Barnaby Joyce has blasted Michael McCormack out to seize back his old job of Nationals leader.
Joyce’s win, which automatically makes him deputy prime minister, has major implications and challenges for Scott Morrison, who had been hoping the more malleable McCormack would survive.
Joyce is a hardliner on issues such as climate change and coal. On a very different front, he recently declared the Bileola Tamil family should be allowed return to the town.
He is a formidable retail politician and will seek to strongly differentiate the Nationals from the Liberals in the run up to the election.
He may also want to renegotiate with Morrison the detail of the Coalition agreement. He has to deal with Morrison, who is in isolation after his trip, remotely.
As Joyce takes over the Nationals in parliament, Morrison this week will be handling question time via videolink.
David Littleproud remains as deputy Nationals leader. What changes Joyce will make to the Nationals ministerial line up are yet to be revealed.
But their Senate leader, Bridget McKenzie, who was forced out of cabinet at Morrison’s insistence after the sports rorts affair, appears likely to be brought back. Matt Canavan, a former resources minister, said ahead of the vote he was not seeking to return to the frontbench.
At Monday morning’s Nationals party room meeting, the spill was moved by Canavan, a Joyce loyalist, and David Gillespie, a backbencher from NSW.
There had been constant criticism among Nationals of McCormack’s performance, with many of them feeling he did not stand up to Morrison firmly enough.
Feeling against McCormack has intensified since the budget, when discontented Nationals believed the minor party had not received proper acknowledgement, particularly in the government’s infrastructure announcements.
Some Nationals have become particularly concerned at Morrison’s slow but steady move towards embracing a “net zero 2050” target. Nationals Resources Minister Keith Pitt and McKenzie both came out publicly last week declaring this was not the Nationals policy.
The Nationals were also dismayed by McCormack’s embarrassing performances in parliament when acting prime minister last week.
Joyce became deputy prime minister in February 2016 after Warren Truss resigned. He quit as leader in February 2018, amid a scandal over his extra-marital affair with his now partner Vikki Campion, and a claim of sexual harassment, which he denied.
In 2017 he had to fight a byelection for his seat of New England after he was disqualified by the High Court during the dual citizenship crisis. He had been a dual New Zealand citizen and so ineligible to be a candidate at the 2016 election, the court found.
Asked on radio before the vote whether he was happy with McCormack’s performance as Nationals leader, Morrison said, “Absolutely. I’ve got a wonderful partnership with Michael. We’ve worked very closely together and provided great, stable leadership for Australia”.
McCormack said after the vote that it had been a privilege to serve and this was what democracy looked like.
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.
A job – any job – is generally thought of as better than no job at all. Consequently, low-paid work is often considered a “stepping stone” to a higher-paid job. But how easily do low-paid workers climb up the pay scale, really?
Our new research suggests past studies may have considerably overstated the chances of moving from low to higher pay. This has significant implications for understanding labour market behaviour.
Given the NZ$3.3 billion increase in welfare payments announced in New Zealand’s recent budget – dubbed the “biggest lift in a generation” – and the ongoing focus on inequality and minimum wage rates, how we measure income mobility is increasingly important.
In particular, what are some of the characteristics of the low-paid workforce? How likely or unlikely is it that an individual can transition from low to higher pay?
Past research has described low-paid work as a stepping stone if there is a greater chance of moving to higher pay relative to someone who is unemployed.
Furthermore, the data have suggested relatively high likelihoods of making the transition from low to higher pay — estimates range from 47% to nearly 90%, based on studies from the UK, Australia and Germany.
However, this research has mostly had to rely on survey data based on individual responses to an annual set of questions. This means we can only observe a snapshot of any given labour market once a year.
When determining whether an individual is unemployed, low paid or higher paid, a lot of information between those annual surveys falls into the unknown.
What traditional research misses
Why does this matter? It helps to imagine three different individuals, with different labour market experiences, answering a survey about their employment status in October 2019 and again in October 2020:
one was low paid in the first survey and remained in low pay every month until the second survey
the second oscillated between low and higher pay between surveys but happened to be in low pay at each survey point
the third regularly moves between low pay and unemployment but is also in low pay at the time of each survey.
Because of the lack of information between survey time points, all three individuals will fall into the same category. In turn, this may influence estimates of movement out of low pay.
First, we mimicked conventional earlier research by looking at the labour market from only one month each year. Through this lens, New Zealand looks similar to Australia, with the probability of moving from low pay to higher pay estimated to be 74%.
When we use the detailed monthly income records, however, it is clear the picture is not as rosy. Most importantly, the likelihood of moving from low pay to higher pay is much lower than traditional methods suggest.
In fact, for those who have been in low-paid work for all of the prior 12 months, we found the likelihood of them moving into higher pay in the following month was only 28%. Being continuously in low-paid work, it seems, means it isn’t easy to climb out.
A limited stepping stone
On the other hand, our research confirms the stepping-stone effect does exist in the New Zealand labour market: compared to being unemployed, you’re more likely to move into higher pay from being low paid.
Specifically, someone unemployed for the previous 12 months has only a 1% probability of moving into higher pay in the next month. That compares to 28% for those in low-paid employment for all of the previous 12 months.
Moving from low-paid work to better pay may be difficult, but moving from an unemployment benefit to higher pay is even less likely. GettyImages
Overall, our research highlights the value of detailed, high-frequency, integrated data in assessing the nuances in the labour market landscape.
On top of that, it illustrates the real difficulty in climbing the wage ladder for those in long-term low-paid work. This suggests policymakers should focus on pathways to wage growth, as well as on job creation itself.
Gail Pacheco is a Commissioner at the NZ Productivity Commission
Alexander Plum and Kabir Dasgupta 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.
Australia’s top economists overwhelmingly back government measures to speed the transition to electric cars in order to meet emission reduction targets.
An exclusive poll of 62 of Australia’s preeminent economists — selected by their peers — finds 51 back measures to boost the take-up of electric cars including subsidising public charging stations, subsidising the purchase of all-electric vehicles, and setting a date to ban the import of traditionally-powered cars.
Only 11 oppose such measures, three of them because they prefer a carbon tax.
Six of the 51 who supported special measures said they did so reluctantly, as their preferred alternative would be a carbon price or a carbon tax, rather than subsidising “one alternative out of many to reduce emissions”.
Cars account for roughly half of Australia’s transport emissions, making them about 8% of Australia’s total emissions.
Yet Australia’s take-up of electric vehicles is dwarfed by the rest of the world.
On one measure, all-electric cars accounted for just 0.7% of new car sales in Australia in 2020 compared to 5% in China and 3.5% in the European Union.
Australia has no domestic car industry to protect, meaning industry policy concerns needn’t hold back the transition.
Norway plans to outlaw new petrol car sales from 2025; Denmark, the Netherlands, Ireland and Israel from 2030; and California and Britain from 2035.
Asked whether Australia should take action to speed the transition, eight in ten of the 62 economists selected by the Economic Society said it should.
Economic Society of Australia/The Conversation, CC BY-ND
The results represent a departure for a profession whose usual advice is to avoid interfering with markets.
One participant, University of NSW professor Gigi Foster said an important question needed to be answered in order to justify government intervention: “what is the market failure here?”
The market failure was pollution, imposing costs on the community beyond the drivers of conventionally-powered cars and on the planet by pushing up global temperatures.
Broad support: subsidies for charging points
If it wasn’t to be dealt with by a carbon price, measures that sped up the switchover to electric vehicles could achieve some of the same effect.
By far the most popular measure of six presented to the panellists who supported government action was subsidising public charging points, backed by 84%.
The next most popular was removing the luxury car tax from electric-only vehicles. At present the 35% tax applies to cars valued at more than $69,152, and $79,659 for fuel-efficient vehicles.
43% supported making charging points compulsory in new homes and new car parks. 39% supported setting a date to ban the import of petrol and diesel cars.
Matthew Butlin, who chairs South Australia’s Productivity Commission, noted that much of Australia was not urban and unlikely to be served by charging points for some time.
Without government measures to speed the installation of remote charging stations, many buyers would be reluctant to go electric, even if most of their driving was in cities.
When they were in place, there would be a good case for banning the import of petrol and diesel vehicles, but not until then.
Others wanted to hold off on banning the import of conventionally-powered cars until Australia had a lower-emissions mix of electricity.
Macquarie University’s Lisa Magnani said that with three quarters of Australia’s electricity generated from coal, electric vehicles created considerable emissions.
The Grattan Institute’s Danielle Wood disagreed, saying “network effects” built a case for switching over early.
Network effects build on themselves
The more people switched, the more charging stations would be built and the lower electric vehicle prices would drop, driving more people to switch, and increasing the benefits of decarbonising the electricity supply.
The sooner Australia swapped over, the easier it would be to get to net zero emissions by 2050 without the need for a “cash for clunkers” style scheme to buy back polluting vehicles.
Setting 2035 as the date for banning imports of petrol-powered cars as recommended this year by the International Energy Agency would give buyers time to adjust while the charging infrastructure developed.
Tax specialist John Freebairn said electric cars were already heavily subsidised by escaping the fuel excise used to fund roads, despite the efforts of some states to plug the gap.
Sydney University economist Stefanie Schurer argued on the other hand bulky and polluting sport utility vehicles were effectively subsidised because of the tax benefits they attracted when used for work.
Former Liberal Party leader John Hewson who heads the Crawford School of Public Policy said smoothing the transition had become urgent.
Smooth transition now “urgent”
It took only ten years from 1903-13 for the United States to switch from horse-drawn to petrol-driven vehicles, and technology take-up was quicker today, particularly in Australia.
Other economists surveyed noted that there was much that could be done to reduce harmful emissions in addition to going electric.
Sue Richardson said Australia should impose serious limits on the tailpipe emissions of new cars. Australia is unusual among developed nations in not having such a limit, making it a favoured market for high-emission cars.
Rana Roy said a better approach would be to limit transport itself through remote working and efforts to encourage walking and cycling. Subsidies for electric cars could send such moves backwards.
When responses to the survey were weighted by the confidence respondents had in them on a scale of 1 to 10, support of special measures to drive the transition remained about as strong, backed by eight in ten of the economists surveyed.
Economic Society of Australia/The Conversation, CC BY-ND
Detailed responses:
Peter Martin 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.
Have you ever chatted with a friend about buying a certain item and been targeted with an ad for that same item the next day? If so, you may have wondered whether your smartphone was “listening” to you.
But is it really? Well, it’s no coincidence the item you’d been interested in was the same one you were targeted with.
But that doesn’t mean your device is actually listening to your conversations — it doesn’t need to. There’s a good chance you’re already giving it all the information it needs.
Can phones hear?
Most of us regularly disclose our information to a wide range of websites and apps. We do this when we grant them certain permissions, or allow “cookies” to track our online activities.
So-called “first-party cookies” allow websites to “remember” certain details about our interaction with the site. For instance, login cookies let you save your login details so you don’t have to re-enter them each time.
Third-party cookies, however, are created by domains that are external to the site you’re visiting. The third party will often be a marketing company in a partnership with the first-party website or app.
The latter will host the marketer’s ads and grant it access to data it collects from you (which you will have given it permission to do — perhaps by clicking on some innocuous looking popup).
As such, the advertiser can build a picture of your life: your routines, wants and needs. These companies constantly seek to gauge the popularity of their products and how this varies based on factors such as a customer’s age, gender, height, weight, job and hobbies.
By classifying and clustering this information, advertisers improve their recommendation algorithms, using something called recommender systemsto target the right customers with the right ads.
Computers work behind the scenes
There are several machine-learning techniques in artificial intelligence (AI) that help systems filter and analyse your data, such as data clustering, classification, association and reinforcement learning (RL).
An RL agent can train itself based on feedback gained from user interactions, akin to how a young child will learn to repeat an action if it leads to a reward.
By viewing or pressing “like” on a social media post, you send a reward signal to an RL agent confirming you’re attracted to the post — or perhaps interested in the person who posted it. Either way, a message is sent to the RL agent about your personal interests and preferences.
If you start actively liking posts about “mindfulness” on a social platform, its system will learn to send you advertisements for companies that can offer related products and content.
Ad recommendations may be based on other data, too, including but not limited to:
other ads you clicked on through the platform
personal details you provided the platform (such as your age, email address, gender, location and which devices you access the platform on)
information shared with the platform by other advertisers or marketing partners that already have you as a customer
specific pages or groups you have joined or “liked” on the platform.
In fact, AI algorithms can help marketers take huge pools of data and use them to construct your entire social network, ranking people around you based on how much you “care about” (interact with) them.
They can then start to target you with ads based on not only your own data, but on data collected from your friends and family members using the same platforms as you.
For example, Facebook might be able to recommend you something your friend recently bought. It didn’t need to “listen” to a conversation between you and your friend to do this.
Exercising your right to privacy is a choice
While app providers are supposed to provide clear terms and conditions to users about how they collect, store and use data, nowadays it’s on users to be careful about which permissions they give to the apps and sites they use.
When in doubt, give permissions on an as-needed basis. It makes sense to give WhatsApp access to your camera and microphone, as it can’t provide some of its services without this. But not all apps and services will ask for only what is necessary.
Perhaps you don’t mind receiving targeted ads based on your data, and may find it appealing. Research has shown people with a more “utilitarian” (or practical) worldview actually prefer recommendations from AI to those from humans.
That said, it’s possible AI recommendations can constrain people’s choices and minimise serendipity in the long term. By presenting consumers with algorithmically curated choices of what to watch, read and stream, companies may be implicitly keeping our tastes and lifestyle within a narrower frame.
Don’t want to be predicted? Don’t be predictable
There are some simple tips you can follow to limit the amount of data you share online. First, you should review your phone’s app permissions regularly.
Also, think twice before an app or website asks you for certain permissions, or to allow cookies. Wherever possible, avoid using your social media accounts to connect or log in to other sites and services. In most cases there will be an option to sign up via email, which could even be a burner email.
Once you do start the sign-in process, remember you only have to share as much information as is needed. And if you’re sensitive about privacy, perhaps consider installing a virtual private network (VPN) on your device. This will mask your IP address and encrypt your online activities.
Try it yourself
If you still think your phone is listening to you, there’s a simple experiment you can try.
Go to your phone’s settings and restrict access to your microphone for all your apps. Pick a product you know you haven’t searched for in any of your devices and talk about it out loud at some length with another person.
Make sure you repeat this process a few times. If you still don’t get any targeted ads within the next few day, this suggests your phone isn’t really “listening” to you.
It has other ways of finding out what’s on your mind.
Dana Rezazadegan is affiliated with Swinburne University of Technology. She is Superstar of STEM at Science and Technology Australia and Honorary fellow at Macquarie University.
Though the official vote won’t happen until next month, Brisbane has already unofficially been awarded the hosting of the 2032 Summer Olympics.
This is potentially a great opportunity for Brisbane, Queensland and Australia. It will also be a catalyst to speed up long-term planning agendas for the fast-growing South East Queensland (SEQ) region.
In the past, Olympic Games have resulted in soaring budgets — Tokyo’s US$15.4 billion budget being the latest example — and infrastructure that has lain unused after the 16-day event is over. This has led to justified criticism the Olympics are not the jewel in the crown they were once considered.
For many past host cities, the games have not been a boon, but a drag. Greeks, for instance, have questioned how their country benefited from hosting the 2004 Summer Olympics, which left the country in crippling debt and with many venues abandoned and in disrepair. As these photos show, they are hardly the only ones.
So, what will make Brisbane 2032 different?
The Olympic swimming pool and velodrome of the Athens Olympic complex, 10 years after the games. Thanassis Stavrakis/AP
Temporary venues and a more dispersed games
First, the International Olympic Committee has introduced a more flexible and efficient approach to hosting, which it calls the “new norm”.
In short, this means host cities will need fewer new venues, a smaller athletes’ village and less Olympics-specific infrastructure overall. Temporary, flexible venues will be allowed for the first time, and venues can be shared by multiple sports. Athletes will also fly in just for their competitions and leave when they are over.
Unlike host cities in the past, these Olympics will not be the sole reason for new development projects. Instead, they will be the catalyst for bringing forward current infrastructure and urban development plans. Around $400 million in road network improvements and $23 million in transport upgrades, for example, will be fast-tracked thanks to the successful Olympics bid.
This mirrors the oft-cited “Barcelona model”, based on the Spanish city’s use of the 1992 Olympics to underpin a long-term, city-wide improvement plan. Studies argue such “event-themed” regeneration is linked with more positive legacy outcomes.
Third, the 2032 Games will be the first to represent a regionally spread-out hub-and-spoke model. This model aims to disperse the benefits of hosting beyond Brisbane, with permanent venues planned across the SEQ region, including the Gold and Sunshine Coasts, Redland Bay, Ipswich, Toowoomba and the Scenic Rim.
The master plan for Olympic venue placement and construction. 2032 SEQ Olympic and Paralympic Feasibility Study
These dispersed venues will be legacy project. An example is the Albion Precinct, where a proposed new stadium could be built to host the athletics in conjunction with existing plans for a food and lifestyle hub. There will also be temporary facilities to host training camps and preliminary events.
One of the main challenges for the Olympic organisers and governments at all levels will be delivering on major, costly transport infrastructure. This will be needed to link the various event sites and transport visitors, athletes and their support crews, and the media without a glitch.
An early feasibility study suggested the hub-and-spoke model would allow for a 45-minute travel region, with every venue within 45 minutes of Brisbane. The current projected costs for the SEQ portion of the rail link are A$5.3 billion (US$4 billion), although the proposal will need some rethinking as it has been rejected by Infrastructure Australia as being too costly.
Long-term social and environmental planning
Lastly, the social and environmental aspects of hosting the Olympics are front and centre of the Brisbane bid. Research by KPMG and The University of Queensland shows a projected economic and social benefit of $17.61 billion for Australia overall and $8.1 billion for Queensland alone.
The “social benefits” are measured in a variety of ways. For residents, the prestige of hosting the games and resulting civic pride should lead to enhanced community spirit. The Olympics can also be used to boost people’s health and well-being by encouraging increased participation in physical activity. This could lead to a lower risk of chronic disease and improved mental health.
Finally, the benefits of volunteering, both for the volunteers themselves and the wider community, are well documented. Volunteer numbers in Australia have been in decline since COVID hit.
With regard to the environment, the Olympics are often associated with a large carbon footprint. Brisbane’s bid document, however, highlights long-term measures to reduce waste and pollution. These include Queensland’s plastic pollution reduction plan, as well as the expanded use of public transport to reduce traffic congestion and emissions.
Training begins for Tokyo Olympic volunteers this month. KYDPL KYODO/AP
Why legacy planning matters
However, none of this happens without significant advance planning. Intangible legacy planning, such as promoting sports to the public and volunteer participation, needs specific attention and should begin as soon as hosting rights are awarded.
Legacy planning should also come under the remit of a distinct body from the Olympic organising committee. This is needed so that legacy planning is not subsumed by the immediate work of event planning and delivery.
Additionally, the Olympic organising committees typically disband soon after the games and the staff move on to other (often international) events. The legacy body and its budget need to continue to deliver long after the event concludes.
Such a model has yet to be widely adopted by host cities. London 2012 was widely recognised as the first Olympic Games of the so-called “legacy era”. However, it was criticised for leaving its legacy planning too late to be fully effective.
