Melbourne’s second wave of COVID-19 last year, which led to a lockdown lasting more than 100 days, provided us with many lessons about controlling transmission. Some of these are pertinent as New South Wales endures its ongoing lockdown.
One feature of Melbourne’s second wave was a disproportionate impact on health-care workers, patients in hospital, and residents in aged-care homes. In response to this, a team of Melbourne-based infectious clinicians, engineers and aerosol scientists came together to learn from each other about how to mitigate the risk of airborne COVID-19 transmission in health care.
We are some members of that team. As we hear about COVID spreading in Sydney hospitals during the current outbreak, we want to share what we learnt about how to potentially minimise airborne COVID-19 spread in the hope it’s helpful to our colleagues.
Importantly, much has improved over the course of the pandemic. Most health-care staff and some of our patients (even if not as many as we would like) are vaccinated against COVID-19, reducing the likelihood of severe illness and death. Appropriate personal protective equipment (PPE) is generally available, including fit-tested N95 masks, and practices such as physical distancing and use of tele-health have been widely adopted.
We’ve read recent expert commentaries about dealing with COVID-19 that mention paying attention to indoor ventilation. But rarely do these specify what exactly can and should be done in our existing hospital buildings.
The heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems in hospitals, like most public indoor spaces, are built for comfort and energy efficiency, not for infection control (aside from purpose-built isolation areas).
Clearly, we cannot rebuild all our hospital ventilation systems to cope with the current outbreak.
However, there are tangible things that can be done now and in future.
Our recommendations
We recommend hospitals prioritise the use of negative pressure rooms for COVID-19 infected patients where available. Negative pressure rooms are built specifically for patients with highly infectious diseases. We already use them when caring for hospitalised people with tuberculosis, measles and chickenpox.
These rooms usually have an “anteroom” with a door either side before the patient room. The air pressure is lower in the anteroom than the corridor, and then lower again in the patient room compared to the anteroom. This means potentially contaminated air doesn’t escape outside the patient room when the door is opened.
Negative pressure rooms ensure potentially contaminated air doesn’t escape into the corridor. Shutterstock
However, these rooms are usually in short supply even in larger hospitals, and may not exist in smaller or rural hospitals.
If negative pressure rooms aren’t available, then where possible, COVID-19 patients should be managed in single rooms with doors that close.
Preferably, these should be rooms with a high number of “air exchanges per hour”. This is a measure of the refreshing of air in the room. Six air exchanges per hour has been suggested at a minimum for hospital rooms, but preferably more.
Hospitals need to be aware the air in normal rooms can travel outside into corridors. Some rooms may be positively pressured without being labelled as such, so we recommend having them tested.
Two small air cleaners can clear 99% of infectious aerosols
If patients with COVID-19 are being managed outside negative pressure rooms, then we recommend hospitals consider using portable air cleaners with HEPA filters.
We published a world-first study in June into airflow and the movement of aerosols in a COVID-19 ward, giving us a real insight into how the virus might be transmitted.
We found portable air cleaners are highly effective in increasing the clearance of particles from the air in clinical spaces and reducing their spread to other areas.
Two small domestic air cleaners in a single patient room of a hospital ward could clear 99% of potentially infectious aerosols within 5.5 minutes.
These air cleaners are relatively cheap and commercially available. We believe they could help reduce the risk of health-care workers and other patients acquiring COVID-19 in health care.
We are currently using them at the Royal Melbourne Hospital and Western Health.
Innovations such as personal ventilation hoods can also be extremely useful. Western Health’s intensive care unit, which managed large numbers of patients in Melbourne in 2020, used these hoods to filter air close to COVID-19 positive patients and help protect staff.
It’s also important hospitals perform ventilation assessments of wards to be aware of the pathways of airflow through spaces to help inform where to position patients and staff.
We found minimising the number of infected patients in a given physical space was important as we think this helped to reduce the density of aerosols. When patient numbers are high, hospitals should try to avoid caring for more than one COVID-19 positive patient in a room, if possible, which may mean closing beds.
Clearly, if new COVID-19 case numbers climb, this becomes difficult, and enlisting the help of additional hospitals with suitable facilities to “share the load” will be necessary.
New hospitals must focus on ventilation
We need to focus on practical strategies we can implement right now to retro-fit health-care settings to improve safety for staff and patients.
But we must also plan for the future.
In designing new hospitals, it’s critical to:
keep ventilation front of mind
build enough negative pressure rooms and single patient rooms
add air cleaning and air monitoring to the building operations toolbox.
We will achieve this by designing facilities together with staff.
Vaccinations will help control this current pandemic. But we’ve learnt so much about managing this virus in such a short time. Let’s apply what we’ve learnt about aerosol transmission to make practical changes to improve safety now and into the future.
The authors would like to thank Ashley Stevens, hospital engineer at Royal Melbourne Hospital, for contributing to this article and the research.
Forbes McGain has co-invented a personal isolation hood (the McMonty Hood) with Prof. Monty (UniMelb). The hood is being used clinically to reduce aerosol exposure in healthcare settings.
Together with Forbes McGain, we invented and developed the McMonty Hood. The device is licensed to and sold by Medihood.
Together with Robyn Schofield, we received funding from the Royal Melbourne Hospital to conduct the airflow/aerosol/ventilation study.
Robyn Schofield received funding from the Royal Melbourne Hospital to conduct airflow/aerosol/ventilation study.
Caroline Marshall, Kirsty Buising, Louis Irving, and Marion Kainer 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.
1986 was a very big news year: history-making moments captured by television. The Space Shuttle Challenger exploded live on air. Who can forget the camera lingering on the horrified faces of Christa McAuliffe’s parents, the teacher-in-space being incinerated before our eyes.
This is the era explored in the ABC’s new TV drama The Newsreader. Creator Michael Lucas and director Emma Freeman have made a program so accurate it gave me a jolting sense of déjà vu.
In 1986, I had just left behind the “slow-news-day” world of Adelaide, packing up my power suit and transferring to the ABC newsroom in the Melbourne suburb of Elsternwick. It was the big smoke with bigger stories, and it was getting faster.
In Adelaide we might have replaced film with tape but we still typed on heavy, steel, manual typewriters and carbon copy paper. My first day was terrifying as I grappled with a huge, speedy electric typewriter.
The Newsreader captures the changing nature of news-gathering. Stories came via telex, fax and AAP wire. Chiefs of staff eavesdropped on police scanners, communicating with crews on two-way car radios. And there was good old-fashioned “shoe leather reporting”: journalists walking out of the office, observing, meeting people and cultivating contacts.
News at Six, the fictional news program in the ABC series, depicts a typical commercial newsroom of the time. This was the golden age of TV when the rivers of advertising gold flowed freely and ratings made, or broke, careers. A reporter was only as good as their last story but if you delivered enough scoops you too could aspire to become a newsreader, a celebrity and a trusted public figure.
Exaggeration and ambition
In the series, Lindsay Cunningham (William McInnes) is the bullying, sexist news director playing staff off against each other with the promise of a career as a newsreader.
“Newsreading is the duck’s nuts,” he tells rookie reporter Dale Jennings (Sam Reid), “.. great pay and you get to waltz in here at midday.”
Except that the news cycle is starting to get faster — news breaks, which can interrupt the programming schedule at any time of day, have increased the pressure to be the first network with breaking news and updates.
Enter Helen Norville (Anna Torv) clever, very ambitious and highly telegenic. Helen (as I did) has big helmet hair, big earrings and even bigger shoulder pads. It was as if exaggeration could make us more visible.
Anna Torv (Helen) and Sam Reid (Dale) in The Newsreader. ABC Publicity
Helen is an anchor woman in the new double header line up. Her co-host, veteran newsman Geoff Walters (Robert Taylor) has already sensed serious news is under threat. A former Vietnam War correspondent, Geoff has the “big G for Gravitas” in spades, but unfortunately that is no longer enough. Helen has the “big G for Glamour” and audiences now want eye candy with their bulletin.
How sexist was it back then? Men were in the majority and the decision makers, but women were moving in and up. ABC journalist Mary Delahunty won a Gold Walkley in 1983. Nine’s Jana Wendt conquered 60 minutes, and went on to A Current Affair where she became known as “the perfumed steamroller”, eventually winniing the Gold Logie.
I have never worked in commercial television. Still, it was common knowledge that female reporters were often judged on their “f…ability quotient”. In one episode of the show, Lindsay arrives at Helen’s house ostensibly to discuss her career. He manspreads on her couch in a very uncomfortable scene until she is saved by the doorbell.
Helen is brilliant but highly strung; while her work days are fuelled by adrenalin she’ll crash and burn in tormented private moments. When Dale rescues her from one of these episodes they become partners in the pursuit of a breaking story.
When Lindy Chamberlain is released from jail in episode three of the series, we get a snapshot of the lengths ambitious reporters will go for an exclusive: stake outs, trespassing and chequebook journalism. Helen and Dale have no ethical problem with offering a quarter of a million dollars for an interview but Geoff’s outrage is such that he sabotages his own network by leaking the offer to rivals at Channel Nine.
There are some great characters in The Newsreader and episodes of note. Noelene (Michelle Lim Davidson) is the smart and deserving production assistant who will never get a promotion. So good is she at her job, and making others look better, she has made herself indispensable.
(There is a hilarious scene where Dale is on the road and needs a fact checked. Noelene rummages through the files of newspaper clippings; Google now does this in an instant.)
Newsgathering in the 1980s was fuelled by adrenaline, competition, caffeine, cigarettes and alcohol. Yes, we drank and smoked in the newsroom. Competition was fierce.
A friend and colleague once diverted a crew away from me so he would have the exclusive. Crews were often in short supply and we all knew — no pictures, no story. Our intellectual property resided in our carefully cultivated and recorded contact books — mine was stolen from my desk sometime in ’86-87. We were motivated by bearing witness and we were trusted by the audience.
The Newsreader is a great piece of television drama but one thing doesn’t ring true. Commercial newsrooms in 1986 were not as diverse as the program pretends and definitely not so Asian.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says work to get New Zealanders out of Afghanistan has ramped up, as commercial options become unavailable.
Yesterday the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade said it was aware of 17 New Zealanders who were in Afghanistan, but Ardern said that number is now believed to be closer to 30 when citizens and family members were taken into account.
“The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade have been actively trying to contact those that they believe may be in Afghanistan and working to get people out,” she said.
“Previously there have been commercial options for people to leave on if they’re able to get to the point of departure. That will increasingly, if not already, no longer be an option,”
She said that was when the government would step up the work it was doing to try to get them out.
Ardern said that the situation was moving fast and quick decisions would need to be made in terms of those New Zealanders in Afghanistan.
“That is something we’ve been working on, as you can imagine, in a very changeable environment for the past, wee while and is something we will continue to work on.
Additional consideration
“There’s also for us … the additional consideration of those who may have who may have historically worked to support the New Zealand Defence Force or who may have been on the ground over many years in Afghanistan their safety situation, so that’s also something we’re moving as quickly as we can on,” she said.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern … “There’s also for us … the additional consideration of those who may have who may have historically worked to support the New Zealand Defence Force.” Image: Samuel Rillstone/RNZ
Ardern said New Zealand had been working with partners to try and determine a safe passage for these New Zealanders, but would not give details about which other countries had been approached.
“There will be security issues around me giving much more detail than I’ve given now, but I can tell you we are working at the highest level alongside our partners to support those New Zealanders who may be on the ground.”
Interpreters contact NZ government
Cabinet is meeting today to consider whether New Zealand can evacuate Afghanistan nationals who supported our military efforts there. The situation is urgent, with civilian lives believed to be in danger.
A small group of people who were not eligible for the Afghan interpreters package in 2012 have now made contact with the New Zealand government, Ardern said.
She said fewer than 40 people, have identified themselves as having worked alongside New Zealand forces, but the majority of these cases are historic and they were not eligible under the previous National government’s “interpreter package”.
Ardern said at that time they were not seen as directly affected or at risk from the Taliban but the current situation has changed dramatically.
“It was basically interpreters at that time who were brought over as they were considered to have the strongest, or face to strongest risk at that time, there were others who weren’t eligible for that who have subsequently made contact.
“Cabinet will be discussing today what more needs to be done to ensure the safety of those who are directly connected to them.”
Ardern said they would need to ensure that these people were in fact working directly alongside the NZ Defence Force and that would be considered by Cabinet today.
Focused on security
She said it was too soon to look ahead with the international community to what would be done regarding the Afghanistan situation.
“We’re quite focused on the security situation on the ground right now, getting those who need to get out out, and doing what we can to support those who supported us, so that’s our immediate consideration I think then we’ll be looking over the horizon to what next with the international community.”
Ardern said it was devastating to see what was happening in Afghanistan now, but that did not diminish the roles of those New Zealanders who served there.
“Everyone makes the best decisions they can at the time they’re made … and in the environment in which they’re made and all I would say to our New Zealand troops who were in there, they would have seen for themselves the difference that they made at that time,” she said.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Nadroga Navosa paramount chief Na Ka Levu Ratu Tevita Nabekwahiga Makutu says his province will not take part in the “disrespectful” land bill public consultations carried out by Fiji government.
In a letter addressed to Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama, Ratu Tevita explained the province’s exemption from the consultations following the passing of the Bill in Parliament last month.
“Sir, you are fully aware of the position of the vanua on the new amendment to the iTaukei Lands Trust Act,” he stated in the letter.
“It is disconcerting to learn that after the law has been amended, your ministry and the iTaukei Land Trust Board officials saw fit and proper to do awareness in the province to the very people who should have been consulted in the very first place.
“This demonstrates a gross disrespect to the dignity of the landowners or the iTaukei community in general.
“The action of your government undermines the trust of the landowning units (LOUs) vested to the board for the efficient and effective administration of iTaukei land.”
He said the vanua must be recognised and respected.
Vanua served faithfully “History will reveal that the vanua has faithfully and diligently served its functions and purposes for socio-economic development of the nation.
“The government cannot operate in isolation or with a sense of distrust with people who have elected them to Parliament.
“We are the true voices of the people of Fiji, must and should be, consulted on pertinent matters relating to our land.”
Questions sent to the permanent secretary for the Office of the Prime Minister, Yogesh Karan, remained unanswered when this edition of The Fiji Times went to press.
Repeka Nasikois a Fiji Times reporter. This article is republished with permission.
The Tongan legislature is now considering the Illicit Drugs Control (Amendment) Bill 2021, which was introduced as a private members’ bill by the Speaker, Lord Fakafanua.
He wants a mandatory death sentence for offenders who traffic 5 kilograms or more of a Class A drug.
Matangi Tonga reported Fakafanua as saying “drugs offences are on the rise and at a very alarming rate in Tonga”.
He said 12 percent of the prison population were illicit drug offenders, while they made up half the admissions to the psychiatric ward.
Fakafanua also said most reoffended.
Several other pieces of legislation aimed at getting on top of Tonga’s drug problem, were now before Parliament.
They include the Intoxicating Substances Bill 2021 and the Therapeutic Goods (Amendment) Bill 2021.
The Illicit Drugs Control (Amendment) Bill 2021 proposes:
Tonga is one of just two Pacific states — the other being Papua New Guinea — that still has the death penalty on its books.
But it has not used it in 40 years.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party advertisements inferentially objecting to COVID-19 lockdowns demonstrate one more way in which the freedoms essential to a democracy can be abused to the detriment of the public interest.
Democracies protect freedom of speech, especially political speech, because without it democracy cannot work. When speech is harmful, however, laws and ethical conventions exist to curb it.
The laws regulating political advertising are minimal.
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. It has nothing to say about truth in political advertising for the good reason that defining truth in that context would be highly subjective and therefore oppressive.
Sections 52 and 53 of the Trade Practices Act make it an offence for corporations to engage in misleading or deceptive conduct, or to make false or misleading representations. The act has nothing to say about political advertising.
Ad Standards, the industry self-regulator, has a code of ethics that enjoins advertisers not to engage in misleading or deceptive conduct. It is a general rule that applies to all advertising, political or not.
The Palmer ads do not violate any of these provisions.
So where does that leave media organisations that receive an approach from the likes of Palmer to publish advertisements the terms of which are not false, misleading or deceptive, but which are clearly designed to undermine public support for public health measures such as lockdowns?
It leaves them having to decide whether to exercise an ethical prerogative.
Short of a legal requirement to do so – say, in settlement of a law suit – no media organisation is obliged to publish an advertisement. It is in almost all cases an ethical decision.
Naturally, freedom of speech imposes a heavy ethical burden to publish, but it is not the only consideration. John Stuart Mill’s harm principle becomes relevant. That principle says the prevention of harm to others is a legitimate constraint on individual freedom.
Undermining public support for public health measures is obviously harmful and against the public interest. Media organisations are entitled to make decisions on ethical bases like this. An example from relatively ancient history will illustrate the point.
In the late 1970s, 4 Corners ran a program alleging that the Utah Development Corporation’s mining activities in Queensland were causing environmental damage. A few days after the program was broadcast, The Sydney Morning Herald received a full-page advertisement from Utah not only repudiating what 4 Corners had said but attacking the professional integrity of the journalists who made the program.
I was chief of staff of the Herald that day and the advertisement was referred to me, partly because it contained the seeds of what might have been a news story and partly because there were concerns it might be defamatory.
I referred it to the executive assistant to the editor, David Bowman, who refused to publish it.
He objected to it not only on legal grounds but on ethical grounds, because it impugned the integrity of the journalists in circumstances where they would have no opportunity to respond. In his view, this was unfair.
A short while later, the advertising people came back saying Utah had offered to indemnify the Herald against any legal damages or costs arising from publication of the advertisement.
Bowman held to his ethical objection and was supported by the general manager, R. P. Falkingham, who said: “You don’t publish something just because a man with a lot of money stands behind you.”
The advertisement did not run, not because of the legal risks but because it would have breached the ethical value of fairness.
Palmer’s ads – which say lockdowns are bad for mental health, bad for jobs and bad for the economy – contain truisms. There is nothing false or misleading about them. But they clearly seek to exploit public resentment about lockdowns for political gain.
The clear intention is to stir up opposition and make the public health orders harder to enforce.
We live in an age where there are not only high levels of public anxiety, but also a great deal of confusion about who to believe on matters such as climate change and the pandemic. It is against the public interest to add gratuitously to that confusion, and harmful to the public welfare to undermine health orders.
These are grounds for rejecting his advertisements.
Nine Entertainment, which publishes The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian Financial Review, has rejected Palmer ads that contain misinformation about the pandemic, including about vaccines. Clearly such ads violate the rules against misleading and deceptive content.
But the ads opposing lockdowns on economic or health grounds were initially accepted by Nine, and are still running in News Corporation.
The question now is whether media organisations are willing to make decisions based on ethical considerations that are wider than the narrow standard of deception.
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.
There’s a rush to vaccinate vulnerable remote Aboriginal communities in New South Wales after spread of the coronavirus out of metropolitan areas has led to a state-wide lockdown.
So focus is turning to how quickly we can get COVID-19 vaccines over vast distances, far from vaccine warehouses in the cities, into remote Australians’ arms.
But transporting vaccines to remote Australia isn’t new. Nor are the challenges that must be overcome to keep vaccines at the right temperature on the long and bumpy journey to remote clinics.
Here are some of the practical issues nurses, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health practitioners, community health workers, pharmacists and others face when vaccines are transported vast distances by road, air or on water.
It’s a long way
The vast distances and isolated communities of remote Australia pose significant challenges to transporting vaccines. Then there are the environmental extremes, with freezing winter nights and scorching summer days, plus monsoonal rains and cyclones often interrupting transport services and making regions inaccessible for weeks.
Keeping vaccines at the right temperature over large distances, over days and weeks, can be challenging. But vaccines are temperature-sensitive products, and their effectiveness is dependent on correct storage. If a vaccine is too hot or too cold it may be damaged and not work as well.
So it’s critical to keep vaccines at the right temperature to ensure their safety and efficacy.
For non-COVID vaccines and the AstraZeneca COVID vaccine, the recommended cold chain — between 2℃ and 8℃ — must be maintained from the place of manufacture to administration in the community.
However, transport and storage requirements for the Pfizer COVID vaccine are different. Unopened vials of the vaccine need to be stored and transported at domestic freezer temperatures, between -25℃ and -15℃, for up to two weeks.
Unopened vials may also be stored at domestic refrigerator temperatures, between 2℃ to 8℃, for up to five days. Once a Pfizer vaccine has thawed it should not be re-frozen.
Keeping vaccines in the recommended temperature range over long distances often means styrofoam boxes and regular eskies are inadequate, particularly when the transit time is likely to be three to four days. Transporting vaccines to remote Australia requires special infrastructure, including dedicated vaccine fridges and insulated containers.
If there’s a cold-chain breach, when vaccines are exposed to temperatures outside the recommended range, the vaccines may become damaged and might need to be thrown away and replaced.
Such breaches are estimated to have cost the Australian health system at least A$25.9 million in replacement vaccines over a five-year period. This estimate is pre-COVID, so the figure is likely higher if we take into account any cold-chain breaches with COVID vaccines.
All staff involved in the vaccination process, from manufacture to transport to administration, must understand the need to maintain the cold chain and the risks associated with cold chain breaches.
This includes knowing the correct way to pack the vaccines in an insulated container (such as a vaccine cold box, esky or styrofoam box), using temperature monitors, and what to do when there’s a cold-chain breach.
However, there are few training materials dealing with vaccine cold chain in remote Australia. And with high staff turnover, it’s difficult to know everyone in the chain has the right training.
A team at Flinders University collaborated with Irene Nangala — a Pintupi elder and director of Western Desert Nganampa Walytja Palyantjaku Tjutaku Aboriginal Corporation (Purple House), an Aboriginal community controlled organisation in Alice Springs — to make a short educational video called Vaccine Story.
The video depicts the journey a vaccine takes from a supply centre to a remote Australian community in a culturally appropriate manner.
This freely available video is especially useful for non-clinical staff, who may not otherwise receive professional training or updates.
Vaccine Story follows an esky full of vaccines from the city to remote Australia.
Transport is important
The video also looks at the importance of transport in maintaining the cold chain, especially in the “last mile” of vaccine logistics.
