the recommendations of a inquiry chaired by Liberal senator Eric Abetz, who said Patrick’s bill was “worthy of consideration and support, in principle”.

Without government support the bill won’t pass the House of Representatives to become law. Nonetheless, it is worth considering why senators as disparate as the Greens and One Nation have backed it. Despite the Modern Slavery Act, there’s much more to be done before Australians can be confident the goods they buy are free of slave labour.

The call for a stronger approach

Patrick began with less expansive ambitions, introducing a bill in December 2020 to ban the import of goods from China produced by Uyghur forced labour.

This was in response to mounting evidence of the Chinese government’s detention of more than a million Uyghurs (and other ethnic minorities) in the western province of Xinjiang, forcing them to work making goods sold by Western companies.

Patrick’s bill was referred to the Senate Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade, chaired Abetz. After considering about 60 submissions, in June the committee recommended (among other things) amending the Customs Act and other legislation “to prohibit the import of any goods made wholly or in part with forced labour, regardless of geographic origin”.

Read more:
Four Corners’ forced labour exposé shows why you might be wearing slave-made clothes

Its inquiry report stated:

The committee endorses without reservation the objectives of the bill. The state-sponsored forced labour to which the Uyghur people are being subjected by the Chinese dictatorship is a grave human rights violation. It is incumbent on the government to take steps to ensure that Australian businesses and consumers are not in any way complicit in these egregious abuses.

Slavery is all around us

Patrick’s revised bill reflects this sentiment.

While the Chinese government may be detaining up to a million Uyghurs, the anti-slavery organisation Walk Free Foundation estimates globally about 4 million people are forced to work by state authorities, with further 21 million people exploited in private supply chains.

The foundation estimates each year goods worth more than US$350 billion (about $A480 billion) imported into G20 countries are at at-risk of having been produced, at least in part, by forced labour.

No country or industry is untouched. The estimate for imports into Australia is US$12 billion (about A$16.5 billion) a year. It’s highly likely at some stage you’ve bought something that has been made with exploited labour.

It might have been clothing made in China. Or it might have tinned tuna from Thailand, cotton milled in India. Or chocolate made from cacao farmed West Africa.

Australia’s Modern Slavery Act has been part of international moves to make companies accountable for the conditions of workers in the global supply chains from which they profit. This law requires reporting entities to submit an annual “Modern Slavery Statement” to a public register.

The law, however, has been criticised for lacking any real bite. There’s no real penalty for noncompliance. Instead it relies on the fear of being “named and shamed” — and as the research from the Australian Council of Superannuation Investors suggests, this doesn’t seem enough.

How did the government respond?

So why didn’t the government support Patrick’s bill?

In the words of Abetz, speaking in the Senate on Monday, “my heart says yes to this bill but my head says not yet”.

The government’s hesitancy is understandable. If passed, the law will require every Australian company — not just the big ones — to prove that any goods it imports are slave-free. That’s a huge leap from what is currently required.

Some large corporations are already struggling with how to adhere to the spirit and less strenuous requirements of the Modern Slavery Act. Many small- and medium-sized enterprises and not-for-profits may also not have the expertise or resources to comply.

But even if this particular bill isn’t right, the issues with Australia’s current response to modern slavery cannot be ignored. The enslavement of human beings shouldn’t be an issue where a progressive, but painfully slow, approach is accepted.

Senator Patrick’s bill may not become law. But it has helped shine a light on the deficiencies with the current law and shown there is broad community support for stronger action.

As the famous abolitionist William Wilberforce said: “You may choose to look the other way, but you can never say again that you did not know.”

Kyla Raby is affiliated with the Australian Red Cross

Katherine Christ has previously received funding from CPA Australia.

– ref. Senate’s vote to ban slave-made imports shows the weakness of Australia’s Modern Slavery Act – https://theconversation.com/senates-vote-to-ban-slave-made-imports-shows-the-weakness-of-australias-modern-slavery-act-166647

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Julian Meyrick, Professor of Creative Arts, Griffith University

Our writers nominate the TV series keeping them entertained during a time of COVID.

Her face is long and austere. Her dark hair is pulled back over a high forehead, and her eyes are large and unblinking. When she moves, she lowers her head and pushes forward, purposeful and soft, like an animal padding through a forest.

In season one of the Danish television series The Killing, when detective Sarah Lund (Sofie Gråbøl) learns of the death of her colleague, Jan Meyer — a death she is partly responsible for — she is standing next to a Russian container ship called Alexa. It means “defender of man”. Lund is a common Scandinavian surname. It means “grove”.

This is the real beginning of the series, the dark waters of ethical awareness Lund never tries to escape thereafter. Even before, she was alone. Now she is doubly so, existentially isolated in the manner of the protagonists of Greek tragedy — Antigone, Iphigenia, Phaedra — figures marked out for an outsize portion of loss and grief. Their response is not anger or resentment, a hardening of the psyche, but the opposite: a deeper vulnerability, fluid and super-sensitive.

This is what is made available to us through Lund’s face: a universal point of identification and address. Not everyone is Sarah Lund. But anyone might be.

Read more:
Rutherford Falls: a laugh-out-loud funny TV show about colonisation

A forensic gaze

The Killing (Forbrydelsen) is a three-season, Scandi-noir detective drama spread over a 15-year (ish) time span, that first aired in 2007 (an American version was made in 2011). Season one consists of 20 50-minute episodes, which is long even by the standards of long-form drama. The story does not move quickly. There is time to examine an aspect of murder downplayed by more conventional police procedurals: its human consequences.

Each season has a triangular shape. As the narratives unfold, they switch between corners, showing their interrelationship. In season one, the triangle is the government, the police and an ordinary Danish family. In season two, the government, the police and a Danish army unit. In season three, the government, the police and a Danish oil company.

Gradually, the political focus shifts higher: from an aspiring mayoral candidate, to a newly appointed Minister of Justice, to a Prime Minister facing the next election.