The 2032 Brisbane Games have the opportunity to showcase a new and improved model of Olympic hosting. The new “Brisbane model” for Olympic hosting could be one the IOC and future host cities will praise and seek to replicate.
Kirsten Holmes receives funding from The Olympic Studies Centre Advanced Olympic Research Grant Program.
Judith Mair receives funding from The Olympic Studies Centre Advanced Olympic Research Grant Program.
Leonie Lockstone-Binney receives funding from The Olympic Studies Centre Advanced Olympic Research Grant Program.
When we were hanging out for a COVID-19 vaccine in 2020, it was a bit like a horse race. We asked ourselves which vaccine would get over the line to win, and how quickly. Then, as multiple vaccines began reporting results from clinical trials, the race turned to which could offer superior efficacy and safety.
Flash forward to 2021, with multiple safe and effective vaccines approved, parts of the globe are experiencing “brand tribalism”. Which brand of vaccine you want, or can get, has become a hot issue.
In Britain, the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine invokes patriotism as well as warm feelings about its not-for-profit roots, even as some consumers prefer the “fancier” Pfizer vaccine.
In Hungary, fraught cold war politics have resurfaced as consumers can be vaccinated with one developed in the East or West.
In Australia, we’ve seen something different. Since the move away from the AstraZeneca vaccine for people under 50 announced in April, brand preferences became about safety rather than efficacy.
However, data from our research currently under peer-review and reports from elsewhere show younger and ineligible people are still stumping up to try and get vaccinated with whatever vaccine they can get.
The public isn’t so tuned in to flu vaccine brands
Having numerous brands of a particular vaccine is not new. Every year, multiple brands of influenza vaccines are used across various age groups.
One of us (Carlson) has been interviewing people about influenza vaccination for over five years, and no participant has told her they prefer a specific brand.
Things are different with COVID-19 vaccines, as people are increasingly aware of the different brands available to them and others. Through our Coronavax project, we are continually hearing brand names mentioned.
Yet some participants challenge the focus on brands. Alma*, a 50-year-old doctor, told us:
No one normally cares what brand of vaccine you get! With the flu vaccination […] people don’t start quizzing me on “what brand is this one?”
Other participants, such as 71-year-old Frank*, were critical of the emphasis on brands. When asked his opinion on under 50s receiving Pfizer and over 50s receiving AstraZeneca, he turned the tables. He asked his interviewer (McKenzie) if she had received her flu vaccination this year (she had) and whether she knew which brand she had received (she did not).
Others expressed some brand preferences, and all were very aware of the different brands.
The difference with flu vaccines, we hypothesise, is that although health-care providers are told about the different influenza vaccine brands so they can safely vaccinate people with the age-appropriate vaccine, the brands themselves are never front page news.
Flu vaccine brands are only ever sold to consumers as “the” flu vaccine. But COVID-19 vaccine brands feel like a buffet in which consumers don’t actually have much choice.
International examples of COVID vaccine “teams” and people sharing their vaccine allegiances don’t directly translate to Australia. That’s because here, brand availability cannot be divorced from systemic and vaccine supply problems, such as not having enough of the appropriate vaccines for the specific age groups requiring them.
So in Australia, we don’t see brand tribalism as a fun expression of identity that can help orient everyone towards vaccinating.
Rather, brand preferences in Australia have developed through changing vaccine recommendations, and positive or negative news coverage.
In this imperfect scenario, governments need to keep backing the available vaccines that people can safely receive according to their age and risk profile, not encouraging people to wait for new ones.
One of the few benefits in the brand “team” wars is Australians are generally more aware of the science behind the development and safety of vaccines.
Most people we interviewed had recently learnt more about the science of vaccination. And most planned on being vaccinated with what was available to them, when it was (easily) available.
We hope this improved scientific literacy can help people appreciate the expertise that goes into creating vaccines, as well as the work of people like us who study their rollout, acceptance and uptake.
However, brand preference tribalism isn’t going to help Australia get vaccinated. Our unique situation of (necessary) directives about specific vaccine brands for different ages, our low rates of disease, and the increasing cut-off age for the AstraZeneca vaccine announced recently have contributed to a broken roll-out strategy.
The conversations we need to keep having about brands are difficult ones. We are on quicksand and science keeps evolving. The most important message isn’t about which team is better. It’s about having a responsive system that cares about people. It changes things up when it needs to, however challenging that makes our vaccine rollout.
The best thing we can do is to tone down the brand narrative within the significant constraints we face. All COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective, and if the disease profile of our country changes, then the recommendations about who should have which vaccine may change again. All COVID-19 vaccines protect and benefit individuals and communities.
Most importantly, all Australians benefit when we can safely reopen to the world and to our local businesses and communities. Without painful lockdowns, vaccines are all we have to look after ourselves and each other. We’re on that team.
*All names of research participants are pseudonyms.
Katie Attwell receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the WA Department of Health. She is currently funded by ARC Discovery Early Career Researcher Award DE1901000158. She is a member of a government advisory committee, the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI) COVID-19 Working Group. She is a specialist advisor to the Therapeutic Goods Administration. All views presented in this article are her own and not representative of any other organisation.
Lara McKenzie receives funding from the WA Department of Health. All views presented in this article are her own and not representative of any other organisation.
Samantha Carlson receives funding from the WA Department of Health. All views presented in this article are her own and not representative of any other organisation.
Wild elephants are awe-inspiring — even if they’re trying to kill you, as I discovered in 2004.
At the time I was studying how poachers and loggers threaten native mammals in Africa’s Congo Basin. I was sneaking up on a herd of forest elephants when they suddenly charged, rushing at me like enraged, out-of-control bulldozers. With the angry animals hot on my heels, I barely escaped by diving into a tangle of vines, shuddering with fear but oddly enthralled by it all, too.
Many residents of southern China must be feeling similarly. A herd of 15 Asian elephants, led by adult females, departed last year from Xishuangbanna National Nature Reserve, near China’s border with Myanmar and Laos. Since then they’ve travelled about 500 kilometres northward, and are now approaching the bustling city of Kunming and its seven million inhabitants.
No one knows exactly where the elephants are going, or why. But two things are clear: the elephants were probably struggling to survive in their native habitat, and Chinese efforts to save the elephants clash with the nation’s aggressive strategies of investment and global development.
Hope for the homeless
As I’ve seen elsewhere, in Africa and Southeast Asia, hungry wild elephants can severely damage human crops, flattening gardens and orchards in their quest for a free meal.
During their sojourn in China, the behemoths — which can weigh over five tonnes as adults (more than three cars) — have indeed been helping themselves to farmers’ crops and anything else they deem edible from local villages and townships. In fact, they’ve caused more than US$1 million in damage to crops so far.
This whole journey has captured the imagination of millions of Chinese citizens, with state broadcaster CCTV carrying a 24-hour live feed of the spectacle.
At first blush, this sounds like a scenario that could go very badly for the elephants. When pachyderms and people collide, elephants usually lose.
But hope remains for the wandering herd. Asian elephants are a legally protected species in China.
Hundreds of police officers assisted by drones have been monitoring the intrepid animals, while wildlife officials are trying to steer them away from populated areas with food baits and roadblocks involving hundreds of trucks. So far, some 3,500 people have been evacuated temporarily to clear a path for the elephants.
Missing the big picture
Such efforts are laudable but misplaced. They address only the symptoms of environmental stress (displaced elephants) but not the “diseases” afflicting elephants in China and beyond.
Firstly, the wandering elephants may well have been forced to move because their home in southern China has been devastated by human development.
Even 15 years ago, when I first visited the Xishuangbanna region, the native rainforests there were being devastated, especially by clearing for exotic rubber-tree plantations.
In southern China, most native rainforests have been felled for crops such as rubber-tree plantations, as shown here in the Xishuangbanna region. William Laurance
Secondly, even with government efforts since 2018 to ban domestic ivory trading, illegal ivory is still being consumed at a terrifying rate.
This bloody trade is one of the main drivers of elephant poaching in Asia and Africa. Chinese citizens working overseas have been widely implicated in wildlife smuggling activities, including illegal ivory.
In Latin America, for example, entrepreneurs and workers from China are causing a dramatic increase in illegal poaching of jaguars, the teeth and body parts of which are being used to produce certain traditional Chinese “medicines”.
China-funded road-construction project in the Congo Basin. William Laurance
Take-home lessons
What can we learn from China’s wandering elephants? At the outset, it’s clear many people, in China and beyond, are motivated far more easily by large, charismatic animals such as elephants than they are by rather nebulous concepts like ecosystem loss and degradation.
So, as we seek environmental sustainability in our densely populated world, we need to tell more evocative stories that inspire hope and capture the popular imagination.
China’s wandering elephants also show us nature often needs large expanses of habitat to survive.
The potential habitat for elephants in China has been severely reduced and fragmented, and now totals less than 250,000 hectares overall in the critical Xishuangbanna region.
Globally, scores of large-bodied species such as elephants and apex predators such as tigers are in big trouble because of the fatal one-two punch of habitat destruction and human persecution. To sustain these iconic species, we urgently need to conserve Earth’s remaining large ecosystems.
Further, China’s homeless elephants could give us a glimpse into the future. On a planet where most native ecosystems are being sliced and diced to meet humanity’s needs, and where the climate is changing apace, wild animals like the Chinese elephants may increasingly need to pull up roots and move to new territories.
A forest elephant killed by poachers in the Republic of Congo. The animal’s face was hacked off with machetes to remove its valuable ivory tusks. William Laurance
At great expense and effort, China is attempting to save its beleaguered band of elephants as they search for a new home.
But as the nation responsible for more habitat destruction, wildlife poaching and greenhouse-gas emissions than any other, China bears a special responsibility to promote sustainable development — not just inside China but overseas as well.
Let’s applaud China’s efforts to save its wandering elephants while we bear in mind that, as a nation and economic superpower, it has far more left to do to ensure our planet remains liveable for vulnerable wildlife — and for us too.
Bill Laurance receives funding from the Australian Research Council and other scientific and philanthropic organisations. He is the director of the Centre for Tropical Environmental and Sustainability Science at James Cook University and founder and director of ALERT–the Alliance of Leading Environmental Researchers & Thinkers.
We have seen a succession of reviews, plans and election promises of faster and better train services for regional New South Wales, home to one third of the state’s population, in recent years. Yet little had been heard from the state government on track works to allow new trains to travel faster until April 29 this year. This was when Premier Gladys Berejiklian told a Sydney conference that serious regional development will need faster rail (trains moving at 150-200km/h on upgraded track with some straightening of track) and fast rail (speeds of 200-250km/h on new dedicated track).
The promised outcomes include Sydney to Newcastle by rail in an hour rather than two-and-a-half hours, 25 minutes taken off Sydney-Wollongong and Sydney-Gosford train trips and travel between Sydney and Goulburn in under an hour instead of two-and-a-half hours for express trains. Details are still awaited on which lines will take priority and the scope of this work.
These developments have been years in the making. In late 2018, the NSW government announced international expert Andrew McNaughton would advise the government how best to deliver a fast rail network to connect Sydney to regional centres. Four lines were identified:
This followed a 20-Year Economic Vision for Regional NSW (recently refreshed), which included a commitment to “make regional travel faster, easier and safer between and within regional centres, and to metropolitan areas”.
Transport for NSW also released a Greater Newcastle Future Transport Plan in 2018. The plan outlined track work to enable trains to travel at higher speeds (with new ones now being delivered). This work included “reducing track curvature, deviations and realignments, removal of level crossings, junction rearrangement and better segregation of passenger and freight services”.
In the lead-up to the March 2019 NSW election, funding was announced for a limited suite of track upgrades on the four main lines linking Sydney to regional NSW. The government also raised expectations of a new line from Eden to Cooma and the reinstatement of the line from Cooma to Canberra.
A NSW government video outlining the promise of fast rail in late 2018.
Much slow running of regional trains on each of the four main lines from Sydney is on sections of track that, about 100 years ago, were reconstructed with less steep climbs than 19th-century track. This allowed steam locomotives to handle heavier loads, but came at the expense of extra length and more curves.
Such track now slows down modern electric and diesel trains. The table below shows the extent of the problem in NSW. It also shows indicative time savings from reverting to straighter track alignments (found in most cases by simulation work by my co-researcher, Max Michell).
Table: The Conversation. Data: Author provided, CC BY
Other states acted decades ago
Following track-straightening works between Brisbane and Cairns for faster and heavier freight trains, in 1998 Queensland Rail introduced a tilt train operating at speeds of up to 170km/h between Brisbane and Rockhampton. The train was well received and by 2002 had carried 1 million passengers.
In 2004, new Prospector diesel rail cars were introduced to allow Perth-Kalgoorlie services to operate up to 160km/h with an average of 100km/h.
Victoria’s Regional Fast Rail Project was mostly completed by 2006. Following track upgrades on four lines to Bendigo, Ballarat (with deviations to improve train times), Geelong and Gippsland, new V/Locity trains travel at 160km/h. Within five years, patronage on these services had doubled.
Victoria has followed up with two further extensive track upgrading programs, each with significant federal funding. The first was Regional Rail Link (2009-15). Currently, at a cost of over A$4 billion, Regional Rail Revival is upgrading every regional line in the state.
Sydney-Canberra train services are too few and too slow. High-speed rail options with trains capable of 250km/h or more on dedicated track for Sydney to Canberra, and beyond, have been studied extensively since 1984. In 1998, SpeedRail received in-principle support from the Howard government but that did not extend to financial support.
The uptake of bus travel – one operator offers a service on the hour for 12 hours a day – suggests more and faster train services would be well received.
In 2020, Infrastructure Australia listed an upgrade of this rail link as a “priority initiative”.
The train service linking Australia’s largest city with the national capital has been taken to task by many commentators. It was recently well described as a “national disgrace”. By way of contrast, New York to Washington DC has many more trains, which are much faster than buses.
The slow rail service between Sydney and Canberra has been dubbed a ‘national disgrace’. Shutterstock
Back to New South Wales
NSW has a A$107 billion “infastructure pipeline”. However, on a population basis, Sydney with its metros and motorways is getting much more than its fair share. Regional NSW is getting left behind.
The imbalance is increasing. The late 2020 budget allocated billions for the Sydney West Metro and preconstruction work on the dubious Western Harbour Tunnel project.
Many NSW regional communities increasingly consider that their major party MPs haven’t had their best interests at heart. This is one reason for the election in 2019 of four lower house members from minor parties plus one independent. In the recent Upper Hunter byelection, the combined primary vote for the ALP and the Nationals was just over 50%.
Serious track work is now needed to lift NSW regional train speeds to those enjoyed in other states. As the Illawarra Rail Fail group sang in this YouTube video, regional NSW needs more trains and faster travel times to get us on our way.
The Illawarra Rail Fail group has been campaigning for years for better services to the south coast.
Philip Laird owns shares in some transport companies and has received funding from the two rail-related CRCs as well as the ARC. He is affiliated, inter alia, with Action for Public Transport (NSW), the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport, the Railway Technical Society of Australasia and the Rail Futures Institute. The opinions expressed are those of the author.
For cinephiles, one of the greatest blows of the initial COVID lockdown was the closure of cinemas. While we all quickly shifted to the smaller screen in our lounge rooms it just didn’t feel the same. There is something magical about sitting in that darkened room, nestled into those oversized chairs, sharing the 50-foot wide experience with the scent of overly salty popcorn in the air.
For many of us, the cinema is our church.
Thankfully, during 2021 Australian cinemas have gradually reopened their doors. What started as a trickle of audiences has now turned into a flood with many cinemas now reporting high attendances.
But what of the films themselves?
Producers and distributors were wary to release their $100 million+ films to less than full capacity cinemas, and many major blockbusters still haven’t been released.
But with cinemas open — and with an almost two-year backlog of big budget and quality international films to be screened — what can we expect in the second half of this year?
We’ve had the cinema famine, now expect the feast.
The action (sequel)
For those needing their superhero fix, there is plenty in store, including the sequel to 2016’s Suicide Squad, the creatively named The Suicide Squad (out in August) which sees the return of Harley Quinn and a new band of super-crazy-super-villains trying to, once again, save the world.
Mel Gibson was one of many directors touted to write and direct before James Gunn eventually got the nod, after previous success in this genre with Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.2 and The Belko Experiment. The first film was massively over-hyped and didn’t live up to expectations, even though it killed at the box office.
Hopefully, Gunn will not disappoint the demanding fan base.
As an avid Wes Anderson fan, I am very excited about his latest outing The French Dispatch, out in October. It’s his usual A-team ensemble cast of Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton, Frances McDormand, Adrien Brody and Owen Wilson but with a few new faces.
The premise is about a bunch of quirky journalists coming together to publish a magazine where the stories come to life, but in true Anderson style it will surely prove to be much more than that. Full of the auteur’s saturated colours and geometrically balanced set pieces against a French backdrop, what’s not to love?
Australia on the silver screen
Also slated for October is The Drover’s Wife: The Legend of Molly Johnson, following a pioneering woman and her four children eking out an existence in the bush.
Leah Purcell adapted Henry Lawson’s 1892 short story into an award-winning play in 2016, and then an acclaimed book in 2019. She will now write, direct and star in the film which will add an Indigenous woman’s perspective to the recent slate of great Australian Westerns dealing with the racial politics of colonial Australia.
Big, bigger, biggest
The four biggest holdovers have sent the internet movie chat rooms into a hot slather.
The new Bond thriller, No Time To Die, sees Daniel Craig in his last outing as the debonair yet ruthless secret agent. Its release has been announced numerous times since and then put back again and again. It’s been scheduled for an October release. Fingers crossed it comes off.
The new Ghostbusters movie, Ghostbusters: Afterlife will be out in December, with the original cast reunited again for the first time since 1989’s (not so good) Ghostbusters II.
The first Ghostbusters is such a nostalgic favourite, even if this film is the limpest lettuce of a film out there no-one will care. We’ve waited 30 years for this — and a comedy with Murray and Ackroyd in the lead is something that’s desperately needed in these dark days.
Denis Villeneuve’s Dune has been hotly anticipated since it was revealed he was set to direct back in 2016. A lot rides on this production. There have been at least a half dozen abortive attempts to get a new version onto the big screen in the past 35 years since David Lynch’s widely disparaged 1984 adaptation.
But producers are confident Villeneuve has got the mix right this time — the rest of us will find out in October.
Down the rabbit hole
Towering over all these films is the monolith that is The Matrix 4.
The original trilogy earned over US$1.6 billion (A$2.1 billion) at the global box office and the fan base of the franchise has never dissipated. Storylines and production images have been kept under tight security but, considering main characters Neo and Trinity died in the last instalment and are back for this one, it may be more of a prequel than a sequel.
This could well be the biggest film of the year, and it’s out just a few days before Christmas.
Overall, we can expect a range of excellent films appearing before us over the next six months as they release the stopper on the film bottle that was 2020. It’s time to cry “Hallelujah!” and see you in church.
Daryl Sparkes does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
The Nationals are in fresh chaos, with Michael McCormack’s leadership under intense pressure, as the party meets on Monday at the start of parliament’s last week before the winter recess.