For remote Australia, variable and unreliable transport add extra logistical challenges. Freight to remote communities is often limited with infrequent or non-existent services.
So local clinics and supply centres need to be adaptable and resourceful to ensure vaccine supply. The right transport option for one day might not be the best for another. Staff need to ask:
is there a bus travelling to the community today?
can the visiting specialist team take the esky with them on the plane?
can the patient-transport driver pick up the vaccine from the pharmacy?
how are the roads today?
Each of these options presents new challenges. Non-clinical staff may have to be trained in how to handle vaccines and the importance of maintaining the cold chain.
For example, the esky needs to be safely secured in the car. If it bounces around, the ice bricks may come into direct contact with the vaccines, which can cause them to freeze (the vaccines are generally separated from the ice with packing materials).
Staff will have to consider the temperature in a car, bus, the hull of a plane or on a barge. Vaccines will have to be handed over to the right person, not left on the runway or on the clinic doorstep in the sun.
There must be good lines of communication so everyone knows where the vaccines are.
The electricity’s out
Vaccines need to be stored in dedicated vaccine fridges when they reach the clinic in remote Australia.
However, challenges in maintaining the cold chain don’t stop there. It’s common in remote communities for electricity outages that mean vaccine fridges go off. Clinic staff need to be trained in how to manage these situations.
Despite these significant logistical challenges, vaccines have been successfully shipped to remote Australia for years before COVID vaccines became urgently needed.
But with the latest COVID cases in remote NSW, we’re reminded just how different the vaccine cold chain is in the bush compared with the city.
So all eyes are on looking after this precious cargo, including maintaining the cold chain.
Tobias Speare received funding from Northern Territory PHN to create Vaccine Story video.
Suzanne Belton is employed by CARPA to evaluate the Vaccine Story film.
The afternoon of August 11 was rather exciting in my community – the tiny, remote Aboriginal township of Goodooga in north-western NSW. After months of waiting, our COVID-19 vaccination clinic was planned for the next day.
Then the news came through of a positive case in Walgett, and the vaccine clinic was cancelled. In the midst of an unrelenting COVID-19 outbreak in NSW, other Aboriginal communities like Goodooga are facing uncertain times ahead.
A clearly defined vulnerable community
From the start of the pandemic, Aboriginal people were identified as “a clearly defined vulnerable community”.
These vulnerabilities stem from both chronic health conditions suffered by Aboriginal people and under-resourced health services in regional and remote areas.
Total Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander vaccination rates are low, but there are also concerns about pockets of poor vaccination coverage in individual communities. As Dr Jason Agostino from the National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation shared with the Guardian:
Unless we’re paying attention to those small levels of geography and those individual communities, we might find islands of poor vaccination coverage that leave those communities vulnerable.
Low vaccination rates have been exacerabated by an absence of Pfizer supply to a youthful population. Aboriginal vaccine hesitancy in Western NSW is largely attributable to anxieties around AstraZeneca, something which isn’t specific to Aboriginal communities.
AstraZeneca hesitancy has been heightened by ATAGI’s recommendation that Pfizer is the preferred vaccine for those aged 12–59.
But in Brewarrina, a recent vaccination hub was organised, only for community members to find out it was only administering AstraZeneca. Instances such as this hardly alleviate anxieties, especially when the Aboriginal population is overwhelmingly young — 86% of Aboriginal people in the Brewarrina area are less than 60 years old.
Although Aboriginal people are in priority categories for access to the vaccination, in Western NSW we haven’t been given access to supplies of the Pfizer vaccine ahead of lower priority groups in Sydney. The cancellation of vaccine clinics such as Goodooga and others (Bourke also had their vaccine clinic cancelled), add to these issues.
Indigenous organisations have long identified the need to deliver culturally appropriate public health messaging, especially around vaccinations, with some developing their own communications, such as NITV’s “Keep the Mob safe from COVID-19” campaign. But this messaging has made limited headway given the mixed messaging about AstraZeneca and lack of access to Pfizer.
Lax COVID testing results in community infections
The state government was put on notice by Aboriginal justice advocates who had highlighted the vulnerabilities of Aboriginal people in custody and in prison. Factors such as over-crowded conditions which make physical distancing impossible, and incarcerated people have much higher rates of chronic health conditions.
Then, in the first week of August, a young man in Western NSW was taken into custody over a weekend, tested for COVID-19 upon entering the prison, and then released on bail a few days later. This young man’s test was not considered urgent because he had not been to a location of concern nor a close contact of a known case.
By the time the young man’s positive test was returned, he was in his hometown of Walgett. The town was plunged into a snap lockdown, with emergency testing facilities established and urgent pleas for vaccines.
While this was happening, an outbreak was spreading in Dubbo, a large regional centre that services much of the north-west. The adjacent local government areas of Bogan, Brewarrina, Bourke, Warren, Coonamble, Gilgandra and Narromine were also placed in a snap seven-day lockdown.
According to our estimates, Aboriginal people make up 25% of the general population in the nine areas of most concern in western NSW. Of this population, 26.5% are under the age of 11, meaning they are currently unable to be vaccinated.
A further 62.4% are aged 12–59, the age group for which Pfizer is ATAGI’s preferred vaccine. Until adequate supplies of Pfizer are provided, our community is unlikely to be protected against the virus.
Fears in western-NSW continue to rise with the increased rate of positive tests in Aboriginal families with particular concern over the rate of COVID-19 infections in children.
It is also important to understand these remote townships rarely have the services and goods to sustain themselves. For example, my hometown of Goodooga is located in the Brewarrina Shire, and yet our closest store is Lightning Ridge, located in the Walgett local government area. According to the restrictions first announced by the state government, our community were initially not permitted to travel there for basic supplies.
As COVID-19 has spread, so has fear and anxiety. Uncle Victor Beale, a Walgett Elder speaking to ABCs Nakari Thorpe, said, “I thought Walgett was one of the safest places on earth [but now] there’s a lot of anxious people”. Another Elder, Aunty Marie Denis Kennedy, meanwhile shared her concern and anger, “There’s no sort of protection for us”.
Scott McLachlan, the chief executive of the Western NSW Local Health District, shared his concerns around these recent outbreaks:
The large proportion of the new cases, and our total cases, are Aboriginal people both in Dubbo and Walgett and many of those are children.
Meanwhile, the NSW Health Minister admitted the medical services in Walgett were not prepared for an outbreak.
There has also been anger at the confusion caused by uncoordinated and confusing messaging from the NSW government about infections and exposure sites.
Multiple, successive, and cascading policy failures
Now what we see unfolding is the result of multiple, successive and cascading policy failures:
failure to vaccinate Aboriginal communities, one of the highest priority groups
failure to safely transition inmates and detainees from correctional facilities to their home communities
failure to plan for and create a surge capacity within local medical services
failure to plan for a COVID outbreak in regional and remote areas, where Sydney’s rules (such as not leaving your local government area) are ineffective in a vast landscape with interwoven communities that depend on one another.
Sensible strategies with achievable milestones that have long been advocated for – such as securing temporary accommodation for inmates and detainees transitioning from correctional facilities – could have protected our communities.
Now, the responsibility to make our communities safe is falling on our own organisations. Often under-resourced and under-staffed despite calls for extra support from the government, these community organisations work tirelessly, often without due recognition or appropriate pay.
Though this work may seem invisible to outsiders and government alike, we see it and we thank you.
Back in Goodooga, families hide in their homes, hoping to ride out this outbreak. But there is a feeling also of being forgotten. In this extraordinary and scary time, all we seem to have is each other, and our families in the city who worry for us.
This article was prepared in partnership with Charlee-Sue Frail, Dr Francis Markham and Peta MacGillivray.
Are the Liberals liberal? Does the Labor Party stand chiefly for those who labour? Electoral politics is nothing if not about wrapping ideas – about values and power – in words.
On Friday, the Morrison government introduced a Party Registration Integrity Bill to the Commonwealth parliament. The bill would let established parties veto the use of words like “Liberal”, “Labor” or “Democrats” in the names of newer, rival parties. It will also make it harder to register – or keep registered – parties, by tripling the number of members required to 1,500, unless the party has an MP.
What is going on? Is this about democratic values, or is it a power play?
People may differ about the bill’s justification. But one thing is clear to a lawyer: as drafted, the bill is cooked. It overreaches and is not well drafted.
To take an obvious example, the bill will let the Liberal Party control the word “Liberal”, if “contained” in the name of any other registered party. That includes the Liberal Democratic Party of ex-senator David Leyonhjelm and potential-senator Campbell Newman fame.
The Liberal Party is also upset by the emergence of the New Liberals. But “Liberals” is not the same as “Liberal”. Indeed it’s a noun, not an adjective. So perhaps the bill won’t cure that upset.
Mere “function words”, like “the” or “of” don’t count. Nor is any “collective noun for people” protected. Think “party” or “Australians”. Linguists will be left to argue whether collective nouns like “Liberals” or “Greens” are off-limits. Can “Indigenous” be bagsed? Your guess is as good as mine.
“Frivolous and vexatious” names will also be struck out. So no Australian version of the UK’s Monster Raving Loony Party. Oh, the shame; if Brits can take a joke, why can’t we?
Australia’s most colourful political figure is currently seeking to remove his own name from his Clive Palmer United Australia Party. But if he doesn’t, he could forever veto anyone else called “Clive” or “Palmer” naming a party after themselves. Real names are not “function words”.
More seriously, handing one party squatter’s rights over everyday words is troublesome. It creates a virtual intellectual property right. That is fine for trademarking commercial goods; it’s another thing altogether in politics, where language is dynamic and fundamental. Worryingly, it gives leverage to established parties. They could ask a newer party for its support (with legislation or electorally) in return for permission to use the overlapping word in their name.
The government argues the bill is needed to minimise voter confusion. But there’s still plenty of confusion within the bill’s language. AAP/Dan Himbrechts
The government argues the bill is needed to minimise confusion among electors. After all, compulsory and preferential voting means identifiable names on ballot papers are crucial, as most electors vote for parties, and some only decide their full preferences when mulling the ballot itself.
Why does party registration, and names, matter? Anyone can form a political group. But to have your group’s name on the ballot paper, and control public funding for garnering 4% of the vote, you need to register as a “party”.
Before registration systems arose in the 1980s, Australian politics was largely a battle between Labor and the Liberal-Country Party Coalition. Other forces came and went, often via splits in the major groupings.
The Liberal Movement was a progressive liberalist party in the 1970s, while the Democratic Labor Party (DLP) had success as a socially conservative, but union-oriented, party in the 1950s-70s. Their names were natural enough.
Australian parties today are electoral machines more than social movements. Each, understandably, wants to guard its “brand”. Infamously, the Liberal Democratic Party won a Senate seat in 2013 when it lucked the first place on a huge ballot paper while the Liberal Party was hidden in the middle.
In response, laws were passed to allow visual cues on ballot papers, via party logos. And the independent Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) and courts can already rule whether a name can be confused with another party, or implies a false association.
In recent decades, registered parties have proliferated, partly due to opportunists wanting a ticket in the lottery of the final Senate seat up for grabs. That gambit has been significantly nullified by making voters choose where their preferences go (if anywhere) in the Senate.
That leaves the long-term decline in voter base of both major parties as the chief driver of the creation of new parties. For national elections, there are 46 registered parties. In Queensland, without a state Senate, there are barely a dozen. Is too much potential choice a bad thing?
Forty-six is a lot, but some will die naturally. Others will be wiped away by the increased, 1,500-member rule. Which is fair enough, unless you are a regional party focused only on the Senate in a small state or territory. The 1,500-member rule also won’t deter parties formed by wealthy interests, if the party can afford a zero-dollar membership “fee”.
Ultimately, this bill is dubious not because of mathematics, but linguistics. It gives established parties control over language. Not even the Académie Française, much lampooned for its elite rulings over how French should be used, has that kind of power.
Graeme Orr has received grant money from the Electoral Council of Australia and done pro bono and consultancy work with various political parties and movements. He is currently a paid consultant on the NSW Electoral Commission’s statutory iVote Expert Panel.
Scenes of mayhem unfolded at Kabul airport overnight, as foreigners and Afghans try to flee Afghanistan following the seizure of the capital by the Taliban.
As many, including myself, observed, this is Kabul’s “Saigon moment”.
What we are seeing — with, for now, the airport remaining open and the Taliban talking in benign terms about the governance of Kabul — echoes what happened in Saigon in 1975, as the United States and its allies exited the Vietnam War. Then, there was a fight north of the city but the North Vietnamese forces didn’t roll directly into town.
In that moment, there was a hiatus — a window of opportunity to leave. A brief moment for extraction of US personnel, their allies, including Australians, and the local people who helped them, before the final takeover of the city occurred.
The way things have unfolded in Kabul, with the airport remaining open for now, speaks to a level of collaboration between the Taliban and the US government in its negotiations about how US and coalition partners would be able to extricate themselves.
Whether Australia can extract its people — particularly the Afghans who helped us and are now in grave danger — remains to be seen. In Saigon, the window of opportunity was open for just a matter of days before it slammed shut.
I think there is considerable moral responsibility for the Australian government to continue to try to get out as many Afghans who helped us, even though their government seems to have collapsed.
In Saigon in 1975, Australia basically turned its back on locally employed staff and refused to repatriate them. Many people feel a bit ashamed about Australia’s attitude back then.
That may have informed the attitude of our government in recent weeks. Bowing to pressure, it has agreed to work toward extricating hundreds of Afghan people who have worked for us.
What is concerning is we haven’t gone hard or quick enough. There is a considerable number of people who remain very vulnerable, who would be worried about being earmarked as collaborators if they stayed.
Eyewitness reports at the airport speak of up to 1,000 people trying to board a plane designed to take 300. It is worth noting that a lot of aircraft can take more people than they are designated for if they don’t fill the cargo bay with luggage. That’s particularly true with big cargo aircraft. It’s not very safe but for some, it’s safer than staying in Kabul.
Australia, a bit late in the piece, has ramped up forces to go in and help extract people who are associated with Australia’s presence there over the past 20 years. I hope that is still on track and those people can still get out.
It is hard to know, because it’s so opaque whether that will materialise. It’s not entirely clear whether Australia’s RAAF flights can get in, or whether we will be able to piggyback off what the British and Americans, and perhaps the Canadians, are doing.
It’s worth noting that Kabul airport is quite vulnerable. It’s surrounded by hills, from which Taliban with ill intent can create havoc. That’s why the US has talked about deploying extra troops to support the extraction.
Turkey, which is still technically a NATO ally but is also a Muslim democracy that is seen as more palatable for the Taliban, has promised to provide security at the airport in Kabul as the Americans and their allies leave.
So there’s an arrangement for a transition out and we will see whether it comes to fruition.
Morale defeats physical force
More broadly, what we have seen in Afghanistan in recent weeks is a vast military power being clearly outfoxed by a Taliban force that, materially, is significantly inferior. Yet in terms of morale, resolve and endurance, the Taliban has clearly outmatched the US and its coalition partners, including Australia.
The saying, “you have the watches but we have the time” speaks to a problem we were not able to address.
The Taliban’s smooth talking has seen city after city give in without a fight, despite having been equipped in a way that shows, on paper, the Afghan security forces on the ground should have been able to defeat the Taliban.
But in battle, morale is three to one to physical force and the morale just wasn’t there.
If you don’t have soldiers and police resolved to defend and hold off the Taliban, it’s worse than useless. Because now the Taliban is replete with American high-tech drones and sophisticated weaponry.
Cauterising the wound
There’s another dimension to this which is important for the future: what all this means for America’s fighting resolve.
In 1975, there was a sense that America’s pullout from Vietnam represented a major catastrophe and a failure of the West’s ability to hold off Communism. But in hindsight it seemed like that was just a low point. The Berlin wall still eventually fell.
There was also a sense in 1975 of the US and its allies being untrustworthy, that they leave people behind and that this will cause would-be allies not to trust them.
So perhaps there’s an argument that this exit from Afghanistan throws up similar issues.
On the other hand, others will argue it is a case of the US and its allies finally seeing reason and cutting their losses in a war that is, according to a hard-nosed realpolitik calculus, of little consequence strategically in the context of Russia modernising and being in cahoots with China.
Regardless of how it unfolded, many pundits saw little long-term prospect of the Taliban being pushed back forever in Afghanistan — particularly given the deep, behind-the-scenes support it got from Pakistan and, increasingly, elsewhere.
The US and its allies had to exit sooner or later. The bottom line is that, at some level, the wound had to be cauterised.
The question is: was there a better way to cauterise the wound?
The scenes unfolding at Kabul airport suggest that perhaps what was done to help those who helped us was a case of too little, too late.
John Blaxland is the author of The Australian Army from Whitlam to Howard, Cambridge University Press, 2014. He is also editor of ‘Niche Wars: Australia in Afghanistan and Iraq, 2001 – 2014’ which is a free download from ANU Press.
In April 1961, just months after the young John F. Kennedy was inaugurated as the 35th president of the United States, his reputation for expertise in foreign policy took a battering as a result of the Bay of Pigs fiasco, a covert action against the Cuban government that collapsed within a matter of days.
The collapse in Afghanistan that has flowed from current President Joe Biden’s decision to proceed with a complete US troop withdrawal is more than likely to be seen as his own Bay of Pigs moment.
But it may be something worse, akin to the Suez crisis of 1956, which not only humiliated the British government of Sir Anthony Eden, but marked the end of the United Kingdom as a global power.
When historians look back at the shambolic US exit from Afghanistan, it may increasingly appear a critical marker of America’s decline in the world, far eclipsing the flight from Saigon in 1975.
The path to disaster
How did this come to pass? Afghans, turning on themselves, are already pinning the blame on now-departed President Ashraf Ghani, and Biden’s defenders are sure to join the chorus. Yet this is an oversimplification of how things unravelled.
Ghani’s domineering style, poor personnel choices, and reluctance to delegate power to others all played significant roles in the current crisis.
However, the institutional and political problems that were festering long before Ghani became president are perhaps more to blame: a seriously overcentralised state; a presidential system that placed far too much formal power in Kabul; and the development of “neopatrimonial” politics, based on patronage networks that had flourished under former President Hamid Karzai, which in turn fostered electoral fraud.
An even more significant role was played by Pakistan, the Taliban’s longstanding patron and supplier of sanctuaries, logistical support, and equipment.
First, there was the catastrophic exit agreement signed with the Taliban on behalf of the Trump administration by the US special envoy to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, in February 2020. The flaws of this deal were immediately obvious. Following that was Biden’s conscious choice to adhere to it.
Biden has since sought to emphasise that he inherited the agreement from Trump, but it was his decision to stick with it, and to retain its architect, Khalilzad, as his own representative. Appalling US decision-making lies at the heart of the tragedy.
What lies behind Biden’s failures?
What factors might explain Biden’s gross misjudgement? At this point, several come to mind.
A first factor, universally overlooked, is his lack of relevant experience in dealing hands-on with complex and dangerous foreign policy challenges.
Until becoming president in January 2021, Biden had never held an office with distinct executive authority. He was a longtime legislator and then vice president, and he was a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for 12 years, including several years as chairman.
But he never occupied a position where he was routinely required to make final decisions on matters of high policy with significant associated risks.
President Joe Biden meeting with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani at the White House in June. Susan Walsh/AP
Having an interest in world affairs is not the same thing as having strong judgement or a talent for developing and implementing foreign policy. Robert Gates, a former defence secretary in both Republican and Democrat administrations, argued in his 2014 memoir that Biden had been
wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.
Some reports suggest Biden’s decision to follow Trump’s path was driven more by instinct and longstanding beliefs than by a methodical, cerebral appraisal of the dangers.
Biden may also have been influenced by a deep, almost visceral, suspicion of the advice of the US military, going back to his failed attempts while vice president to argue against the “surge” of US troops in Afghanistan, which President Barack Obama ultimately decided to do.
A second factor at play is likely US domestic politics. Biden and his supporters have quoted polling in support of a complete US troop withdrawal, but it is unlikely this was much of a contributor to the final decision, as Afghanistan has never generated anything like the heat in US politics that was associated with the Vietnam War.
A more likely contributor was the internal politics of the Democratic Party. Biden had endured considerable criticism from the left over his ardent support for the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Supporting an Afghanistan troop withdrawal had the potential to ameliorate some of those concerns, and to appeal to the party’s progressive wing and ideological isolationists.
How the US-Taliban deal eroded confidence
The US decision also reflected a grave misunderstanding of power dynamics in Afghanistan.
As I have previously noted, mass psychology is a critical determinant of political trajectories in an environment as threatening and de-institutionalised as that in Afghanistan.
As in an avalanche, a small shift can rapidly snowball, resulting in what social scientists call “cascades”.
The collapse of the Afghan government provides a perfect example of a cascade at work. The 2020 US-Taliban deal created deep and widespread apprehension about what the future might hold. Then, it only took a few localised failures to sap the confidence of all sorts of actors, both military and civilian, in the survival of the government. Side-switching became a rational strategy, then spun out of control.
The US troop withdrawal also seems to have reflected a failure on the part of Biden – although not the US military — to appreciate how destructive the February 2020 agreement had been to the effectiveness of the Afghan military.
In requiring the withdrawal not just of US troops but US maintenance contractors, it compromised the ongoing capabilities of key assets in the inventory of the Afghan National Army, as well as depriving the army of critical air cover. As an insightful analysis put it,
in the wake of President Biden’s withdrawal decision, the US pulled its air support, intelligence and contractors servicing Afghanistan’s planes and helicopters. That meant the Afghan military simply couldn’t operate anymore.
The long-lasting damage to US credibility
It is hard to see how Biden can emerge from this disaster without his credibility shredded, but the greater loss is to the credibility of the United States, which increasingly appears a fading power internationally (as well as a failing state at home).
For no great gain, it sold out the most pro-western government and public in the region to a brutal terrorist group, all this after having long promised the Afghans that they would never be abandoned.
The implications of this abandonment stretch far beyond Afghanistan’s borders. As a group of eminent retired ambassadors has put it,
an ignominious American departure from the country would send a terrible signal to other countries as the United States competes with China and other authoritarian states. If US security guarantees are not credible, why not cut deals with China?