Lund is what my son when he was small would have called “very look-y”. She soaks in everything happening around her through her quiet stare. She is the opposite of hypercritical. The intent of her gaze is forensic not judgemental. What happened? Who did it? Why?

In respect of delivering a final verdict, only in the last episode, does she claim that right. It destroys both the man she judges and her own life.

Politicians avoiding responsibility

What makes The Killing right for this moment is its portrayal of how contemporary politics infects contemporary life, a politics of constant displacement and mendacity. Governments avoid responsibility, then avoid taking responsibility for taking responsibility. It’s not so much that they lie. Rather the truth is not an epistemological category, only a strategic factor.

Over three seasons, The Killing’s politicians juggle different narrative framings to find one that will stick. The line between plausibility and veracity is obliterated. Perception is all. Public debate collapses into popular opinion. Politicians do the right thing up to a point. When media attention is averted, or if one of them looks like getting into trouble, it is immediately abandoned.

These are the politicians we have largely come to accept as our own: a morally plastic breed whose every move is about obtaining or retaining power.

Read more:
Five of the best crime dramas to be banged up with under lockdown – from a screenwriter

To be adequate to our moment — one marked by the long term health and economic effects of COVID-19, the terror of the latest IPCC report, and the failure of US post-millennial military excursions — requires the sort of courage Sarah Lund shows.

Yet she is without heroic properties. She isn’t “special” in the way Hollywood heroes are. She is ordinary. She does not “recover”. She is not “resilient”. She grows, ethically, emotionally, spiritually. Every killing marks her more deeply. That’s a lesson we can take to heart.

A home for grief

Lund has no luck with men. In season one, her engagement founders as she is swallowed up by an investigation into a murdered girl. In season two, she falls for a detective who turns out to be a psychopathic killer. In season three, an old flame appears and it’s on. But she wrecks everything and has to flee from the beginnings of a happy life.

Lund has no memorable quirks, unless you count being unable to cook and a taste for chunky knit jumpers (now famous in their own right). She is not witty, or especially charismatic. When annoyed, she rarely shouts. Instead, she purses her lips and pushes on with whatever she’s doing, like a truculent child. She makes mistakes, sometimes big ones. If she does the right thing it’s because she chooses to, never because it’s easy.

“When people are killed, it’s important” she says to a weary Afghan army officer in season two, when she is investigating the murder of a family in the middle of a war-zone.

Lund can be abrupt, cutting people off mid-sentence, or mid-phone call, or suddenly walking out of a room. Later, she will shrink into herself, aware of what she has done. Her face shows remorse in ways that don’t involve her having to open her mouth and say “I’m sorry”. She has the courage to feel overwhelmed.

In season three, a couple whose daughter has been kidnapped visit a Lutheran pastor who tells them, “Grief is love that has become homeless”. In Lund, grief finds a home again and turns back into love. It isn’t her fault that nature, to balance her analytical gifts, deprives her of expressive ones.

Lund is the least political creature. She does what we all do. She gets on with the job. Only at the end does she see what she is up against, and act to save the future when no one else will. Knowingly, sufferingly, she walks into hell.

The Killing is airing on SBS on demand.

Julian Meyrick 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. The Killing’s Sarah Lund: an anti-hero for our COVID moment – https://theconversation.com/the-killings-sarah-lund-an-anti-hero-for-our-covid-moment-166654

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jessica Oliva, Lecturer, Psychology, James Cook University

It may come as no surprise to dog owners in lockdown, but walking the dog can be the highlight of the day.

With exercise being one of the few reasons for leaving the house for millions of Australians, walking the dog clearly benefits both dog owners and their furry friends.

But walking the dog isn’t the only thing you can do to lift your spirits and ease loneliness.

Our study found three things you can do at home with your dog to make you feel better, which your dog will probably love too.

1. You can meditate with your dog

Our study showed it helped to take time out to focus on your dog’s fur or the warmth of their body using “mindfulness meditation”.

This type of meditation involved people listening to a recording that guided them to activate their senses (for instance, touch) as a way of enhance their engagement with the task.

Dog owners who did this for seven minutes once a week or more felt relaxed, calm, enjoyed the process, said they felt more connected to their dog, and helped them focus on the present.

For many dog owners in our study, these effects also lasted for several minutes or hours after stopping the activity.

Read more:
Mindfulness meditation in brief daily doses can reduce negative mental health impact of COVID-19

If you want to try this for yourself, create a space in your home where you are not likely to be interrupted and turn off your phone. Sit comfortably on the floor, on a mat, cushion or blanket and invite your dog to come and sit next to you or on your lap.

Place one or two hands on your dog and sit up tall. Start by closing your eyes and taking a few deep breaths. Be aware of your sense of touch and notice the sensations in your hand and fingertips. Stay with this awareness and if your mind starts to wander, gently escort it back to your feeling of touch and your dog’s fur. Stay with this practice for seven minutes or more.

Although we didn’t specifically measure the impact on dogs, we suspect they appreciate the close, calm and private space this creates for both of you.

2. You can play hide and seek

If mindfulness meditation isn’t your thing, our study showed setting aside seven minutes of undivided playtime with your dog had similar results. This might be an interactive game, such as hide and seek.

Dog owners who did this said they enjoyed this, had a better connection with their dog, and helped them focus on the present. They also thought their dog had fun.

How might this work as well as mindfulness meditation? Mindfulness is simply about being present in the moment. So if we put the phone away, pets can be great facilitators to help bring us into the present and centre our mind on one thing — them.

Read more:
Routine and learning games: how to make sure your dog doesn’t get canine cabin fever

3. You can talk to your dog

If you really want to increase the connection with your dog, try some
calm and focused interactions. This might be seven undivided minutes of affection with your dog, such as giving them a good belly rub, or spending seven undivided minutes talking to them.

Out of all the activities we tried, these worked best to connect with your dog.

While some people in our study said they felt awkward talking to their dog, our earlier research showed others seem to love it.