Amid speculation about a possible challenge during what’s often dubbed the “killing season” for leaders, some Nationals sources on Sunday claimed former deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce had majority support, after the defection of one McCormack supporter.
Former resources minister Matt Canavan, a strong Joyce supporter and blunt critic of McCormack, had a mixed message.
“My view is well known – the Nationals have an identity crisis because Michael has failed to deliver a clear vision,” Canavan said.
“Barnaby has mapped out such a vision and can again for the party. But I don’t think the numbers are there for him and I am just one vote. Still some of the commentary is taking on a self fulfilling character so maybe something will happen.”
McCormack told the ABC no one had told him a spill move was likely: “I’ve got no-one having called me and said, ‘It’s on.’ I have had no-one say to me, ‘There is a spill afoot.’”
He said in a weekend statement:
“I am focused as always on helping Australians to recover from the pandemic, rebuilding after the Victorian floods and the growth of regional Australia. If others within government think that they should be talking about themselves and their ambitions at this difficult and challenging time then that’s a matter for them. I’m concentrating on the issues that matter to ordinary, everyday Australians.”
Joyce told The Australian “I am not going to call a spill tomorrow.”
In a party of 21, it is proving hard for those assessing numbers to be sure of them, not least because they don’t trust all their colleagues.
There is a school of thought in the party that the speculation about an imminent leadership challenge was started as an anti-Joyce move.
McCormack came under renewed criticism within the Nationals last week when, as acting prime minister, he made some silly statements in parliament.
He said, “I would much sooner live in Australia than live anywhere else in this nation”.
In a burst of attempted sarcasm that backfired, he said in relation to the animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, “I actually agree with PETA. [The mice] should be rehomed into their inner-city apartments so that they can nibble away at their food and their feet at night and scratch their children at night.”
More fundamentally, militant Nationals are angry that Scott Morrison has been allowed, as they see it, to walk all over the minor Coalition partner, taking McCormack for granted and refusing to give the Nationals credit for things that affect the party’s constituency.
They are also concerned that with McCormack as leader, Morrison could move to adopt a firm target of net zero emissions by 2050, which he has been sliding towards. This is despite McCormack telling The Conversation last Wednesday the party would not endorse the target.
Resources Minister Keith Pitt and former Nationals minister Bridget McKenzie both declared last week that net zero by 2050 was not the Nationals’ policy.
It was unclear on Sunday night whether, if there were a move against McCormack, Deputy Leader David Littleproud would be a candidate.
Littleproud would not have the numbers in a three-way contest against McCormack and Joyce. He would need McCormack’s votes. He has also said he would not run against McCormack.
But if a vote of no-confidence in McCormack were carried and McCormack stood aside, that would provide a pathway for Littleproud to run.
Morrison, who is in isolation at The Lodge and will do question time remotely this week, would be appalled at the thought of Joyce replacing McCormack. Joyce would differentiate the Nationals to the maximum extent and would oppose the firming up of the net zero commitment, which Morrison presently couches as “preferably” by 2050.
Littleproud would be tougher with the Liberals than McCormack, but would go along with the 2050 target, provided there was a positive deal for agriculture.
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.
A counter-terrorism hui intended to help heal the wounds inflicted in Christchurch two years ago sparked a walk-out which hit the headlines. The news media were also there to be questioned about their rights and responsibilities after 15 March 2019.
When police National Security Adviser Cameron Bayly revealed that two possible shootings in Christchurch had been foiled in 2019 – one before and one after the atrocity on March 15 – it quickly made headline news.
The revelation came last Tuesday morning during a panel discussion at He Whenua Taurikura – an annual hui recommended by the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the terrorist attack.
He Whenua Taurikura means “a land at peace”. But the hui created rancour when an invited speaker, Jewish Council spokesperson Juliet Moses, referenced a rally in Auckland’s Queen Street in 2018 at which some had expressed support for Hezbollah.
That had not been condemned and leaders should be consistent when confronting terrorism, Moses said.
That prompted members of the Christchurch Muslim community to walk out.
One – Azad Razzaq Khan from the Foundation Against Islamophobia and Racism – said this “implied New Zealand Muslims support terrorism”.
This led news bulletins that evening and next morning – and the anger was amplified by the fact no victims or witnesses of the mosque atrocities were among speakers at the hui.
Following the startling news that a film studio wants to tell the March 15 story without consulting with victims or Muslim leaders in the city, this was a problem waiting to happen.
However, it didn’t derail He Whenua Taurikura’s second day on Wednesday, during which Islamic Women’s Council of New Zealand leader Anjum Rahman gave an eye-opening talk on online extremism after the Christchurch attacks.
Rahman, who is an adviser to the Christchurch Call and the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism, showed how social media’s hyperactive algorithms still spread anti-Muslim stuff that extremists latch onto.
The He Whenua Taurikura livestream.
Media leaders face up
NZME’s Miriyana Alexander at He Whenua Taurikura … “we are fiercely protective of that right [to report in the public interest].” Image: Screenshot/He Whenua Taurikura livestream
“Listen and respond. Do not write narratives about us without us. Do not talk over us or for us.”
— Khairiah Rahman
Leaders from New Zealand’s news media also faced questions at the hui last Tuesday.
Stuff chief executive Sinead Boucher admitted news media coverage of ethnic issues and communities is often only surface-deep and through a European lens.
But she insisted our news media have a social conscience that social media does not.
“I can think of a handful of examples in recent years where media have not published information because of the risk it could bring to someone’s safety,” Boucher told the hui.
New Zealand Herald head of premium content Miriyana Alexander said those gathered at the hui would have different ideas about how news serves the public interest.
“We are often asked not to report something, because a certain group doesn’t believe it’s in the public interest,” Alexander said.
“We are fiercely protective of that right [to report], while we acknowledge that rights carries responsibilities.”
Reporting if gunman’s crimes A case in point was the reporting of Brenton Tarrant’s crimes back in 2019.
Stuff didn’t publish his name for a while and only minimal details of his background and apparent beliefs. The NZ Herald published a lot more about him back in March 2019.
All mainstream news media agreed on protocols for reporting his trial last year and stuck to guidelines designed to ensure he couldn’t grandstand or promote his beliefs.
“I’ve never seen that happen before in my time in media and I think it was a great credit to all organisations involved,” Alexander said.
“It was a powerful thing to do and it laid a strong foundation for the ongoing coverage and relationships.”
RNZ head of news Richard Sutherland said individual media organisations would probably have followed the same principles anyway, without a binding pact in place.
But some free speech and media freedom advocates were alarmed by that.
Media crisis meetings Alexander – the current chair of the Media Freedom Committee which represents the mutual interests of the news media – said the media had been meeting twice a year with the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (which organised this week’s hui), with terror attacks or crises in future in mind.
“Some protocols have been drafted,” said Alexander.
“I’m not aware of this happening in any other jurisdiction and it’s evidence of the media’s desire to be a responsible member of our community.”
Providing a Muslim community perspective on the panel was Khairiah A Rahman, a senior lecturer at the School of Communication Studies at Auckland University of Technology (AUT) and a board member and researcher of AUT’s Pacific Media Centre.
About 13,000 of just over 14,000 stories in the New Zealand media that included the word Islam also mentioned either terrorism or Islamic Jihad — and most were from from overseas sources.
“There appears to be a growing misconceived hatred for a faith supported by 1.5 billion of the world’s population, but more importantly, this destructive trend is promoted by the media, consciously or not,” Rahman’s paper concluded.
Praised media response Last Tuesday in Christchurch, she praised the media response to the mosque attacks, but pointed to examples of reporting from the past that had caused offence.
She cited coverage of the so-called “jihadi brides” issue.
In 2015, Prime Minister John Key called New Zealand women travelling to Syria and Iraq “jihadi brides.” The director of the Security Intelligence Service (SIS) said the numbers were rising. But in 2016, the SIS revealed none of the women involved actually left from New Zealand.
Rahman also warned visual elements of stories could be discriminatory and cited a Sunday Star Times story from 2014: Fears of terror in our own backyard.
The story was published at a time when government ministers were considering new measures to stop New Zealanders heading overseas as foreign fighters.
The main photo portrayed was of Sheik Abu Abdullah outside his home in West Auckland, under which a caption read: “FIREBRAND OR MAN OF PEACE?”
“You have to wonder what was the purpose of that,” Rahman said.
Experienced journalists The story was written by two experienced journalists and focused on this controversial figure, also known as Abu Hamam, who had been barred from the Avondale Islamic Centre.
“He was not interviewed in the story so how is it fair to call him ‘Firebrand… or man of peace?’
“If you understand the people you’re reporting on in the marginalised position that they come from it’s not that difficult,” she said.
The story included comment from Muslims in Auckland who knew him, followers and Muslim experts. On the face of it the story has the kind of context and community input critics say is often missing.
“I disagree. If you were to run that story past the Muslim community there will be some things they will point out to you. You find that the voices are diminished, because at the end there is a list of people who have been through Australia and joined ISIS.”
At the foot of the article was a list of four “Kiwi Jihadis”, including Daryl Jones and Christopher Havard, killed in a US drone strike alongside al-Qaeda militants in 2013. The paper said Havard’s family claimed he was radicalised at a mosque in Christchurch.
“If you have a good introduction, but the final part is horrible, you go away thinking Muslim people are horrible,” Rahman said.
Khairiah Rahman speaking at He Whenua Taurikura … “media responsible for perpetuating negative stereotypes and ideas.” Image: Screenshot/He Whenua Taurikura livestream
‘Largely negative’ Her research on how the New Zealand media treated Muslims before the Christchurch attacks showed coverage was “largely negative”.
“But in the Royal Commission’s report, there was no mention of the media having any responsibility. I made a submission to the Royal Commission pointing out that the media was responsible for perpetuating negative stereotypes and ideas – largely from international media,” Rahman said.
“I think it’s a start to recognise this.”
Rahman left the media with this message last Tuesday:
“Listen and respond. Do not write narratives about us without us. Do not talk over us or for us.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Fiji’s Health Secretary Dr James Fong confirms that the country has recorded 150 new cases in the 24-hour period ending at 8am June 19 as authorities prepare for deployment of a medical team with specialists from Australia and New Zealand.
One hundred and seventeen cases are from known clusters.
Two cases presented to the Fiji Emergency Medical Assistance Team (FEMAT) field hospital at the Vodafone Arena are under investigation and four cases are under investigation from Totogo police.
Dr Fong said the Colonial War Memorial Hospital (CWMH) cluster had 32 new cases.
“A new cluster has been identified at the Nasese Medical Centre with one new case reported today, adding to the six cases already in this cluster.
Seven cases are primary contacts of other cases – this includes 3 cases from Charles Street in Toorak.
Twenty-three cases are currently under investigation and considered as cases of community transmission.
Death investigations complete Investigations into the death of a 49-year-old at CWM Hospital reported on Friday are now complete.
The patient’s doctors at the hospital have determined that his death was a result of the severe non-covid-19 pre-existing medical condition that he was receiving treatment for during his admission at the hospital and not covid-19.
Twenty-one more covid-19 patients have recovered, which means there are now 1311 active cases in isolation.
There have been 1728 cases during this outbreak that started in April.
Fiji has recorded a total of 1798 cases since the first case was reported in March 2020.
There have been 473 recoveries and six deaths due to covid-19, with four of the deaths during the outbreak that started in April 2021.
A total of eight covid-19 positive patients have died from pre-existing non-covid-19 related illnesses.
So far 124,264 samples have been tested since this outbreak started in April 2021, with 167,125 tested since testing began in early 2020.
NZ and Australia medics to be deployed to Fiji At the request of Fijian medical authorities, the Australian government has approved the deployment of a medical team to assist the country.
A media statement issued by Australia’s Minister for Foreign Affairs Senator Marise Payne with Minister for Health and Aged Care Greg Hunt and Minister for International Development and the Pacific Senator Zed Seselja, confirmed that the Australian Medical Assistance Team (AUSMAT) would be in Fiji for an initial 28-day period.
Senator Payne did not say how many people would form the AUSMAT team but explained the members were from Australia and New Zealand and from various specialities in medicine.
AUSMAT is similar to Fiji Emergency Medical Assistance Team (FEMAT), which are emergency medical teams globally verified by the World Health Organisation (WHO) as being able to provide a broad range of medical and emergency services in the field in times of crisis.
FEMAT had set up field hospitals in Lautoka, when the city’s hospital was locked down earlier in this current outbreak, and at the Vodafone Arena at Laucala Bay in the capital Suva.
Earlier this week Dr Fong said the Fijian government had requested AUSMAT support with scenario planning.
“We have extra space to deploy for field hospitals and we have extra critical care capacity we have yet to activate. They come to help us plan beyond that,” he said.
Doctors, nurses and paramedics The Australian version deploys doctors, nurses, paramedics and logisticians to provide medical care in the Asia Pacific region including after Severe Tropical Cyclone Winston in February 2016.
AUSMAT teams are drawn from state and territory health services, but this time includes New Zealand nationals.
“The team will work with the Fijian Ministry of Health and will provide immediate support for health system management and infection prevention control, as well as assessments of Fiji’s priority health needs,” Senator Payne said.
“Australia has also sent 1.3 tonnes of personal protective equipment, medical supplies, including 500 thermal guns for health screening teams, testing equipment and laboratory consumables since the beginning of the current outbreak in April 2021,” she said.
“The health security of our near neighbours is a critical priority for Australia.”
The support is part of the Australian government’s covid-19 support to Fiji worth A$83.5 million for 2021.
Meanwhile, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) have supplied more than 1.6 million urgent medical supplies and 9450 diagnostic testing kits to support Fiji in the ongoing detection and containment of the coronavirus disease pandemic.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Australia’s top economists overwhelmingly back government measures to speed the transition to electric cars in order to meet emission reduction targets.
An exclusive poll of 62 of Australia’s preeminent economists — selected by their peers — finds 51 back measures to boost the take-up of electric cars including subsidising public charging stations, subsidising the purchase of all-electric vehicles, and setting a date to ban the import of traditionally-powered cars.
Only 11 oppose such measures, three of them because they prefer a carbon tax.
Six of the 51 who supported special measures said they did so reluctantly, as their preferred alternative would be a carbon price or a carbon tax, rather than subsidising “one alternative out of many to reduce emissions”.
Cars account for roughly half of Australia’s transport emissions, making them about 8% of Australia’s total emissions.
Yet Australia’s take-up of electric vehicles is dwarfed by the rest of the world.
On one measure, all-electric cars accounted for just 0.7% of new car sales in Australia in 2020 compared to 5% in China and 3.5% in the European Union.
Australia has no domestic car industry to protect, meaning industry policy concerns needn’t hold back the transition.
Norway plans to outlaw new petrol car sales from 2025; Denmark, the Netherlands, Ireland and Israel from 2030; and California and Britain from 2035.
Asked whether Australia should take action to speed the transition, eight in ten of the 62 economists selected by the Economic Society said it should.
Economic Society of Australia/The Conversation, CC BY-ND
The results represent a departure for a profession whose usual advice is to avoid interfering with markets.
One participant, University of NSW professor Gigi Foster said an important question needed to be answered in order to justify government intervention: “what is the market failure here?”
The market failure was pollution, imposing costs on the community beyond the drivers of conventionally-powered cars and on the planet by pushing up global temperatures.
Broad support: subsidies for charging points
If it wasn’t to be dealt with by a carbon price, measures that sped up the switchover to electric vehicles could achieve some of the same effect.
By far the most popular measure of six presented to the panellists who supported government action was subsidising public charging points, backed by 84%.
The next most popular was removing the luxury car tax from electric-only vehicles. At present the 35% tax applies to cars valued at more than $69,152, and $79,659 for fuel-efficient vehicles.
43% supported making charging points compulsory in new homes and new car parks. 39% supported setting a date to ban the import of petrol and diesel cars.
Matthew Butlin, who chairs South Australia’s Productivity Commission, noted that much of Australia was not urban and unlikely to be served by charging points for some time.
Without government measures to speed the installation of remote charging stations, many buyers would be reluctant to go electric, even if most of their driving was in cities.
When they were in place, there would be a good case for banning the import of petrol and diesel vehicles, but not until then.
Others wanted to hold off on banning the import of conventionally-powered cars until Australia had a lower-emissions mix of electricity.
Macquarie University’s Lisa Magnani said that with three quarters of Australia’s electricity generated from coal, electric vehicles created considerable emissions.
The Grattan Institute’s Danielle Wood disagreed, saying “network effects” built a case for switching over early.
Network effects build on themselves
The more people switched, the more charging stations would be built and the lower electric vehicle prices would drop, driving more people to switch, and increasing the benefits of decarbonising the electricity supply.
The sooner Australia swapped over, the easier it would be to get to net zero emissions by 2050 without the need for a “cash for clunkers” style scheme to buy back polluting vehicles.
Setting 2035 as the date for banning imports of petrol-powered cars as recommended this year by the International Energy Agency would give buyers time to adjust while the charging infrastructure developed.
Tax specialist John Freebairn said electric cars were already heavily subsidised by escaping the fuel excise used to fund roads, despite the efforts of some states to plug the gap.
Sydney University economist Stefanie Schurer argued on the other hand bulky and polluting sport utility vehicles were effectively subsidised because of the tax benefits they attracted when used for work.
Former Liberal Party leader John Hewson who heads the Crawford School of Public Policy said smoothing the transition had become urgent.
Smooth transition now “urgent”
It took only ten years from 1903-13 for the United States to switch from horse-drawn to petrol-driven vehicles, and technology take-up was quicker today, particularly in Australia.
Other economists surveyed noted that there was much that could be done to reduce harmful emissions in addition to going electric.
Sue Richardson said Australia should impose serious limits on the tailpipe emissions of new cars. Australia is unusual among developed nations in not having such a limit, making it a favoured market for high-emission cars.
Rana Roy said a better approach would be to limit transport itself through remote working and efforts to encourage walking and cycling. Subsidies for electric cars could send such moves backwards.
When responses to the survey were weighted by the confidence respondents had in them on a scale of 1 to 10, support of special measures to drive the transition remained about as strong, backed by eight in ten of the economists surveyed.
Economic Society of Australia/The Conversation, CC BY-ND
Detailed responses:
Peter Martin 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.
They were the face of a generation growing up in a new land. They were the Polynesian Panthers, young activists fighting against social and racial injustice in Aotearoa New Zealand.
Fifty years on, they’re back to share their struggles and triumphs as we look back on their legacy.
From 1971-1974, the Polynesian Panthers continued to fight for civil, social and legal rights. From their headquarters in Ponsonby, they implemented initiatives to improve the quality of life for Pacific communities.
The Panthers were also crucial in the fight against the government-sanctioned Dawn Raids where, in the early hours, police would force their way into homes demanding proof of residency, or stop people in the street to ask for permits or passports.
These immigration tactics were mostly targeted at Pacific people.
While Tagata Pasifika honours the activism and sacrifice of the Panthers, it also remembers the lasting impact of the Dawn Raids.
The Panthers have spent the better part of the year working together with the Ministry of Pacific Peoples to obtain an apology from the government.
This week, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced she will make a formal government apology for the 1970s Dawn Raids next week on June 26 at a commemoration event in the Auckland Town Hall.
Russia has more recorded deaths per capita than India. Chart by Keith Rankin.
Analysis by Keith Rankin.