In May 1940, in a scathing indictment of the failures of the Chamberlain government to stand effectively by its allies, former British Prime Minister David Lloyd George observed cuttingly that “our promissory notes are now rubbish on the market”.
As a result of its failures over Afghanistan, the Biden administration is rapidly heading in a similar direction.
William Maley 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.
New Zealand Parliament Buildings, Wellington, New Zealand.
Editor’s Note: Here below is a list of the main issues currently under discussion in New Zealand and links to media coverage. Click here to subscribe to Bryce Edwards’ Political Roundup and New Zealand Politics Daily.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Frank Bongiorno, Professor of History, ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences, Australian National University
Great crises are a stimulus to right-wing political mobilisation. Famously, the Great Depression of the 1930s gave the Nazis their chance. It was a good time for fascists or near-fascists in other countries as well, including Australia. Here, the ground was thick with the Old Guard, New Guard, White Army, Country Movement, New Staters, Western Australian secessionists, patriotic bodies and citizens’ leagues, all claiming to be sick of politics and above it all.
The present pandemic has been no exception. The uncertainty of the times has been a great generator of conspiracy theories and, dangerously, of do-it-yourself medical science. The Depression gave a great boost to funny money theories such as Social Credit, which identified an evil and conspiratorial “money power” as the root of all social and economic evil, a theory that sometimes had anti-Semitic content.
Such conspiracy theories are still with us, expressed most obviously by the obsession of a section of the right with the supposedly malign influence of billionaire George Soros. Others worry Bill Gates is listening in, 5G technology is enslaving us, and vaccination is a plot to destroy our liberty. For many years now, the far right has been preoccupied with Islam. Without abandoning old enemies, it’s now finding new ones to worry about.
But not entirely new. It is a feature of right-wing political mobilisation that it tends to stitch together bits and pieces of fabric that have often been around for a long while, tailoring them into new garments for the present. Anti-vaccination arguments have been around for years. They are now being repurposed for the times.
Where are they coming from? Not entirely from the right, of course: there are wellness and natural lifestyle advocates, and social media influencers, who object to vaccination. Lockdown protesters might be predominantly of the right, but not exclusively so. There is a palpable frustration with restrictions on personal freedom. This extends well beyond those who might consider themselves on the right.
Anti-lockdown protestors seem to be predominantly of the right, but not exclusively so. Mick Tsikas/AAP
Still, is it striking that much that is recognisable as right-wing protest about “freedom” at present has its origins in the mainstream politics of the right. Craig Kelly, an enthusiastic purveyor of COVID misinformation, was until recently a Liberal member for a Sydney seat, his preselection under the protection of the current prime minister. John Ruddick, a prominent member of the libertarian Liberal Democrats conspicuous in recent anti-lockdown protests in Sydney, is a former candidate for president of the Liberal Party. Campbell Newman was Liberal National Party premier of Queensland for a term: he’s now also hitched a ride with the Liberal Democrats and announced his Senate candidature in the noble cause of “freedom”. Others complaining of lockdowns and restrictions, such as George Christensen and Matt Canavan, both Queensland federal politicians, remain in the Coalition government.
All of this conforms to a historical pattern. Pauline Hanson would likely never have been heard of if not for Liberal Party preselection for Oxley in 1996. Sky News is fronted by former Liberal advisers such as Alan Jones and Peta Credlin – even if Andrew Bolt once worked on the Labor side of politics and Mark Latham puts in the odd appearance.
The right benefits from our media ecology. The role of the Murdoch media in turning last night’s exotic and extreme into this evening’s political meat and three veg is well enough understood. So is the role of social media in enabling the spread of conspiracy theories, loopy ideas and even violent extremism of the kind witnessed in Washington DC on January 6.
But there is an understandable reluctance on the part of the mainstream media, given their complicity, in exploring their own role in facilitating right-wing political mobilisation. Just over a fortnight ago, Senator Matt Canavan was talking on a program fronted by Breitbart founder and Trump adviser Steven Bannon. Last week, he was on the ABC’s Q&A, where he was handed a national audience.
Mainstream media thrive on the melodrama provided by the staging of stark disagreement. The advocate of locking down the population for its own safety while infections run at over 300 per day in the country’s largest city needs to be confronted with a “let the virus run free” type. For the sake of “representation” and “balance”, the right-wing Institute of Public Affairs gets media opportunities quite out of proportion to any real public interest in its libertarian ideas.
The revival of Hanson’s political career in the mid-2010s was fundamentally dependent on the opportunities provided by commercial television, where her extreme views and opinions could be guaranteed to draw attention, viewers and advertising coin. Similarly, she and her advisers have always understood the media value of the political gimmick – such as appearing in parliament in a burqa.
Mainstream media have long been complicit in providing a platform – and thereby validation – for extreme views. Peter Mathew/AAP
To read the Australian section of The Spectator these days – I realise I am among a small minority who do – is to encounter a fragment of the right-wing commentariat that seems out of sorts with the Coalition government under Scott Morrison.
Indeed, it seems almost as upset with him as it was with its previous dangerous radical enemy, Malcolm Turnbull. In the July 17 issue, it asserted:
The Liberal Party is adrift, a large, ugly and ungainly tanker that has slipped its moorings and is taking on water as it flounders in a turbulent and unpredictable sea. On the bridge, an ineffectual captain navigates by opinion polls and focus groups, with sinister factional bosses whispering in his ear.
Commentators of this kind – and the editorial goes on to praise Ruddick as “one of the great thinkers of the modern Liberal Party over three decades” – seem almost as worried these days by Morrison as by “Dictator Dan” Andrews in Melbourne. Perhaps more so. They are worried by the authoritarianism, the big spending and the flirtation with zero-carbon ideas. Above all, they are worried by what they call the lies and deceit about COVID.
The basic idea in these circles is that most politicians and their health advisers have persistently exaggerated the risks of the disease. They have done so because they fundamentally hate individual freedom, care nothing for ordinary people and are cosseted from having to earn their bread in the real economy. And, once again, here are ideas you will find among certain commentators in the mainstream media, not only in strange corners of the internet or in low-circulation, right-wing magazines.
In one sense, they are the Australian backwash of Brexit and Trump, mouthing the slogans of British Europhobes, Hungarian despots, Dixieland governors and Republican Party senators – and Steve Bannon.
But like these right-wing populist counterparts elsewhere, they are also political adventurers and entrepreneurs, seeking to build new constituencies in unknown territory. Short on solutions, big on rhetoric and in the fortunate position of not having to run anything, the libertarian right is frustrated that most of the population seems content to do what it’s told.
At times, it sounds as shrill as the sectarians on the far left whom it sometimes resembles. But those on the right are more consequential because they have significant media sponsors, they exploit real fears and frustrations, and they can sound reasonable when they criticise government excess and authoritarianism.
That is because our governments have sometimes, during this crisis, practised excess and authoritarianism.
Frank Bongiorno 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.
Parents and researchers have longsuspected city kids are disconnecting from nature due to technological distractions, indoor lifestyles and increased urban density. Limited access to nature during COVID-19 lockdowns has heightened such fears.
Yet, there’s been surprisingly little investigation to directly test whether a disconnect exists between children and nature – and if it does, how this might affect their environmental behaviours. Our recent research, focused on Australian children in urban areas, sought to address this knowledge gap.
We found most younger children, especially girls, reported strong connections to nature and commitment to pro-environmental behaviours. But by their teenage years, many children have fallen out of love with nature. Understanding and reversing this trend is vital to tackling climate change, species loss and other grave environmental problems.
Young people are key to addressing environmental problems. Henry Lydecker
What we did
Our research involved more than 1,000 students aged 8-14 years, attending 16 public schools across Sydney.
We measured the students’ connections to nature using a questionnaire which asked about their:
enjoyment of nature
empathy for creatures
sense of oneness with nature
sense of responsibility towards nature.
The survey also canvassed students’ current environmental behaviours, such as whether they recycled waste and conserved water and energy, as well as their willingness to:
volunteer to help protect nature
donate money to nature charities
talk to friends and family about protecting nature.
A girl volunteers her opinion in a group discussion at Sydney’s Royal Botanic Gardens. Ryan Keith
What we found
Contrary to the conventional wisdom about nature-deficit disorder, we found one in two children aged 8 to 11 felt strongly connected to nature, despite living in the city. However, only one in five teens reported strong nature connections.
Children in the younger age group were also more likely to engage in pro-environmental behaviours. For example, one in two were committed to saving water and energy on a daily basis, and two in three recycled each day.
Girls generally formed closer emotional connections to nature than boys did – a difference especially apparent in the final stage of primary school.
Connection to nature by age and gender. CNI = Connection to Nature Index. Author provided
Importantly, girls differed from boys in their responses to questions about sensory stimulation. Girls particularly liked to see wildflowers, hear nature sounds and touch animals and plants. This finding echoes previous research which found motivation for sensory pleasure is greater in women than men.
Girls also felt greater empathy for nonhuman animals than did boys, even after accounting for differences in sensory experience.
Children with strong nature connections were much more likely to demonstrate pro-environmental behaviours. This helps explain why girls were more willing than boys to volunteer for nature conservation.
Girls felt greater empathy for nonhuman animals than boys did. www.pisquels.com
What does all this mean?
These findings suggest parents, educators, and others seeking to “reconnect” youth with nature should focus on the transition between childhood and the teenage years.
Adolescence is a period of great change. Children move from primary to high school, switching peer groups and struggling through puberty. They gain independence and must adapt to a maturing brain.
Relationships with nature easily fall by the wayside when teens prioritise other aspects of their busy lives. In fact, evidence of the adolescent dip in nature connection is emerging across differentcultures.
Educators and parents hoping to engage girls with nature might give them activities focused on sensory stimuli.
Girls’ greater empathy for nonhuman animals may result from societal norms that socialise girls to be more caring, cooperative, and empathetic than boys. Boys can be encouraged to have more empathy for nonhuman animals through activities focused on perspective-taking and role-playing.
Even when locked down at home, both girls and boys can cultivate empathy for animals and nourish their connections to nature by taking mindful note of their surroundings. Though cities can appear to be concrete jungles, they still contain urban wildlife, parks and other green elements.
Children mindful of their surroundings can foster connections to nature in urban areas. Shutterstock
Children are the future
Recent research has demonstrated that stronger nature connections are associated with improved health and wellbeing in children.
The benefits of connecting to nature should be distributed among youth in a just and equitable way. That means working with groups often marginalised in discussions about nature, such as ethnic minorities.
Conservation is increasingly reliant on young citizens forming meaningful connections with urban nature. Many environmental leaders, such as Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, are teenage girls.
Ensuring urban children maintain nature connections through adolescence is crucial to tackling Earth’s serious environmental problems. But it will also require more young people to confront the difficult realisation that the world’s climate is in crisis. For this, we need to develop better ways to help them cope.
Ryan Keith 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 his academic appointment.
Dieter Hochuli receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the City of Sydney and the Inner West Council.
John M. Martin receives funding from the Australian Research Council.
Lisa M. Given receives funding from the Australian Research Council.
Research at Australian universities has been scrutinised through the Australian Research Council’s (ARC) assessment exercise, Excellence in Research for Australia, since 2010.
A companion Engagement and Impact Assessment exercise began in 2018. The time and costs for universities of running these exercises (the ARC collected this information when ERA began but never released it) and the value they generate for universities, government, industry and the public are unknown.
It’s difficult to see how any future versions can be justified without evidence of a healthy return on investment.
The question of future assessment exercises is now in the spotlight. The ARC recently completed a review of ERA and EIA to “ensure the national research assessments address Australia’s future needs”.
The review’s terms of reference included consideration of “the purpose and value of research evaluation, including how it can further contribute to the Government’s science, research and innovation agendas”. This is important, as no evidence has ever been provided of exactly how the government, industry or community uses assessments for informing agendas.
The review received 112 submissions in response to a consultation paper. Most came from universities, peak bodies/associations and various service providers and consultants. No responses were received from the sectors that supposedly benefit from these exercises, namely government, industry and the community.
A review advisory committee was then appointed to consider key issues and make recommendations to the ARC CEO. The committee readily identified key concerns about how the assessments work, such as rating scales, streamlining and automation, evaluation cycles and eligibility requirements. These matters also came up in university submissions.
But what came through most clearly from universities were the mixed views about the value of assessments as a whole. By extension, there is a question mark over whether they should continue if their utility cannot be clearly demonstrated.
While EIA has been run only once, there have now been four rounds of ERA overseen by four different ministers. Each round has culminated in a detailed national report with a minister’s foreword that consistently focuses on the same two matters:
ERA results provide assurance of the government’s investment in the research sector
the results will inform and guide future strategies and investments.
In other words, there has been an overreaching focus on justification for the exercise and on its purported utility. But how convincing is this?
In its early days, ERA was credited with playing an important role in focusing university efforts on lifting research performance. Indeed, a number of university submissions to the review acknowledged this.
However, much has changed since then. As university responses noted, new databases and digital tools – together with greater expertise in data analytics within universities to analyse performance – as well as the impact of international benchmarking through university and subject rankings have meant ERA’s influence has dramatically dwindled. Universities no longer need an outdated assessment exercise to tell them how they are performing.
As for its actual application, there was a brief time when ERA informed funding allocations under the Sustainable Research Excellence for Universities scheme. It was one of a number of schemes through which government support for university research was based on their performance. But this was quickly abandoned.
ERA data were once used to inform government funding allocations, but funding no longer mentioned on the website. Wayback Machine archives
In 2015, with a clear focus on incentivising performance and simplifying funding, the government introduced revised research block grants. In the process, it overlooked the very exercise that identifies research excellence and so ought to inform performance-based funding.
Since then, the best the government has been able to come up with is adding national benchmarking standards for research to the Higher Education Standards Framework. But with the bar set so low and no apparent reward for institutions that perform well above the required standards, barely an eyelid has been batted over this change.
‘Informing’ without evidence of use
Returning to the review committee, its final report of June 2021 acknowledged the vision for and objectives of ERA required rethinking, as these had lost their relevance or failed. This included the objectives of providing a stocktake of Australian research and identifying emerging research areas and opportunities for development.
But the committee has danced around the issue of ERA’s utility. It issued a lofty vision statement:
“that rigorous and transparent research assessment informs and promotes Australian universities’ pursuit of research that is excellent, engaged with community, industry and government, and delivers social, economic, environmental and cultural impact.”
The notion of “informing” as a buzzword for influence and utility has been the consistent feature of ERA. It seems this will continue. The review committee’s report contains over 50 references to this idea. And “informing decisions” is to be one of the four objectives taken up by the ARC, specifically to “provide a rich and robust source of information on university excellence and activity to inform and support the needs of university, industry, government and community stakeholders”.
But no evidence has ever been provided of ERA’s usefulness to these sectors. This objective rings hollow, particularly in light of the conspicuous absence of industry or government responses to the review.
The ERA process has produced no clear evidence of how university research is being used. Shutterstock
The vanishing link to funding
Of course, the really big question is whether ERA and EI will ever inform research funding. That’s something the ARC has brought up over the years, and possibly the only reason why universities are so compliant.
Curiously, though, the review’s terms of reference did not cover this issue. Perhaps, after 11 years, no one can work this out. Now that would surely represent a very poor return on investment.
Ksenia Sawczak 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.
In this series we pay tribute to the art we wish could visit — and hope to see once travel restrictions are lifted.
Have you ever entered a gallery, cathedral or grand old ballroom and drawn breath with surprise? Usually, it is opulence, vastness or one stunning painting or sculpture that evokes this response — think Michelangelo’s David, or Chartres Cathedral or the hall of mirrors at Versailles.
In London, an extraordinary gallery draws gasps because there is none like it anywhere else. It is like entering a giant “globe” covered in paintings of faraway places and plants. You can walk from South America to North America to Asia in a few paces.
All the paintings are by the Victorian-era female botanical artist and explorer Marianne North. The small gallery nestles in a stunning natural setting — Kew Gardens beside the Thames River.
The design of the gallery and the layout of the 800-plus paintings were largely North’s idea, assisted by Kew Gardens staff. Though she was a largely self-taught botanical illustrator, she also discovered four specimens that were named in her honour.
Victorian-era adventurer and artist Marianne North, photographed at her home in Ceylon by Julia Margaret Cameron around the 1870s. Wikimedia Commons
I remember my first impression of the peacefulness and softness on entering the gallery, elicited by a timber-panelled gallery covered top-to-bottom with paintings. It is a tightly packed mosaic of artworks.
Then I notice the gold lettering of countries and continents above the panels —America, Australia, Japan, Jamaica — and begin to explore the natural world as it was in Victorian times.
The vibrancy, colour and beauty in each individual painting emerges on closer viewing.
I walk from one continent to another noticing the unique vegetation of each, but also the similarity and diversity of natural forms — when these paintings were being created and collated, Charles Darwin had already written:
[…] endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.
The gallery displays this exquisitely, from a grand avenue of Indian rubber trees in Ceylon (Sri Lanka), medicinal plants from the tropics, vivid tangerine flowers on coral trees in Brazil, early coffee plantations in Jamaica, to a tall and majestic monkey puzzle tree in Chile. Australian banksia, bottle tree and bottle-brush are accurately and beautifully depicted.
Within the walls of the gallery, I can even travel back in time to see what Mudgee in NSW looked like in the late 1800s.
Over 14 years, Marianne North visited 15 countries and created more than 800 detailed paintings.
Then there are the four specimens named in North’s honour. Kniphofia northiae, discovered in South Africa, now grows in many gardens with the common name red hot poker (Painting no. 367). Northia seychellana is also called the capucin tree Painting no. 501). Nepenthes northiana, a large and unusual pitcher plant, was discovered by Marianne in Borneo (Painting no. 561). And crinum northianum , in the lily family (Painting no. 602), comes from Sarawak, Borneo.
North was one of several Victorian-era British female explorers. She was born (1830) into a wealthy family and had early connections to Kew gardens since her father knew its first director, Sir William Hooker.
Her interest in botanical art grew as an educational activity and as a means of passing on knowledge in pre-photography times. She made nearly 900 works from across the continents and larger islands.
North set out on her first main botanical tours in the 1870s, 40 years after Darwin sailed on HMS Beagle, determined to “paint from nature”. Her paintings of vegetation, birds, mammals and terrain, depicted with close accuracy, helped to foster awareness of the evolutionary connections between plants, animals and environment.
North and Darwin were in fact acquainted. In 1880 they met and discussed her paintings and he advised her to see and paint the Australian vegetation “which was unlike that of any other country”. North took Darwin’s advice, and returned to Down house in 1881 with a new collection spanning Townsville to Perth.
North gifted her botanical collection to Kew Gardens along with a gallery to house it. She arranged the paintings and also the decorations surrounding the doors to the gallery. Hence the unique design and global feel of the gallery interior. It opened in 1882.
Some 140 years later, we can explore her adventurous life and travels and view a global nature study in one gallery. With today’s technology we can see much of it online, which is handy during lockdown. I wonder what human expansion and global warming have done to those special places? If I could retrace North’s steps, what would I see?
After “browsing the continents”, you can exit the gallery into Kew Gardens. Among the 50,000 plants at the World Heritage site, you can search for the rare Australian Wollemi Pine, growing quite vigorously in the grounds.
The words of Darwin in 1859’s Origin of Species come to mind: “There is grandeur in this view of life”.
Mary Voice 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.
Prime Minister James Marape has assured Papua New Guinea that the 2022 National General Election will go ahead as scheduled, reports the PNG Post-Courier.
He dismissed fears that the election will be deferred due to concerns over funding and the electoral roll, which is yet to be updated, with only seven months to go before the issue of writs.
“Do we have time? I concur that time is running out for us to work. We have seven months left before the writs are issued.
“We can squeeze a work program in by all sectors of government to ensure that we arrive in the 2022 election in June and July,” he said.
Marape said the update of the common roll or electoral roll was an important requirement to progress good elections in 2022.
He said the government is conscious about that and would ensure that adequate funding was secured to get all the necessary preparations for the elections in place.
“In the past we do have heavy census, heavy NID (national identification) exercises and heavy common roll updates that consume a lot of money.
For example, to do common roll updates, they come up with budgets of K200-K300 million (NZ$80-NZ$120 million), the NID exercise consumes K300-K400 (NZ$120-NZ$160 million) and the census also has a funding submission to that tune,” Marape said.
“We do not have the luxury of funds to conduct different census or common rolls.
“We are trying to do it in a cost efficient manner in which we get to know our population.
“We will a do headcount and from one population data we could migrate that into our census.
“In the September-October period, every district and province is informed to prepare to assist our ward members update the population of the 6000 wards that we have nationwide.”
Ward members can update baseline population headcount from household to household. They are are closest to the people.
“The PNGEC (PNG Electoral Commission) team, from this population data base, will verify those who are 18 years and above to be migrated to the common roll and that will take place in December, January, February and March, for the common roll verification and update,” Marape said.
“By April-May that data will be ready to be used for the election.”
He said this during question time when responding to questions from Esa’ala MP Davis Steven.
Today — 15 August 15 1962 — marks “a day of betrayal for us West Papuans”, says a Papuan leader as critics reminded the world about what happened 59 years ago.
“This is the day a secret deal was done between the United States, Indonesia and the Netherlands, deciding our future without any consultation with the people of West Papua,” said interim president Benny Wenda of the United Liberation Movement of West Papua (ULMWP).
“This secret deal was done without a single West Papuan in the room.”
This deal led to the Indonesian invasion of West Papua in 1963, “sanctioned by the big powers”, said Wenda in a statement.
“The secret deal contained a proviso: that there be a referendum, one person one vote, to decide the long-term future of West Papua.
“But it never happened. The 1969 Act of No Choice was a fraud. Our right to self-determination remains stolen from us by Indonesia.
“I’m calling on all my people in West Papua, in exile, in a refugee camp, wherever you are: do not join the Indonesian independence day celebrations on August 17.
Independence ‘snatched from us’ “This is not our independence day. Our independence day is 1 December 1 1961, an independence and sovereignty snatched from us by the Indonesian military. We have our own constitution, our own provisional government, our own interim president.
“We know that Indonesian security services will go door to door trying to force West Papuans to raise the Indonesian flag. We do not want to celebrate your flag in West Papua.
“Under the name of the Indonesian flag, many of my people have been killed. Indonesia must respect our rights; you cannot force my people to raise your flag.