For people living alone in lockdown, having a pet dog was an excuse to talk out loud, and this may play an important role in their well-being.

Making time to be affectionate towards your dog also made owners feel relaxed and calm, at similar levels to those who practised mindfulness meditation.

Completely focusing on your dog this way increases the release of molecules associated with relaxation (such as oxytocin) and reward (such as dopamine) in both owner and dog.

Read more:
Lockdown can be stressful for pets too – here’s how to keep your dog entertained

Making time for your dog

Not all dog owners are spending their time in lockdown going on long walks with their furry friends. One study found some dog owners walked their dog less often or went on shorter walks during the pandemic.

Whether that’s been your experience, or if you want to try something new, these three types of interactions with your dog don’t take a lot of time. You could even continue them after lockdown’s over.

This might end up become the new highlight of your dog’s day, making the long wait for you to return home from work completely worth it.

Read more:
Your dog’s nose knows no bounds – and neither does its love for you

Jessica Oliva 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. At home with your dog? 3 ways to connect and lift your spirits – https://theconversation.com/at-home-with-your-dog-3-ways-to-connect-and-lift-your-spirits-166331

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

The Doherty modelling is the government’s underpinning for a proposed easing of COVID restrictions once we reach targets of 70% and 80% of the adult population vaccinated.

But the exit path has put Scott Morrison at odds with Western Australia and Queensland, states which would inevitably have to give up their present status of having little or no COVID.

The model’s priority is pivoting from reaching zero cases, to limiting COVID by vaccination, minimising serious illness, hospitalisation, and deaths.

This week, Professor Sharon Lewin, Director of the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity joins the podcast to explain into the much-discussed modelling and its policy implications.

In the event things open up, our “first line of defence” will be the public health capacity, says Lewin. The ability to trace, test, isolate, and quarantine limits the explosion of cases and keeps the transmission potential “less than one”.

Some critics have said the 70-80% target won’t sufficiently protect the entire population from COVID. Lewin notes that amongst the varying models there is agreement we cannot open up on vaccine uptake alone.

“You can’t just open up a 70% with nothing else in place. There is no ‘Freedom Day’. You do need these additional public health measures.”

In particular, while “tremendous advances have been made in capabilities[…] it’s not universal across the country. In particular, First Nation communities, which have been prepared and boasted an “effective community lead response” earlier in the pandemic, will require a strengthening of their public health facilities.

Additional audio

A List of Ways to Die, Lee Rosevere, from Free Music Archive.

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

– ref. Politics with Michelle Grattan: Doherty’s Sharon Lewin on pivoting from chasing COVID zero – https://theconversation.com/politics-with-michelle-grattan-dohertys-sharon-lewin-on-pivoting-from-chasing-covid-zero-166740

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Willow Hallgren, Adjunct Research Fellow, Centre for Planetary Health and Food Security, Griffith University

For three days this month, 7 billion tonnes of rain fell across Greenland — the largest amount since records began in 1950. It’s also the first time since then that rain, not snow, fell on Greenland’s highest peak.

This is alarming. Greenland’s ice sheet is the second largest on the planet (after Antarctica) and any rain falling on its surface accelerates melting. By August 15, the amount of ice lost was seven times greater than is normal for mid-August.

This is just the latest extreme climate event on the island, which sits in the North Atlantic Ocean. In a single day in July this year, the amount of ice that melted in Greenland would have covered the US state of Florida with 5 centimetres of water. And last October, research showed ice in Greenland is melting faster than at any other time in the past 12,000 years.

Melting in Greenland threatens to significantly hamper humanity’s efforts to mitigate climate change. That’s because, after a certain point, it may create catastrophic “feedback loops”. Let’s look at the issue in more detail.

Rising temperatures in the Arctic

Greenland’s vast ice sheet comprises almost 1.7 million square kilometres of glacial land ice. It covers most of the territory and contains enough ice to raise sea levels by more than 7 metres if melted.

The Greenland and Antarctica ice sheets lost a combined 6.4 trillion tonnes of ice between 1992 and 2017. Melting in Greenland has contributed to 60% (17.8 millimetres) of the Earth’s overall sea-level rise due to melting ice sheets, even though Greenland is much smaller than Antarctica.

This may be partly because half of Greenland’s melting is the result of rising air temperatures, which cause surface melting. In Antarctica, most ice loss is from ocean water melting glaciers that spill from land into the sea. And the rate of ice loss in both Greenland and Antarctica is accelerating — increasing sixfold since the 1990s.

Rain falling on ice exacerbates this process. So what’s behind the recent unprecedented weather?

Temperatures in the Arctic are rising twice as quickly as the rest of the planet for a number of reasons, including changes in cloud cover and water vapour, the reflectivity of the surface, and how weather systems transport energy from the tropics to the polar regions. This has made extreme weather events more common.

Read more:
Climate explained: why is the Arctic warming faster than other parts of the world?

In recent years in Greenland, rain has fallen further north, and more rain has fallen in winter. This is not normal for these regions, which usually get snow, not rain, in below-freezing temperatures.

This month’s rain is the result of warm, moist air flowing up from south-west of Greenland and remaining for several days. In the morning of August 14, temperatures at the 3,216-metre summit of Greenland’s ice sheet surpassed freezing point, peaking at 0.48℃. Rain fell on the summit for several hours that morning and on August 15.

This was particularly shocking given the above-freezing temperatures occurred so late in Greenland’s normally short summer. At this time of year, large areas of bare ice are exposed from a lack of snow, which leads to greater runoff of rainwater and meltwater into the oceans.

When melting is self-reinforcing

Rainfall makes the ice sheet more prone to surface melt since it exacerbates the so-called “ice-albedo positive feedback”. In other words, the melting reinforces itself.

When rain falls, its warmth can melt snow, exposing the underlying darker ice, which absorbs more sunlight. This increases temperatures at the surface, leading to more melting.