Russia has more recorded deaths per capita than India. Chart by Keith Rankin.
While India’s well-publicised Covid19 outbreak came quickly and is well on its way out, South America continues to show the greatest difficulty in throwing off this disease. Some of the most prominent South American countries this year were not prominent in 2020. Of particular note are the ‘Guianas’: Dutch (Suriname), British (Guyana), and French. And nearby Trinidad. Uruguay and Paraguay were also much less affected last year.
Parts of Eastern Europe continue to have high Covid19 death rates, though lower infection numbers suggest that – at least for now – Covid19 is largely beaten in the Balkans. But Russia does have a problem, and the high rate of recorded deaths relative to reported cases suggests that Russia’s outbreak is serious.
In Asia, Sri Lanka now has the highest death rate, with Malaysia, the Maldives, and Mongolia all higher than India.
Mongolia, Southern Africa and Cuba; United Kingdom back in the picture. Chart by Keith Rankin.
Mongolia is the surprise newcomer for reported cases of Covid19. China must be very concerned about this; and it would be interesting to see how covid came to Mongolia. The usual story for a country is that an outbreak arises from multiple breaches of the international border. Mongolia has just two land borders; China and Russia.
Southern Africa is now prominent. Not only is there a resurgence in South Africa, but Namibia, Botswana and Zambia have it too. The Arabian Gulf states are also becoming more prominent; while Bahrain has been problematic for a while, now UAE, Kuwait, and Oman are also on the chart.
An interesting newcomer is Cuba, a country that has until now been more successful than most in its Caribbean region.
Finally, to note, the United Kingdom is back. Along with Chile, the United Kingdom is a concern on account of their high vaccination rates combined with their high past infection rates. These countries should be at or close to ‘herd immunity’. It may turn out that the big improvement in United Kingdom infection rates from February to May was almost entirely due to the extended lockdown, and only minimally to the vaccine.
The United States and Israel do provide interesting controls; their infection rates are clearly well down and they had lesser lockdowns than the United Kingdom and Chile. It may be that the particular vaccines used in the United States and Israel have been more effective than those used in the United Kingdom and Chile. (Although United States deaths from Covid19 persevere at a rate that suggests the problem in the United States is far from solved.) Whatever, it is likely that effective immunisation against coronaviruses will need lifelong annual – or even biannual – boosters.
US President Ronald Reagan meeting with Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov in the Oval Office in 1988.White House Photographic Collection/Wikimedia Commons
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.
Andrei Sakharov was one of the most brilliant scientists of the nuclear age.
In the field of theoretical physics, he made an enduring contribution to our understanding of the universe. He also played a pivotal role in the creation of the first Soviet hydrogen bomb in 1953. A decade later, he helped instigate a move towards limiting these weapons – the atmospheric Test Ban Treaty.
Despite these achievements, Sakharov is best remembered today for another reason: his years as the Soviet Union’s most famous dissident and outspoken human rights defender.
No other individual rivals Sakharov’s contribution to the global human rights “boom” of the 1970s. When he began to discuss human rights in the late 1960s, the term was so esoteric that Western journalists often mistranslated it as “rights of man”.
His ideas about the link between human rights and international peace won him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1975 and helped to make human rights a central issue in superpower relations.
When Mikhail Gorbachev, then secretary general of the Communist Party, liberalised the Soviet system in the late 1980s, Sakharov became first a leader and then a symbol of Russia’s democratic movement.
In it, Sakharov argued the world could avoid nuclear apocalypse and ecological disaster through the “convergence” of the socialist and capitalist systems, which would each adopt the most humane features of the other.
What was needed to accomplish this historic transformation, Sakharov wrote, was intellectual freedom and an end to the crackdown unleashed in the USSR by the 1966 trial of the writers Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuli Daniel.
Two years later, Sakharov joined a human rights committee created by the dissident Valery Chalidze. At Chaldize’s prompting, Sakharov started attending political trials and collaborating with others in the Moscow dissident milieu. He also began giving interviews to Western journalists and meeting visiting Western politicians.
Valery Chalidze, speaking to reporters at his hotel in New York in 1972. Ron Frehm/AP
The Soviet authorities retaliated in the summer of 1973. They unleashed a propaganda campaign against him that was reminiscent — in its virulence and scale — of the Stalin era.
Pushing the US to make human rights a priority
Undaunted by the intensifying harassment, Sakharov threw down the gauntlet to the Kremlin by addressing an open letter to the US Congress in support of a bold human rights initiative.
Under the terms of a proposed amendment to the 1974 Trade Act (called the Jackson-Vanik amendment), a US-Soviet trade agreement would be made conditional on the lifting of restrictions on Jewish emigration from the USSR.
This legislation, which was only repealed in 2012, was fiercely resisted by then-US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who regarded criticism of Soviet totalitarianism as a threat to improving US-Soviet relations.
In his letter, Sakharov argued that restricting emigration made the Soviet Union a closed society that was a danger to the world. This was a historic intervention.
As Kissinger later admitted, Sakharov’s letter “opened the floodgates.” The adoption of the amendment by Congress in 1974 became a turning point in the incorporation of human rights into US foreign policy.
It was no coincidence that Jimmy Carter, the first president to embrace human rights as a diplomatic priority, began his tenure in the White House in 1977 by exchanging letters with Sakharov.
No less important was Sakharov’s influence on the Helsinki Process, a series of East-West conferences on security and cooperation in Europe.
Launched by the signing of the Helsinki Final Act in 1975, the Helsinki Process was widely perceived as a Western defeat because it appeared to recognise Soviet domination of Eastern Europe. Sakharov, however, saw it as an opportunity. In his acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize that year, he drew attention to the fact the agreement contained
far-reaching declarations on the relationship between international security and the preservation of human rights.
This insight inspired a group of dissidents, including Sakharov’s wife Yelena Bonner, to establish the Moscow Helsinki Group (MHG), an organisation dedicated to monitoring the Soviet regime’s implementation of the human rights provisions of the Final Act.
Andrei Sakharov (left) with fellow dissidents and intellectuals in Moscow in 1973. Yelena Bonner is on the bottom right. Wikimedia Commons
For nearly eight years, the MHG sent meticulous reports about Soviet violations to the follow-up conferences of the signatory states, but its most compelling evidence was the brutal repression inflicted on its own members.
Thanks to these dissidents, the Helsinki Process became what one US diplomat called “a court trial in continuous session” of the USSR and its East European satellites.
Much of this contest focused on the fate of Sakharov himself after the Soviet regime finally moved to silence him in 1980. For speaking out against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, he was arrested and banished to internal exile.
‘Our duty is to Sakharov’s name’
During his seven-year ordeal in the closed city of Gorky, Sakharov spoke to the world more often through hunger strikes than by words. His treatment cast a vast shadow over Soviet relations with both the US and Western Europe.
In response to the mounting pressure, Gorbachev astonished the world in 1986 by personally telephoning Sakharov and requesting he resume his “patriotic work”.
Two and a half years later, Sakharov dominated the debates of the first Congress of People’s Deputies, the Soviet Union’s first serious parliamentary experiment.
This obstructionism is a tribute to Sakharov’s enduring importance for many anti-Putin democrats, like the twice-poisoned Vladimir Kara-Murza, who honour Sakharov as the embodiment of Russia’s democratic tradition.
Robert Horvath 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.
Hundreds of police officers search the Apple Daily group’s headquarters after five senior staff were arrested under the National Security Law, accused of “collusion with foreign forces”. Video: Al Jazeera
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has condemned yesterday’s police raid on Hong Kong media outlet Apple Daily’s headquarters — the second time in less than one year — and has urged the release of the five arrested senior staff.
On 17 June, 2021 independent Hong Kong media outlet Apple Daily’s chief editor Ryan Law, chief executive Cheung Kim-hung, chief operating officer Royston Chow, associate publisher Chan Pui-man and director of Apple Daily DigitalCheung Chi-wai were arrested on suspicion of “conspiracy to collude with foreign forces”, a crime that bears a life sentence under the National Security Law imposed last year by the Chinese regime.
Approximately 500 police officers also raided the media outlet’s headquarters, forcing journalists to leave the newsroom, seizing their computers, phones and other devices.
Authorities have also frozen Apple Daily’s HK$18 million assets (about €2 million).
“Today’s arrests and raid on Apple Daily’s headquarters show that the government will do anything in their power to silence one of the last independent media outlets and symbols of press freedom in Hong Kong”, said Cédric Alviani, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) East Asia bureau head.
He called for “all charges to be dropped and all defendants immediately released”.
This is not the first time that Hong Kong police have raided the media outlet’s headquarters: in August 2020, 200 police officers searched Apple Daily’s premises, blocked its journalists from entering the newsroom and obstructed several major news outlets from covering the incident.
Apple Daily founder Jimmy Lai, 2020 RSF Press Freedom Awards laureate, has been detained since December 2020 and was recently sentenced to a total of 20 months in prison for taking part in three “unauthorised” pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.
He also faces six other procedures, including two charges under the National Security Law for which he risks life imprisonment.
Hong Kong, once a bastion of press freedom, has fallen from 18th place in 2002 to 80th place in the 2021 RSF World Press Freedom Index.
The People’s Republic of China, for its part, has stagnated at 177th out of 180.
Pacific Media Watch is an associate of Reporters Without Borders.
The Hong Kong police raid on the Apple Daily – 500 police took part to arrest 5 news executives. Image: RSF/AFP
Vanuatu Supreme Court judge Justice Oliver Saksak has upheld a decision by the former Speaker of Parliament to expel 19 government MPs from Parliament.
The court ruling could trigger the collapse of Vanuatu’s government but a subsequent appeal is likely to grant a stay of execution for the administration of Bob Loughman.
Gracia Shadrack, who resigned the speakership earlier this week, ruled last week that the 19, who include Prime Minister Loughman, had vacated their seats by failing to attend Parliament on three consecuative days.
The 19 MPs had sought a court ruling claiming their constitutional rights had been breached.
The group of MPs is planning to appeal and will seek a stay on the court’s decision.
If that appeal is rejected there is likely to be 19 byelections in Vanuatu.
It has also been reported locally that the remaining 13 government MPs are being encouraged to consider resigning and so forcing a full election.
The case came after the opposition had lodged a motion for a vote of no confidence which prompted the government to seek to remove the Speaker.
Both those motions were to be heard this past week but the appeal over the vacation of seats took precedence.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Fiji health authorities have announced 115 new covid-19 cases for the 24 hour period ending at 8am today.
Health Secretary Dr James Fong said 12 cases were from new clusters – 8 of them from Max Value Supermarket, Lami, and 4 from Public Rental Board.
Seven cases have also been detected during screening at the Valelevu, Nuffield Health Centre in Tamavua, and Raiwaqa screening clinics.
Dr Fong said 1 case was also identified during screening at Nadi Hospital.
Investigations were underway to determine any links to known cases.
Twenty one cases have been identified as primary contacts of previous cases and are under investigation by the contact tracing teams to determine if there is a cluster link.
Two cases from Naqio settlement, Rewa, 1 case from Nadave, 7 cases from Nausori Village, 4 cases in Naulu, 1 case in Omkar Rd, Narere, 1 case in Valenicina, Lami, 1 case in Verata, Nausori, 1 case from Milverton Road, Raiwaqa, 2 cases from Qauia, Lami, 1 case from Naduru Road, Nausori and 1 case from Fiji Pharmaceutical and Biomedical Services are under investigation to determine if they have links to other cases.
Community transmission Dr Fong said these cases were currently considered cases of community transmission.
The majority of the cases announced were related to existing clusters of transmission or to localities where significant transmission had occurred.
A 49-year-old man has died at the Colonial War Memorial Hospital (CWMH).
Dr Fong said he had been admitted for almost a month and was being treated for a severe non-COVID pre-existing condition.
He tested positive for covid-19 during his admission, and his doctors are currently investigating to determine if this is a covid-19 death.
Pre-existing illnesses RNZ Pacific reports that to date there have been 6 deaths but another 7 covid-19 positive patients have died of pre-existing illnesses.
There are 1182 active cases in isolation, with Fiji having recorded 1578 cases since the latest outbreak started in April 2021.
Dr Fong said since April, 121,193 samples had been tested, with average daily testing now at 3443.
In terms of vaccinations, “43 oercent of Fijians 18 and older have received their first dose, and 2.1 percent are fully vaccinated. That is a total of 252,791 who have received at least one dose and 12,246 who are fully vaccinated,” he said.
Vijay Narayan is news director of Fiji Village News.
Days after being condemned by the largest Pacific Island capital — Port Moresby, the Economist’s Global Liveability Index has been criticised in Auckland by one of New Zealand’s most respected “green” columnists.
The criticisms come from different ends of the spectrum — Port Moresby was third to last in the 140-nation survey while Auckland, with the world’s largest urban Polynesian population, was top.
Both results were thanks to city responses to the global covid-19 pandemic.
National Capital District Governor Powes Parkop had roasted the Economist index, criticising the “irresponsible” criteria used in in the index assessment and called for a rethink about his sprawling city of Port Moresby (pop. 391,000).
“This is a harsh verdict on our city, which we have worked so hard to build,” Parkop said.
Leading Māori academic Associate Professor Ella Henry of Auckland University of Technology also criticised the criteria saying few indigenous tangata whenua people would agree with Auckland/Tāmaki Makaurau (pop. 1.6 million, with 11.5 percent Māori) being the world’s “most liveable” city.
“In particular, I would argue that many Māori whānau in Auckland do not enjoy the benefits of this supposed ‘liveability’,” she said, citing negative employment, health, housing, poverty and digital divide statistics.
Global ‘low bar’ However, while New Zealand Herald commentator Simon Wilson, celebrated for his environmentally progressive views on Auckland, today welcomed his city’s success, he also criticised the global “low bar” that had contributed to the Economist result.
“It sure puts covid into perspective, doesn’t it? Auckland … is now the world’s most liveable city. And it’s all because of our response to the pandemic,” he wrote.
“Britain has just delayed lifting all restrictions by another month. The fast rollout of vaccines in the US has stalled at around 50 percent, because nobody really knows how to persuade the remaining half of the population to get the jab.
“European and Asian countries alike slide in and out of covid crises. The nightmare that is India seems almost beyond redemption. This is a terrible tragedy.
“Here in Tāmaki Makaurau, meanwhile, we enjoy the luxury of debating the future of yachting contests, school zones and cycling on the harbour bridge.
“Yes, for now and at least into the near future, Auckland has every reason to think of itself as the world’s most liveable city. But the bar is very low.”
Wilson also wrote that it was not very encouraging that the Japanese city of Osaka had been placed second on the index.
What to crow about? “The Japanese city has uncontrolled covid and is set to be half submerged by even a minimal rise in sea levels,” he observed.
“Here [in Auckland], though, setting covid aside, what else have we got to crow, or complain, about?” Wilson continued.
“We’re tremendously liveable, obviously, if you own property – and cruelly not so if you don’t. We’re tremendously liveable if your life doesn’t oblige you to get stuck in traffic, but not so much, etc.
“Some of us have reasonably well-paid future-focused jobs while others of us are precariously clinging to the gig economy, or are on minimum wage, or are not in the productive economy at all.
“The fact is, measuring liveability is a spurious business. The only markers that count should be the ones that acknowledge we’re doing well when we’re all doing well.”
A Human Rights Protection Party (HRPP) associate minister has had his seat of Sagaga 2 in the Samoa general election declared void by the Supreme Court following a legal challenge, triggering a byelection.
This means previously elected Member of Parliament Seiuli Ueligitone Seiuli, a member of the HRPP has been removed from his seat after being found guilty of bribery and treating charges.
The petitioner, Maualaivao Patelesio Ah Him, who ran as an independent candidate, was also found guilty of treating and bribery charges filed in a counter petition.
The ruling was handed down by Justice Fepuleai Ameperosa Roma and Justice Vui Clarence Nelson.
A byelection for the seat will be triggered, the outcome of which will influence the wider Parliament’s balance of power.
It is not known when the byelection will be held. But neither man will be able to stand in the contest, nor will they be able to stand for elected office for 15 years.
In the near-term it increases the majority of the Faatuatua ile Atua Samoa ua Tasi (FAST) party, which will now have a total of 26 confirmed elected members to the HRPP’s 24.
Challenged in court Maualaivao challenged Seiuli in court, alleging bribery, treating and providing transportation for voters in a bid to influence their votes.
Maualaivao was found guilty of bribery charges laid against him supported by evidence presented by witnesses who claimed to have received amounts of up to $100 when visiting his office at the Nia Mall Building in Fugalei ahead of the April election.
Meanwhile, Seiuli was found guilty of transporting voters to polling booths on election day. He was also found guilty of bribery and treating through the provision of $10,000 in breakfast cash money (suā ti) presented during a village meeting in 2020.
Maualaivao was not present at the court when the decision was delivered. The Supreme Court also raised issues that arose from the case for the Speaker of the House to review.
Both men are former senior Members of Parliament and from the village of Malie.
Seiuli was the former Associate Minister of the Ministry of Works Transport and Infrastructure in the most recent Parliament.
Maualaivao had been a Member of Parliament during the 15th Parliament (2011-2016) for the now-defunct Individual Voters seat, under the HRPP banner.
Ran as an Independent The 71-year-old businessman failed to return for the 16th Parliament (2016-2021), losing his seat to Faumuina Wayne Fong who won the (rebranded) Urban West seat they were contesting.
For the 2021 general election, he decided to run as an Independent, contesting for the Sagaga No 2 seat.
On the April 9 election Seiuli secured 699 votes to Maualaivao’s 547, the Electoral Commission’s final count showed.
Anti-vax misinformation is throwing a spanner in the works for covid-19 vaccination programmes in Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands, with the prime ministers of both countries firing warnings at those spreading it.
PNG Prime Minister James Marape issued a blunt statement this week, saying his government had done everything possible to provide the vaccine during a time of global demand, and that if people did not get themselves vaccinated and then felt sick or died, they only had themselves to blame.
The tally of confirmed cases of vovid-19 in PNG has grown at 16,000 cases in four months, and almost 17,000 people have tested positive for the virus so far. Yet the rate of infections has tapered off from the highs of March.
The government has declared the situation under control, but is anxious to use its supply of AstraZeneca doses before they expire. About 100,000 doses sent through the COVAX programme facility need to be used within a month or they will go to waste.
A little more than 41,000 people in PNG have now had the vaccine, mostly essential workers and about 7000 health workers. But the figures are a drop in the bucket compared to the total population of 9 million people.
Professor Glen Mola, the head of obstetrics and gynaecology at Port Moresby General Hospital, said the government could be more vigorous in quelling misinformation from anti-vaxxers.
“It’s just ridiculous that we spend hundreds of hours out of our precious health worker time countering the ridiculous conspiracy theories of a few people. They spend all their days on social media spreading all this fear,” he said.
“The Controller has powers under the National Pandemic Act, to declare people a threat to public safety… and give them a warning and lock them up if they don’t heed the warning.”
This week 146,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, bought by the NZ government, were delivered to PNG. Image: RNZ/PNG Department of Health
Hesitancy, social media and antivaxxers Many of PNG’s nurses initially refused to get the vaccine when first offered in late March and early April, asking for clear information about its safety and efficacy.