Victor Yeimo and the Papuan people are victims of racism since Indonesia’s brutal occupation!
Wenda said Papuans must hold a day of mourning instead to “remember what has been done to us”.
He added: “Due to this covid crisis, we must stay at home this year. If you can safely hold a prayer meeting in your village, do so, but remember that covid-19 is a killer. We must be safe.”
Wenda also called on the Indonesian government to “begin to rectify this history” by setting freed all political prisoners, including Victor Yeimo, spokesperson of the KNPB, and Frans Wasini, of the ULMWP provisional government.
“Their condition is worrying, due to their unfair treatment. They are at risk of dying in prison if nothing is done.
UN visit needed urgently Indonesia must also allow the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights into West Papua as a matter of urgency, Wenda said.
He added that Papuans would continue fighting until they regained their right to self-determination through an internationally-mediated referendum on independence.
A rally by the People’s Front of Indonesia For West Papua (FRI-WP) and the Student Alliance of Papua (AMP) Ambon City Committee, were being held today to commemorate the tragic event with the theme: ′′ 59 years of New York illegal agreement and against racism in the Land of Papua.′
Collins said in a statement there was also concern that as the Indonesian Independence Day on August 17 approached, West Papuans might be intimidated or forced to take part in celebrations against their will.
An article by Antara news agency titled “Papuans urged to display flags ahead of Independence Day celebration” reported that the Papua local administration had urged residents and bureaucrats to join the celebration of Indonesia’s 76th Independence Day by displaying the Red and White national flag in front of their homes, shops, and offices.
Tomorrow, the Papuan People’s Petition (PRP) facilitators have called for people in the Land of Papua to be involved together in the Papuan people’s free pulpit action to urge the unconditional release of Victor Yeimo.
According to Tabloid Jubi, spokesperson for the petition, Samuel Awom, said that Yeimo was not a perpetrator but a victim of Indonesia’s structured and massive colonial racism that had happened to indigenous Papuans.
Yeimo currently holds the status of a “prosecutor’s detainee” but is being temporarily placed in the Papua Police Mobile Brigade detention centre while waiting for the trial process.
It has become obvious in recent weeks that the strategy of Samoa’s oldest political party is to “repeat a lie long enough that it becomes the truth”.
And these untruths have been disbursed through multiple platforms: television, radio and social media as well as through protest marches and vehicle convoys.
It explains why the former prime minister and Human Rights Protection Party (HRPP) leader, Tuila’epa Dr Sa’ilele Malielegaoi and his party deputy, Fonotoe Pierre Lauofo, have been on air lately, as part of a party-led crusade to disparage the judiciary, following the Appellate Court’s decision last month to install the Fa’atuatua i le Atua Samoa ua Tasi (FAST) government.
Last week the Ministry of Justice and Courts Administration (MJCA) felt compelled to set the record straight — in the face of a slew of misinformation by the HRPP leadership recently — on the 23 July 2021 judgment of the Appellate Court and where the court views the position of the Head of State in relation to the Constitution.
Perhaps, the former prime minister needs to be reminded again of the position that the Head of State occupies under the Constitution, as laid out by the Appellate Court’s ruling:
“It may not be a well-known fact that the Head of State, except as otherwise provided in the Constitution, has no option but to comply with the advice of the Cabinet or the Prime Minister; such advice is deemed to be accepted by the Head of State after a period of 7 days.
“Respectfully, the Head of States authority is to do what he is told to do by Cabinet or the Prime Minister as his responsible Minister.
“He is like everyone else, a servant of the Constitution, not its Master.”
— (Paragraph 60 of the court’s decision notes.)
So aren’t we blessed that our forefathers foresaw what could come many years later — when a sitting prime minister could have illegally used a Head of State to usurp the powers of the Constitution — and therefore drafted in the provisions to ensure the Head of State remains subservient to the Cabinet or the Prime Minister (not a caretaker cabinet or caretaker prime minister) at all times?
One thing we know for sure is Tuila’epa and Fonotoe have been cherry-picking the courts’ judgments to suit their party’s political agenda, which is why the MJCA felt the need to release a statement last week to point out the role of the courts as the guardians of the Constitution.
So what is the endgame for these two notable politicians, one a former prime minister and the other a former deputy prime minister, as they persist in churning out flawed interpretations of the court’s judgement?
We ask this question because both have reached the highest echelons of political power in Samoa, one as a prime minister and the other deputy prime minister, and basked in the glory that came with their terms in office including the triumphs of successive HRPP governments over the years.
Speaking on TV1 Samoa’s Good Morning Samoa programme on Wednesday, Fonotoe claimed “Samoa is slipping into a failed state” and then unleashed a barrage of untruths on how the judiciary is “causing the erosion of the Constitution” and “effectively putting itself above Parliament” on the televised show.
And this is from a politician who has practised as a lawyer and made submissions as a barrister before the same court, which he and party boss continue to disrespect to this very day with their Machiavellian commentary, following their party’s loss at the April general election.
But then how can Samoa be a failed state when the international community immediately stepped forward with congratulatory messages for the FAST government and Samoa’s first female Prime Minister, Fiame Naomi Mata’afa after the Appellate Court handed down its 23 July 2021 ruling?
The international community showed total confidence in the ability of our judiciary to rule without fear or favour to resolve the three-month-long constitutional crisis, and this was demonstrated by their acceptance of the court’s judgement.
Therefore, the call by Tuilaepa for the international community to assist “restore Samoa’s democracy to where it should be” appears to be at best tongue-in-cheek, consigned to the annals of Samoan political history.
How can he be taken seriously as a leader on the international stage when history now shows how him and his party members tried to manipulate the Constitution to prolong their illegal tenure in office?
Nonetheless the highest court in the land has spoken, let’s respect the wisdom of its judgement and enable the new government to get on with the job of governing, and delivering on its promises to the people of this nation.
If you haven’t noticed storm clouds have been gathering recently and the people want their government to be ready to tackle these challenges, so if you have nothing positive to contribute, then it is in the public’s interest that you step aside and let those who’ve been given the mandate to lead take charge.
This Samoa Observer editorial was published on 13 August 2021. It is republished with permission.
People aged 20-39, who were identified by the Doherty Institute modelling as super spreaders of COVID, will be targeted for the one million Pfizer doses the Morrison government has purchased from Poland.
Of these, 530,000 doses will be sent urgently to a dozen Sydney local government areas, where the outbreak is still growing. They will start being administered in state clinics this week, Scott Morrison said.
He said the allocation to NSW “will give everyone aged 20 to 39 years in the 12 LGAs the opportunity to be vaccinated”.
The Doherty modelling said: “As supply allows, extending vaccinations for adults under 40 years offers the greatest potential to reduce transmission now that a high proportion of vulnerable Australians are vaccinated”.
When the modelling was recently released Professor Jodie McVernon, Director of Epidemiology at the Doherty Institute, said the 20 to 39 year olds were “the peak spreaders” of the virus.
“They will bring COVID home to their children, they will take it home to their own parents, and this is the group now where we’re proposing the reorientation of the strategy,” she said.
In the heartland of the Sydney outbreak many of this age group are necessarily mobile because they are in essential jobs and unable to work from home,
Sunday saw 415 new locally acquired NSW cases announced and four deaths. Late Saturday the state government locked down the whole of regional NSW. Victoria recorded 25 new cases and the ACT two, in Sunday’s announcements.
NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian said:“The experience of Delta is that no other jurisdiction has been able to eliminate it. It’s not possible to eliminate it completely. We have to learn to live with it. But the best chance we have to live with it freely and safely is to get the case numbers down as low as possible.”
A particular concern is the spread of the disease into outback areas of NSW with higher Indigenous populations, who are particularly vulnerable.
The Pfizer doses from Poland were set to begin landing in Australia on Sunday night.
The rest of the vaccines will be distributed on a per capita basis to other parts of the country, to accelerate the vaccination of the under 40s and high risk groups.
“Within days of landing in Australia, these extra Pfizer doses will be available to go into the arms of young Australians in our hardest hit COVID hot-spots,” Morrison said.
“These young Australians are often the backbone of our essential workforce and these doses will not only protect them, but their loved ones, their state and our nation.”
He thanked Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and the Polish government “for their generous support of Australia’s COVID-19 response, during this challenging time”.
The vaccines were produced at Pfizer’s Belgium facility.
The federal government has been pulling out all stops internationally to try to get more Pfizer.
Michelle Grattan 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.
The Civil Society Alliance — which is made up of a number of organisations in Indonesia and Timor-Leste — is urging President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo to revoke the Bintang Jasa Utama (1st Class Star of Service) award for “civil bravery and courage” in times of adversity which was given to former East Timorese pro-integration militia leader Eurico Barros Gomes Guterres.
“[We] urge President Joko Widodo to revoke the decision to give the Bintang Jasa Utama award to Eurico Guterres,” said Alliance representative Fatia Maulidiyanti, reports CNN Indonesia.
Bestowing this award added futher to the injury felt by victims of gross human rights violations and was like reaffirming impunity, she said.
“Today President Joko Widodo gave the Bintang Jasa Utama award to Eurico Guterres, which is like rubbing salt into the wounds of [his] victims.
“Once again, the space is narrowing for efforts to resolve gross human rights violations which continues to suffer pressure and recession.”
In 2002, Guterres was sentenced to 10 years in prison by the Ad Hoc Human Rights Court for East Timor. The decision was upheld in an appeal with the Supreme Court.
Guterres was found guilty of crimes against humanity.
Released early from jail However the deputy commander of the pro-Indonesia militia in East Timor was released following a judicial review in 2008.
Maulidiyanti added that giving the award to Guterres was a serious betrayal of humanitarian values and morality and sidelines justice for the victims.
The decision showed that the administration of Joko Widodo and Vice-President Ma’ruf Amin had lost any legitimacy as a government with good intentions, she said.
“To cite the maxim of Immanuel Kant on the morality of the categorical imperative – that ‘actions must be based on moral goals which are objective’.
“Meanwhile conferring this award clearly places the victims as just tools of power, not the goals let alone the raison d’etre of this government,” she said.
She said that Widodo’s move clearly showed an authority which denied the experience, aspirations and advocacy efforts by civil society and the victims of human rights violations in realising the values of justice and efforts to prevent a repetition of such violations.
“Giving an award to Eurico Guterres sets a bad precedent for the democratic process in Indonesia after emerging from the shackles of authoritarianism.
Rooted in impunity “On the contrary, this award in fact proves how deeply rooted the practice of impunity is, especially after more than two decades of reformasi,“, said Maulidiyanti, referring to the political reform process that began in 1998.
The Civil Society Alliance is made up of number of organisations, including the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras), Indonesian Human Rights Watch (Imparsial), the Institute for Human Rights Studies and Advocacy (ELSAM), Asian Justice and Rights (AJAR) and the Indonesian Association of the Families of Missing Persons (IKOHI).
Individual representatives include Roichatul Aswidah, Miryam Nainggolan, Sri Lestari Wahyuningroem and Uchikowati.
Earlier, Widodo through Presidential Decrees Numbers 76, 77 and 78 TK/TH dated August 4, 2021, gave the Bintang Mahaputera (Star of Mahaputera), the Bintang Jasa Utama and the Bintang Budaya Parama Dharma (Cultural Merit Star) decorations to a number of figures.
Aside from the Bintang Jasa Utama given to Guterres, who is the general chairperson of the Timor Aswa’in Union Congress (UNTAS) and the East Timor Fighters Communication Forum (FKPTT), Widodo also awarded the late former Supreme Court Justice Artidjo Alkostar and 325 healthcare workers with the Bintang Mahaputera Utama.
The Palace itself has not yet responded to the accusations against Guterres.
Australian human rights defender Patrick Walsh writes: “It is unthinkable that the President, once applauded for championing ordinary people, would not have been briefed on Guterres criminal record.
“Is it also unlikely that Jakarta would not have cleared the award first with the authorities in Dili or ignored their protests?
“What is this really all about? Why are victims and justice being treated so shabbily by Jokowi’s government for which such high hopes were once held?”
Background Eurico Guterres is a former pro-integration militia leader recruited by the Indonesian military during East Timor’s bid for independence between 1999 and 2000.
He was involved in several massacres in East Timor and was a chief militia leader during the post-independence killings and destruction of the capital Dili.
Guterres was tried by the Ad Hoc Human Rights Court for East Timor for crimes against humanity on charges of murder and persecution along with 17 other defendants and subsequently sentenced to ten years imprisonment in November 2002, for which he was imprisoned in 2006 until 2008.
The #HoldTheLine (#HTL) Coalition has welcomed the dismissal of a cyber-libel charge against Rappler CEO and founder Maria Ressa in the Philippines — the second “spurious” charge against Ressa to be dropped in just two months, says Reporters Without Borders.
The #HTL coalition calls for all remaining charges to be immediately dropped and the endless pressure against Ressa and Rappler to be ceased.
In a hearing on August 10, a Manila court dismissed the case “with prejudice” after the complainant, college professor Ariel Pineda, informed the court he no longer wished to pursue the cyber-libel claim against Maria Ressa and Rappler reporter Rambo Talabong.
The move followed the dismissal on June 1 of a separate spurious cyber-libel case brought by businessman Wilfredo Keng, also “with prejudice” after Keng indicated he did not wish to continue to pursue the claim.
“We welcome the overdue withdrawal of this trumped-up charge against Maria Ressa, which was the latest in a cluster of cases intended to silence her independent reporting,” said the #HTL steering committee in a statement.
“We call for the remaining charges against Ressa and Rappler to be dropped without further delay, and other forms of pressure against them immediately ceased.”
Ressa was convicted on a prior spurious cyberlibel charge in June 2020, based on a complaint made by Wilfredo Keng in connection with Rappler’s reporting on his business activities.
Possible six years in jail If the charge is not overturned on appeal, Ressa faces a possible six years in prison. Ressa and Rappler are also facing six other charges, including criminal tax charges; if convicted on all of these, Ressa could be looking at many years cumulatively in prison.
The #HTL coalition continues to urge supporters around the world to add their voices to a continuous online protest that will stream until the charges against Ressa and Rappler are dropped, and to don an #HTL mask in solidarity. The joint #HTL petition also remains open for signature.
Contact #HTL Steering Committee members for further details: Rebecca Vincent (rvincent@rsf.org); Julie Posetti (jposetti@icfj.org); and Gypsy Guillén Kaiser (gguillenkaiser@cpj.org). The #HTL Coalition comprises more than 80 organisations around the world. This statement was issued by the #HoldTheLine Steering Committee, but it does not necessarily reflect the position of all or any individual coalition members or organisations.
Two days after President Emmanuel Macron’s visit to Mā’ohi Nui last month, where the French leader urged the local population to get vaccinated against the danger of the new delta variant of the covid pandemic already on the islands, High Commissioner Domique Sorain and territorial President Édouard Fritch announced a new set of orders aimed at prohibiting unlawful gatherings.
Here is the wording of High Commissioner Sorain on local television on July 30:
“All festive events such as weddings, birthdays and baby showers, along with concerts in cafes, hotels and restaurants are prohibited” – Tahiti Infos
Sorain added a caveat that would allow restaurants and other food courts to operate if the number of guests was less than 500, with six people a table, with no dancing and performances allowed — and with respecting all protective measures already in place.
Any breach would result in a fine of up to NZ$235.
His guest list included nearly all the members of the local government (the ministers of Health and of Culture were not present) for a total number of around 300 guests at Tahiti’s Paul Gauguin Restaurant.
Wedding shown on Facebook This event was shown on the Facebook social media platform, thanks to the work of well-known local journalist Vaite Urarii Pambrun and was viewed by thousands of internet users.
This triggered a torrent of critical comment — and at times insults — hurled at the members of the government for their blatant hypocrisy.
Journalist Pambrun also became the target of violent diatribes on social media and she was called a “snitch” by the local government’s supporters for reporting what was happening in broad daylight.
It did not help that President Fritch gave another one of his awful speeches at the wedding where he told the audience to simply throw Pambrun in the water if they ever saw her.
The wedding of the vice president: Fritch minimises and says sorry, Sorain remaining firm (Tahiti Infos)
It must be remembered that many people who transgressed against the measures imposed since March last year were fined by the High Commissioner.
“L’incompréhension” … says the banner headline on Tahiti-Infos on a story about the celebrity wedding at the Paul Gauguin Restaurant in Tahiti. Image: Tahiti-Infos screenshot
Equal penalty? One might have expected an equal penalty for all those who took part in the wedding of the year.
In a typical administrative and French fashion, the High Commissioner promised on August 8 that an investigation had been launched into the fiasco.
Somehow the comments flooding social media platforms talked about a cover-up since at least one important representative of the French state was present at the wedding, and the gendarmes (French National Police) who were sent to the restaurant came out without putting an end to the wedding like they had done on other occasions.
It also emerged that some months before, the High Commissioner was asked for authorisation to allow the wedding to go ahead, but he did not grant it.
It is ironic that the High Commissioner, who did know about the presence of one of his colleagues and the gendarmes at the wedding, did not make the decision to stop it.
To reassert his authority, the High Commissioner was quickly back on television this week to remind Tahitians once more about the importance of sticking to the preventive measures in place.
But he also called upon the political personalities who were at the wedding to provide an explanation.
Responses over the celebrity wedding of the vice-president controversy … President Fritch (left): “excuses” but “sorry”; High Commissioner Sorain: “steadfast”. Image: Tahiti-Infos screenshot
High Commissioner doubles down He doubled down by saying that he sent the gendarmes to make a statement and that those found guilty of the breach would be fined and dealt with.
Many viewed this intervention as a stark warning to the members of government and other very important political personalities who were involved.
It signalled the beginning of a break in communication between President Fritch and High Commissioner Sorain.
President Fritch also went on television this week to respond, when asked why he waited four days to speak out, that he had wanted to see clearly what the situation was. He did not want to intervene straight after the wedding.
Clearly he was afraid to add oil to the fire straight after pictures of the wedding were posted on social media.
In his interview, he admitted that the issue was not the number of guests or the preventive measures that, according to him, were followed (although pictures and videos seemed to contradict him). Howdever, it was the live music and the performances that ensued which should never have happened.
Fritch acknowledged that the behaviour of wedding guests was not exemplary and for that he was extremely sorry.
Wedding guests not above law He also admitted that wedding guests were not above the law, and he understood the public’s disappointment.
Fritch and his government extended an unreserved apology to the public concerning the wedding party’s “lack of judgment”. He said that the investigation was still running and he and his government would take responsibility.
It is difficult to see any kind of sincerity in President Fritch’s comments on television when we know that he lied about the danger of nuclear testing and that he was found guilty and fined for abuse of public funds.
The question remains that neither of the two government leaders have given any reasons for breaking the law — why did the police not put an end to the wedding like they had done for other festive events?
Reaction from deputies Moetai Brotherson and Nicole Sanquer Deputy Moetai Brotherson of the opposition pro-independence party Tavini Huiraatira also found himself in hot water when people saw that he attended the wedding.
He said that he decided to leave the wedding and talk to Vaite Pambrun when unjust attacks were made against the local journalist by President Fritch.
Moetai has tried to justify his presence at the wedding by saying that he came to see the man and not Vice-President Teari’i Alpha and that he had already accepted the invitation well before the restrictions were in place.
However, in hindsight he admitted that it was wrong to have gone to the wedding and he was ready to pay the fine.
He was the first to apologise for his lack of judgement. He was however perplexed about the gendarmes who were at the wedding and did not stop it.
He assumed that the High Commissioner had given authorisation for the event.
Non-aligned Deputy Nicole Sanquer has been more scathing towards the members of the local government which she was once a member of.
‘Law and sanctions are for others’ Using her own quote: “Law and sanctions are for others”, Sanquer shamed President Fritch who liked to remind the population that it was their duty to behave in an exemplary fashion during this pandemic.
On August 5, people witnessed a real scandal.
At a wedding that gathered hundreds of people with nearly all the members of the government and elected members of the parliament, and in the middle of a concert orchestrated by Fritch and Pape’ete Mayor Michel Buillard, Sanquer said:
“I could not find the words to describe such irresponsibility and lack of common sense. What credibility do they have now?”.
The High Commissioner reminded Tahitians of the rules to follow but what was seen on Facebook showed a lack of respect for the rules.
Why didn’t the High Commissioner put an end to the party like they usually do in the city centre? Are some people exempt from the law and sanctions?
Deputy Sanquer expressed special support for fairground workers, restaurant owners, artists, frontline doctors, nurses, and the whole Ma’ohi Nui population.
‘Carry on fighting the pandemic’ She added: “Let’s carry on fighting against this pandemic by protecting ourselves and above all not rely on the example of those who govern us.”
Tahitian renewed covid-19 crisis health statistics at at August 10. Image: Tahitian Health Ministry
From a political stance, the question that should be in people’s mind is the following: are Fritch and Sorain the right people to govern Ma’ohi Nui when one considers himself above the law and the other seems reluctant to apply the law.
Alarming figures about the number of fatalities by covid-19.
The latest figures at the time of writing show 176 deaths (including 10 in 24 hours with 2 at home), 185 people in hospital (26 patients in ICU), and 1075 new cases, making it a total of more than 24,977 cases. There are 3,869 cases still active.
The number of people vaccinated with at least one dose is 103,033 since January 18, 2021.
Editor’s note: Since this article was written a further five people have died in Tahiti.
Ena Manuireva, born in Mangareva (Gambier islands) in Ma’ohi Nui (French Polynesia), is a language revitalisation researcher at Auckland University of Technology and is currently completing his doctorate on the Mangarevan language. He is also a campaigner for nuclear reparations justice from France over the 193 tests staged in Polynesia over three decades.
Former Fiji opposition leader Sitiveni Rabuka has submitted his application to register his newly proposed political party — the “People’s Aliance”.
A statement released by the Fijian Elections Office stated that the Registrar of Political Parties, Mohammed Saneem, was now processing the application to register the party.
According to the Political Parties (Registration, Conduct, Funding & Disclosures) Act, an association of persons or an organisation shall not operate, function, represent or hold itself out to be a political party unless it has been registered.
Under the Act, the application for registration of a new proposed political party should be accompanied by a schedule setting out the names, addresses, signatures and voter identification card numbers of at least 5000 members from all four divisions.