Unfortunately, this isn’t the only positive feedback loop destabilising the Greenland ice sheet.

The “positive melt-elevation feedback” is another, where the lower height of the ice sheet leads to faster melting because higher temperatures occur at lower altitudes.

Also worrying is when higher temperatures cause coastal glaciers to thin, allowing more ice to slip into the sea. This both speeds up the rate of glacier flow towards the sea and lowers the ice surface, exposing it to warmer air temperatures and, in turn, increasing melting.

What does this mean for the planet?

These positive feedbacks can lead to tipping points — abrupt and irreversible changes in the climate system after a certain threshold is reached. We are more likely to reach these tipping points as emissions increase and global temperatures rise.

While the science on tipping points is still emerging, the most recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said they cannot be ruled out. The report identified likely tipping points such as widespread Arctic sea-ice melting and the thawing of methane-rich permafrost.

Read more:
‘Failure is not an option’: after a lost decade on climate action, the 2020s offer one last chance

Recent studies show what humanity may be up against. A study from May this year showed a substantial part of the Greenland ice sheet is either at, or about to reach, a tipping point where melting will accelerate, even if global warming is stopped. Scientists are concerned reaching this point may trigger a cascade effect, leading to other tipping points being reached.

Melted ice from both the Arctic Ocean and Greenland have caused an influx of freshwater into the North Atlantic Ocean. This has contributed to the slowing of a system of crucial ocean currents, which carry warm water from the tropics into the colder North Atlantic. This current, called the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), has slowed by 15% since the 1950s.

If the AMOC slows down any further, the consequences for the planet could be profound. It could destabilise the West African monsoon, cause more frequent drought in the Amazon rainforest and accelerate ice loss in Antarctica.

An existential threat

The rising likelihood of tipping points being reached beyond 1.5℃ of warming represents a potential, looming existential threat to human civilisation. However, even if we’ve already crossed some tipping points, as some scientists suggest, how fast the impacts unfold is still within our control.

If we limit global warming to 1.5℃ this century, we give ourselves longer to adapt to heating already locked into the Earth’s system. But the window is rapidly closing; estimates indicate we may reach the crucial 1.5℃ threshold as soon as the mid-2030s.

The message for humanity is urgent: hard science, not cloying political spin, needs to dictate climate action in the coming years. As with COVID-19, listening to the scientists gives us the best hope of saving the planet.

Read more:
When Greenland was green: rapid global warming 55 million years ago shows us what the future may hold

Willow Hallgren 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. What Greenland’s record-breaking rain means for the planet – https://theconversation.com/what-greenlands-record-breaking-rain-means-for-the-planet-166567

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Denis Muller, Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Advancing Journalism, The University of Melbourne

The news that Craig Kelly, MP, serial purveyor of COVID misinformation, is to join Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party in order to fund his damaging ravings on a grander scale, confronts Australian democracy with a dilemma.

How is he to be prevented from adding to the harm he is already doing to the public welfare without trespassing unjustifiably on his right of free speech?

It is a classic example of how populists are exploiting the rights conferred by democracy to undermine democracy.

Kelly is frank about what he intends to do. Referring to his joining the UAP, he told The Sydney Morning Herald:

The crude reality is that I’ll have greater resources.

I have been screaming this stuff from the rooftops for a long time. It’s very hard to get this message through. We have a huge war chest, we can run television commercials, ads, we can finance a proper campaign that no other minor party or independent can.

He says that because these advertisements would be considered party-political advertisements, blocking them would be unconstitutional.

Whether or not he is right about that, it reveals his attitude: a preparedness to exploit a law protecting freedom of political speech so he can go on spreading COVID misinformation in pursuit of elected office.

The electoral and trade practices laws have no provisions to stop him. Section 329 of the Commonwealth Electoral Act is confined to the issue of whether a publication is likely to mislead or deceive an elector in relation to the casting of a vote. Sections 52 and 53 of the Trade Practices Act, which make false or misleading representations an offence, have nothing to say about political advertising.

Read more:
Why Clive Palmer’s lockdown ads can be rejected by newspapers on ethical grounds

However, there are two philosophical bases for arguing the electoral laws should be amended to thwart this kind of harmful exploitation.

One is John Stuart Mill’s harm principle, which says the prevention of harm to others is a legitimate constraint on individual freedom.

The other is from John Locke’s A Letter Concerning Toleration. Locke’s principle is that society is not obliged to tolerate actions or positions that undermine the civil order. Corrupting the electoral process as Kelly proposes – by misleading voters – falls well within that compass.

To borrow from Locke’s other great contribution to the development of modern democracy, his Second Treatise on Government, such actions or positions would breach the social contract. This contract is built on trust. Individuals submit themselves to the law on the condition that everyone else will do the same. Breaches of that trust are not to be tolerated.

This principle may be extended to other behaviours that breach the public trust: unethical conduct and anti-social conduct that might fall short of illegality but still do harm. Unethical conduct is embodied in Kelly’s stated intention to use Palmer’s millions to amplify his COVID misinformation, which would be to the detriment of public health.

In common with other mature democracies, Australia has predicated its laws on certain norms concerning truth, responsibility and the preservation of the social contract.

The problem is that in an age when populist politicians, social media and influential elements of mass media combine to spread harmful content, these norms – the guard rails of democracy – are being tested to breaking point.

In Washington on January 6 2021, when the mob invaded Congress, we saw what happens when the guard rails give way. For months leading up to and during the US presidential election, the then President Donald Trump and his mouthpiece, Fox News, abandoned the norm of truth-telling and persuaded a significant plurality of voters that the election was fraudulent.

This confronts democracies with a paradox. If they extend free speech even to those who use it to do serious harm, then tolerant societies become defenceless against the baneful effects of this behaviour.

It is akin to Karl Popper’s argument concerning what he called the tolerance paradox:

Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.

In common with other democracies, Australia places restrictions on free speech when it does unjustified harm. The defamation and contempt of court laws are just two examples among many.