A Port Moresby nurse (who asked not to be named) this week told RNZ her colleagues had been working their way through the information about the vaccine that had since been made available to them, but she was not yet convinced about it.
“The frontliners are not well informed of all those things, so most of us are still in suspense. But we are just trying to read around and search online, and see for ourselves what it is.”
Professor Mola said his team of doctors had all lined up for the jab, but more work was needed to be put into the campaign to vaccinate as many health workers as possible.
“They’ve had their first shot, and some have had two shots now — that’s the doctors in the maternity side. And we have not had a doctor go down with covid since we started vaccinating.”
One prominent anti-vaxxer in PNG with almost 7000 Facebook followers offers multiple daily commentaries on what she described as a global project to kill and maim millions.
Gladys Habu, a pharmacist and former Miss Solomon Islands, getting her second dose of covid-19. Image: RNZ/Solomon Islands Ministry of Health
The information shared included “terrifying” reports from an alternative UK media source, denigration of organisations which support the vaccine rollout in PNG, and questions such as: “How many times do we have to tell these idiots who have allowed themselves to be injected with poison?”
The official death toll from covid-19 in PNG is 164, but as with the total confirmed cases, the real figure is likely to be much higher, as testing for the virus and reporting of deaths have been limited.
Health workers feature prominently among those in PNG confirmed to have caught the virus so far, and systemic staffing shortages were placing great strain on the workers who continued on the job.
The Port Moresby nurse spoken to by RNZ said she believed there were hospital staff infected with the virus who continued to work in the hospital.
“Maybe they are just trying to normalise the coronavirus like any other diseases,” she said.
Solomon Islands health workers warned In Solomon Islands, Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare spoke out in a nationwide address criticising a small group of health workers who had promoted misinformation about covid-19 vaccine safety and effectiveness.
He said it was extremely sad that the group had ignored evidence that vaccines were vital to break the cycle of the pandemic, and instead promoted misleading information to the public.
“While I respect individual points of view, I will not allow deliberate misinformation to scare people that wish to protect themselves from covid-19.
“If such deliberate misinformation continues, those involved will be held accountable in accordance with provisions of the relevant regulations.”
Counting on demographics Professor Mola said drily that the upshot was that PNG was relying on the natural protection in a youthful population to mitigate some of the impacts of covid-19.
“Seventy five percent of our population are under 30. And by and large (among) under-30s only one out of 1000 gets seriously ill, and one out of 2000 dies. So we’re going to rely on the protection of youth.”
PNG Health Minister Jelta Wong said officials were doing what they could to vaccinate the priority groups, and while there were ongoing “issues” with reaching all healthworkers, the vaccinations were now been extended to the elderly.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Yesterday’s announcement the AstraZeneca COVID vaccine would now only be recommended for the over 60s has highlighted the many ways we think about risk.
The decision reflects a greater understanding of the real, but extremely low, risk of the clotting disorder called thrombosis with thrombocytopenia (TTS) for people aged 50-59, who are now recommended to have the Pfizer vaccine.
But errors in the way we perceive these extremely small risks, called cognitive biases, reflect the fact that when our brains evolved we did not have to grapple with risks this small. So we struggle to make sense of them and perceive these events as being much more likely than they actually are.
This can lead us to make decisions, such as not having a vaccine that could potentially save our life. And the misperception of the likelihood of TTS is one of the main reasons many are hesitant about receiving the AstraZeneca vaccine.
So let’s start with what we know about the risk of dying from TTS associated with the AstraZeneca vaccine, expressed the traditional way, with words and numbers. Then we’ll present the same numbers graphically.
Initially, we thought about 25% of people with TTS associated with the vaccine would die. But as we learnt more about how to recognise and treat these rare blood clots, the risk of dying from it has changed. In Australia, mortality is now down to around 4%.
This is a low risk of dying from a syndrome with a small likelihood of occurring. So we can express TTS risk in another way.
Two people in Australia have died from TTS after 3.8 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine delivered. This makes the likelihood of dying from this syndrome about 0.5 in a million, or if you prefer whole numbers, about 1 in 2 million.
As you can see, the risk of TTS is so small it is almost too small to communicate effectively in this format.
Perhaps even more visually powerful is to compare the risk of dying from TTS to other risks we face in our lives, using a risk scale. This allows you to compare a range of risks and put them into perspective.
As the risk of TTS is a one-off risk normally associated with the first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine, one interesting comparison is with other one-off risks, such as adventure sports.
As you can see, the risk of dying from TTS is far lower than many activities some of us get up to at the weekend.
But not all of us spend our weekends scuba diving or rock climbing. So let’s look at the more common risks we take in our everyday lives but do not pay much attention to.
This is not a perfect comparison, as the risks are averaged across the whole population, across the entire year. But it’s useful nevertheless.
So the risk of dying from TTS after the first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine is similar to the risk of being killed by lightning in a year in Australia. And this pales in comparison when compared to other risks, such as the risk of dying in a car accident.
So what happens next?
One of the challenges for public health has always been putting the risks and benefits of our health choices into perspective. This task is even harder when the risks involved are so small.
Using visualisations like these is one way to effectively communicate just how small the risk of TTS is and also put this risk into perspective by comparing it to other risks we incur in our lives.
When you fully appreciate how small the risk of TTS is, the decision to have the AstraZeneca vaccine to protect yourself and others becomes a much easier one to make.
Hassan Vally does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Most people with an interest in art and culture in Australia believe it is in deep crisis, and you’d be hard pressed to find someone who didn’t think the crisis predated the pandemic. COVID-19 has smashed every sector involved in live events and on-site attendance. But art and culture stand out as receiving little government sympathy and less support.
This underwhelming response comes off the back of a 19% per capita cut in federal funding over the past decade and the declining visibility of the “arts” in its host ministry. Many in the arts sector are convinced they are in the middle of a “culture war”.
Having tried spruiking economic impact, jobs and growth, AI-resistant “creativity”, all to no avail — what’s next for a sector battling for survival?
Past failures
Two recent reports — the first from the think tank A New Approach (ANA), the second from John Daley, ex-Director of the Grattan Institute — argue the problem is art and culture’s own failure to effectively “advocate” for their worth as legitimate targets of public funding.
That might come as a shock to a sector that since 1994’s Creative Nation has been pushing the importance of its economic contribution, turbo-charged by the adoption of creative industries rhetoric from the UK after 1998 (think: “the creative economy”).
Clearly, the economic approach hasn’t worked. According to Daley, this was always barking up the wrong tree, with arguments made “by people who don’t believe them to people who don’t believe them”.
It’s a good line, but not quite right. Artists might not work primarily for money (which is lucky), but the belief that art and culture are a crucial part of Australia’s post-industrial economy, and that this should bring government recognition, is deeply ingrained in the sector. Hence the consternation when these arguments did not cut through in 2020.
What will convince hard-nosed policymakers in Treasury departments then? Daley’s answer is simple: the arts produce “happiness”. He suggests this is the metric the arts should use to demonstrate their value. It is highly unlikely this will sway policy, where employment metrics have failed. Worse, it simply misdescribes what art is.
Reducing art to “happiness” ignores centuries of debate about its complex purposes going back to Aristotle.
Does “happiness” really describe the dark energies and ecstatic highs of popular culture? The anger and joy that Shakespeare provokes? And “happiness” didn’t drive funding of our biggest contemporary cultural investment — the new War Memorial — with its gravitas, solemnity, and confrontation with the meaning of death.
The problem is not specific to “happiness”, which is just the next word in a chain of key terms leading the sector a merry dance around the abattoir walls to its next funding cut. Rather it is the concept of “advocacy” itself that isn’t right.
Building on shared values
Advocacy works best in situations where basic values are broadly shared. Then issues can be raised and agendas pushed in a melee of healthy civil debate. When that consensus breaks down, when there is no common value ascribed to arts and culture in the first place, advocacy breaks down too.
Health and education need no “advocates” per se (though this consensus too is showing signs of stress). When art and culture need to advocate for their very existence, they are already in deep trouble.
This problem can be seen in its political dimension in the ANA’s latest report, Imagining 2030. Taking their cue from sectors like sport, defence and agriculture, they suggest the “cultural and creative industries” need a coherent economic plan as a basis for advocacy to government.
So it’s back to the old approach: framing art and culture as an industrial sub sector, calculating its financial worth, and trying to fit into Australian Bureau of Statistics parameters. The difference is that now the pitch is to be made to “middle Australia”, says the ANA.
Nowhere in this report is middle Australia defined, though elsewhere the sourced “focus group” is described as “middle-aged, middle income swing voters from suburban and regional Australia”.
We all know what this means. From Robert Menzies’ campaign slogan of the “forgotten people” in 1942, through John Howard’s appeal to Australian “battlers” in the 1990s, to the present government’s Trump-like culture war against “the elites” — it is a rhetorical figure in Coalition attacks on those it perceives to be its opponents.
The democratic impulse of opening up the arts to everybody becomes an entreaty to the “sensible centre”. Those outside it can be ignored.
In this call-and-response with the government, ANA shows what can happen to advocacy in an age of political polarisation — you end up where you may not want to go. Deploying the term “middle Australia” aligns ANA with the political territory of the Coalition. But where sport, defence and agriculture play squarely to Coalition constituencies, art and culture does not.
“He found the Archimedean point, but he used it against himself”, as Franz Kafka wrote about gaining a truthful perspective. From this vantage, those in art and culture better get used to their worth depending on how many jobs they generate for tradies — with utes getting tax cuts, but not TV drama — and whether funding them passes the pub test in the Coalition’s marginal seats.
If we want to avoid walking down an ever-narrowing policy path to a final cull, we need to assert arts and culture’s fundamental value, not play advocacy roulette with government terms du jour.
This means peak bodies saying things governments don’t like to hear, and risking accusations of biting the hand that feeds them. It means robustly maintaining that art and culture are inseparable from social citizenship, and essential to the foundations of our common life. It’s a risk that must be taken.
The Wilds, recently cancelled along with the Rising festival in Melbourne. Rising/Eugene Hyland
And new ideas are out there. Regen Melbourne, a network of more than 40 organisations and 600 individuals, has added art and culture to its “doughnut economics” model of community engagement to create a vision for a liveable sustainable city.
These initiatives might be “bad advocacy” with the current government, but in the long term they are art and culture’s best hope.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Last week’s storm system wreaked havoc across Victoria. Some 220,000 households and businesses lost power, and residents in the hills on Melbourne’s fringe were warned yesterday it might not be restored for three weeks.
The extreme weather severely damaged the poles and powerlines that distribute electricity, particularly in the Mount Dandenong area. Senior AusNet official Steven Neave said of the region this week, “we basically have no network left, the overhead infrastructure is pretty much gone. It requires a complete rebuild”.
That leaves about 3,000 customers without electricity for weeks, in the heart of winter. The loss of power also cut mobile phone and internet services and reportedly allowed untreated water to enter drinking supplies.
So, could this disaster have been avoided? And under climate change, how can we prepare for more events like this?
Fallen trees brought down power lines across Melbourne. Daniel Pockett/AAP
An uncertain future
The Mount Dandenong area is heavily forested, and the chance of above-ground power infrastructure being hit by falling trees is obviously high.
Without electricity, people cannot turn on lights, refrigerate food or medications, cook on electric stoves or use electric heaters. Electronic banking, schooling and business activities are also badly disrupted. For vulnerable residents, in particular, the implications are profound.
Such disruptions are hard to avoid, at least while the electricity network is above ground. Good management, however, can prevent some trees coming down in storms.
The more pertinent question is: how can we prepare for such an event in the future?
Scientists warn such extreme weather will increase in both frequency and severity as climate change accelerates. The Australian Energy Market Operator is acutely aware of this, warning climate change poses “material risks to individual assets, the integrated energy system, and society”.
However, it’s challenging to predict exactly how future heatwaves, storms, bushfires and floods will affect the power network. As AEMO notes, many climate models related to storms and cyclones involve an element of unpredictability. So, plans to make the electricity system more resilient must address this uncertainty.
As researchers have noted, there is no “one future” to prepare for – we must be ready for many potential eventualities.
Under climate change, extreme weather is predicted to become more severe. Daniel Pockett/AAP
Yallourn – the bigger problem?
Meanwhile, in Victoria’s LaTrobe Valley, a situation at the Yallourn coal-fired power station which may have even greater consequences for electricity supplies. A coal mine wall adjacent to the station is at risk of collapse after flooding in the Morwell River caused it to crack. If the wall is breached and the mine is flooded, as happened in 2012, there will be no coal to power the station and almost a quarter of Victoria’s power supply could be out for months.
Victoria’s energy needs are increasingly supplied by renewables. However, losing Yallourn’s generation capacity would reduce the capacity of the network to adapt to other possible disruptions.
If further disruptions seem unlikely, it’s worth noting the Callide Power Station in Queensland is still operating at reduced capacity after a recent fire.
A wall adjacent to the Yallourn power plant may collapse. Julian Smith/AAP
Look beyond the immediate crisis
The Victorian government has offered up to A$1,680 per week, for up to three weeks, to help families without power buy supplies and find alternative accommodation.
Welfare groups say the assistance could be improved. They have called for changes to make it quicker and easier for people to access money, cash injections to frontline charities and more temporary accommodation facilities for displaced people and their pets.
While no doubt needed, these are all reactive responses targeted at those without electricity. When any system is disrupted, however, the effects can be widespread and felt long after the initial problem has been addressed.
Take dairy farmers in Gippsland, for example, who could not milk their cows without electricity. Cows must be milked regularly or else they stop producing milk – they cannot be “switched back on” when electricity is restored. Longer-term assistance may well be required for farmers facing such ripple effects.
And as welfare groups have noted, power companies should support affected customers over the long-term, with electricity discounts, deferrals and payment plans.
Relief centres offer affected residents a hot shower and electricity access, but longer-term solutions are also needed. Daniel Pockett/AAP
A call for backup
So, what else can be done to prepare for future power disruptions? Those with backup options, such as portable fuel-powered generators, or off-grid household batteries connected to solar panels, will undoubtedly be more resilient in such events.
These are examples of “system redundancy”, providing alternative electricity until the network is restored.
But it costs money to invest in household batteries or a generator that may never be used. Resilience is often a function of wealth, and the less well-off risk being left behind.
Certainly, governments can act to make society as a whole more resilient to power outages. For example, mobile phone towers have backup battery life of just 24 hours. As Victoria’s Emergency Management Commissioner Andrew Crisp said this week, extending that is something authorities “need to look at”.
Power and communications infrastructure could be moved underground to protect it from storms. While such a move would be expensive, it has been argued not doing so will lead to greater long-term costs under a changing climate.
The recent challenges at Yallourn and Callide show the risks inherent in a centralised electricity network dominated by coal.
Certainly, integrating renewable energy sources into the power network comes with its own challenges. However, expanding energy storage such as batteries, or shifting to small, community-level microgrids will go a long way to improving the resilience of the system.
This story is part of a series The Conversation is running on the nexus between disaster, disadvantage and resilience. It is supported by a philanthropic grant from the Paul Ramsay Foundation. Find the series here.
Anthony Richardson 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.
A new drug to treat Alzheimer’s disease was last week given accelerated approval by the United States Food and Drug Administration.
The drug is called aducanumab, commercially known as Aduhelm, and was developed by US biotechnology company Biogen.
This development is a game changer, because aducanumab is the first ever drug that targets the underlying cause of Alzheimer’s rather than simply the symptoms. Aducanumab is an antibody which targets and lowers a toxic protein in the brain called beta amyloid.
Approval of aducanumab has been a slow and painful journey for pharmaceutical companies, with many setbacks and failures since this approach was first investigated over 20 years ago.
While the drug will be available for use in the US, the FDA says further trials will be needed to conclusively determine whether or not aducanumab is clinically effective in treating people with early stage Alzheimer’s.
There’s considerable support from patient groups and many doctors and scientists for the early approval of this drug, but there are some who don’t agree with this decision.
This is because clinical trials of the drug showed mixed results. Trials suggested the drug could successfully lower levels of beta amyloid, but this didn’t necessarily cause patients’ memory or behaviour to improve in one of the two trials.
What’s Alzheimer’s disease?
Alzheimer’s disease is the most common form of dementia. Its symptoms include worsening memory loss, confusion, concentration difficulties, and language problems.
Research indicates a key contributing factor to the development of Alzheimer’s is deposits of “amyloid” in the brain. Amyloid is a protein found in many organs in the body. The accumulation of amyloid in the brain is toxic and disrupts the normal functioning of the brain.
In the mid 1980s, I was part of a small team from Perth who isolated amyloid plaques from Alzheimer’s brains. This discovery was a huge development in helping the scientific community understand the condition, and in determining the direction researchers should follow to eliminate these plaques.
The team demonstrated the major protein component in the amyloid plaques is a small protein known as beta amyloid.
Beta amyloid is like cholesterol. Too much cholesterol leads to heart disease, while an excessive buildup of beta amyloid is a contributing factor to Alzheimer’s.
Drugs which lower cholesterol reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease and heart attacks. Similarly, it’s thought drugs which lower beta amyloid may help reduce the risk and slow the symptoms of Alzheimer’s.
Why did a drug targeting amyloid take over 20 years to develop?
The journey to make an anti-amyloid antibody drug involved many companies using different methods, and over 20 years several companies had a go and failed.
Initial animal studies published in 1999 and 2000 used “active vaccination” by injecting beta amyloid into mice to generate antibodies against beta amyloid to treat Alzheimer’s. These studies showedprofoundeffects, clearing the toxic proteins in the brain and improving memory.
However, a similar “active immunisation” approach in humans resulted in severe side effects and the trial was prematurely stopped in 2003. This was the first major hurdle.
Subsequent trials developed in part by Pfizer and Janssen used altered versions of the drug. Results published in 2014 showed a significant reduction in side effects. But its ability to remove beta amyloid from the brain was minimal.
This was the next hurdle. These versions, while relatively safe, weren’t potent enough to remove significant amounts of amyloid from the brain.
Then Biogen came in with a different version, now know as aducanumab. Studies published in the past two years suggest the drug can successfully and significantly reduce beta amyloid levels in the brain.
They stopped their two trials prematurely after not seeing any effects on memory. However, when they got their data from all the sites globally, they found there was an improvement of memory at a high dose, which led them to make an application to the FDA.
In saying that, its ability to reduce symptoms varied between the trials. One trial showed it reduced symptoms slightly, while the other trial showed no effect on improving memory and behaviour.
Overall, the drug successfully reduced brain beta amyloid in both studies but failed to show improvement in memory, learning and behaviour.
Three experts who were on a committee advising the FDA on the drug resigned after the approval decision. This committee had earlier decided not to endorse the drug.
Many scientists believe this failure might be due to the drug trials being conducted in people with Alzheimer’s where the disease has advanced to the stage that damage to the brain was irreversible.
It’s becoming clear that for greatest efficacy, early diagnosis is essential, preferably before the onset of symptoms. Such clinical trials are currently under way. These trials include people who have no symptoms but whose brains are shown to contain high levels of amyloid — that is, they don’t have Alzheimer’s symptoms yet but could soon develop them. They’re treated with the drug to determine whether the amyloid is reduced and whether memory decline is prevented.
It’s worth noting the approval of aducanumab will likely enhance activity in the pharmaceutical industry, paving the way for more effective drugs to be made available in the near future.