Rabuka said the proposed party would have to wait for the result and at the same time plan on what to do in the near future.
He said he would not be able to comment further as the proposed party awaited its application result.
Meanwhile, speaking to The Fiji Times during an interview last week, Rabuka revealed that some people who contested the 2018 general elections had resigned from political parties they represented to join him in contesting the next election.
He confirmed this during an interview at his home in Namadi Heights.
“Some people have resigned from their political parties in the last general elections to join me,” Rabuka said.
“They have shown their support for the next general elections.”
As a third-ranked military commander, Sitiveni Rabuka staged the first two of four coups d’etat in Fiji in 1987 and was later elected prime minister, serving the country between 1992 and 1999.
Litia Cavais a Fiji Times reporter. This article is republlshed with permission.
The New Zealand government says it has full confidence Samoa’s new government and its judiciary will continue to act with integrity.
This comes after former prime minister, Tuila’epa Sa’ilele Malielegaoi, claimed that the recent actions of the judiciary had “shattered” the constitution and the law of the jungle now applied.
Tuila’epa claimed the rulings by the Court of Appeal, which last month confirmed FAST as the legitimately elected government, had destabilised the country.
He castigated New Zealand and Australia for not speaking out in support of his position.
But, in a statement, the Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta reiterated New Zealand’s backing for the new government of Fiame Naomi Mata’afa as the legitimate government of Samoa.
She said New Zealand’s recognition of the FAST government was swift and unequivocal, and that New Zealand had faith in the judicial and law enforcement systems to act appropriately, as they have done since the election on April 9.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
The US ambassador to the USSR, George Kennan, chats with a reporter in 1952 after the Soviets told the US State Department that Kennan must be recalled immediately. Bettmann/contributor/Getty Images
This piece is part of a new series in collaboration with the ABC’s Saturday Extra program. Each week, the show will have a “who am I” quiz for listeners about influential figures who helped shape the 20th century, and we will publish profiles for each one. You can read the other pieces in the series here.
George Kennan stands second only to Henry Kissinger as one of the most influential and respected American geo-political thinkers of the mid-20th century.
His greatest achievement was providing the historical and conceptual underpinning of the US resistance to Soviet expansionism during the Cold War. That posture became known as the “Containment Doctrine” and Kennan himself became known as “the Father of Containment”, though he was ambivalent about its subsequent military emphasis.
Kennan’s diplomatic career was substantial but modest. His highest ranks were ambassador to the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia and director of the US State Department’s policy planning staff.
However, he was a quintessential advisor — thoughtful, articulate and persuasive. He attracted the attention and respect of post-war leaders such as the secretaries of state, George Marshall and Dean Acheson, Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal, and ultimately President Harry Truman, as they steered the US from collaboration to conflict with the USSR in the period from 1945–50.
One of America’s few true Soviet experts
A Yale education, a studious nature, and years of service in the Moscow embassy made Kennan one of America’s few true experts on Soviet affairs.
In 1946, as acting ambassador (charge d’affaires), Kennan drafted his now famous “long telegram” to Washington.
He argued that the insecure Soviet leaders would relentlessly pursue expansionist policies to retain power and fulfil their communist dogma. They would use ideological proselytising, espionage, and the subversion of neighbouring states to achieve this — not only by military means, but also through economic coercion.
This warning was not welcomed by American and European liberals and optimists who hoped to continue wartime collaboration, or at least peaceful coexistence, with the Soviets. But Kennan’s advice convinced the leaders of the departments of state, war and navy (defence after 1948) — as well as the Truman administration — that a US response to Russia’s outreach was urgently needed.
Popular awareness of the Soviet threat was heightened when Kennan expanded his telegram into an article in 1947 entitled The Sources of Soviet Conduct for Foreign Affairs, America’s premier foreign policy journal. Kennan signed it “X” to deflect speculation that it articulated official US policy, although it soon became so. Its principal theme was clear:
The main element of any United States policy toward the Soviet Union must be that of a long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies.
Leading media commentators amplified and popularised Kennan’s analysis. Public opinion soon crystallised into the Cold War mindset of suspicion of all things Soviet.
How Kennan envisioned ‘containment’
Soviet actions following the second world war seemed to bear out Kennan’s warning. These included clandestine support of communist parties in Italy and France, aid to insurgents in Turkey and Greece, subversion of Czechoslovakia’s democratic government, and the blockade of West Berlin.
Mao Zedong’s communist victory in China in 1949 was supported by then-Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, as was North Korea’s attack on South Korea in 1950.
So, Kennan’s diagnosis of Soviet expansionism was timely. It was widely adopted by American leaders and the public, and in Europe and Asia, as well.
But what was his policy prescription? Kennan avoided impulsive solutions, such as confrontation and counter-attack, which were advocated by hawkish leaders. Instead, he recommended vigilance and defensive firmness.
(From left) Winston Churchill, Harry Truman and Joseph Stalin at the Potsdam conference in July 1945. Imperial War Museums/Wikimedia Commons
His preference was to build the economic strength of the US and its allies. This would reduce the appeal of communist command economics in the countries outside the Soviet bloc. It would also project an attractive example of the success of western liberal democratic and free market systems.
This is what became known as “containment”, or preventing Soviet expansionism through not only military strength but also superior economic achievement and diplomatic leadership. This, and sensitive diplomacy, would enhance America’s global leadership.
Military responses might sometimes be necessary, Kennan acknowledged, but this would be secondary to economic and diplomatic responses. The ultimate outcome of this containment policy, he surmised, would be the intensification of tensions and contradictions within the Soviet system and its eventual collapse.
In fact, this occurred in 1991, and the Cold War never escalated into another global conflict.
The Truman administration initially applied Kennan’s prescriptions. In 1947, in what became known as the Truman Doctrine, the US extended aid to Greece and Turkey and Secretary of State George Marshall unveiled the European Recovery Program (more popularly known as the Marshall Plan) as a way of diluting creeping Soviet influence in western European countries.
Two years later, Truman also announced a plan of economic aid to poor countries called the Point Four Program, which became a fixture of US economic diplomacy.
However, Soviet military initiatives in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, as well as the Soviets’ testing of an atomic bomb in 1949, brought a policy shift in the direction of US military preparedness.
Paul Nitze, Kennan’s successor as director of the State Department’s policy planning staff, drafted a top-secret national security memorandum in 1950 that inspired an increasingly hawkish posture by US leaders and legitimised an American military build-up to deter further Soviet threats.
Alliances with European and Asian partners followed. And the Cold War, marked by proxy wars and the nuclear arms race, emerged as the dominant geo-political feature of the next four decades.
At this point, Kennan demurred. He advised against military responses and arms build-ups, regarding them as unnecessarily provocative and risky. But his admonitions failed to resonate amid the anti-communist hysteria that swept the US in the early 1950s, exploited by Senator Joseph McCarthy and the “witch hunts” that ensued.
Kennan’s reputation was overshadowed not only by events such as the Korean and Vietnam wars — both of which he criticised — but also by Kissinger’s rise to prominence.
Kennan’s writings were discounted by “realists” as too abstract to be of use to decision-makers facing day-to-day challenges. Among hawks, he was thought to be too accommodating to enemies when he advocated “disengagement”, that is, yielding on certain US interests to avoid confrontations with the Soviets or Chinese.
After his final posting, Kennan retired from the State Department and began a scholarly life attached to the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study. There, he wrote thoughtful books and articles on American diplomacy and security.
Is Kennan relevant today? I believe three of his themes apply to the current US strategic rivalry with China and Russia.
First, Kennan counselled officials to study and respect US rivals, not just oppose them blindly and reactively.
Second, he had faith that judicious compromises would facilitate coexistence with adversaries with minimum cost and risk of war.
Third, he advocated setting an example of US strength through economic achievement and diplomatic leadership, rather than relying on military muscle.
Biden is so far taking a similar approach to Kennan in his dealings with Russia. Saul Loeb/Pool AFP
The Biden administration is thus far acting in accordance with Kennan’s themes: seeking engagement with Russia and China from a position of reinvigorated American economic strength, commitment to liberal principles, and international cooperation. Kennan, in fact, would likely approve of Biden’s promises in his inaugural address:
“We will lead not merely by the example of our power, by the power of our example.”
Stephen Hoadley 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.
The Kimberley region is host to Australia’s oldest known rock paintings. But people were carving engravings into some of these rocks before they were creating paintings.
Rock art sites on Balanggarra Country in the northeast Kimberley region are home to numerous such engravings. The oldest paintings are at least 17,300 years old, and the engravings are thought to be even older — but they have so far proved much harder to date accurately.
Cupules, or circular man-made hollows, ground into a dark mineral coating at a rock art site on the Drysdale River, Balanggarra country. Photo by Damien Finch
But in research published today in Science Advances, we report on a crucial clue that could help date the engravings, and also reveal what the environment was like for the artists who created them.
Some of the rocks themselves are covered with natural, glaze-like mineral coatings that can help reveal key evidence.
What are these glazes?
These dark, shiny deposits on the surface of the rock are less than a centimetre thick. Yet they have detailed internal structures, featuring alternating light and dark layers of different minerals.
Our aim was to develop methods to reliably date the formation of these coatings and provide age brackets for any associated engravings. However, during this process, we also discovered it is possible to match layers found in samples collected at rock shelters up to 90 kilometres apart.
Radiocarbon dating suggests these layers were deposited around the same time, showing their formation is not specific to particular rock shelters, but controlled by environmental changes on a regional scale.
Dating these deposits can therefore provide reliable age brackets for any associated engravings, while also helping us better understanding the climate and environments in which the artists lived.
Marsupial tracks scratched into a glaze like coating at a rock art shelter in the north east Kimberley. Photo by Cecilia Myers/Dunkeld Pastoral Company; illustration by Pauline Heaney/Rock Art Australia
Microbes and minerals
Our research supports earlier findings that layers within the glaze structure represent alternating environmental conditions in Kimberley rock shelters, that repeated over thousands of years.
Our model suggests that during drier conditions, bush fires produce ash, which builds up on shelter surfaces. This ash contains a range of minerals, including carbonates and sulphates. We suggest that under the right conditions, these minerals provided nutrients that allowed microbes to live on these shelter surfaces. In the process of digesting these nutrients, the microbes excrete a compound called oxalic acid, which combines with calcium in the ash deposits to form calcium oxalate.
A: dark coloured, smooth mineral coating at a Kimberley rock shelter; B: alternating layering, as seen in the field; C: alternating layering as seen in a cross-sectioned coating under a microscope. Photos by Cecilia Myers; microscope image by Helen Green
As this process repeats over millennia, the minerals become cemented together in alternating layers, with each layer creating a record of the conditions in the rock shelter at that time.
Samples of the glazes were collected for analysis in close collaboration and consultation with local Traditional Owners from the Balanggarra native title region, who are partners on our research project. Using a laser, we vaporised tiny samples from the coatings to study the chemical composition of each layer. The dark layers were mostly made of calcium oxalate, while lighter layers contained mainly sulphates. We propose darker layers represent a time when microbes were more active and lighter layers represent drier periods.
These dark calcium oxalate layers also contain carbon that was absorbed from the atmosphere and digested by the microbes that created these deposits. This meant we could use a technique called radiocarbon dating to determine the age of these individual layers.
Using a tiny drill, we removed samples from distinct dark layers in nine glazes collected from different rock shelters across the northeast Kimberley.
A: micro-drilling samples from individual layers for radiocarbon dating; B: Laser ablation maps showing the distribution of the element calcium within the different layers; C: radiocarbon dating of individual layers identified four key growth periods. Photo by Andy Gleadow; illustration by Pauline Heaney
Despite coming from different locations, these layers all seem to have been deposited at the same time, during four key intervals spanning the past 43,000 years.
This suggests the formation of each layer was determined mainly by shifts in environmental conditions throughout the Kimberley, rather than by the distinct conditions in each particular rock shelter.
The records held by these glazes over such a large time period – including the most recent ice age – means they could help us better understand the environmental changes that directly affected human habitation and adaptation in Australia.
Hypothetical example of how layered mineral coatings can be used to date engraved rock art in Kimberley rock shelters. Pauline Heaney
Stories in stone
Research we published earlier this year shows how the subjects painted in early Kimberley rock art changed from mostly animals and plants around 17,000 years ago, to mostly decorated human figures about 12,000 years ago.
Otherresearchers have discovered that during this 5,000-year period there were rapid rises in sea level, in particular around 14,500 years ago, as well as increased rainfall.
We interpret the change in rock art styles as a response to the social and cultural adaptations triggered by the changing climate and rising sea levels. Paintings of human figures with new technologies such as spear-throwers might show us how people adapted their hunting style to the changing environment and the availability of different types of food.
By dating the natural mineral coatings on the rock surfaces that acted as a canvas for this art, we can hopefully better understand the world in which these artists lived. Not only will this give us more certainty about the position of particular paintings within the overall Kimberley stylistic rock art sequence, but can also tell us about the environments experienced by First Nations people in the Kimberley.
We thank the Balanggarra Aboriginal Corporation, the Centre for Accelerator Science at the Australian National Science and Technology Organisation, Rock Art Australia and Dunkeld Pastoral Co for their collaboration on this research._
receives funding from the Australian Research Council, Rock Art Australia, The Ian Potter Foundation and an Australian Postgraduate Award and the Australian Institute of Nuclear Science and Engineering .
Damien Finch receives funding from the Australian Research Council, Rock Art Australia, an Australian Postgraduate Award and the Australian Institute of Nuclear Science and Engineering .
Vaccine and drug development, artificial intelligence, transport and logistics, climate science — these are all areas that stand to be transformed by the development of a full-scale quantum computer. And there has been explosive growth in quantum computing investment over the past decade.
Yet current quantum processors are relatively small in scale, with fewer than 100 qubits — the basic building blocks of a quantum computer. Bits are the smallest unit of information in computing, and the term qubits stems from “quantum bits”.
While early quantum processors have been crucial for demonstrating the potential of quantum computing, realising globally significant applications will likely require processors with upwards of a million qubits.
Our new research tackles a core problem at the heart of scaling up quantum computers: how do we go from controlling just a few qubits, to controlling millions? In research published today in Science Advances, we reveal a new technology that may offer a solution.
What exactly is a quantum computer?
Quantum computers use qubits to hold and process quantum information. Unlike the bits of information in classical computers, qubits make use of the quantum properties of nature, known as “superposition” and “entanglement”, to perform some calculations much faster than their classical counterparts.
Unlike a classical bit, which is represented by either 0 or 1, a qubit can exist in two states (that is, 0 and 1) at the same time. This is what we refer to as a superposition state.
Demonstrations by Google and others have shown even current, early-stage quantum computers can outperform the most powerful supercomputers on the planet for a highly specialised (albeit not particularly useful) task — reaching a milestone we call quantum supremacy.
Google’s quantum computer, built from superconducting electrical circuits, had just 53 qubits and was cooled to a temperature below -273℃ in a high-tech refrigerator. This extreme temperature is needed to remove heat, which can introduce errors to the fragile qubits. While such demonstrations are important, the challenge now is to build quantum processors with many more qubits.
Major efforts are underway at UNSW Sydney to make quantum computers from the same material used in everyday computer chips: silicon. A conventional silicon chip is thumbnail-sized and packs in several billion bits, so the prospect of using this technology to build a quantum computer is compelling.
In silicon quantum processors, information is stored in individual electrons, which are trapped beneath small electrodes at the chip’s surface. Specifically, the qubit is coded into the electron’s spin. It can be pictured as a small compass inside the electron. The needle of the compass can point north or south, which represents the 0 and 1 states.
To set a qubit in a superposition state (both 0 and 1), an operation that occurs in all quantum computations, a control signal must be directed to the desired qubit. For qubits in silicon, this control signal is in the form of a microwave field, much like the ones used to carry phone calls over a 5G network. The microwaves interact with the electron and cause its spin (compass needle) to rotate.
Currently, each qubit requires its own microwave control field. It is delivered to the quantum chip through a cable running from room temperature down to the bottom of the refrigerator at close to -273℃. Each cable brings heat with it, which must be removed before it reaches the quantum processor.
At around 50 qubits, which is state-of-the-art today, this is difficult but manageable. Current refrigerator technology can cope with the cable heat load. However, it represents a huge hurdle if we’re to use systems with a million qubits or more.
The solution is ‘global’ control
An elegant solution to the challenge of how to deliver control signals to millions of spin qubits was proposed in the late 1990s. The idea of “global control” was simple: broadcast a single microwave control field across the entire quantum processor.
Voltage pulses can be applied locally to qubit electrodes to make the individual qubits interact with the global field (and produce superposition states).
It’s much easier to generate such voltage pulses on-chip than it is to generate multiple microwave fields. The solution requires only a single control cable and removes obtrusive on-chip microwave control circuitry.
For more than two decades global control in quantum computers remained an idea. Researchers could not devise a suitable technology that could be integrated with a quantum chip and generate microwave fields at suitably low powers.
In our work we show that a component known as a dielectric resonator could finally allow this. The dielectric resonator is a small, transparent crystal which traps microwaves for a short period of time.
The trapping of microwaves, a phenomenon known as resonance, allows them to interact with the spin qubits longer and greatly reduces the power of microwaves needed to generate the control field. This was vital to operating the technology inside the refrigerator.
In our experiment, we used the dielectric resonator to generate a control field over an area that could contain up to four million qubits. The quantum chip used in this demonstration was a device with two qubits. We were able to show the microwaves produced by the crystal could flip the spin state of each one.
Illustration of a crystal dielectric resonator producing a global control field in a spin quantum processor. Tony Melov
The path to a full-scale quantum computer
There is still work to be done before this technology is up to the task of controlling a million qubits. For our study, we managed to flip the state of the qubits, but not yet produce arbitrary superposition states.
Experiments are ongoing to demonstrate this critical capability. We’ll also need to further study the impact of the dielectric resonator on other aspects of the quantum processor.
That said, we believe these engineering challenges will ultimately be surmountable — clearing one of the greatest hurdles to realising a large-scale spin-based quantum computer.
Jarryd Pla receives funding from the Australian Research Council. He is also an inventor on patents related to quantum computing.
Andrew Dzurak receives research funding from the Australian Research Council and the US Army Research Office. He is a member of the Executive Board of the Sydney Quantum Academy and a member of the Executive of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Quantum Computation and Communication Technology. He is also an inventor on a number of patents related to quantum computing.
By joining the Government, the Greens promised to give Labour the spine it needed to act decisively on housing, inequality, climate change and other pressing issues. This hasn’t happened. In fact, rather than being the progressive backbone of the current government, some allege the Greens are helping to “greenwash” Jacinda Ardern’s administration. This issue was discussed in secret at the party’s AGM last weekend. One activist even challenged James Shaw for his leadership, claiming the party had simply become “Labour’s little helper”.
What’s happened to the Green Party in power?
The question for those on the progressive side of politics, including some supporters and activists, is whether the Greens are actually achieving enough in power. The party has been taking a very low-key approach this year, decidedly not rocking the boat too much for Labour.
This approach, in which the Greens don’t pressure the Government and keep out of some of the big debates (such as the hate speech proposals), is appreciated by the Labour Party. It also hasn’t hurt the Greens’ popularity. Their last two poll results have been relatively high – 8.5 and 10 per cent. Just by existing, the Greens seem to function as a home for progressive voters who are less impressed with Labour’s continued centrism.
However, for some supporters that’s simply not enough. There have been growing questions about whether the Greens have been silenced in Government and have enabled Labour to govern in their centrist manner without any significant gains for the Green agenda. This was what many progressives, especially inside the party, feared when the Greens decided to support the new Government in exchange for ministerial jobs – see my roundup column from last year: The Green Party’s fraught decision.
Since then, there have been numerous signs that the new coalition arrangement hasn’t yielded much progress for the party and its two ministers. Co-leader Marama Davidson has struggled in her homelessness housing portfolio. In March, for example, it was revealed that in the first five months during which she had held the portfolio, she had not taken a paper to a Cabinet committee, nor issued a press release, nor engaged with the community – see Jenna Lynch’sRevealed: The multimillion-dollar cost of the Government’s emergency motel policy.
Commenting on this, Heather du Plessis-Allan questioned Davidson’s work output. Du Plessis-Allan argues that having Davidson as a minister is all about appearances for the Greens, rather than actually fixing anything for those in need – see: What’s going on with Marama Davidson?. And she draws attention to Davidson’s $250,000 ministerial salary, saying “It turns out that you don’t have to do the mahi to get the treats.”
Yet Shaw continues to suggest that the failures to deal with climate change are someone else’s fault – see for example his opinion piece today: For decades, politicians have failed on climate. Now we face our last chance. Like the old joke goes, once Shaw finds out who the current Minister for Climate Change is, he’s going to give them a piece of his mind.
Political journalist Bernard Hickey is clear that the Greens are actually helping to “greenwash” the Labour Government, and have become a “party of government launderers”. He recently argued that James Shaw “is giving Labour an excuse and a means to do nothing significant on climate”, and that “Green voters are belatedly realising their votes were wasted”.
Hickey also tweeted this challenge to Green supporters: “How has the Greens in/with Labour changed the Govt’s policies?” He offered up his own scathing answer: “No capital gains tax. Barely any welfare reforms. Mean policies on temporary migrants. More road building. No light rail. No meaningful climate action. Delayed water standards. Cosy deals with dairy farmers. Massive increase in homelessness. 30-40% rise in house prices. Rents rising faster than wages. Barely any mental health change. Reneging on student fees promise. Less cycling/pedestrian spending. Only major achievement is $20/hr min wage. Which NZ First demanded.”
A quiet conference of defence and challenge
Surrounded by questions about the lack of Green achievements, the party went into its annual conference last weekend. With the possibility of serious dissent being aired, conference organisers chose to close the conference off from any outsiders – the media were barred from observing the weekend conference.
The bar on the media was temporarily lifted, of course, to allow journalists to watch the set-piece publicity speeches from the co-leaders. You can read the two co-leader speeches here, both of which aimed to convince voters that the party really is achieving progress: James Shaw’s full Green Party AGM speech, and: Marama Davidson’s full Green Party AGM speech.