There is no reason why this principle should not be extended to speech that causes provable harm to the public welfare in pursuit of election to parliament. Those harms could be defined and circumscribed in the Electoral Act without too much difficulty and would certainly include harms to public health.

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

There is precedent. In the aftermath of the Christchurch terrorism in March 2019, Parliament enacted the Criminal Code Amendment (Sharing of Abhorrent Violent Material) Act. Abhorrent violent material was confined in its definition to mean murder or attempted murder, a terrorist act, torture, rape or kidnapping. There are provisions to allow for the reporting of these acts.

At the same time, great care needs to be taken to avoid overreach, particularly in a society like Australia’s, which has no constitutional protection for free speech. That situation only sharpens the paradox.

As matters stand, Australia is leaving it to powerful foreign sources such as YouTube, unelected and unaccountable, to restrain the likes of Kelly, as when it recently suspended Sky News for spreading COVID misinformation.

Instead of confronting the paradox, the Australian parliament seems content to outsource to the global media platforms control over how our democratic freedoms are governed. Neither of the major parties has shown the slightest interest in engaging with this problem.

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

– ref. Craig Kelly’s move to Palmer’s United Australia Party shows the need for urgent electoral law reform – https://theconversation.com/craig-kellys-move-to-palmers-united-australia-party-shows-the-need-for-urgent-electoral-law-reform-166663

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anna Powles, Senior Lecturer in Security Studies, Massey University

By first denying and then granting visas to more than 100 Afghan contractors who guarded its embassy in Kabul, Australia has shone a light on the murky world of the private security industry.

According to the lawyer and former army officer representing the security guards, his clients had yet to receive the humanitarian visas and the about-face was merely an attempt by Australian officials “to look like they have done their job when they sat on their hands for so long”.

The Australian case mirrors the British government’s policy reversal concerning 125 Afghan security guards at its Kabul embassy.

They, too, were initially informed they were ineligible for emergency evacuation due to being employed by Canadian private security firm GardaWorld, only for the decision to be overruled late last week.

In both cases, these Afghan contractors have fallen into the shady legal gap between the private security company that employed them locally and the governments that contracted their employers.

As one GardaWorld employee said when he was told his contract would be terminated:

No one asked whether we are safe or not. No one asked whether our lives are in danger or not.

Privatising and outsourcing war

Afghanistan, famously known as “the graveyard of empires”, has been a gravy train for the global private security industry for the past two decades, as the war was increasingly privatised and outsourced.

Under the Trump administration, private security companies with Pentagon contracts numbered nearly 6,000, costing US$2.3 billion (A$3.1 billion) in 2019. When the US military withdrawal began, these private contractors dropped to about 1,400 by July.

Read more:
As the Taliban’s grip on Afghanistan tightens, New Zealand must commit to taking more refugees

Until now, however, private security firms were such a critical element of the war effort that their departure was considered a key factor in the collapse of the Afghan army.

The appeal of these private security contractors lies in their arms-length advantage — they are relatively disposable and carry little political cost. This allows the industry to operate opaquely, with little oversight and even less accountability.

In the case of the Australian embassy guards, it would appear their direct employers have done little to secure their safety. How, then, can these companies and the governments that employ them be held accountable?

Little binding protection

The Montreux Document on Private Military and Security Companies – which reflects inter-governmental consensus that international law applies to private security companies in war zones – requires private security companies “to respect and ensure the welfare of their personnel”. Unfortunately, this is not a binding agreement.

The International Code of Conduct for Private Security Service Providers (ICoCA) – known as “the code” — lays out the responsibilities of private security under international law. It requires signatory companies to:

[…]provide a safe and healthy working environment, recognising the possible inherent dangers and limitations presented by the local environment [and to] ensure that reasonable precautions are taken to protect relevant staff in high-risk or life-threatening operations.

Read more:
The Taliban may have access to the biometric data of civilians who helped the U.S. military

Australia is a signatory to the ICoCA, as are private security companies Gardaworld, Hart International Australia and Hart Security Limited, all of which operate in Afghanistan and have at various times been contracted by the Australian government.

But again, like the Montreux Document, the ICoC is non-binding. However, ICoC Executive Director Jamie Williamson has said:

The situation in Afghanistan is shining a spotlight on the duty of care clients of private security companies have towards local staff and their families […] We expect to see both our government and corporate members ensure the safety and well-being of all private security personnel working on government and other contracts, whatever their nationality.

Still no guarantee of safety

This duty of care now appears to have been extended to those guards who worked for the Australian and British governments in Afghanistan — albeit at the last minute. As one contractor told Australian media, he and his colleagues first applied for protection visas in 2012.

But their safety remains uncertain. The visas do not guarantee safe passage to Kabul’s international airport where evacuation efforts are chaotic. In the past weekend alone, 14 civilians were killed trying to flee the Taliban takeover.

There are also concerns about safe passage through Taliban checkpoints not being properly coordinated by US and NATO
allies, leaving dangerous alternative routes the only option.

Read more:
Where do Afghanistan’s refugees go?

Sheltering until they can safely travel to the airport is also fraught. As one guard explained:

Every day there is news that the Taliban will start a search for each house […] looking for people who have served the army and those who have served the foreign army.

Australia has made a legal and moral commitment to provide refuge to these people. But with the Taliban’s so-called red line of August 31 looming, the window to evacuate them and their families is closing.

And while the global private security companies may have shut up shop in Afghanistan for now, the consequences and human costs associated with outsourcing war linger on.

Dr Anna Powles has consulted on security sector reform and private security sector governance with the United Nations Development Programme and co-leads a research project on private security companies in the Pacific.

– ref. The plight of Afghan security contractors highlights the legal and moral risks of outsourcing war – https://theconversation.com/the-plight-of-afghan-security-contractors-highlights-the-legal-and-moral-risks-of-outsourcing-war-166730

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Muhammad Nadeem Malik, Senior Lecturer, The University of Melbourne

Pakistan has long played a critical, yet confusing role in Afghanistan. It has been one of the strongest US allies in its “war on terror”, yet it has also covertly backed the Taliban in its fight against US-led forces for years.