For example, a drug aimed at treating Alzheimer’s called Tacrine had serious side effects, but it led to more powerful current drugs with minimal side effects.
Who’s likely to benefit from aducanumab?
People with early stage Alzheimer’s, or even earlier.
Australia’s drug regulator, the Therapeutic Goods Administration, will make its own evaluation before deciding whether to approve the drug, though this isn’t expected until 2022.
The price of aducanumab is exorbitant, costing approximately A$72,000 per year. Government subsidies would be essential for most people to access this drug in Australia, and its high cost may encourage us to look for alternatives.
It’s well established lifestyle factors play a major role in heart disease.
Preventative measures including a healthy diet, regular exercise, brain training and adequate sleep are important for reducing the risk of heart attacks.
What’s considered good for the heart is also good for the brain, and these same lifestyle factors apply to Alzheimer’s.
There’s strong evidence at least 40% of Alzheimer’s is preventable. Research into how people’s lifestyle could be modified to prevent Alzheimer’s isongoing.
Ralph N. Martins receives funding from
1. Australian Alzheimer’s Research Foundation
2. Lions Alzheimer’s Foundation
3. National Health and Medical Research Council
4. US Alzheimer’s Association
Michelle Grattan discusses the week in politics with University of Canberra Associate Professor Caroline Fisher.
This week the pair discuss the outcomes of Scott Morrison’s attendance at the G7 summit in Cornwall, including a face-to-face meeting with US President Joe Biden, and a free trade agreement with the UK.
Also discussed is the relocation of the Biloela Tamil family and what comes next for them, as well as a revision of the health advice concerning the AstraZeneca vaccine.
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.
This article contains names and images of people who have passed.
On August 23 1966, Vincent Lingiari and his fellow Aboriginal stock workers walked off the Wave Hill cattle station in the Northern Territory. Their action, in pursuit of fair working conditions, wages and land, was supported by unions across the country, and lasted nine years – the longest in Australian history.
That remarkable struggle, known to many Australians through the song “From little things big things grow” by Kev Carmody and Paul Kelly, culminated in the Whitlam government passing the Aboriginal Land Rights Act in 1976, which granted parcels of land to Aboriginal communities.
Less well-known, however, is the upshot of the station workers’ campaign for fair wages. That remains unfinished business.
Last week a class action claim was lodged in the Federal Court against the Commonwealth government seeking redress for the non-payment of wages to Aboriginal workers in the Northern Territory from the 1930s to the 1970s.
This is the first class action on stolen wages against the Commonwealth, which administered the territory until 1978.
Aboriginal stock workers were excluded from being paid award rates until 1966, when the Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Commission ruled they should be paid equal wages under the Cattle Industry (Northern Territory) Award 1951. Pastoral companies were given until 1968 to restructure their labour practices.
But this proved a limited win. Cattle stations never resumed the mass employment of Aboriginal workers, turning instead to motorised mustering techniques. Nor did they pay compensation for profiting from decades of low or withheld wages.
In these practices the Commonwealth government was complicit through its 1918 Aboriginal Ordinance, which provided powers to territory officials (called “Aboriginal Protectors”) to govern all aspects of Aboriginal peoples’ lives, including their employment and wages.
Commonwealth complicity
The class action (filed in the Federal Court on June 10) seeks compensation from the Commonwealth for wages of Aboriginal workers in the Northern Territory held in trust accounts from 1933 to 1972 and never paid.
The action alleges the federal government breached multiple duties of care by using its powers to require Aboriginal people to work for no or inadequate wages through discriminatory laws in the Northern Territory.
Non-payment of wages to Aboriginal workers was widespread in Australia. It was especially prevalent on pastoral stations, and also occurred in the pearling industry and on government settlements and church-run missions.
Sometimes the money was put into a “trust fund”. Sometimes it was simply not paid, on the pretence the employer was providing rations, shelter, clothes or store credit.
Station worker Big Mick Kankinang recalled the paltry provisions when he was interviewed in the late 1970s:
But we been working for bread and beef. We never got money then. We been working for blanket, boot, hat, shirt and trousers, that’s all.
Hobbles Danayarri, interviewed in the 1980s, described how Aboriginal workers were treated on the Victoria River Downs Station, the biggest cattle station in the Northern Territory:
Don’t give them good tucker, don’t give them good beef. They can work free […]
Hobbles Danayarri, photographed in 1980 by Håkan Ludwigson. This portrait was published in Ludwigson’s book Balls and Bulldust, featuriing images of life on cattle stations in the Northern Territory. Håkan Ludwigson, CC BY
At its peak the Victoria River Downs station covered 41,000 square kilometres. Like Wave Hill – and the Cattle Creek, Helen Springs and Morstone Downs stations – it was run by the Vestey Group, a British family company that leased vast tracts of land at “minimal rents” in exchange for building an abattoir in Darwin. The company sold its leases in the 1990s. It continues (as Vestey Holdings) to be a significant player in the food industry.
Minor redress
Campaigns protesting unpaid wages and effective enslavement go back to the early 1900s.
Two decades before the 1966 action by Lingiari and his comrades, for example, 800 Aboriginal pastoral workers in Western Australia’s Pilbara region walked off stations demanding wages and fair working conditions. Their strike lasted three years, from 1946 to 1949.
Over the past two decades, Aboriginal people have sought compensation for wages owed as historians have unearthed documents and recorded testimonies adding to evidence that governments and corporations weren’t holding anything in “trust”, but knowingly stealing wages for their own gain.
This has led some state governments to initiate redress schemes. New South Wales has offered payments from $1,000 to $24,000, Queensland up to $9,200 and Western Australia $2,000.
The Queensland action, initiated in 2016, led to a settlement in 2019, in which the state government agreed to pay $190 million to more than 10,000 claimants (both workers and descendents) for wage earned but never paid from 1939 to 1972.
That’s an average of about A$19,000 per claimant – a “disheartening” return, as the son of one claimant put it for the exploitation his mother endured from a young age.
The West Australian action was initated in 2020 and is still in process. The law firm running the claim, Shine Lawyers, has said it expects to end up representing tens of thousands of claimants.
Shine is also running the Northern Territory class action. Costs are being funded by Litigation Lending, a specialist class-action financing company that is also funding the WA action, and funded the Queensland claim.
What does wage justice look like?
The Northern Territory class action, though not the first such case, is still a landmark, putting the federal government in the dock.
It’s safe to assume the government will want to settle. The only question is for how much. For a just settlement, compensation should be more than the money owed.
In other areas of compensation, courts award “exemplary damages” to punish a wrongdoer for perpetrating a deliberate and egregious harm and send a message to others. Justice must also reflect the “transgenerational disadvantage” arising from this systemic wage exploitation. It has also impoverished workers’ descendents, just as the profits of the Vesteys have benefited their descendants.
Which raises the issue of whether only governments should be paying compensation.
Should corporations that owe their current fortunes to past exploitation not also be expected to redress injustices committed in living memory?
Indeed Samuel Vestey, the “British Lord Vestey” referred to in “From little things big things grow”, died only in February.
“Good ownership is good for business. Good for everyone,” says the website of Vestey Holdings. “Our business is a partnership between the family and colleagues, with everyone fairly rewarded for their contribution to our collective success.”
It (and other corporations) may yet be required to put its money where its mouth is by compensating generations of Aboriginal people for their unpaid, involuntary contributions to those companies’ success.
Thalia Anthony receives funding from the Australian Research Council.
The Israel-Palestine conflict has experienced its first violent spasm in the term of a new Israeli government. However, hostilities have since been contained, for the time being.
Provocative demonstrations this week in Arab East Jerusalem involving Israeli proto-nationalists chanting “death to Arabs” were met with a barrage of Hamas incendiary balloons that caused fires in Israeli farmland.
Israeli launched retaliatory air strikes against alleged Hamas positions in Gaza. This was pretty much the extent of the violence in the latest outbreak, a familiar tit-for-tat pattern.
Both sides have been sizing each other up in these very early stages of the post-Netanyahu era in which Bennett is striving to stabilise a government whose combustible components range across the Israeli political spectrum.
The Bennett coalition is highly unstable and will need time to coalesce, if indeed that proves possible. The ousted Benjamin Netanyahu will be doing all he can as opposition leader to bring down the coalition led by his former allies.
In a divided Israel, not unlike the biblical market of Seleucia, in which anything and everything was for sale, the notion of a loyal opposition is anathema.
This is the reality of Israeli politics on a knife edge in this new period.
New Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett is leading a very fragile coalition. Atef Safadi/EPA/AAP
From the Palestinian perspective, its divided leadership, between Hamas militants in Gaza and the feeble Fatah mainstream in Ramallah, will be watching and waiting to see where the cards fall.
Both the Israelis and Palestinians will have their eyes on Washington, where the Biden administration represents a significant change from its predecessor led by Donald Trump, whose blatant partisanship encouraged Israel’s bad behaviour.
Initial indications are Biden will not be replicating the Obama administration’s focus on kick-starting an ephemeral Middle East peace process.
The administration’s early preoccupation will be with crisis management. Washington has much broader concerns these days, prime among them are managing China’s rise and combatting a revanchist Russia.
In all of this, Israel-Palestine and the endless machinations of its various players are a distraction.
The question, as always, is whether destructive forces on either side can be contained long enough for an easing of tensions and a relaxation of restrictions on Palestinians living under occupation.
In the present circumstance, there is no realistic chance of a resumption of a genuine Middle East peace push. For all intents and purposes, talk of a “two-state solution” resides in the glib assertions of politicians who know perfectly well it means little.
An essential question in all of this is whether Netanyahu’s departure from the Israeli leadership, if only temporarily, will provide breathing space for the various parties to step back from the brink.
There is little confidence between Israelis and the Palestinians, shredded by Netanyahu’s 15 years in office in two separate and destructive tranches. In the end, trust had evaporated, with faults on both sides.
Netanyahu’s words could not be trusted. His opposite number, Mahmoud Abbas’s utterances could not be taken seriously since he was barely in control of his own faction, let alone the broader Palestinian movement.
Israel’s messy democratic process stands in contrast to the unwillingness of the Palestinian leadership in Ramallah to risk the judgment of its citizens. This is notwithstanding the difficulties of holding free and fair elections under occupation.
This brings us back to the Bennett-led Israeli government in the first week of its tenure. It hangs on to power by a thread in Israel’s 120-member Knesset. Securing a working parliamentary majority in Israel has become increasingly difficult over the years as political parties of left and right have fragmented.
Bennett, of the minority rightist Yamina party, is an unlikely mainstream Israeli leader, although Israel’s political centre has shifted to the right. He has made his name as an outspoken leader and supporter of the Israeli settlers’ movement. In some respects, such as his energetic support for annexation of Palestinian territory, he has been to the right of Netanyahu. He was once Netanyahu’s chief-of-staff.
As leader of a hydra-headed government of eight parties, which includes for the first time in Israeli history an Arab Islamist bloc, it will be a Holy Land miracle if Bennett survives for long.
However, he brings several assets to the table. For a start, he is not Netanyahu, who had become a reviled figure across Israel’s political spectrum, leaving aside his die-hard supporters.
Bennett is a successful entrepreneur in his own right. He is showing signs of being a political pragmatist, after establishing his political career as an uncompromising supporter of Israel’s expansion into territories occupied in war.
He is something of an unknown quantity in his new leadership role in partnership with the centrist Yair Lapid of the Yesh Atid bloc.
Whether all this is even workable will become apparent fairly soon.
In the meantime, Palestinians will not be investing much hope in Bennett’s ability to ease pressure on their daily lives, let alone bring about steps towards an enduring peace.
The latest Gaza spasm represented a punctuation mark in a new political environment. It is not an end point.
Tony Walker 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 end of the financial year is near. So all of us — especially those scrambling at the last minute to get their receipts in order — should keep an eye out for the accompanying onslaught of tax scams.
Posing as the Australian Taxation Office in particular has been a key vehicle for scammers to target victims, with considerable success over the years.
According to an Australian Competition and Consumer Commission report, scams targeting Australians last year cost an estimated A$851 million. Reported financial losses over the past five years show a clear upward trajectory.
Reported financial losses from scams over the last five years (data from ACCC) Author provided
And while this is clearly concerning, it only represents a proportion of the overall problem, as many victims are unlikely to report being scammed.
Bargaining psychology
Scams come in various forms. Often they will use social engineering to convince victims to reveal personal information or to participate in their scheme. They rely on the same emotional triggers marketers use to encourage purchasing.
The excitement of chasing (and getting) a good deal leads to a feeling of self-satisfaction that’s hard to resist. Bargain-hunting, in other words, makes us feel smart. But it doesn’t mean we are smart.
Criminals rely on this to bypass a potential victim’s rational brain and appeal directly to their emotions. Scams will often frighten victims with threats of financial or even criminal penalties.
Scammers will use any event or entity as an opportunity to undertake fraudulent behaviour. The ATO therefore presents them a valuable opportunity, as having to interact with it at some point is a near-universal experience for Australians.
Scams based on the ATO are so common that the body has a dedicated page to alert taxpayers with examples from the preceding two years.
Phone scams in particular have attracted a lot of attention. The ATO has even provided a real example online to warn the public.
Tax time is the perfect opportunity for scammers, as taxpayers are often time-poor, working to a deadline and are conscious of the legal consequences of failing to comply.
Scammers rely on victims behaving impulsively. Shutterstock
Receiving an email, SMS or voice call at this time of year with a tax-related matter has an air of legitimacy (we expect them) and a sense of urgency (we don’t want to be fined).
But illegitimate demands for payment and requests for information can lead to huge financial losses and identity fraud.
How to spot scams
While the ATO does phone and send text messages to individuals, it will never ask you to make a payment to nullify an arrest warrant, nor will it threaten you with revoking your Tax File Number, as is done in some scams. It also won’t ever call you using prerecorded messages.
These messages are known as “RoboCalls”. They can range from sounding quite genuine to being almost laughable. In either case, if you ever wish to follow up you should contact the ATO directly. Do not respond to the message, and do not provide any information.
If you are suspicious of a communication you’ve received, the best way to react is to not react. Take a breath, count to five and ask yourself whether what you’re looking at seems legitimate. Is it unusual in any way?
Scammers rely on victims acting quickly on impulse. Pausing and reflecting is the best weapon against social engineering. Take time to consider who the message is from. What are they asking you to do, and why?
The ATO provides a useful set of examples and advice regarding how scammers try to convince victims of their legitimacy.
What to do if you get scammed
If you know you’ve been scammed, or suspect you may have been, the first step is to contact the ATO (always using the phone number on the official website). You can also report the incident directly via the ATO’s report a scam page, or through ScamWatch.
If you’ve already lost money to scammers, unfortunately there are limited options because most scams send stolen money to offshore accounts, making recovery almost impossible. If you’ve bought gift cards you can talk with the retailer, but most are non-refundable.
If you have made a funds transfer or credit card payment, you should contact your bank to see if the funds can be recovered (and speed is crucial here).
Year after year, we can’t avoid doing our taxes. But if we’re careful, calm and aware, we can at least avoid being taken advantage of by scammers.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
These days we emphasise the very important greenhouse costs arising from the burning of fossil fuels: coal, petrol, gas. But they are not the only ways that urban vehicle use contributes to global environmental degradation. Certainly it is important that New Zealanders make a contribution to the emission-reduction endeavour, at least in proportion to the influence of greenhouse gases on global environmental harm. Changing the ways we own and use private vehicles represents an important outcome, to which good policymaking can make a valuable contribution.
In cities and towns, the problem is a mix of the overuse of private motor vehicles, and the use of vehicles that are overspecified for the tasks they are required to perform. The high-tech solution just announced in New Zealand is to transition to an all-electric fleet; with 2035 being designated as the year in which the import of non-electric new urban vehicles will be prohibited, with a view to New Zealand having an all-electric fleet by around 2050. The important new policy to accelerate the promoted transition will be a subsidisation of electric and low-emission vehicles, combined with a tax on high-emission vehicles.
In my view, this represents an overreliance on a particular technology that presently contributes as a niche solution, but is untested at scale. It represents a strategy by which one technology is replaced by another, whereas a more robust outcome might involve more variety of technologies, and better incentives to use existing technologies more efficiently. Indeed, there is too little emphasis on low-tech contributions that can be implemented in 2021 or 2022.
Public Transport
We should note that countries operating at pandemic emergency levels need to emphasise both minimisation of urban travel, and other measures – vaccination, physical distancing, and mask use – that minimise opportunities for indoor airborne transmission of pathogens between people from different households. Public transport here constitutes a public indoor space; so, under these conditions, there will necessarily be a preference for private transport. However, this preference for private transport in a pandemic will be offset by significantly less overall movement of people.
It is important that, when countries are not at pandemic emergency levels – and New Zealand is not currently at a domestic emergency level (it does continue to have a pandemic emergency at its international border) – all incentives to prefer private over public transport are discontinued; even reversed.
New Zealand at present has a permanent requirement for passengers to wear facemasks when using public transport. And the consequences are obvious, at least in Auckland. While traffic congestion is noticeably worse than it was in 2019, buses and trains are noticeably more spacious, with empty buses still a common sight all over the city.
New Zealanders of all ethnicities have revealed an unsurprising preference to not wear masks (except when there is a current outbreak of Covid19), and to only use masks when required to by law. New Zealanders don’t like wearing masks. Indeed, it was quite strange visiting Middlemore Hospital last month, which has a train station outside its main entrance. The only masks I saw in the hospital were those being worn by people heading out the front door, to catch a train.
The mask mandate makes public transport consumption a more costly experience than it would otherwise be; in part because New Zealanders don’t like wearing facemasks, and in part because it signals to the public at large that buses and trains are inherently unhealthy – indeed dangerous – places. Auckland’s public transport has improved markedly this century, though buses had a taint, even before Covid19, of being ‘loser movers’. That taint has been majorly exacerbated during covid times.
When there are twenty percent more cars on urban roads than there need to be, then greenhouse emissions are likely to be raised by fifty percent; that’s because of the stop-start nature of traffic congestion. So the first thing authorities can do to reduce greenhouse emissions from car use is to discontinue the mask mandate, except as an emergency measure. Other incentives to use public transport – including temporary incentives – may also be helpful, to help redress its ‘loser mover’ taint.
(Of course any incentives for workers to take sick leave when sick, or to work from home periodically, need to be retained. Also, people should be encouraged to wear facemasks if they are experiencing conditions such as hay fever; conditions which could be construed by fellow passengers as covid or influenza. The general principle is that buses and trains and ferries should become happy, normalised, family-friendly public spaces.)
It’s also important to note that interruptions to the normal flow of low grade ‘seasonal’ viruses – infections such as ‘common colds’ – may have unanticipated consequences. These viruses may provide substantial (albeit incomplete) immunity to more serious viral infections; we do not know, in large part because our public health people are not asking this question. (We should note that vaccinations themselves can be regarded as protective low-grade infections.) Thus, by disturbing the normal flow of low grade pathogens – such as the cold viruses we have adapted to – we are participating in a social experiment. In New Zealand over the last nine months, hospitalisations have increased for what were otherwise rare respiratory disorders; and excess deaths in New Zealand have been comparable with those in European countries with active Covid19 outbreaks.