Reporting on the speeches, the NBR’s Brent Edwards noted in his column yesterday that the “Greens have some dissension within their ranks” about the lack of progress, and so Shaw “reminded party members that to make a difference, the Green Party had to be in government” – see: National, Greens both seek togetherness – but in very different ways (paywalled).
Shaw’s speech is quoted: “If we are going to build a better future for Aotearoa, then we need to be at the table, shaping the decisions that will determine the type of world our children and grandchildren grow up in”. And according to Edwards, Shaw “made it clear that he, even as Climate Change Minister, was as frustrated as some party members by the slow progress on climate change.”
According to this account, Shaw outlined the party’s achievements so far: “passing the Zero Carbon Act; charging the biggest polluters nearly $50 a tonne for their climate warming pollution; investing in rail, buses, walking and cycling; introducing the clean car discount; and providing more dry, warm homes. But more was needed”.
Like Judith Collins at her National Party conference, the co-leaders were under pressure from activists, and hence resorted to a call for unity. According to Brent Edwards: “It seems uncanny that, despite giving such different speeches to their respective annual conferences, National leader Judith Collins and Greens co-leader Marama Davidson ended almost exactly the same way. Collins told her party followers: ‘And remember we are better together.’ Davidson finished her speech with: ‘We get further, and we get there faster, when we move together’.”
When she wasn’t talking up the Greens’ achievements, Davidson chose in her speech not to criticise Labour’s lack of progress in government, but instead to focus her firepower on the less relevant National Party, especially in terms of “culture war” issues. See, for example, Derek Cheng’sGreen co-leaders unleash scathing attack on National Party.
Left-wing commentator Steven Cowan was less than impressed with Davidson’s speech and its simplistic allegations of racism, labelling it “a string of ‘woke’ buzzwords”, and explaining that her adherence to “race reductionism dovetails nicely with the Green’s centrism” – see: Marama Davidson: What’s class got to do with it?. He complains that the Greens have become subservient to Labour, and are failing to put forward alternatives that might benefit the working class, instead focusing on woke concerns.
Also writing from the left about the conference, Martyn Bradbury lampooned the fact the Greens were having such a zen conference when they were in a government failing to deal with some big problems: “Marama soothed, James soothed, we all soothed. It was less a party conference and more a yoga session focused on deep breathing. Only middle class people enjoy being this present. It was so soothing you would be forgiven into thinking that we don’t have 190 000 kids in poverty, 4000 in motels, 22512 on emergency housing wait lists, a spike in inequality not seen since feudal times, generations locked out of home ownership and a planet on fire” – see: Green conference vs Blue conference 2021: So many feelings.
A left-wing challenge to James Shaw
Shaw was challenged for his male co-leadership position at the conference by Dunedin software developer James Cockle, and unsurprisingly this failed. For details of why Shaw was being challenged, see Alex Braae’s James Shaw facing Green co-leadership challenge from Dunedin activist.
According to this, “the challenge reflects wider rumblings of discontent within the party membership over the pace of action on climate change and social justice issues, particularly with the Greens playing a subordinate role to the governing Labour Party.” Shaw’s challenger “says the party has become too timid on the great challenges facing humanity.” Cockle declared his intentions for the Green Party: “I’m running to pull it back to the left.”
The conference vote was 116 for Shaw, 4 for Cockle, and 20 abstentions – see Derek Cheng’sChallenge to James Shaw’s Green Party co-leadership fizzles at AGM. As Shaw himself explained, the combined 24 abstention and Cockle votes were about the same proportion as the number of members who voted last year against the Greens going into coalition with Labour.
Green leaders promise change
The co-leaders also answered questions about the Greens’ lack of progress by promising to push Labour to move faster on a progressive agenda. Spinoff political editor Justin Giovannetti reports that “the two co-leaders sketched out a plan for the next two years, one where they are simultaneously in government and critical of it” – see: James Shaw wipes floor with rival as Marama Davidson lets rip at National Party. Davidson explains the strategy further saying: “We have the Greens in government, but also not in government.”
This approach is meant to allow the Greens to both work inside constructively while speaking up loudly from outside of Cabinet. However, this strategy has been used numerous times by the Greens to defend their arrangements. For example, Davidson even ran her 2018 campaign to be co-leader on the basis that she would be the outspoken leader that contrasted nicely with Shaw being the insider and constructive leader.
This approach clearly stopped once Davidson became a minister. However, Davidson argued in April that she is continuing this approach, and that “she feels ’empowered’ as a Minister while continuing to work with the same grassroots organisations” – see Jo Moir’sThe Greens’ new relationship with power. According to this article, the Greens maintain “the ability for MPs outside of the executive tent to fight for much more”.
Potential changes to the way the Greens operate were discussed behind closed doors at the weekend. The big leadership debate was really about whether the party should continue to have rules to ensure a dedicated male and female co-leader. Some argued that the dichotomy should be in terms of ethnicity instead of gender – see, for example, Dan Satherley’s Green co-leader Marama Davidson says party leadership should reflect ‘Te Tiriti representation’.
For more on the Greens’ ongoing representation debates, see Jo Moir’s April article, Hints of new leadership model for Greens. As to whether this is about improving representation or getting Chlöe Swarbrick as a co-leader alongside Marama Davidson, see Heather du Plessis-Allan’sIs personal ambition behind the Greens’ latest kooky idea?. However, we don’t know what was decided because the party co-convenors wouldn’t answer journalists’ questions on the outcome.
In our age of unnuanced media reporting, cynicism, and political correctness, words and meanings are subject – perhaps increasingly – to an effective process of cancellation. It’s not a new process, in the past certain words might be replaced by others – eg ‘race’ replaced by ‘ethnicity’, ‘illegitimate’ replaced by ‘ex-nuptial’, ‘benefit’ replaced by ‘handout’. Such replacements are not necessarily problematic. In the first two examples given above, words whose popular meanings have become pejorative have been replaced by words with essentially the same meanings, but without the pejorative connotations.
In the third example, a word (‘benefit’) that is a very good word – indeed a word that literally means ‘something good’ – has suffered a pejorative meaning and has been largely replaced by a word that reinforces that pejorative meaning. The proper meaning of ‘benefit’ – as a noun, though not as a verb – has largely been lost to the language; and it’s a critically important meaning to the understanding of the available capitalist options for the future of human civilisation. (I cannot conceive of any non-capitalist options that are not dystopian; apologies for the quadruple negative!)
Three words that I am particularly lamenting are ‘disinterested’, ‘progressive’, and ‘literally’. Today the word ‘disinterested’ has been almost entirely conflated with the word ‘uninterested’. Yet the craft of an academic – of a scholar – is to be always disinterested and never uninterested. The loss of this distinction is one of the warning signs that the age of reason – always tentative, but critically important to facilitating a civilised way of life – is nearing its end.
The word ‘progressive’ has two main meanings – both somewhat nebulous. For the earlier meaning, we get the full flavour in James Belich’s book on New Zealand history, Making Peoples. It was exemplified in the settler dream of creating a ‘Greater Britain’ in these islands; progress was understood as growth on steroids. The politicians in New Zealand most associated with this meaning of progressive were Julius Vogel, Joseph Ward, and Robert Muldoon (in Muldoon’s case it was about stemming what would otherwise have been substantial negative growth). These were our financially heroic political leaders, prepared to make full use of the government’s privileged balance sheet to build a materially advanced and equitable future.
The alternative – and prevailing – meaning of ‘progressive’ was coined through the American progressive movement of the early 1900s. Indeed these left-wing American intellectuals looked to New Zealand – and particularly the initial ‘radical’ Liberal leadership of John Balance (who lost his head, decades ago, in Whanganui) and William Pember Reeves – as setting the pace to a bright new socially enlightened twentieth century. (Refer Progressivism and the World of Reform: New Zealand and the Origins of the American Welfare State, 1987, by Peter J. Coleman.)
There are ironies. In Canada in the twentieth century, the equivalent of New Zealand’s National Party was the ‘Progressive Conservatives’, with the word ‘progressive’ fully containing that Vogellian meaning mentioned above. Yet today, the term ‘progressive’ relates to the new white collar socio-economic elite – simultaneously left-wing and (like all elites) conservative, inclined to shut down debates about practical solutions to the actual problems of our age, pursuing ideological agendas formed yesterday, and inclined to interpret the contemporary world as a contest between intelligentsia (defined as themselves) and an emerging conspiracy-theorising stupidia.
The word ‘literally’ is a wonderful word, the antonym of ‘figuratively’. To literally walk in someone else’s shoes means to actually wear the shoes of that other person. Recently I heard someone say, after a good result in the Olympic Games, that they were ‘literally over the moon’. Yeah right! Not even Jeff Bezos can do that. Not yet. ‘Literally’ is now becoming a synonym of ‘figuratively’; and, more generally, its just becoming another meaningless expression of hyperbole.
Sex, Gender and Certification
Language in this area is becoming a (figurative) minefield. And, in reflection of these sensitivities, this week the New Zealand Parliament is proceeding with a bill that will enable people to modify their birth certificates. This retrospective tinkering with historical documents – like other retrospective procedures in law – makes me very uneasy. Retrospectivity was one of the important themes of George Orwell’s classic dystopia, 1984. People would be cancelled, would become unpersons who legally never existed, even though they are or were alive, literally.
I will quote Yuval Noah Harari – from p.170 of his very (and deservedly) popular book Sapiens. Harari has impeccable credentials as a ‘progressive’ intellectual, in the full twentyfirst century meaning of that word.
Scholars usually distinguish between ‘sex’, which is a biological category, and ‘gender’, a cultural category. Sex is divided between males and females, and the qualities of this division are objective and have remained constant throughout history. Gender is divided between men and women (and some cultures recognise other categories). … To get to be a member of the male sex is the simplest thing in the world. You just need to be born with an X and a Y chromosome. To get to be a female is equally simple. A pair of X chromosomes will do it.
The word ‘sex’ has become a bit like the word ‘race’, and as a result many people have come to use the word ‘gender’, incorrectly, as a euphemism for ‘sex’. Some people accentuate the biological concept of ‘sex’, while substituting the word ‘gender’. Take ‘gender-reveal parties’ as an example. Further, some feminists refer to ‘gender’ as a biological attribute, while others use it as a cultural attribute.
Gender, as a term of identity, is much like that of religion. We know that most people born to Muslim parents will live their lives as Muslims; but it would be wrong to put the world ‘Muslim’ on a person’s birth certificate. A person born into a Muslim family may choose to not be a Muslim. It’s even trickier with Jews. To be an ‘Ashkenazy Jew’ is widely used as an ethnicity (eg in ancestry DNA tests), as well as a descriptor of a person’s faith, or an ancestor’s faith. This is because of the widespread social practice – covering three millenniums – of Jews to reproduce within their religious community. Over time, a religious group thereby becomes an ethnic group. Nevertheless, a person born into a Jewish family can disavow Judaism, but will still have the same ethnicity as their siblings who retain their birth faith.
A birth certificate is the official documentation of a birth, not a documentation of a person’s life, nor a documentation of a person’s subjective status on their eighteenth birthday. It’s meant to be a document of a person’s biology, not of their culture.
The issue does arise however, about the need to have a widely-used document that states who someone ‘is’, rather than what they ‘were’. Our common practice is to use passports and drivers’ licences for this purpose. But its an ad hoc solution.
Given that, in the 2020s, fewer people will travel internationally and more people are choosing not to drive (or choosing to delay gaining a driver’s licence), it is now time that New Zealanders ‘bite the bullet’ and develop an official domestic system of identity documentation; a present-focussed (rather than past-focused) system that easily allows a person to revise their identity when any aspect of their identity changes. Some categories of identity – eg gender, religion, ethnicity – could be optional inclusions. A person’s sex would not be required. The items of information needed would be a photo, a signature, a date of birth (to indicate age), a social security number, and a person’s immigration status. (With immigration status shown, a person’s place of birth would not be required.)
Do we need to indicate sex at all on a birth certificate? We don’t include ethnicity. I would argue ‘yes’, a person’s sex is an important part of their birth identity. (And, much academic research focusses on different life outcomes and options and discriminations based on their sex, even if much of its publication is couched in the subjective language of gender. Sex, like age, is a fundamental human attribute.) Harari (p.172) notes that “there is some universal biological [my emphasis] reason” why we have regarded, throughout history, the distinction between males and females as important. I presume it relates to their distinctly different biological roles in the literal reproduction of our species.
There is no equivalent imperative to define a person by their ethnicity, although some societies still do. (This is a touchy hypothetical point though, because there were once multiple species – not races – of humans. Even politically correct people today hang on to the idea that it is acceptable to be disparaging to extinct species of humans – eg Neanderthals – whereas they should not be disparaging to more recent victims of genocide, such as Tasmania’s first peoples. The boundary between extinct human species and extinct ethnicities is not clear though; it’s still accepted practice to call an allegedly ‘uncultured’ person a ‘philistine’. Also, especially in this modern era of DNA sequencing, we know that neither the genomes of native Tasmanians nor native Europeans [Neanderthals] are extinct.)
Marriages and Unions
An interesting episode in New Zealand’s political history is when, half a decade ago, New Zealand was one of the first jurisdictions to redefine the word ‘marriage’. The legislation came up, purely by chance, as a private member’s bill, and was promoted as an exercise in the right of two men (or two males) or two women (or two females) to love each other in the same public sense as a man and a woman (or a male and a female) could. Very few people disagreed with that right, which already existed. (It’s a bit like the ‘anti-hate speech’ bill which we are told to expect this or next year. We already have laws against hate-speech.)
There was a small issue, a problem with the earlier ‘Civil Union’ legislation, brought in about 15 years ago by the then Helen Clark led government. Imagine a Venn Diagram with ‘marriage’ on one side and ‘civil union’ on the other. While the two sides largely intersected, in some respects a civil union was wider in scope (same-sex relationships) and in other respects marriage was wider in scope (eg in the rights to adopt children). What we did, in effect, was to extend the scope of the Civil Union legislation, and then to redefine a ‘civil union’ as a ‘marriage’. The first part of this process was necessary, the second part was not. In doing so, we removed by diktat the meaning of a word – marriage, the union of an adult male and an adult female – that had existed since Adam and Eve, or Rangi and Papa.
The logically obvious approach to take was to make traditional marriage a cultural subset of an enhanced legal institution; a subset of a properly defined civil union. (An unpleasant linguistic analogy is that of ‘murder’ being a cultural subset of the legal term ‘homicide’.) In that way, marriage could still have been what it always was (a popular name for a union between a man and a woman), and there would have been no basis for any discrimination between same-sex and different-sex unions. In that case, marriage would have disappeared as a legal construct, while maintaining its popular role as a reproductive union.
My understanding is that the then Attorney-General, Christopher Finlayson, held essentially this same view. But hardly anybody – least of all people like myself, or Christopher Finlayson – wanted to be seen as gay-bashers or as neanderthals, as all opponents of gay-marriage were framed as being. At that time, there was no space for nuanced opposition to the legislation; in the public eye, re that issue, a person was either a progressive or a philistine.
At least the idea of a biological-based reproductive union still exists, albeit as a phrase – heterosexual marriage – rather than as a word. So all is not lost. Problematic though is the fact that – by affirming the legal meaning of the word ‘marriage’ – the concept of a de facto marriage, a favoured union for many people, has become an oxymoron.
Science, Knowledge, and other related Concepts
We have a number of important words – science, knowledge, truth, facts, claims, information – that have related meanings, but distinctively different (albeit nuanced) meanings.
A few weeks ago, a group of University of Auckland scientists wrote to the New Zealand Listener, arguing that traditional Māori knowledge (and modern knowledge developed through that Mātauranga Māori framework) was not science. While they were correct – science and knowledge are not the same thing – the uncritical reaction was immediate and unforgiving.
Knowledge derives from three things: observation (and measurement), reasoning, and literature (ie culture). Knowledge is evolving, and much of what was knowledge in the past would not be classed as knowledge today (eg Galen’s paradigm of medical knowledge). Much that is knowledge – such as complex knowledge that passes to us through literature – is unverifiable, but it tells us who we are, and how we see the world and how we think about it. (Early medical knowledge may not be classed as knowledge today, but the historiography of early medical knowledge certainly would be classed as knowledge today.)
Science is very much a method – associated with the Age of Reason – that can only create negative knowledge. Scientific research can only falsify propositions; it cannot declare them to be ‘true’; and, in practice, most falsification is based on probabilistic arguments devised by statisticians.
Empirical knowledge about the stars sufficient to enable trans-oceanic navigation is no more ‘science’ than is knowledge about which herbal remedies relieve certain conditions of pain or disease. Ptolemaic astronomy, traditional Polynesian astronomy, and Copernican astronomy all equally convey practical navigational knowledge. Polynesian astronomical knowledge is ‘true’, as observational knowledge; but it’s not science, it cannot be falsified. Ptolemaic astronomy, likewise, enabled navigation. But it offered an explanation for the movements of celestial objects that has been proven to be false. Likewise, Copernican astronomy is also false – the sun is not at the centre of the universe – but in an important scientific sense it is less false than Ptolemaic astronomy. Copernican astronomy made it possible to create further truths that are even less false (eg those associated with Gallileo, Kepler and Newton). These are evolving truths that are progressive – in the Vogellian sense – without which humans could never have visited the moon.
Truth is a philosophical rather than a scientific concept. If I say that I believe Vitamin C supplements are good for a person’s health in some circumstances, then I know that that is true, because I know what I believe. Further, that belief is verifiable (sort of) if I am observed to be taking Vitamin C supplements; although I could be taking the supplements as part of an experiment, and not necessarily because I believe they are good for me. Beliefs are truths, albeit subjective truths. I know what I believe, even if you don’t. If I believe in flying pigs, then it is true that I believe in flying pigs.
A scientific truth is a plausible ‘claim’, or ‘hypothesis’; an assertion of objective truth. By its very nuanced meaning, all scientific truths are provisional. A scientific truth, by definition, must be conceptually falsifiable.
Information is a mix of all the above-mentioned: science, knowledge, truth, facts, claims. Information makes no special claim to truth, and may be intentionally false, or an untested claim.
Trivial truths may be called facts. My date of birth is a fact. The size of a crowd for an event at Eden Park is a fact, but only has meaning if contextualised; it needs to be ‘time-stamped’, because the crowd size varies during an event. And even then, the truthful meaning of a time-stamped fact may vary; 50,000 people may have turned up by 7:30pm on the day of a given event, but most those people may have left soon after. The size of the crowd at 9:00pm is an alternative fact. For an event to be truthfully classed as more popular than another event, it depends on the duration of the crowd as well as its peak size.
One important kind of truth is abstract (or a priori) truth. Mathematics is a set of such abstract truths. 2+3=5 is a truth. So is +x+(-x)=0; the truth that underpins double-entry bookkeeping (where ‘x’ can be any number). So is i²=-1, where i is by definition the imaginary number which makes that truth true.
Historical Truth
A particularly important class of truth is ‘historical truth’. Historical truth is a set of facts underpinned by a set of counterfactuals that confer meaning or explanation onto that truth. Facts can be observed; that’s the easier part. Counterfactuals can only be argued; they can only be reasoned, because, by definition, they did not happen.
Much of what we think of as history is sequences of facts; many of these are provisional facts which may be disputed because of gaps or anomalies in the documentary record. Further, such facts are often interpreted. Was a recovered archaeological monument a temple, or a palace, or a parliament?
That James Cook and Jean-François-Marie de Surville unknowingly crossed paths off Cape Reinga in December 1769 is a fact. The date of that crossing is an unresolvable fact, because 17 Dec 1769 on Surville’s calendar would have been 16 Dec 1769 on Cook’s calendar. (I thank Mike Lee, former Auckland Councillor and author of Navigators and Naturalists for alerting me to this!) This is because Surville’s voyage was travelling towards the east, while Cook was travelling towards the west. (And for Surville, New Zealand’s north cape was one bit of land – now named in his honour – while Cook saw and named North Cape, another piece of land; close but not the same.)
The deeper historical truth is that these voyages changed New Zealand (named ‘New Zealand’ in the 1640s, after Abel Tasman’s voyage, so both navigators knew in advance that New Zealand was there, and that New Zealanders were fierce) forever. Possibly an even deeper historical truth is that, even if none of these three European voyagers had ventured to these islands, Europeans would still have come to – and colonised – New Zealand, and before the year 1800.
The last-mentioned ‘probable truth’ is a counterfactual. It is a fact that all the Europeans who visited New Zealand in the eighteenth century knew in advance that it was there. It is an argument, however, to claim that Europeans would have visited New Zealand before 1800 even if they had not known it was there. The argument is based on two main pieces of reasoning: first that Europeans at that time believed that there was land in our part of the world even before they knew it was there; and, second, Europeans had become a global voyaging people, much like the Polynesians before them. So, sooner or later – most likely sooner – they would have found us anyway, by chance.
This counterfactual actually devalues the significance of the ‘discoveries’ of Cook et. al., because others would have made them had they not made them. But the fact that Cook – and men of the French Enlightenment – made voyages to New Zealand when they did (in the era of the ‘Noble Savage’), may be important in that other people with less reputable motives could have made those first contacts instead.
The history of New Zealand can only be understood through well-argued counterfactuals; how did what actually happened differ from the other likely scenarios that might have happened. This applies, obviously, to all aspects of history, and not just the history of early encounters between Pakeha and Māori, between Europe and Aotearoa. To establish the best historical truths available, the most critical skill is to be able to present one or more well-argued counterfactuals. The art of argument is essential to the acquisition of historical knowledge.
Counterfactuals, as mentioned, represent alternative probabilities. There is another kind of counterfactual, an ideal counterfactual, which considers what might have been the best historical possibility. And knowledge of ideal counterfactuals can inform the future. In my example case above, relating to early post-contact New Zealand, we can imagine ‘win-win’ scenarios in which post-contact history might have worked out better for all parties. (We can also imagine other ‘win-lose’ scenarios, bearing in mind that today’s progressive narrative is that post-contact factual history represents one such ‘win-lose’ scenario.) Thinking about win-win historical scenarios can help us to think about win-win futures. But there is one proviso, and that is that well-intentioned behaviours do not necessarily bring about desirable outcomes; and selfishly-intentioned behaviours do not necessarily bring about undesirable outcomes. (Unintended and unforeseen consequences constitute one of history’s major themes.)