The paradox remained visible after the Taliban swept into Kabul last week.

Pakistan’s official response by its foreign minister was hope for a peaceful settlement in Afghanistan through an inclusive, transition government following broad-based consultations with all ethnic groups and stakeholders.

Moreover, in a televised address, Pakistan’s army chief urged the Taliban leaders to fulfil their promise to the international community regarding respect for women’s rights and human rights

Both statements align with America’s aspirations. But in contrast, Prime Minister Imran Khan declared that Afghans had broken “the shackles of slavery”, which seems to mock the US establishment.

How regional powers are responding

Despite this mixed messaging from Pakistani leaders, a coordinated regional response to the Taliban takeover appears to be shaping up.

As western countries hold back from recognising the new government, the regional powers of Russia, China, Iran and Pakistan have kept their embassies open in Kabul and expressed their willingness to work with the Taliban.

According to a senior security journalist I spoke with in Pakistan, both Russia and Iran supported the Taliban fight against the US-sponsored Afghanistan government to contain the threat from the Islamic State.

Iran’s influence on the Taliban can be gauged by the fact the group’s leadership participated in the Shia’ Majlis (a religious council delivering sermons) in Kabul after its takeover, which is highly unusual for the extremist Sunni Taliban.

Moreover, Iran and Russia have been so involved in Afghanistan and the politics of the Taliban that when then-President Donald Trump cancelled a planned meeting with Taliban leaders in late 2019, the group reacted by going to both countries to get advice from their leaders on how to respond.

Overall, the strategies of these regional powers will greatly influence the politics in Afghanistan in the coming days — but it’s Pakistan that likely has the greatest sway over the Taliban leaders.

Read more:
Afghanistan: western powers must accept defeat and deal realistically with the Taliban

A brief history of Pakistan’s support for the Taliban

Pakistan has provided political and military support for different factions within Afghanistan since the early 1970s. During the 1980s, Pakistan was a major backer of the Afghan mujahideen (holy warriors) fighting against the Soviet invasion and hosted millions Afghan refugees fleeing the war.

Pakistan was also a major ally of the US at this time. The US channelled some US$2-3 billion (A$2.7-4.1 billion) worth of covert assistance through Pakistan to the mujahideen, training over 80,000 of the fighters.

Even after the withdrawal of Soviet troops in 1989, Pakistani military officers continued to provide training and guidance to the mujahideen and eventually to Taliban forces to combat their enemies.

In addition, senior members of Pakistan’s intelligence agency and army are accused of helping the Taliban plan major military operations against the government during the Afghan civil war in the 1990s. Pakistani support for the group attracted widespread international criticism, including from then-UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who called it “deeply distressing”.

Read more:
As Afghanistan falls, what does it mean for the Middle East?

Pakistan was then just one of three countries to officially recognise the new Taliban government when it took power in 1996.

General Hamid Gul, a former head of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), acknowledged in 2014 that Pakistan even used US aid to continue funding the Taliban after the September 11 terror attacks.

He told a television audience,

When history is written, it will be stated that the ISI defeated the Soviet Union in Afghanistan with the help of America. Then there will be another sentence. The ISI, with the help of America, defeated America.

Pakistan is still likely to provide covert political and logistic support to the new Taliban leaders in Afghanistan today.

In the past, the Taliban leadership had three consultative councils, known as shuras, based in Pakistan. At least one of these shuras, based in Quetta, still probably seems to be operating from Pakistan.

The Taliban also operated in the country throughout the American occupation in Afghanistan, even though the Pakistan government denies supporting the group and denies the existence of the Quetta shura.

Given this history, it’s no wonder many people around the world are blaming Pakistan for the Taliban’s recent military success, reflected in the #SanctionPakistan campaign on Twitter.

Read more:
As the Taliban surges across Afghanistan, al-Qaeda is poised for a swift return

What does Pakistan stand to gain or lose?

Pakistan’s biggest gain is that India will lose its influence in Afghanistan, which was seen as a threat to Pakistan’s security. The Taliban takeover also allows Pakistan to boost its bilateral trade with Afghanistan and provides an unrestricted trade route to the countries of central Asia.

However, Pakistan can lose from the Taliban’s ascendancy, as well. If the Taliban fails to ensure stability, this can trigger another wave of refugees crossing the border. The Taliban’s takeover could also embolden domestic terror groups within Pakistan.

As a result, Taliban rule in Afghanistan could have adverse security repercussions for Pakistan, particularly with regard to the Pakistani Taliban (TTP). The TTP considers the takeover of Afghanistan by its Afghan counterparts a significant ideological victory.

The TTP has launched several violent attacks in Pakistan over the years, including an attack on a school in Peshawar in 2014 that killed more than 150 people, mostly children.

Some of the TTP’s leaders were also reportedly freed from prisons by Afghan Taliban fighters in recent days.

As a former member of Pakistan’s parliament told the Financial Times, “a stable Afghanistan will work in Pakistan’s favour”.

The key to creating peace and stability in Afghanistan will be Pakistan’s strategic cooperation with all of the regional powers, as well as the US. Such cooperation, however, may be a challenge to achieve, given the competing interests that have long torn this country apart.

Muhammad Nadeem Malik 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. How Pakistan stands to gain — or lose — from the Taliban’s victory in Afghanistan – https://theconversation.com/how-pakistan-stands-to-gain-or-lose-from-the-talibans-victory-in-afghanistan-166414

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jamin Wood, PhD Candidate at the Australian Centre for Water and Environmental Biotechnology (formerly Advanced Water Management Centre), The University of Queensland

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report released earlier this month sounded a “code red for humanity”. At such a crucial time, we should draw on all possible solutions to combating global warming.