Public transport use is a critical component of greenhouse emissions’ reduction.
Subsidies and Small Cars
Subsidies (‘carrot’ incentives) are generally more effective than taxes (‘stick’ disincentives’). They work by leading more people into making those choices that have collective benefits. And they fit the wider (‘zero-sum’) principle of public finance that requires private financial surpluses to be offset by public financial deficits. (In this context, just as responsible governments understand that small countries are not excused from contributing to the global good through greenhouse emission reductions, so all countries’ governments need to contribute by running public sector financial deficits to offset unsustainable private sector financial behaviours. This means that ‘we do not have enough money’ is not a valid governmental excuse for inaction or for under-action.)
First, governments need to subsidise surgical-grade facemasks for people with conditions that make them high risk to acquiring respiratory infections in public places. This allows such compromised people to mingle in public spaces without imposing illiberal mandates on the general public.
Second, small cars emit fewer greenhouse gases than large cars. Not only should governments subsidise small safe low-emission petrol vehicles, but they should encourage households who genuinely require larger family vehicles to acquire such small vehicles as their ‘second’ car. And to default to their smaller vehicle whenever they are on runabout duty with one to four occupants; thus, the smaller vehicle should rightly be called the ‘first car’ of a household.
The vehicle I mainly drive now is a 2003 Honda Jazz, which is still fuel efficient, can act as a mini utility vehicle when circumstances require it, and, over the last summer, effortlessly ran a return trip from Auckland to Cromwell.
The other benefit of city residents and townspeople driving small cars like this as their default option is that the roads become safer. Collisions are more likely than at present to be between two small vehicles, and thereby less likely to cause major injury or death.
By all means we should subsidise small electric vehicles as part of this mix. But, we should note that most small vehicles will not be garaged at night – because they are owned by mainly younger people without a garage, because a bigger family vehicle is in the garage, or because of the modern trend to use garages more as storage units for household affects than as homes for cars – and that plugin electric vehicles parked on the street at night cannot easily be charged.
Family Vehicles
Larger vehicles – especially vans and people movers – do play and will continue to play an important role in our vehicle mix. The answer here would be to emphasise (and subsidise) hybrid technology, now well established. These vehicles are particularly useful for large families, and for many businesses.
What we want is to minimise the inappropriate urban use of ‘utes’ and SUVs. Indeed, in recent years four-door utility vehicles – in most cases a form of truck – have become a status symbol, to some extent displacing SUVs. These are vehicles best suited to rural use – eg by farmers. Petrol or diesel ‘utes’ should be subject to a large-car tax (indeed a large car-tax), which can be rebated to legitimate users for whom these are a valid business cost. They should continue to be available to rich city-folk who need to tow their recreational boats to Pauanui or Whangamata, so long as they pay the large car tax. And, they should be exempted the tax if they buy an electric ute or SUV instead of a ‘gas guzzler’; incentives should apply at all price points.
Electric Vehicles
All EVs, including bikes, should be eligible for transition subsidies. The aim however should not be to switch to fully electric fleets; we need diversity and efficiency, rather than vulnerability. Thus a small EV is clearly better than a big EV, for typical city runabout use.
We should note that, in New Zealand this year, more electricity has been generated by burning coal than in any of the previous ten years. This may be partially a consequence of climate change; more droughts, meaning less water available to generate hydroelectricity. Thus, a mass switch from oil-based fuels to electricity might end up being, substantially, a switch from petrol to dirtier coal; not exactly what the policy is intended to achieve.
Considering vulnerability, we need to note that modern electric vehicles require scarce raw materials, such as rare earth metals, which are substantially sourced from China; and massive amounts of other increasingly scarce metals, such as copper. (See Al Jazeera‘s The Dark Side of Green Energy.) At a time that one ‘conversation’ is leading western countries to distance themselves from China, another conversation may be leading us go become more dependent on Chinese sourced materials. And the environmental costs to these mining regions in China is comparable to the political costs being faced by some other communities in China.
Another really big issue is that of e-waste. It’s important that the cost of any vehicle – including electric vehicles – is fully inclusive of the costs of reusing, recycling, or otherwise disposing of end of life vehicles (and vehicle components such as batteries and tyres). One aspect of this is to avoid a transition process which makes many still good vehicles prematurely obsolete. Policymakers need to take a global perspective on this. Countries like New Zealand – which traditionally import many used vehicles – need to continue importing quality low emission used petrol vehicles – to ensure that a sound global vehicle ecology is maintained.
Rental Vehicles
It is common for us to rent tools (eg trailers) and power machinery; otherwise these items that we own spend most of their time idle. We can treat passenger vehicles in much the same way. So, while it is good for young people to learn to drive – and gain drivers’ licences – that does not mean they need to own a car, not even a small car. They can rent cars – preferably small cars – for weekend and longer trips. Quality rental housing within walking distance of main employment and transport nodes, combined with a reliance on rental vehicle options for irregular travel, can form the basis for an affluent but uncluttered life; an eco-life.
Likewise, ‘nuclear’ households of four or fewer people should be able to comfortably get by with one small private vehicle, renting a larger vehicle whenever irregular vehicle requirements occur.
A green society needs fewer vehicles that each do many kilometres in one year. In that way, the vehicles will wear out as the technology becomes obsolete; ie ideally a car should do 200,000 km (or more) in a fifteen-year life.
Technological Transition
Electric vehicles, used at scale, represent an unproven option with many potential unaddressed and unintended consequences. The only comparable wholesale transition is that from steam to oil, and that took eighty or so years, with the best steam engines being built in the 1950s.
One of the most interesting transitions in transport technology was that of sailing ships giving way to powered ships. The transition lasted over 100 years, with Norway in particular improving the technology of commercial sailing ships into the twentieth century. New Zealand is particularly well-adapted to sailing ships, because it represents the half-way point of the great circle circumnavigation route. There is a reason why the westerly winds in the Southern Ocean are called ‘trade winds’. The last of the commercial windjammers was the Pamir, which last sailed out of Wellington in 1948. Sailing ships, in their context, are much more eco than electric cars. May we see a reintroduction of sailing ships into the mix?
We can learn from this last episode, by using multiple technologies simultaneously, and letting markets (which properly cost what they supply) determine the outcomes; and focussing on the bigger ecological picture, that less is more.
We need to remove disincentives to the use of public transport. And we need to promote the intensive use of small private vehicles wherever and whenever they are sufficient to the tasks people require of them.
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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.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Ernest McClelland, Distinguised Professor and Director Centre for Gravitational Astrophysics, Australian National University
Caltech / MIT / LIGO Lab, Author provided
The LIGO gravitational wave observatory in the United States is so sensitive to vibrations it can detect the tiny ripples in space-time called gravitational waves. These waves are caused by colliding black holes and other stellar cataclysms in distant galaxies, and they cause movements in the observatory much smaller than a proton.
Now we have used this sensitivity to effectively chill a 10-kilogram mass down to less than one billionth of a degree above absolute zero.
Temperature is a measure of how much, and how fast, the atoms and molecules that surround us (and that we are made of) are moving. When objects cool down, their molecules move less.
“Absolute zero” is the point where atoms and molecules stop moving entirely. However, quantum mechanics says the complete absence of motion is not really possible (due to the uncertainty principle).
Instead, in quantum mechanics the temperature of absolute zero corresponds to a “motional ground state”, which is the theoretical minimum amount of movement an object can have. The 10-kilogram mass in our experiment is about 10 trillion times heavier than the previous heaviest mass cooled to this kind of temperature, and it was cooled to nearly its motional ground state.
One of the four Advanced LIGO 40-kg mirrors that are cooled near their quantum ground state. Danny Sellers / Caltech / MIT / LIGO Lab, Author provided
The work, published today in Science, is an important step in the ongoing quest to understand the gap between quantum mechanics — the strange science that rules the universe at very small scales — and the macroscopic world we see around us.
Plans are already under way to improve the experiment in more sensitive gravitational wave observatories of the future. The results may offer insight into the inconsistency between quantum mechanics and the theory of general relativity, which describes gravity and the behaviour of the universe at very large scales.
How it works
LIGO detects gravitational waves using lasers fired down long tunnels and bounced between two pairs of 40-kilogram mirrors, then combined to produce an interference pattern. Tiny changes in the distance between the mirrors show up as fluctuations in the laser intensity.
The motion of the four mirrors is controlled very precisely, to isolate them from any surrounding vibrations and even to compensate for the impact of the laser light bouncing off them.
This part may be hard to get your head around, but we can show mathematically that the differences in the motion of the four 40-kilogram mirrors is equivalent to the motion of a single 10-kilogram mirror. What this means is that the pattern of laser intensity changes we observe in this experiment is the same as what we would see from a single 10-kilogram mirror.
One of the four Advanced LIGO 40-kg mirrors that are cooled near their quantum ground state. Matt Heintze / Caltech / MIT / LIGO Lab, Author provided
Although the temperature of the 10-kilogram mirror is defined by the motion of the atoms and molecules that make it up, we don’t measure the motion of the individual molecules. Instead, and largely because it’s how we measure gravitational waves, we measure the average motion of all the atoms (or the centre-of-mass motion).
There are at least as many ways the atoms can move as there are atoms, but we only measure one of those ways, and that particular dance move of all the atoms together is the only one we cooled.
The result is that while the four physical mirrors remain at room temperature and would be warm to the touch (if we let anyone touch them), the average motion of the 10-kilogram system is effectively at 0.77 nanokelvin, or less than one billionth of a degree above absolute zero.
Squeezed light
Our contribution to Advanced LIGO, as members of Australia’s OzGrav gravitational wave research centre, was to design, install and test the “quantum squeezed light” system in the detector. This system creates and injects a specially engineered quantum field into the detector, making it more sensitive to the motion of the mirrors, and thus more sensitive to gravitational waves.
The squeezed light system uses a special kind of crystal to produce pairs of highly correlated or “entangled” photons, which reduce the amount of noise in the system.
Australian National University scientists Nutsinee Kijbunchoo and Terry McRae build components for a quantum squeezed light source at LIGO Hanford Observatory in Washington, US. Nutsinee Kijbunchoo, Author provided
Being able to observe one particular property of these mirrors approach a quantum ground state is a by-product of improving LIGO in the quest to do more and better gravitational wave astronomy, but it might also offer insights into the vexed question of quantum mechanics and gravity.
At very small scales, quantum mechanics allows many strange phenomena, such as objects being both waves and particles, or seemingly existing in two places at the same time. However, even though the macroscopic world we see is built from tiny objects that must obey quantum phenomena, we don’t see these quantum effects at larger scales.
One theory about why this happens is the idea of decoherence. This suggests that heat and vibrations from a quantum system’s surroundings disrupt its quantum state and make it behave like a familiar solid object.
One of the four Advanced LIGO 40-kg mirrors that are cooled near their quantum ground state. Danny Sellers / Caltech / MIT / LIGO Lab, Author provided
In order to measure gravitational waves, LIGO is designed to not be affected by heat or vibrations from its surroundings, but LIGO test masses are heavy enough for gravity to be a possible cause of decoherence.
Despite a century of searching, we have no way to reconcile gravity and quantum mechanics. Experiments like this, especially if they can get even closer to the ground state, might yield insight into this puzzle.
As we improve LIGO over the next few years, we can re-do this quantum mechanics experiment and maybe see what happens when we cross over from the classical world into the quantum world with human-sized objects.
After the brutal conflict in Gaza flared yet again in the past month, and the end of Benyamin Netanyahu’s 12 years as prime minister of Israel, attention is again focused on the apparently intractable conflict between Israel and Palestine.
Australia has been one of Israel’s staunchest supporters, but this is increasingly being questioned, particularly within the Labor Party. The Queensland branch recently passed a resolution condemning Israel for the “ethnic cleansing” and “oppression and dehumanisation of Palestinian people”. The party’s federal leadership immediately disavowed the resolution.
H.V. ‘Doc’ Evatt was instrumental in the establishment of Israel. National Archives of Australia
This is not a new debate within Labor, nor is it likely to disappear. While there is less obvious dissent within Coalition ranks, there is growing public scepticism about Australia’s consistent support of Israeli governments. What data we have suggests less enthusiasm for Israel’s position than is reflected in mainstream media, with younger Australians less supportive of Israel’s current position.
Australia played a significant role in the formation of Israel after the second world war. As president of the United Nations General Assembly, Herbert “Doc” Evatt, then Labor’s foreign minister, shepherded through the resolutions that led to the partition of the British mandate of Palestine and the recognition of the state of Israel.
Support for Israel continued under successive governments. In the Suez Crisis of 1956, the Menzies government stood with Britain and France in backing Israel’s attack on Egypt. In the United Nations, Australia is one of a dwindling number of American allies that have supported Israel in a series of votes condemning Israel.
Disputes over Palestine split the National Union of Australian Students in the mid-1970s. In her memoir, Julia Gillard writes that these debates contributed to her strong sympathies for Israel. Her sympathies were tested when Bob Carr, then foreign minister, pushed for Australia to modify its automatic support for Israel in United Nations votes. Carr mobilised considerable support within caucus, and Australia abstained on a General Assembly vote on Palestinian recognition.
By 2012, attitudes within Labor had begun to shift. When he was foreign minister in the Hawke and Keating governments, Gareth Evans had written of the dilemmas facing Israel if it refused to acknowledge the claims of the Palestinians.
In his memoir he argues Israel “could not be simultaneously a Jewish state, a democratic state, and a state occupying the whole of biblical Judea and Samaria”.
Labor’s shift is due to both ideological and pragmatic reasons. Carr is very explicit about the growing importance of Lebanese and other Arab-Australian voters to the Labor cause, as against the already influential, though smaller, Jewish community.
As foreign minister, Bob Carr pushed for Labor to modify its automatic support of Israel. AAP/Alan Porritt
But he also saw a shift in Australia’s position as a necessary recognition of the Palestinian case against continuing Israeli occupation of the West Bank.
Traditionally, Australians have felt a sense of identity with Israel. It represented for several generations a chance to atone for the horrors of the Holocaust, and Australia has been largely free of the sort of unreflective anti-Semitism that colours much debate about Israel.
The first Australian-born governor-general, Sir Isaac Isaacs, was Jewish. Stories of settling the land had particular resonance for many Australians; reflecting on whose land was being dispossessed was too uncomfortable for most of us to consider.
It’s not surprising the strong government and media support for Israel finds a reaction in pro-Palestinian sympathies among many Australians, predominantly on the left. Supporters of Israel claim this is selective indignation and complain there is far less condemnation of equally or more repressive regimes closer to home. But as both Evans and Carr point out, Israel claims to be a democratic state and must be held to account by the norms of Western liberal democracies.
Australian debate on Israel/Palestine too often becomes ritualistic. It is either totally supportive of one side or the other, or resorts to vague talk of a “two-state solution”, which has long ceased to be meaningful given the scope of Israeli settlements on the West Bank. The current government has quietly shelved Scott Morrison’s suggestion of moving the Australian embassy to Jerusalem, a thought bubble aimed at pleasing both Donald Trump and the electors of Wentworth.
a halt to actions that increase tensions, including land appropriations, forced evictions, demolitions and settlement activity.
It is doubtful the new government in Israel will change the dynamics of the conflict. While the coalition government straddles the political spectrum, new Prime Minister Naftali Bennett opposes any concessions to the Palestinians.
One might expect both domestic and international pressure on Australian governments to adopt a more critical position of Israel.
Dennis Altman 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 Jay Marlowe, Associate Professor, Co-Director Centre for Asia Pacific Refugee Studies, University of Auckland
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern marks World Refugee Day 2020 at the Mangere Refugee Resettlement Centre in Auckland.GettyImages
When COVID-19 forced New Zealand to shut its borders, it left refugees we had committed to resettle in precarious circumstances with shattered hopes.
The latest United Nation figures put people forcibly displaced by conflict at nearly 80 million — a near doubling from ten years ago. Each minute of every day last year 21 people were separated from their friends, family and communities because of who they are or what they believe.
As we approach World Refugee Day this Sunday, we need to reflect on what is fair as we contemplate reopening those borders.
COVID restrictions aside, New Zealand accepts 1,500 refugees per year. While that’s an increase on the previous quota of 1,000, this only keeps track with population growth since the quota began in 1987.
With COVID under control for now, New Zealand accepted 35 refugees in February, with 242 expected to have arrived by the end of our intake year — far short of our total commitment.
All will be required to quarantine for 14 days before starting their five-week orientation program at the Mangere Refugee Resettlement Centre in Auckland.
Refugees from Syria, arrivals under an extra quota during the Syrian crisis in 2016, eat lunch at the Mangere Refugee Resettlement Centre. www.shutterstock.com
NZ’s refugee record
While New Zealand does a relatively good job supporting refugees who manage to make it here, we accept small numbers.
According to the latest pre-COVID statistical yearbook from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), New Zealand has one of the lowest numbers of refugees per capita internationally: 0.3 refugees per 1,000 people, putting us 95th in the world.
By comparison, Sweden ranks sixth by accepting 23.36 refugees per 1,000 people, Canada 49th (2.68), United Kingdom 55th (1.83), Australia 59th (1.74) and the United States 77th (0.84).
Norway and Ireland, with similar populations to New Zealand, are placed 15th (11.29) and 69th (1.22) in the world respectively.
To put this in context, if we were to fill Eden Park to its capacity of 50,000, about 15 people from refugee backgrounds would be there. We have plenty of space for more.
On the other hand, 2% of students enrolled at the University of Auckland identify as coming from a refugee background. Fill Eden Park with students, then, and there would be 1,000 students from refugee backgrounds. That shows to what extent these people are invested in their futures — and New Zealand’s.
There is no ‘queue’
All of these numbers, however, pale in comparison to countries closest to refugee movements, where the majority of refugees (around 85%) live.
Lebanon, for instance, has about 170 refugees per 1,000 people. Typically, these countries are far less well resourced to support and protect those displaced people.
Over the past ten years, the Refugee Status Unit in New Zealand has approved an average of 106 asylum seekers a year for refugee status (from an average of 375 applicants). These are people who apply for refugee status from within New Zealand due to fears of persecution if they were to return home.
It’s often said asylum seekers should “join the queue” — but there is no queue. Fewer than 1% of the world’s refugees will have opportunities to resettle in places like New Zealand, Canada, Australia, the UK and US.
This often leaves the one person fortunate enough to receive the opportunity reflecting on the 99 people left behind.
The right to be a refugee
It’s worth noting New Zealand has never had a boatload of asylum seekers arrive on its shores in modern times. Despite this, the fear of asylum seekers remains. This is largely thanks to highly politicised representations of overloaded boats heading for Australia and crossing the Mediterranean into Europe.
Political parties in the UK, North America, Europe and Australia routinely stir up fear and spread misinformation on refugee and migrant issues at election times.
Even in New Zealand people have been unjustly and inaccurately stigmatised, moved from being “at risk” to “a risk”.
But seeking refuge is a human right. New Zealand is a signatory to the 1951 UN Refugee Convention and its 1967 protocol, which assert the right to have a claim of refugee status considered and, if successful, to remain in New Zealand.
commit to resettling those who missed the opportunity to come (including from the refugee family support category) during our border closures, as well as the current annual intake
ensure equal support for people seeking asylum or consideration under the family reunification program, regardless of how they arrive in New Zealand
provide adequately resourced services for refugees during the first several years of resettlement, supporting health, education, employment, housing, language acquisition and a sense of belonging
provide opportunities for people from refugee backgrounds to participate equally in employment, education and wider society.