Covid19 Delta
A final example of historical truth worth mentioning here is that relating to the ongoing outbreak of Covid19 in New South Wales, Australia. I heard on the news last night some gentleman claiming that we are now in a near-existential battle between humanity and delta.
Certainly, the way the story is being reported is that all would be well for us on the viral front if only the delta mutation of the covid virus had not happened. Thus, the story we are getting comes with an ordained (rather than argued) counterfactual; that delta, and only delta, is the beastie. An alternative counterfactual is that what is happening in Australia is much the same as what would be happening there had delta not evolved. After-all, South America – consider Uruguay as a particularly pertinent case – experienced something much worse, and without a hint of delta.
If we go back to the story of the near-existential battle between humanity and delta, where delta is an allegory for a strengthened foe, an important factor is whether humanity (the good guys) are stronger or weaker than in previous episodes. If humanity this year is weaker – ie less immune to respiratory viruses – than last year then the present weakness of humanity may be the key determinant of events, meaning that the New South Wales event might have happened regardless of delta.
Yet the narrative we have may be useful, if not true. If the message is that humanity has to strengthen in order to match a stronger foe – eg strengthen through taking vaccines – then the ‘official’ narrative, though probably not true, nevertheless supports good behaviour.
Finally
By losing language, and conflating words with similar meanings into the same meaning, we lose our ability to conceptualise the alternative realities which represent the pathways to better futures. Too many words today become synonymous with hyperbole. Other words morph into their opposites.
Science is a particularly important word. Unlike ‘marriage’, if the word ‘science’ loses or changes its meaning, eg morphing with ‘knowledge’ and ‘facts’, there is no other word or phrase which we can use, in its stead, to mean what ‘science’ has meant. Indeed, all the slightly synonymous words used above – science, knowledge, truth, facts, claims, information – may all be coming to mean ‘beliefs’. In other words, all these nuanced words – with their underlying objectivity – may be lost in favour of post-modern subjectivity.
Our most important word may be the word ‘otherwise’. It is the word that indicates a counterfactual – a blend of imagination and argument that we need to make sense of our world, and to make progress in it.
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Keith Rankin, trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.
News Britney Spears’ father has agreed to step down from her conservatorship might have you wondering how equivalent laws work in Australia.
Australia doesn’t have “conservatorships” but rather guardianship and financial management laws for each state and territory.
Traditionally, there have been three legal options for appointing other people to manage your money and your affairs.
One is through the Supreme Court, which is a very formal process out of reach for many. A second option is through state-based mental health laws for temporary financial management while an individual is detained in a mental health facility.
A third option is via state-based guardianship tribunals. Exactly how it works varies from state to state, so check the links below for details:
In most cases, financial management and guardianship laws relate to people who have been deemed incapable of managing their affairs, or who are considered in need of a financial manager or guardian, because of a disability.
That might include a person with a mental health condition, an intellectual disability, dementia or a disability affecting their ability to communicate their decisions.
Since the 1980s, state-based tribunals (made up of people with different expertise) have been able to make decisions to appoint someone to be a financial manager and someone to be a personal guardian.
In general, financial managers (sometimes called “administrators”) take care of the money side of things while a personal guardian makes decisions around their health and lifestyle.
Guardians can also play a major role in decisions about “restrictive practices” that normally involved limitations being placed on a person’s ability to move around (sometimes via physical or chemical restraints). Guardians might also be given power to make decisions regarding “special medical treatments” — for example, whether to put a person on long-acting contraception.
To have a financial manager or guardian appointed, a person has to make an application to the court or a guardianship tribunal. The applicant might be a government employee, a family member, a service provider or a medical professional who forms the view the individual in question doesn’t have the capacity to make their own decisions.
Australia has recently seen two trends in relation to financial managers and guardians.
Firstly, we are seeing more people living with dementia having financial managers appointed. This can be to prevent financial abuse or it can be a form of financial abuse in itself.
The second trend relates to the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS). The creation of the NDIS has resulted in people who previously had their affairs managed informally by friends or family now needing to get financial managers and guardians appointed. For some, that has resulted in less control over their affairs.
When someone applies to a tribunal to have a financial manager appointed, the tribunal will considerfactors such as
how capable the person with disability is and what might in in their best interests
what family support they have around them
what might occur if a financial manager was not appointed.
Getting a decision reviewed
In most jurisdictions, guardianship and financial management orders are subject to routine reviews. Under the legislation, the welfare and interests of the person whose affairs are being managed are meant to be given paramount consideration. In practice, however, once a financial manager or personal guardian is appointed, it can be difficult to get them removed.
It can also be difficult to prove that circumstances have changed and that the financial manager or guardian is no longer needed. This is especially the case if the person is still contending with poverty and/or social isolation, or doesn’t have access to social networks or resources to support them to make decisions, or has not been provided with opportunities to develop their skills.
Many of the people contacting IDRS about financial management orders find the restrictions very distressing, frustrating and detrimental to their lives. They are often limited in the social activities they can enjoy. Moreover, most are frustrated and angry with their financial managers (especially where the financial manager is a government agency).
Substituted decision-making versus supported decision-making
Financial management and guardianship laws involve what experts in this field call “substituted decision-making”, because someone else is making decisions on behalf of an individual with disability.
United Nations bodies and Australian Disabled People’s Organisations have long argued for the abolition of substituted decision-making laws and the introduction of supported decision-making systems based on a person with disability’s “will and preferences”. The latter aims to provide access to support and resources for people to make their own decisions about their finances and other aspects of their lives.
The United Nations Committee overseeing the Disability Convention in 2019 expressed concern Australia has made little progress to abolish substituted decision-making regimes, and replace it with supported decision-making systems. The same UN committee also urged the Australian government to eliminate restrictive practices.
Only Victoria has changed its laws to formally incorporate the UN Convention into its Guardianship and Administration Act 2019 and even this law still employs mechanisms for substituted judgement in many cases.
Almost every day in recent months, Australian Medical Association (AMA) president Dr Omar Khorshid has appeared in the media, commenting on various issues related to the coronavirus pandemic.
Why is the AMA so regularly deferred to by politicians and media alike? And what is its role in the pandemic?
Historically, it has protected doctors’ professional and financial interests
The AMA (and its predecessor, the British Medical Association) built its reputation as a powerful, aggressive lobby group – essentially a medical union. It’s focused on protecting doctors’ professional interests and financial autonomy, and preserving the status quo in health care.
The self-published volume to commemorate the AMA’s 50th anniversary – ironically titled “More than Just a Union” – boasts of efforts to forestall government attempts to make health care universal and affordable.
Underpinning this opposition was a fear of controls and interference by both governments and health insurers, and efforts to expand the scope of practice for health-care providers other than doctors.
How the AMA has shaped past health policies
Those past fears are echoed today in the AMA’s continuing opposition to a range of proposals that are seen as impinging on doctors’ autonomy.
These include resistance to payment mechanisms that would move from fee-for-service (an itemised fee charged for every visit) to capitated fees for ongoing care of a chronic condition.
Concerns about the adequacy of doctors’ Medicare rebates are ongoing and, in some cases, justified. These concerns have led to the AMA issuing its own fee guidance to doctors.
The AMA has a particular aversion to “US-style managed care” which it describes as “a recipe for cost-cutting and less choice”. The AMA fears Medicare and private health insurers will try to push doctors, hospitals and patients into coercive contracts with capped funding payments, and require defined standards for performance, quality and outcomes.
Meanwhile, the AMA has consistently pushed back on increasing the roles for midwives and nurse practitioners in the health-care system, and is vehemently opposed to pharmacists having an increased prescribing role.
The AMA has opposed nurses doing work traditionally done by doctors. Shutterstock
Yet the AMA has also played a significant leadership role in highlighting important issues as varied as Indigenous health, tobacco and vaping regulation, boxing injuries, treatment of refugees, and climate change.
Inside the AMA machine
The AMA’s federal secretariat has excellent resources to assist with this work – experts in policy development, economic analysis and communications. This is highlighted in the report cards it regularly issues, which have the capacity and status to influence public opinions and government policy.
The AMA is diligent about making sure its voice is heard with budget commentary and submissions to a range of enquiries and reports. According to the AMA website, in 2020 it made 45 submissions – a mammoth task of preparation and approval.
This latter task is never easy for the AMA. It is an inherently conservative body, more comfortable with the conservative side of politics, although this has varied with the public face of the president.
Internal infighting was conspicuously highlighted when Dr Michael Gannon, in his successful 2016 run for AMA presidency, chided then-president Dr Brian Owler for opposing funding cuts in health in the 2014-15 Budget and the medical treatment of asylum seekers.
The criticism that is made of the current leadership [of the AMA] is that it’s strong on progressive policies but not listened to by the conservative government.
Ultimately, these in-house conflicts undermine the effectiveness of the organisation’s loud public voice. It can agree with or oppose government proposals, but is rarely able to generate enough internal consensus to offer alternatives.
All this serves to cast the AMA today as something of a chameleon organisation trying to be all things to all people. On the one hand, it’s always at war with government (regardless of political party) over members’ interests. On the other hand, it elevates issues of social responsibility and publicly positions itself as seeking to advance community health.
We see this dichotomy playing out in the pandemic. Along with supportive words to the public and comments on governments’ actions, the AMA is raising the usual concerns and is “working tirelessly” to shore up its influence in the corridors of power.
How the AMA is using its influence in the pandemic
It is likely the AMA’s influence on the federal government led to the initial decision to roll out the vaccination of the general public primarily through GPs.
The AMA highlighted that rolling out the campaign through general practice was the best way to encourage the community to get vaccinated and noted “significant reservations” about the role of pharmacists in the vaccine rollout.
This follows years of opposition to pharmacists playing a role in the flu vaccinations rollout, as you can see in this media release from 2014:
But many busy GP practices were unable to gear up for COVID-19 vaccinations and initially they were unable to manage the storage requirements for the Pfizer vaccine. These were later modified and since June practices can apply to also administer the Pfizer vaccine.
Responding to questions The Conversation’s political correspondent Michelle Grattan raised last week about how the AMA shaped the vaccine rollout, Dr Khorshid said the program was slowed by “supply constraints and hesitancy due to changing advice”:
In recent weeks, we have seen how both GPs and pharmacists are needed to ramp up
vaccine delivery, especially in coronavirus hotspots.
On other issues, the AMA has been very supportive of the expanded telehealth services that were put in place early in the pandemic to allow patients to have a consultation with their doctor by video or phone.
Initially these consultations were required to be bulk billed, but the AMA has now persuaded the government to remove this requirement. This means patients whose doctors do not bulk bill will now have out-of-pocket costs for telehealth consultations.
Meanwhile, AMA media releases also credit the organisation for proposing the government’s yet-to-be-implemented vaccine indemnity scheme.
Striving for relevance and public trust
The AMA is driven by the need to demonstrate relevance to today’s cohort of doctors and the public in the face of increasing competition for members and attention.
When the federal AMA was formed in 1962, 95% of doctors were members. As of 2018 it was less than 30%.
So it’s no surprise the RACGP is also an active player on behalf of its members – the advocacy pages of its website show it claims some of the same policy victories as the AMA. Its president is also a frequent media presence on the pandemic and other issues.
Many of Australia’s problems with vaccine rollout and compliance with lockdowns are due to confusing communication strategies from governments and the poor quality of public education campaigns. There is certainly room for effective communicators, speaking in language that everyone understands, to step into this space.
The public sees doctors as trusted voices and doctors working at the coalface are uniquely placed to comment on the health-care consequences of the pandemic.
The AMA (and other medical organisations) have spent decades building access to media and politicians. This means that often their voice is heard above those who have more expertise and their concerns are more obvious than those of affected communities. This is a privileged situation that should be used for public good, ahead of any organisational self-interest, during the pandemic and in the years ahead.
Editor’s note: The Conversation contacted the AMA for a response and in a statement, Dr Omar Khorshid said, “the issues the AMA advocates on are in the interests of doctors, the wider health professions, and patients”. He said these issues “go to the heart of our healthcare system and all health professionals, including nurses”.
Lesley Russell 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.
With the simple touch of a smartphone, online food delivery services conveniently offer takeaway food straight to your door.
Contact-free delivery has surged in popularity as lockdowns have limited physical access to restaurants and food outlets. Industry reports suggest Australians are spending three times more on online food delivery than before the COVID-19 pandemic.
While these delivery apps provide easy access to a variety of foods, they may be harmful for our health.
Online food delivery services increase access to fast food
During January and February 2020, we analysed data from Uber Eats, the market-leading online food delivery service in Australia and New Zealand.
We focused on online food ordering in 233 suburbs in Sydney and 186 suburbs in Auckland with above-average populations of young people (aged 15-34). This age group represents the biggest consumers of online takeaway foods.
We evaluated 1,074 popular food outlets available on Uber Eats across Sydney and Auckland by type and nutritional quality.
The use of food delivery apps has surged during the pandemic. Shutterstock
Results showed fast-food chains were the most popular food outlets. Fast-food chains accounted for 38% of the popular food outlets we looked at in Sydney and 54% in Auckland.
In Sydney, the most common fast-food chains were McDonald’s (54 stores, 8.4%), Subway (52 stores, 7.6%), Oporto (42 stores, 6.2%) and Domino’s (19 stores, 2.8%).
In Auckland, the most common fast-food chains were Subway (46 stores, 11.7%), McDonald’s (40 stores, 10.2%), Burger King (24 stores, 6.1%) and Hell Pizza (20 stores, 5.1%).
These fast-food chains were all classified in the lowest healthiness category.
When The Conversation contacted Uber Eats for comment, their spokesperson pointed to their grocery category, which “[makes] fresh fruit and vegetables more accessible for thousands of Australians”.
The spokesperson also said “quinoa, kale, bowls, brussel sprouts, edamame, acai, kombucha, hummus, poke and brown rice” all increased in popularity since June 2020. However according to our assessment, these items were not as popular or as well spruiked as the unhealthy menu items.
Independent outlets are rushing to join, but how healthy are their menus?
In Sydney, we found independent takeaway stores, like your local kebab shop or fish and chip shop, are the second most popular food outlet type (30% of all food outlets).
In a separate study, we analysed the menu items (13,841 in total) from 196 of Sydney’s most popular independent takeaway stores on Uber Eats. We used a classification system of 38 different food and beverage categories based on the Australian Dietary Guidelines.
We found more than 80% of all the menu items were discretionary or “junk” foods. A large number of menu items (42%) were categorised as “discretionary cereal-based mixed meals”, which includes foods such as pizzas, burgers, kebabs and pidés. Other types of junk foods could be battered fish or chicken schnitzel, and sugary drinks, among others.
Marketing tactics don’t help
Both these studies demonstrate the abundance of unhealthy menu items available on these platforms. This, combined with in-app marketing tactics, can hinder consumers from making healthier choices.
We found unhealthier menu items were more than twice as likely to be categorised as “most popular” than healthier options on Uber Eats. In addition, unhealthy menu items were nearly one-and-a-half times more likely to include a photo, and over six times more likely to be offered as a value bundle compared with healthier items.
More than 80% of the menu items we looked at from independent takeaway stores on Uber Eats were junk foods. Shutterstock
In another study, we observed how online food delivery services have leveraged the pandemic to promote junk food on social media.
Our recently published digital marketing analysis on the Instagram accounts of nine online food delivery services across three regions (Australia/New Zealand, North America and the United Kingdom) found nearly 70% of all food advertised was junk food.
In 2020, 32% of posts referenced the pandemic. Most commonly, the messaging in these posts encouraged consumers to stay home and get food delivered to support local businesses.
While of course during lockdowns it’s important to stay at home, and supporting local businesses is noble, worryingly, more than 97% of the food items featured in COVID-related Instagram posts from Australia and the UK were junk foods.
The World Health Organization has acknowledged the growing impact of online food environments on people’s diet choices. For the benefit of public health, it urges collective action by food industry, governments, policy makers and researchers.
In line with the WHO, we propose the following actions:
include healthy online food environments in the National Obesity Strategy. This is a ten-year strategy, currently under consultation, that will guide Australia’s actions on the overweight and obesity epidemic. The public, particularly young people, have asked for supportive food environments that will enable them to make healthy food choices. This framework will be an important way to put the public health impact of online food delivery services on the agenda
restrict junk food advertising on social media. Online food delivery services need to be considered with the broader food industry in government policies restricting junk food advertising to young people
generate clear public health messaging on health and environmental impacts.Research has suggested convenient takeaway produces excessive amounts of waste. Combining the messaging may enhance potential for behaviour change.
In a world disrupted by COVID-19, the way we purchase and consume food is changing. The time is ripe to shape the online food environment to promote easy access to healthy and nutritious convenience food.
This article draws on research by former University of Sydney Masters students Andriana Korai and Celina Wang.
Stephanie Partridge receives funding from National Health and Medical Research Council, National Heart Foundation, NSW Health and the Medical Research Future Fund.
Alice A Gibson receives funding from National Health and Medical Research Council and Diabetes Australia.
I have/do receive fellowship and research grants from the NHRMC and MRFF
Dr Rajshri Roy receives funding from The University of Auckland Food and Health Programme.
Rebecca Raeside receives funding from The University of Sydney Postgraduate Research Scholarship in Digital Health, Youth and Nutrition
Sisi Jia receives funding from the Research Training Program Stipend Scholarship, provided by the Australian Government to support postgraduate research students.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Steven Freeland, Professorial Fellow, Bond University / Emeritus Professor of International Law, Western Sydney University, Western Sydney University
What do cyberspace and outer space have in common? As we make clear in a new report to the Department of Defence, both are new frontiers for national security that blur traditional ideas about borders, sovereignty and defence strategy.
These “areas” are important elements of Australia’s critical infrastructure and are vital to our ability to defend our nation and keep it secure. They also have a “dual use” character: both areas (and often even individual pieces of equipment) are used for both military and civilian purposes.
What is sovereignty and why is it important?
Sovereignty is a legal and political concept. It generally refers to the authority of a country (nation state) to exercise control over matters within its jurisdiction – including by passing laws and enforcing them.
Historically, this jurisdiction was based primarily on geography. However, cyberspace and outer space are not limited by borders in the same way as territorial spaces.
Sovereignty also includes the power to give up certain sovereign rights, such as when countries agree to limit their own actions so as to cooperate internationally on human rights and national security.
Cyberspace and outer space enhance our defence and national security capabilities, but our increasing dependence on continuous access to both also makes us vulnerable. These domains can be a source of unity and vision for humanity, but they can also be a source of tension and discord – and could easily be misused in the conduct of war.
Cyberspace
The world’s dependence on the internet has outpaced efforts at effective cyber security. For every “solution”, another threat arises. This can create serious vulnerabilities for defence and national security.
There is a general understanding that international law applies to cyber activities. However, the details of precisely how are not agreed. The debate generally concerns what military cyber activities are “acceptable” or “peaceful”, and which are prohibited or might be considered acts of war.
For example, during peacetime, international law is largely silent on espionage. Nation states can generally engage in cyber espionage without clearly violating their legal obligations to other countries.
However, it can be hard to tell the difference between a simple espionage cyber operation (which might be permitted) and one carried out to prepare for a more disruptive operation (which might count as an “attack”). Both involve unauthorised access to computer systems and networks within another nation state, but working out who is responsible for such intrusions and their intentions can be an imprecise art.
Different countries have suggested various approaches to the problem. France and Iran say any unauthorised penetration of their cyber systems “automatically” constitutes a violation of sovereignty, irrespective of the reason.
Others, such as the United Kingdom and New Zealand, say a cyber operation must be sufficiently disruptive or destructive to count as a violation of sovereignty principles. These might seem like legal niceties, but they matter – they can determine how the impacted country might retaliate.
Outer space
Outer space is no less challenging. The “militarisation” and possible “weaponisation” of space represent a significant defence and national security challenge for all countries.
Outer space, like the high seas, is often seen as a global commons: it belongs to everyone and is governed by international law. A key tenet of international space law is that space may not be appropriated, which would prevent plans such as colonising the Moon or Mars.
The 1967 Outer Space Treaty, ratified by almost every spacefaring country, provides that the Moon and other celestial bodies are to be used “exclusively for peaceful purposes”. It also forbids the placement of weapons of mass destruction in outer space and the militarisation of celestial bodies.
The treaty also imposes international responsibilities and liabilities on the countries themselves – even for transgressions carried out by a private entity. Everything revolves around the imperative to promote responsible behaviour in space and minimise the possibility of conflict.
Initially, there were different views as to whether the peaceful use of space meant that only “non-military” rather than “non-aggressive” activities were permissible. However, the reality is that outer space has been and continues to be used for terrestrial military activities.
The 1991 Gulf War is often referred to as the first “space war”. The use of satellite technology undeniably represents an integral part of modern military strategy and armed conflict for Australia and many other countries.
The situation is made more complex by the increasing interest in possible future mining in space and the potential rise of space tourism. There is also no clear international agreement about where to draw the line between sovereign airspace and outer space, or about what (and whose) criminal law applies in space.
Space sovereignty
At present, some 70-80 countries have some degree of sovereign space capability, including an ability to independently launch or operate their own satellites.
On the other hand, this means nearly two-thirds of the world’s countries do not have any national space capability. They are completely dependent on others for access to space infrastructure and to space itself. Their ability to enjoy the benefits of space technology for development and well-being relies on strategic and geopolitical networks and understandings.
Even Australia, which is a sophisticated space participant, currently has relatively limited sovereign capability for space launches, Earth observation, GPS and other critical space activities.
However, it is not economically feasible for Australia to be wholly independent in every aspect of space. For this reason, Australia’s twin policy of ensuring access to space through strategic alliances with selected spacefaring nations, while also developing further sovereign space capability in specific areas, is essential to Australia’s defence and national security interests.
Looking forward
Addressing the intersection between cyberspace and outer space is vital for Australia’s defence and national security policies. Both civilian and military actors participate in these domains, and the range of possible activities is rapidly developing.
We will need to understand the increasingly close intersection between cyberspace and outer space technologies to be in the best possible position to develop effective and integrated defence and national security strategies to meet the challenges of the 21st century.