About one-quarter of greenhouse gas emissions are associated with the manufacture of the products we use. While a small number of commercial uses for carbon dioxide exist — for instance in the beverage and chemical industries — the current demand isn’t enough to achieve meaningful carbon dioxide reduction.

As such, we need to find new ways to transform industrial manufacturing from being a carbon dioxide source to a carbon dioxide user.

The good news is that plastics, chemicals, cosmetics and many other products need a carbon source. If we could produce them using carbon dioxide instead of fossil hydrocarbons, we would be able to sequester billions of tonnes of greenhouse gases per year.

How, you may ask? Well, biology already has a solution.

Read more:
There aren’t enough trees in the world to offset society’s carbon emissions – and there never will be

Gas fermentation

You may have heard of microscopic organisms, or microbes — we use them to make beer, spirits and bread. But we can also use them to create biofuels such as ethanol.

They typically need sugar as an input, which competes with human food consumption. However, there are other microbes called “acetogens” which can use carbon dioxide as their input to make several chemicals including ethanol.

Acetogens are thought to be one of the first life-forms on Earth. The ancient Earth’s atmosphere was very different to the atmosphere today — there was no oxygen, yet plentiful carbon dioxide.

Acetogens were able to recycle this carbon using chemical energy sources, such as hydrogen, in a process called gas fermentation. Today, acetogens are found in many anaerobic environments, such as in animals’ guts.

Not being able to use oxygen makes acetogens less efficient at building biomass; they are slow growers. But interestingly, it makes them more efficient producers.

For example, a typical food crop’s energy efficiency (where sunlight is turned into a product) may be around 1%. On the other hand, if solar energy was used to provide renewable hydrogen for use in gas fermentation (via acetogens), this process would have an overall energy efficiency closer to 10-15%.

This means acetogens are potentially up to twice as efficient as most current industrial processes — which makes them a cheaper and more environmentally friendly option. That is, if we can bring the technology to scale.

Sustainable carbon recycling

Gas fermentation is scaling up in China, the United States and Europe. Industrial emissions of carbon monoxide and hydrogen are being recycled into ethanol to commercially produce aviation fuel from 2022, plastic bottles from 2024 and even polyester clothes.

In the future this could be expanded to produce chemicals needed to make rubber, plastics, paints and cosmetics, too.

But gas fermentation currently isn’t done commercially with carbon dioxide, despite this being a much larger emission source than carbon monoxide. In part this is because it poses an engineering and bioengineering challenge, but also because it’s expensive.

We recently published an economic assessment in Water Research to help chart a pathway towards widespread acetogen-carbon dioxide recycling.

We found economic barriers in producing some products, but not all. For instance, it is viable today to use carbon dioxide-acetogen fermentation to produce chemicals required to make perspex.

But unlike current commercial operations, this would be enabled by renewable hydrogen production. Increasing the availability of green hydrogen will greatly increase what we can do with gas fermentation.

Looking ahead

Australia has a competitive advantage and could be a leader in this technology. As host to the world’s largest green-hydrogen projects, we have the capacity to produce low-cost renewable hydrogen.

Underused renewable waste streams could also enable carbon recycling with acetogens. For instance, large amounts of biogas is produced at wastewater treatment plants and landfills. Currently it’s either burned as waste, or to generate heat and power.

Past research shows us biogas can be converted (or “reformed”) into renewable hydrogen and carbon in a carbon-neutral process.

And we found this carbon and hydrogen could then be used in gas fermentation to make carbon-neutral products. This would provide as much as 12 times more value than just burning biogas to generate heat and power.

The IPCC report shows carbon dioxide removal is required to limit global warming to less than 2℃.

Carbon capture and storage is on most governments’ agendas. But if we change our mindset from viewing carbon as a waste product, then we can change our economic incentive from carbon disposal to carbon reuse.

Carbon dioxide stored underground has no value. If we harness its full potential by using it to manufacture products, this could support myriad industries as they move to sustainable production.

Read more:
Our ability to manufacture minerals could transform the gem market, medical industries and even help suck carbon from the air

Jamin Wood receives funding from The Warwick and Nancy Olsen Scholarship and Research Training Program.

Bernardino Virdis receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Shihu Hu receives funding from Australian Research Council.

– ref. From jet fuel to clothes, microbes can help us recycle carbon dioxide into everyday products – https://theconversation.com/from-jet-fuel-to-clothes-microbes-can-help-us-recycle-carbon-dioxide-into-everyday-products-165242

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Zuleyha Keskin, Associate Professor, Charles Sturt University

With the world still in shock over the Taliban’s lightning-fast takeover of Afghanistan, Afghan people, especially women, wonder what kind of life awaits the nation. When pressed about preserving the rights of women, a Taliban spokesperson said the Taliban would not discriminate against women and would give them their rights “within the bounds of shariah”.

These seemingly moderate messages from the Taliban give the impression they might have changed. But their track record in the 1990s, their interpretation of Islam, and the events that transpired in the past two decades give us a good idea of how they are likely to implement shariah.

What is shariah and how did it come about?

Shariah literally means “the way to a watering source” in Arabic. It came to denote a unique legal system based on the sources of Islam.

When Prophet Muhammad established the first Muslim community in Medina in 622, there was a need to have a legal system better than the crude customs of the tribal Arabian Peninsula. The revelations of the Quran and the Prophet’s own reforms set out the legal principles and practices that laid the foundations of shariah.

The legal approach of the Prophet was progressive and moderate for its time. Prophet Muhammad’s wife Ai’sha said whenever he was confronted with a matter regarding people, he would always choose the easier option for people and he never took revenge. This is an important point for the Taliban to keep in mind.

When Islam grew rapidly from Spain to India by the end of the seventh century, the need for a common legal system became paramount. Instead of replicating the Roman and Persian legal systems, caliphs and Muslim scholars built a complex and detailed legal system on the foundation laid by the Quran and Prophet Muhammad.

Scholars identified higher objectives of the law. In the 14th century, influential Muslim jurist Abu Ishaq al-Shatibi identified the highest objective of law as:

to promote good and to benefit human beings and to protect them from evil, from harm and from subsequent suffering.

Muslim jurists deduced five basic human rights for Islamic law to guarantee – the right to life, property, freedom of religion, freedom of mind (including speech) and to raise a family. Caliphs and sultans could not violate these individual rights.

Legal pluralism was also practised in the Muslim world. Many schools of law were established, having developed over centuries, and implemented in much of the Muslim world. Five such schools survived – Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi’i, Hanbali and Jafari. The last is for Shiite Muslims, and the others for Sunnis.

Shariah became the most sophisticated and developed legal system in the world from the eighth to the 17th century. It served as the common legal code across the vast Muslim lands and populations characterised by racial, cultural, religious and geographic diversity.

Read more:
The Taliban wants the world’s trust. To achieve this, it will need to make some difficult choices

Why does shariah appear backwards today?

Why, then, does Islamic law appear to have a medieval flavour and appear backwards when it is implemented in modern times? There are five main reasons.

First, from the 11th century onwards, Muslim scholars declared the closure of the gate of ijtihad (legislation) and discouraged new legal interpretation. The 11th through to the 14th centuries was the era of the Crusades, Mongol invasion of Muslim heartlands and the plague. It was not the time to make new interpretations with so many crises taking place. Anyway, scholars reasoned, Islamic law was quite developed.

Second, European colonisation of the majority of the Muslim world from the 19th century onward collapsed the political, legal and religious institutions. Busy with independence movements and dealing with the onslaught of modernity on conservative society, Muslim leaders and scholars had no time to develop Islamic law.

Third, when Muslim nations gained their freedom, mostly after the second world war, they began nation-building. The political leadership were mainly secular modernists who wanted to westernise and modernise their nations. There was no place for Shariah in their vision. The new Republic of Turkey, for example, implemented direct translations of Swiss civil codes instead of Shariah.

Fourth, the historical role of Muslim scholarship has shifted. Newly established secular nation states nationalised rich endowments that belonged to religious institutions. Muslim scholars were persecuted for fear of dissent and opposition. Islamic scholarship was reduced to a small, underfunded university faculty. Talented Muslims chose professions other than Islamic law.

The result is a major loss in the quality of scholarship and a gap of at least 150 years with no practical development in Islamic law.

The last attempt to align Islamic law with a modern legislative framework was made by the Ottoman Empire in its Majalla civil code project. Completed in 1876, Majalla consisted of 16 volumes and 1,851 articles. Since then, the world has changed dramatically without an adequate theoretical and practical response from Islamic law.

A fifth factor is the influence of puritanical Salafism among jihadist groups such as Al-Qaeda, the Taliban and Islamic State. These groups often ignored the vast Shariah legal literature, scholarship and historical experience. They cherry-picked and implemented certain Quranic verses and prophetic traditions as Islamic law.

So, Islamic law appears relatively underdeveloped when compared to other legal systems. It simply did not have a chance to develop in the modern era.

Contemporary Muslim views on shariah

Muslims have differing views on the contemporary application of shariah law.

One view held by secular and modernist Muslims is that shariah was more suited to classical agrarian societies. Given the world and Muslim societies have changed dramatically, shariah is no longer applicable.

The opposite view is held by ultra-conservative Muslims and Islamists. They insist shariah is complete and perfect as it is, and modern societies should be changing to conform with shariah.

A third group, holding perhaps the majority view, believes Shariah is applicable at all times. The key is to know how to apply it correctly, given the changes in time and place.

The third view considers the complexity of the world and proposes committees made up of Islamic scholars alongside scientists and sociologists to fully examine Islamic law. Using the principles and methodology of Shariah, old legal rulings could be evaluated and, if there are grounds, modified. New issues not found in classical Islamic law would also be responded to.

Read more:
Owning up: Australia must admit its involvement in Afghanistan has been an abject failure

Taliban’s idea of shariah and Women

Almost certainly, the Taliban holds the second view – society has to change in line with the shariah. This means a move away from the liberalism Afghans grew accustomed to in the past two decades.

The next important question is whether the Taliban will follow the puritanical Salafism or a more traditional Islamic legal school?

In the 1990s, with its support of Al-Qaeda and use of harsh punishments, the Taliban appeared to follow puritanical Salafism. Their fall in 2001, Islamic State’s demise in 2019, and regression of Al-Qaeda after Osama bin Laden’s death would suggest they have learned a lesson or two.

Muslims of the subcontinent and central Asia traditionally follow the Hanafi legal school, which is one of the more liberal of the four Sunni Islamic legal schools. Even if this legal school is implemented, its most recent form is the 150-year-old Ottoman Majalla legal code. It will be curious to see if Taliban will consider Majalla at all.

An important consideration is the degree of change the world and Afghanistan have gone through since the first Taliban rule. The Taliban were isolated when they first came to power. But now all of their officers have smartphones connected to the internet and social media. Most importantly, they are using them effectively. Online access to the world would certainly have a moderating effect.

In the first Taliban rule, women had almost no rights. Women had to cover their body and face with the burqa, and they could not get education or work. They could only travel with a male chaperone.

The Taliban today claims to be more inclusive and tolerant of women. While wearing the burqa may not be imposed, women (and men) will be required to cover the rest of their bodies, much like in Iran.

Girls would be allowed to receive an education in girls-only schools staffed by female teachers and administrators. Women would be able to work in a narrow list of professions where there will be limited or no mixing of genders.

In short, life for women in Afghanistan will be better than during the first Taliban rule, but worse than the liberal rights they enjoyed in the past two decades.

Zuleyha Keskin is affiliated with ISRA Academy

Mehmet Ozalp is affiliated with ISRA Academy.

– ref. Explainer: what is shariah law and what version of it is the Taliban likely to implement? – https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-shariah-law-and-what-version-of-it-is-the-taliban-likely-to-implement-166490