Your heading here
This research was funded by a Strategic Policy Department of Defence Research Grant. Steven Freeland is a Director of the International Institute of Space Law
Danielle Ireland-Piper was part of a research team that received funding from the Australian Department of Defence. However, the views expressed herein are those of the authors and are not necessarily those of the Australian Government or the Australian Department of Defence.
This research was supported by the Australian Government through a grant by the Australian Department of Defence. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and are not necessarily those of the Australian Government, the Australian Department of Defence, or the universities or other institutions the authors are affiliated with.
This research was funded by a Strategic Policy Department of Defence Research Grant.
This research was funded by a Strategic Policy Department of Defence Research Grant.
This research was funded by a Strategic Policy Department of Defence Research Grant. Wendy Bonython was previously employed by the Department of Defence. She is a current member of the Defence Department of Veterans’ Affairs Human Research Ethics Committee.
When Treasurer Josh Frydenberg joined the podcast in December, the outlook was positive. While the forecast deficit was massive at nearly $200 billion, it had been revised down and the prospects for growth and employment revised up.
Frydenberg said then: “Australians go into Christmas with real cause for optimism and hope”.
But the economic climate now is bleaker. And very uncertain.
With the September quarter set to be negative, and the December quarter dependent on New South Wales’ ability to get on top of the virus, a second recession can’t be ruled out.
But joining The Conversation podcast this week, Frydenberg looks for some silver linings. He says a likely contraction of “about 1.5%” in the September quarter would be considerably less drastic than the 7% contraction the economy saw in the June quarter of last year.
“Consumer spending is about 30% higher today than it was in March and April last year.
“Consumer confidence, similarly, is around 30% higher than it was back then”.
And the latest jobs numbers had shown that more than 200,000 people had come off unemployment benefits since that JobKeeper ended.
“So I’m confident that the underlying fundamentals of the Australian economy [are] sound.”
With the New South Wales lockdown more than likely to continue into a third month and other lockdowns around the country, the government has remained steadfast in its decision to not reinstate JobKeeper, relying instead on COVID disaster payments to support workers.
A criticism levelled against the JobKeeper program was that money was wasted going to companies which ended up making profits, and then not returning the funds.
The treasurer calls JobKeeper “a remarkable success” which “restored confidence immediately after it was announced.
“If we had said at the time, you know, Grattan Enterprises would have to pay it all back if somehow they got through the crisis, the likelihood would have been that[…]some businesses wouldn’t have taken that money and therefore would have let their staff go.”
Once borders are open, and we are back to some sort of normality, Frydenberg looks to migration to assist in the economic recovery, and in countering “the impacts and consequences of an ageing population” outlined in this year’s Intergenerational Report.
Frydenberg supports a migration programme which strikes “the right balance”.
A program which “goes to our humanity with the resettlement of refugees[…]goes to the needs, the immediate needs of the economy with skilled workers, and[…] goes to the harmony of our society, with family reunions and the like.”
Michelle Grattan 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.
If you are one of the millions of Australians in lockdown, you are not alone in feeling a range of emotions difficult to put into words.
Lockdown days are blurry, with time lost within our own four walls. These walls are far more visible than we’ve noticed before. Our obsession with the never-ending news cycle leaves us both informed and overwhelmed.
Whether it’s a day filled with anger and sadness or oscillating between feeling grateful and feeling lost, this lockdown feels harder than ever before.
And the sadness you may be feeling, but can’t quite put your finger on,
could be something called “disenfranchised grief”.
Let’s admit how tough it’s been
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought changes to our lives we never imagined. It has transformed the world we live in, our sense of safety, our behaviours and how connected we feel to our loved ones.
It’s highlighted the importance of human connection. We’ve learned a lack of connection with others can bring social pain, just as real as physical pain.
The sadness you may be feeling can be down to a number of reasons. And feeling sad is not necessarily a sign of a mental health disorder. In fact feeling sad is one of the range of emotions that make us human, and has benefits.
But this doesn’t really explain the sadness many of us are feeling in lockdown right now — disenfranchised grief.
US researcher and professor Kenneth Doka introduced this notion about 30 years ago. He described disenfranchised grief as a loss not “openly acknowledged, socially validated, or publicly mourned”.
This fits with what we know about COVID-19, with stories of intangible losses including loss of safety, control, community, dignity and independence. Feelings of loss seem to envelope us wherever we turn.
Refugees and temporary migrants lost the safety of new-found homes, with the loss of jobs, accommodation and support services; citizens lost the predictability of being able to come home.
Students were robbed of in-person learning and parents were robbed of celebrating their children’s transition to the next phase in life. As well as birthdays and graduations, we lost funerals and weddings.
And when it came to grieving and loss, we lost access to the places and people that allow us to grieve collectively — our wider family and community, as well as places of worship.
Is it OK to grieve about this?
Societal and cultural norms, including gender norms, dictate how we grieve. These norms allow us to mourn the death of a loved one. Yet it feels more challenging to mourn the loss of our way of life.
Grieving can feel complicated in a pandemic when others may have it worse. People may question whether it’s legitimate for them to grieve the loss of their way of life. Researchers also talk about a hierarchy of loss, a sliding scale of who has a socially acceptable right to grieve, rather than a simple “yes” or “no”.
Disenfranchised grief may also cloud our ability to identify and validate our difficult emotions, such as feelings of shame. This may be especially so when others don’t see these losses.
This impacts our capacity to express emotions as well as seek appropriate support when needed.
Grief is real even when it feels impossible to explain what you’re feeling. So it’s important to acknowledge the loss.
Grieving is allowing yourself permission to say out aloud what you have lost. It can be validating to also label the emotions you’re feeling, even if they sound contradictory, such as feelings of both anger and guilt.
Although the risk of depression and anxiety symptoms for people with vulnerabilities has increased during the pandemic, it is not helpful to always pathologise valid human emotions that tell us we are not doing so well. These emotions act as a compass for us to slow down, reset expectations, and seek support when necessary.
Setting practical and achievable short-term goals can help direct our behaviour to be more purposeful. Sticking to a routine (as closely as possible to what you did before lockdown) can also support our sense of control.
Check in with yourself and each other. Use social media for support, which many young people in the LGBTQIA+ community have found beneficial during the pandemic. It’s vital for us to hear others’ experiences that can normalise our own.
Finally, nothing is more important than reminding ourselves we are living through a one-in-one hundred year event. We are all doing the best we can. And that’s not only OK, it’s enough.
If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, please call Lifeline on 13 11 14 or GriefLine on 1300 845 745.
Neeraja Sanmuhanathan is a Senior Sexual Assault Counsellor with NSW Health at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, Sydney. She received the Australian Research Training Program Scholarship to complete her PhD at the University of Sydney.
The sudden death this week of track cyclist Olivia Podmore has rocked New Zealand’s high-performance sporting and cycling communities and raised urgent questions about the culture of elite sport.
The tragedy has prompted past and current athletes, parents and the public to call for changes across a system that is seen by many to prioritise performance over the health and well-being of athletes.
Importantly, high-performance sport in New Zealand mirrors many international systems, and these issues are widespread across countries and sports.
Mental health in elite sport has been an issue for a long time. But the pressure on modern athletes is arguably more intense than ever, with increased salaries, media (and social media) visibility and heightened public scrutiny.
Tennis champion Naomi Osaka and multi-medal-winning gymnast Simone Biles have both been forced to make difficult decisions to prioritise their own well-being in sporting environments that value them as athletes rather than human beings.
Recent research by High Performance Sport New Zealand (HPSNZ) has shown that more that one in five athletes experience mental health challenges during their time as elite performers. Even more do during their transition out of elite sport.
There has been case after case of elite athletes walking away from their sport because of the pressure, most recently world champion rower Zoe McBride. She retired weeks before Tokyo because of the toll the sport was taking on her mental and physical health.
Pressure to perform: US gymnast Simone Biles withdrew from several events at the Tokyo Olympics. www.shutterstock.com
Women on an uneven playing field
The pressures on sportswomen are possibly more severe than on men. As well as expectations from sports organisations, coaches, the public and social media to bring home medals, they are also expected to conform to particular ideals of femininity, beauty and success.
Our survey of 219 elite and developing New Zealand sportswomen found 79% felt pressure by their sport to alter their physical appearance to conform to gender ideals. The impact on their overall health represents a double burden on many sportswomen.
Furthermore, for decades women’s sport has received less funding, resourcing and research, meaning organisations are not always well supported to manage those pressures. Despite initiatives to improve opportunities for women in sport, chronic inequities mean the infrastructure around female athletes remains inadequate.
The HPSNZ working group focused on building healthy environments for sportswomen (WHISPA) is committed to improving conditions for female athletes. But for greater impact the initiative requires sports organisations to prioritise health and make tangible changes.
In each of the reports about those organisations, athletes describe a culture of fear that prevents them speaking out about problems and vulnerabilities.
While these reports and subsequent media coverage typically focus on individual cases, it is time to connect the dots and acknowledge the wider crisis — the elite sport model is broken and it has been breaking athletes for many years.
The prioritisation of performance over well-being has come at great cost. The tragic loss of Olivia Podmore must be a watershed moment, a catalyst for significant cultural change.
The challenge is bigger than “treating” individual athletes as if they are isolated cases. A fundamental cultural shift is needed in the priorities and value systems of high-performance sport.
The lust for gold
A “win at all costs” mentality has become normalised to the extent coaches often fail to acknowledge they are part of the problem. Athletes learn from a young age that to be the real thing they must buy into a sport ethic that involves personal sacrifice for the game, suppression of vulnerability and acceptance of extreme discipline and surveillance.
This “whatever it takes” attitude compromises the health and well-being of athletes, but in many countries (including Aotearoa) funding is dependent on international podium results.
While “performance measurement” has been promoted as the best way to generate value from public funding, this flows through the system to the performance pressure felt by coaches and ultimately athletes.
It leaves little room for coaches or athletes to express doubts, worry or vulnerability. There is always someone waiting to take their spot on the team.
Sport New Zealand Chief Executive Raelene Castle has promised an investigation after Olivia Podmore’s death. GettyImages
Commitment to change
HPSNZ’s recently released and much anticipated 2024 Strategy includes a clearer focus on athlete well-being, including new well-being manager roles, mental health initiatives and objective measures to monitor well-being in national sports.
The strategy also introduces well-being criteria for investment decisions, with NZ$3.85 million earmarked for improved support structures around female athletes.
The priority shift is long overdue and sports organisations must be held accountable if they fail to care for the health of their athletes.
However, international efforts to implement safe systems for athlete mental health, welfare and protection have had mixed results, highlighting the challenges of creating genuine cultural change.
Following the death of Olivia Podmore, the chief executive of Sport New Zealand and acting chief executive of HPSNZ, Raelene Castle, promised a full investigation and the prioritisation of athlete well-being.
We can only hope those working with athletes – from development to elite levels – are also willing to take responsibility and commit to a process of rethinking deeply ingrained practices and value systems.
High performance and well-being are not mutually exclusive. Healthy, happy and flourishing athletes will stay in sport longer, come back from injury and illness faster and ultimately perform better. They will also be more likely to give back to the sport in retirement.
For all these reasons it is worth committing to new models of elite sport.
Holly Thorpe is affiliated with the High Performance Sport New Zealand working group, WHISPA: Health Women in Sport: A Performance Advantage
Michelle Grattan discusses the week in politics with University of Canberra Associate Professor Caroline Fisher.
This week the pair discuss provisional approval of the Moderna vaccine, as well as the wider question of vaccine hesitancy – especially in light of George Christensen’s controversial speech before Question Time on Tuesday.
They also discuss the government’s response to the grim report out of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which has called for immediate action to combat global warming.
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.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bethaney Turner, Associate Professor, Centre for Creative and Cultural Research, Faculty of Arts and Design, University of Canberra
Shutterstock
With millions of Australians enduring lockdown yet again, you may be seeking solace in gardening. For migrants and refugees in Australia, gardening can be particularly meaningful when shared in community spaces.
But community gardens aren’t always sites of inclusion. In our recently published research, my colleagues and I highlight the ways migrants and refugees are excluded from community gardens — and how to change this.
When community gardens are socially inclusive, everyone benefits. Culturally diverse community gardens can not only deepen cross-cultural social connections, they can even help develop the skills to adapt to change and crisis, such as from climate change.
The benefits of community gardens
Waiting lists to join community gardens are extremely long in many parts of Australia, with some gardens requiring up to an eight-year wait. Advocacy groups consistently call for more sites and greater financial support to meet this demand.
There are good reasons for their growing popularity. Improved mental and physical health and wellbeing regularly tops the list of their positive impacts, as they promote more exercise, greater access to nutritious food, strengthen community connections, and more.
The food grown in community gardens can also help improve food security. During lockdown, these sites have been vital to meet the everyday needs of many suffering from financial hardship.
For refugees and migrants, communal gardening sites can be therapeutic, safe spaces.
When immersed in supportive communities that share a commitment to productive gardening, migrants and refugees can improve their self-efficacy. The ability to grow culturally familiar foods can also maintain their connections to homelands, easing the resettlement and migration process.
Communal gardens should be safe spaces. Shutterstock
This is why it’s so important to improve these opportunities and remove any barriers excluding these gardeners. Our research reviewed worldwide studies of community gardens, and found common barriers to refugee and migrant participation revolve around three key areas:
1. Physical and material features of gardens
This includes high membership fees, inability to easily travel to gardens and insecure land tenure.
Site design that limits gardeners’ autonomy and ability to grow familiar foods is also a problem. This can happen where there’s communal, rather than individual, plot cultivation, putting pressure on new gardeners to grow foods already well known to existing gardeners.
Another barrier is a lack of available space and small plot sizes, which can make it harder to grow culturally important crops, such as maize.
2. Garden management styles
Inclusive practices are often not embedded into information sharing and decision making, such as not translating information.
For example, community gardens often rely on formal management meetings, but these may not take into account different languages, cultural traditions and unequal power relations.
Relying on community gardens for food security can also be a big problem for refugees and migrants, especially for new arrivals. This can lead to gardens replacing more holistic social support programs.
The way we care for gardens and ideas about how a productive garden should look, are often shaped by whatever cultural norm is dominant. Uniform, neatly mulched raised beds, free of weeds and overhanging vegetation, are often favoured by risk averse councils.
Migrant and refugee gardening styles can be at odds with accepted expectations and values like these. Many are used to cultivating directly into the soil and prefer to grow a wide variety of plants together that may not look neat, but can increase biodiversity. They may also leave more space between crops to improve yield.
This means these familiar, productive and culturally appropriate ways of gardening for refugees and migrants can be devalued and excluded, along with their skills and knowledge.
Volunteer groups managing community gardens should be give more resources. Shutterstock
The good news is we can make community gardens more socially inclusive places. To do this, there needs to be more investment from governments and local councils in resources (including land and financial support) for the largely volunteer groups developing and managing these sites.
These resources need to assist migrants and refugees to:
develop social and ecological connections that engender a sense of belonging
contribute to the design and management of gardens in culturally and linguistically inclusive ways
make choices about how to tend their plots that enable some connection to their homeland
engage with other garden members from all backgrounds to share knowledge and lessons
not have to rely on the garden as a primary source of food or income generation.
Gardens are better when migrants and refugees are included
Community gardens are currently off limits to many under lockdown. When we return to COVID-normal, the lessons from socially inclusive gardens could help communities better prepare for future disruption, particularly from climate change.
Resettlement in a different country involves ongoing adjustments to new social, ecological and climate conditions. We can all learn from migrant and refugee skills, knowledge, and the ways they adapt, as adjustment to unfamiliar environments often comes with careful tinkering and trial and error.
When it comes to food gardens, past research has shown this experimentation can lead to boosting biodiversity and expanding diets, due to the variety of crops grown. One example is the introduction of maize to produce maize flour in many gardens throughout Australia. This is a diet staple for many African nations.
The desire to grow foods from the homeland can lead to gardening techniques that can sustain future changes in climate. Shutterstock
The desire to grow culturally relevant foods means tinkering with soil and growing conditions, as well as the plants themselves. This enables the plants to adapt to unfamiliar conditions, which will become increasingly variable under climate change. Learning how to grow tropical plants in frosty parts of Victoria or on marginal soils are a couple of good examples.
What’s more, gardeners from diverse backgrounds can increase a community’s repertoire of safe, low-tech cultivation and pest management techniques. This includes how to make the most of the waste from culturally familiar foods, such as Japanese gardeners’ use of tofu residue as a soil conditioner.
Not only will bringing together culturally diverse community members foster more meaningful connections, but also it will strengthen our shared ability to adapt to the uncertainty of a changing climate.
The author would like to acknowledge Jessica Abramovic and Cathy Hope who helped compile the research upon which this article is based.
Bethaney Turner has previously received funding from the Australian Capital Territory(ACT) Government for research into community gardens and local food strategies in the ACT and surrounding regions. Her family has a plot in a local community garden administered by Canberra Organic Growers Society.
Fifty percent of Fijians who died from covid-19 were at home at the time of their deaths.
The Fiji government said it had noted that many people dying of covid-19 had not given healthcare workers a chance to treat them.
The Health Ministry reported 398 new cases of covid-19 and five deaths for the 24 hours to 8am yesterday.
That compares with 568 cases and 13 deaths in the previous 24-hour period.
Health Secretary Dr James Fong said there were enough ventilators in health facilities across the country to accommodate the covid patients.
“We got ventilators but unfortunately many people are dying from coronavirus at home or due to late presentations,” he said.
“Severe coronavirus is a medical emergency and a delay in receiving appropriate medical treatment reduces your chance of recovering from the disease.
Plea to visit healthcare facilities “If you have severe symptoms of coronavirus, please visit the nearest healthcare facility to get medical treatment. Call 165 if you are unable to travel to a medical facility.”
There have been 345 deaths due to covid-19 in Fiji, with 343 of those victims dying during the outbreak that started in April this year.
There have been 38,742 cases during the outbreak that started in April 2021; and 38,812 cases recorded in Fiji since the first case was reported in March 2020, with 14,301 recoveries.
Of the latest cases, Dr Fong said 254 were from the Western Division and 144 from the Central Division.
Dr Fong said of the five deaths, three were reported from the Central Division and two in the Western Division.
“There have been eight more deaths of covid-19 positive patients. However, these deaths have been classified as non-covid deaths by their doctors,” he said.
“There have been 345 deaths due to covid-19 in Fiji, with 343 of those deaths during the outbreak that started in April this year.”
300 in hospital “There have been 38,742 cases during the outbreak that started in April 2021; and 38,812 cases recorded in Fiji since the first case was reported in March 2020, with 14,301 recoveries.”
Dr Fong said there are 300 patients admitted to the hospital — 62 at Lautoka Hospital, 67 at the FEMAT field hospital and 171 patients at the CWM, St Giles and Makoi hospitals.
He said 41 patients are considered to be in severe condition, and nine in critical condition.
He said as of August 9, a total of 513, 535 adults in Fiji had received their first dose of the vaccine and 180,722 had received their second doses.
“This means that 87.5 percent of the target population have received at least one dose and 30.8 percent are now fully vaccinated nation-wide,” Dr Fong said.
Drop in daily cases Meanwhile, the ministry noted a drop in cases reported daily recently.
Dr Fong said the seven-day average of new cases per day is 730 cases per day or 825 cases per million population per day.
This figure fluctuated at least over the past week, Dr Fong said with numbers recorded in four-digits at the height of soaring infections reported largely in the Central Division, and spiking numbers in the West.
Just a week ago, Dr Fong was reporting the following seven-day average of new cases:
Tuesday, August 3: 1220 new cases reported in 24 hours; Seven-day average of new cases per day – 1085 cases per day or 1226 cases per million population per day
Wednesday, August 4: 1187 new cases reported in 24 hours; Seven-day average of new cases per day – 1103 cases per day or 1247 cases per million population per day
Thursday, August 5: 968 new cases in 24-hour reporting period; Seven-day average of new cases per day – 1156 cases per day or 1193 cases per million population per day
Friday, August 6: 752 new cases in 24-hour period; Seven-day average of 997 cases per day or 1127 cases per million population per day
Saturday, August 7: 682 new cases in 24-hour period; Seven-day average of new cases per day – 934, or 1056 cases per million population per day
Sunday, August 8: 657 new cases in 24-hour period; Seven-day average of new cases per day is 938 cases per day or 1060 cases per million population per day
Monday, August 9: 603 new cases in 24-hour period; Seven-day average of new cases per day is 867 cases per day or 980 cases per million population per day.
Test numbers dropping Dr Fong said while they had noted a drop in recent cases reported per day, their daily testing numbers had also been dropping around the same time.
He attributed this to the change in testing policy in the Suva-Nausori containment area.
Fiji’s Dr James Fong … “resources [being] targeted to early detection, monitoring and care of persons with covid-19, who are at higher risk of severe disease.” Image: RNZ/Fiji govt
Dr Fong said, as announced on July 21, only persons that have a higher risk of developing severe covid-19 were being tested in Suva-Nausori.”This was done so that resources could be targeted to early detection, monitoring and care of persons with covid-19, who are at higher risk of severe disease, to prevent more people succumbing to severe disease and death,” Dr Fong said in an epidemic outlook of the pandemic in the country.”We are likely seeing the effect of this testing policy change now in Suva-Nausori with the drop in daily reported cases.”This does not mean that the outbreak is on a downward trend in the Suva-Nausori community.”Dr Fong said daily case numbers in Suva-Nausori were not being used as an indicator at present to monitor the progress of the outbreak in Suva-Nausori.Closely monitoring “The ministry is closely monitoring other indicators such as test positivity, hospitalisations and deaths to track the progress of the outbreak in Suva-Nausori.”Test positivity in Suva-Nausori was between 40-50 percent before the change in testing policy and has remained at this high level, which is above the national average. This is one indicator of the continuing high level of community transmission in this area.”Dr Fong said testing levels in the Western Division remained high with 3.8-4 tests per 1000 population per day at a 7-day average.”We are seeing increasing cases reported in the Western Division with evidence of widespread community transmission in that division.”We are also recording increasing numbers of people with severe disease and deaths in the West.”The World Health Organisation (WHO) test threshold is five percent.Dr Fong urged the people to continue to adhere to covid-19 safety protocols and restrictions put in place.
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