We can all can play a part in helping refugees feel they belong here. A genuine welcome is about ensuring they receive a fair go.
Jay Marlowe receives funding from the Royal Society Te Apārangi as part of a Rutherford Discovery Fellowship.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nathan Bartlett, Associate Professor, School of Biomedical Sciences and Pharmacy, University of Newcastle
Jessica Hill/AP/AAP
Bookings for the first dose of the Pfizer vaccine have been halted in Victoria this week, amid shortages of the vaccine.
Some Victorians who’ve had their first Pfizer dose already will need to wait six weeks to get their second.
Some people are wondering if it’s OK to get their second Pfizer shot beyond the recommended three week gap between their first and second dose.
And yesterday, the federal government recommended the Pfizer vaccine as the preferred vaccine for people under 60. Previously, it was only recommended for people below 50. This will place even more pressure on our currently limited supply of Pfizer vaccine, and could lead to wait times being longer than three weeks for some.
The good news is, you can wait up to 12 weeks between your first and second dose of the Pfizer vaccine. In fact, some preliminary evidence suggests you might get even stronger immunity with a longer wait time.
The only downside is you’re at risk from the virus the longer you wait for your second dose.
So the improved immunity conferred from waiting longer must be weighed against the risk of contracting COVID in the meantime.
You can wait longer than three weeks
The Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI) recommends a minimum of three weeks between the first and second Pfizer dose. However it says this gap can be extended to up to six weeks.
The minimum time to establish immune memory following first exposure to a new vaccine is roughly three weeks. This is the minimum time, but waiting longer between the first and second jab is absolutely fine in terms of efficacy.
This makes sense based on what immunology experts understand about our immune response to vaccines.
By about two weeks after vaccination, adaptive immunity has kicked in. This involves immune cells called T and B cells working together to produce antibodies that target the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, and are able to block infection.
At this stage, some of these become “memory” immune cells, and by about the third week they have established immune memory. This means these virus-recognising cells are on hand to rapidly respond if we are exposed again.
If that exposure is via a second immunisation, this will boost the immune response to the vaccine and increase immune memory, which in turn enhances protection against the virus.
The secondary immune response is faster and bigger because you have a pool of memory immune cells primed and ready to jump into action. The memory response is also faster, so by two weeks after the second jab, protection has significantly increased.
You’re not fully protected against COVID until about seven to 14 days after the second Pfizer dose.
Waiting longer might be even better
Many vaccines confer improved protection with longer gaps between doses, and preliminary data suggests this seems to be the case with Pfizer too.
One pre-print study, yet to be peer reviewed, suggests waiting 11-12 weeks for the second Pfizer dose actually produces an even more potent antibody response in people over 80.
The levels of antibodies in people who waited 12 weeks for their second dose were 3.5 times higher than those whose gap was three weeks.
What are the risks of waiting?
We must remember the level of protection isn’t the only consideration. The time it takes to get there is also important. Delaying the second dose increases the time it takes for you to achieve a high level of immunity, and therefore increases your susceptibility to infection, and risk of COVID.
One dose does provide some protection from severe COVID, but not enough, which means you can still become infected and transmit the virus to others. Preliminary data suggests one Pfizer dose provides only 33% protection against the Delta variant, while two doses confers 88% protection.
However, this risk must be weighed against the risk of contracting COVID in Australia currently. Community outbreaks are relatively contained, so the risk in between doses is not as high as it is during periods of rampant transmission.
In saying that, as we’ve seen from Victoria’s recent lockdown and new cases in Sydney this week, COVID transmission is still smouldering in Australia and we must not let our guard down yet. In this context it’s important everyone who can get vaccinated does, and as soon as possible.
Nathan Bartlett 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 wild storms that recently raged across eastern Victoria caused major property and environmental damage, and loss of lives. They’ve also triggered serious water contamination incidents.
Yarra Valley Water issued an urgent health warning to not to drink tap water — not even if it’s boiled — in three affected suburbs: Kalista, Sherbrooke and The Patch.
So what caused this incident? Yarra Valley Water says the severe weather led to an equipment failure, with potentially unsafe water entering the drinking water system.
I spoke to the water authority about the nature of the contamination, and they did not provide any more detail. But based on my three decades of experience in the water industry, I can offer some insight into how disasters create contamination crises, and Australia’s vulnerabilities.
Does boiling water help?
Despite recent health warnings, it’s worth pointing out that Australia’s water supply is generally safe and reliable, with few exceptions. Still, this is hardly the first time disasters have disrupted water supply, whether from droughts, storms and floods, or bushfires.
For example, the Black Summer bushfires damaged water supply infrastructure for many communities, such as in Eden and Boydtown on the south coast of New South Wales. The Bega Valley Shire Council issued a boil water notice, as the loss of electricity stopped chlorinating the water supply, which is needed to maintain safe disinfection levels.
In inland and remote communities, drinking water contamination can be more common and very difficult to resolve.
For example, many remote Western Australian towns have chronic water quality problems, with drinking water often failing to meet Australian standards. And in 2015, the WA Auditor General reported the water in many Indigenous communities contains harmful contaminants, such as uranium and nitrates.
The source of this contamination is often naturally occurring chemical compounds in the local geology of ground water supplies.
One of the biggest contamination incidents in Australia occurred in August and September in 1998. A series of extreme wet weather events after a long drought triggered the contamination of Sydney’s drinking water with high levels of protozoan parasites, which can cause serious diseases such as gastroenteritis or cryptosporidiosis. It resulted in boil water alerts across much of the Sydney metropolitan area.
But what makes this latest incident in Victoria so concerning is that authorities have warned even boiling will not reduce contamination. This suggests contamination may be due to the presence of a harmful chemical, or high levels of sediment particles.
Sediment in water — measured as “turbidity” — can be hazardous because these particles can hold other contaminants, or even shield pathogens from disinfection.
Yarra Valley Water’s advice for the affected suburbs is to avoid using water in any cooking, making ice, brushing teeth or mixing baby formula, and for people to take care not to ingest water in the shower or bath. Emergency drinking water is being supplied by Yarra Valley Water in some locations.
So why do disasters threaten our drinking water?
This latest incident is another reminder that our drinking water is vulnerable to disruption from extreme weather.
This is almost certain to continue, and worsen, as the the Bureau of Meterology’s State of the Climate 2020 report predicts more extreme weather — including drought, heatwaves, bushfires, storms, and floods — in Australia’s future.
As these disasters become more frequent and extreme under climate change, impacts on water supplies across Australia are likely to become more destructive.
A good example of how this can unfold was the impact on Canberra’s water supply after the destructive 2003 bushfires.
Fire burned most of the region’s Cotter River catchments, which hold three dams. After fires went out, massive storms eroded the weakened ground, and washed ash, soil and organic debris into the storage reservoirs. It took years for the water supply system to fully recover.
Physical damage to water infrastructure is also a big risk, as modern water supplies are large and complex. For example, a fallen tree could break open the roof of a sealed water storage tank, exposing water to the elements.
Interruptions of electrical supplies after extreme weather are also common, leading to failures of water supply technology. This, for instance, could stop a water pump from operating, or break down the telemetry system which helps control operations.
As difficult as these hits to Australia’s water security are, and will be in future, it’s even more problematic in the developing world, which may not have the resources to recover.
How can we withstand these challenges?
To maintain optimal water quality, we must protect the integrity of water catchments — areas where water is collected by the natural landscape.
For example, damaging logging operations along steep slopes in Melbourne’s biggest water catchment threatens to pollute the city’s drinking water because it increases the risk of erosion during storms.
There’s also merit in Australian cities investing in advanced treatment of wastewater for reuse, rather than build infrequently used desalination plants for when there’s drought.
Australia could follow the US state of California which has ambitious targets to reuse more than 60% of its sewage effluent.
And it’s completely safe — Australia has developed guidelines to ensure recycled water is treated and managed to operate reliably and protect public health.
If you’re concerned about water quality from the tap and haven’t received any alerts, you might just not like its taste. If in doubt, contact you local water supplier.
This story is part of a series The Conversation is running on the nexus between disaster, disadvantage and resilience. It is supported by a philanthropic grant from the Paul Ramsay foundation. You can read the rest of the stories here.
Ian Wright has received funding from industry, local and state government agencies.
Incivility is on the rise in university culture. If you are an academic you’ve likely seen or experienced instances of bullying, incivility or mobbing in department meetings, in hallways and in seminars.
Of course, academics have been socialised to be contentious, to ask critical questions and engage in intellectual sparring. But sometimes these exchanges can become an intellectual battlefield characterised by vitriolic attacks, sarcastic innuendo and intellectual one-upmanship. Ideological convictions spill over into personal attacks, creating a fractured and toxic work environment.
Challenging times for university leaders
Public universities in Australia are challenged to develop strategies to lessen the impacts of reductions in government funding and international student fee revenue and unforeseen events such as the COVID-19 pandemic. University leaders face tough decisions about restructuring, program rationalisation and staff redundancies to ensure the long-term viability of their institution. It is their responsibility to engage stakeholders in forming strategies and ensure faculty, staff and students understand the intended outcomes.
These changes and platforms for consultation have fuelled ideological clashes among academic staff and administration. Combative attacks on administrators by tenured academics aiming to reveal the shortcomings in their plans and undermine their credibility as leaders are increasingly common. Untenured faculty are less likely to contribute in these forums, particularly if their views don’t align with dominant group perspectives.
Of course, there should always be space for debate in universities. The concern is when it escalates to the point of aggression and uncivilised conduct. It’s then an obstacle to achieving clarity and understanding of the issue and engaging staff in solutions.
These exchanges can have lingering impacts on workplace culture and well-being of staff, students and administration. We see this in low morale, absenteeism, increased health issues and faculty disengagement.
Typically, the aggressive behaviour isn’t overt bullying. As one dean said:
“Bullying, the aggression, or yelling, it doesn’t happen much because this is a university.”
There are policies, workshops and procedures to deal with harassment and bullying. She went on to say it was the “smart bullies” she found most difficult to contend with as a leader.
Bullying is defined as repeated patterns of negative behaviour, by a single person or group, that results in pressure, provocation or intimidation of the victim causing psychological harm. Smart bullies are adept at working around workplace policies. Instead, they draw upon a full arsenal of uncivilised behaviours such as acts of rudeness, demeaning comments and creating or spreading gossip and rumours.
Smart bullies use micro politics to create allies. They infiltrate committee structures and decisions to camouflage and insulate themselves as the real bully or instigator. Their behaviour is tolerated and often chalked up to expressions of academic freedom.
Smart bullies are adept at deflecting responsibility for their behaviour. Shutterstock
Incivility can stand alongside bullying, but is more insidious because it occurs in day-to-day interactions. Because these types of behaviours are part of most workplaces it makes incivility difficult to categorise and create policies to prevent and combat.
Victims of incivility seldom seek organisational assistance. The usual reason is they lack confidence in the process and outcome.
Human resources departments and their policies are rarely adequate to combat the unpatterned behaviours of incivility. The onus is on the victim to document these behaviours and actions. There is also little precedent for other academics to get involved in calling out bullying.
The stress of repeated exposure to intentional acts of micro-aggression can harm mental and physical health. When left unchecked it becomes part of the accepted norm of an increasingly hostile and toxic work environment.
In our study, deans described the emotional labour of maintaining composure and professional demeanour in dealing with micro-aggressions from smart bullies and their allies. These behaviours put them on edge, mindful of their words and actions. They became alert to the possibility of being blindsided at any time.
Deans describe being on edge about the risk of being unsettled by acts of micro-aggression at any time. Shutterstock
While part of being a dean is dealing with management and performance issues that involve difficult conversations, deans felt ill-prepared for the intensity and impacts on their mental and emotional well-being. They mostly suffered in silence, unable to discipline subordinates for behaviour that did not technically breach codes of conduct.
Deans who confront perpetrators risk sparking grievance complaints or rows over academic freedom. The alternative of appealing to provosts can appear weak and incompetent.
It’s near-impossible under current policies to stop or prevent incivility, but incivility is happening, the consequences are real and can have serious health and personal implications for the victims. For a sector that claims to be increasingly aware of the well-being and mental health of staff, incivility is quickly coming to the forefront of issues confronting HR researchers and departments.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Strong community opposition to a proposed waste facility in regional New South Wales madeheadlines earlier this year. The A$3.9 million facility would occupy 2.7 hectares of Gunnedah’s industrial estate. It’s intended to process up to 250,000 tonnes a year of waste materials from Sydney.
Much of this is construction waste that can be used in road building after processing. Construction of the plant will employ 62 people and its operation will create 30 jobs. Yet every one of the 86 public submissions to the planning review objected to the project.
Residents raised various concerns, which received widespread local media coverage. They were concerned about water management, air quality, noise, the impact of hazardous waste, traffic and transport, fire safety and soil and water. For instance, a submission by a local businessman and veterinary surgeon stated:
“The proposed facility is too close to town, residences and other businesses […] Gunnedah is growing and this proposed development will be uncomfortably close to town in years to come.”
The location of the proposed waste recycling facility in Gunnedah. Source: Google Maps (2021), Author provided
The general manager of the applicant said descriptions such as “toxic waste dump” were far from accurate.
“It’s not a dump […] Its prime focus is to reclaim, reuse and recycle.”
He added: “[At present] the majority of this stuff goes to landfill. What we’re proposing is very beneficial to the environment, which is taking these resources and putting them back into recirculation. The reality is the population is growing, more waste is going to get generated and the upside is we’re much better processing and claiming out of it than sending it to landfill.”
According to the latest data in the National Waste Report 2020, Australia generated 27 million tonnes of waste (44% of all waste) from the construction and demolition (C&D) sector in 2018-19. That’s a 61% increase since 2006-07. This waste stream is the largest source of managed waste in Australia and 76% of it is recycled.
Public opposition to new infrastructure in local neighbourhoods, the Not-in-My-Back-Yard (NIMBY) attitude, is a global phenomenon. Australia is no exception. We have seen previous public protests against waste facilities being established in local areas.
The academic literature reports the root causes of this resistance are stench and other air pollution, and concerns about impacts on property values and health. Factors that influence individuals’ perceptions include education level, past experience of stench and proximity to housing.
Local communities around the world have protested against local waste management plants that they see as a threat to their health. United Workers/Flickr, CC BY
What are the other challenges of recycling?
Our research team at RMIT University explore ways to effectively manage construction and demolition waste, with a focus on developing a circular economy. Our research shows this goal depends heavily on the development of end markets for recycled products. Operators then have the confidence to invest in recycling construction and demolition waste, knowing it will produce a reasonable return.
A consistent supply of recycled material is needed too. We believe more recycling infrastructure needs to be developed all around Australia. Regional areas are the most suitable for this purpose because they have the space and a need for local job creation.
To achieve nationwide waste recycling, however, everyone must play their part. By everyone, we mean suppliers, waste producers, waste operators, governments and the community.
Today we are facing new challenges such as massive urbanisation, shortage of virgin materials, increasing greenhouse gas emissions and bans on the export of waste. These challenges warrant new solutions, which include sharing responsibility for the waste we all generate.
Government has a key role to play in educating the public about the many benefits of recycling construction and demolition waste. These benefits include environmental protection, more efficient resource use, reduced construction costs, and job creation.
Government must also ensure communities are adequately consulted. A local news report reflected Gunnedah residents’ concern that the recycling facility’s proponent had not contacted them. They initiated the contact. One local said:
“I do understand the short-term financial gains a development like this will bring to the community, but also know the financial and environmental burden they will cause.”
Feedback from residents triggered a series of consultation sessions involving all parties.
A robust framework for consulting the community, engaging stakeholders and providing information should be developed to accompany any such development. Community education programs should be based on research.
For instance, research indicates that, unlike municipal waste recycling facilities, construction and demolition waste management facilities have negligible to manageable impact on the environment and residents’ health and well-being. This is due to the non-combustible nature of most construction materials, such as masonrt.
Such evidence needs to be communicated effectively to change negative community attitudes towards construction and demolition waste recycling facilities. At RMIT, through our National Construction & Demolition Waste Research and Industry Portal, we continue to play our part in increasing public awareness of the benefits.
Even before COVID-19 hit, Australia was experiencing slow growth in GDP per capita and real wages.
There has been a distinctly lower rate of both economic and real wages growth since the financial crisis of 2008-09.
Advanced economies around the world have, to varying degrees, witnessed the same trends. If anything, Australia has done slightly better than other countries.
Why has growth slowed globally? That’s a real question.
What theory tells us
Basic economic theory tells us GDP per capita is driven by technological progress.
The so-called “neoclassical growth model”, developed in the 1950s by
American Robert Solow and Australian Trevor Swan, saw technological progress as exogenous – attributable to an external cause. In a sense, the idea was that innovations just drop from the sky at some fixed rate.
In the early 1990s Philippe Aghion, Peter Howitt, and Paul Romer pioneered “endogenous growth theory” – that the causes are internal to the economic system. In particular their theory emphasised the development of ideas as crucial to technological progress.
Romer’s contribution was to highlight that producing ideas has large set-up costs but potentially low marginal costs of replication. Think pharmaceutical development, where R&D is very expensive but producing extra pills is cheap.
To make the development of new pharmaceuticals viable, therefore, some degree of monopoly power is required, so others who didn’t invest in developing them can’t simply copy the product. This suggests a crucial role for government policy, such as intellectual property rights and subsidies for basic research.
Developing pharmaceuticals is expensive, while making them is cheap. Zhang Yanlin/AP
Aghion and Howitt highlighted the role of “creative destruction”. Innovation can render old technologies obsolete.
Thus innovations come with externalities – costs or benefits for other parties.
Romer’s research emphasised the positive externalities – namely that ideas are non-rivalrous. For example, we can all use Pythagoras’s Theorem now it has been discovered.
The Aghion-Howitt framework emphasised the negative externalities. New ideas can render old ideas obsolete, thereby deterring innovation in the first place – why invest in R&D now if future R&D will render it all obsolete? But market power protects the rents earned by innovators.
This means, as Aghion and Howitt put it, the average growth rate “depends on the size and likelihood of innovations resulting from research and also on the degree of market power available to an innovator”.
What does this mean for wages?
Since wages are the returns to labour from economic value created economy-wide, technological progress is needed to drive real wage increases.
Real wage growth, per cent, 2003-2021
Annual real wage growth = annual growth in total hourly rates of pay excluding bonuses minus annual growth in underlying consumer price index. ABS
Productivity isn’t everything, but, in the long run, it is almost everything. A country’s ability to improve its standard of living over time depends almost entirely on its ability to raise its output per worker.
Or, to paraphrase legendary American political strategist James Carville: “It’s the productivity, stupid!”
In the foreword, chairperson Michael Brennan writes:
The decade ending 2019-20 was the worst decade of growth in 60 years, and even if the last year of growth is excluded then this nine-year period still compares unfavourably to past decades. This mainly reflects a global productivity slowdown and the end of the mining investment boom, which has subdued investment and, through lower terms of trade, reduced the purchasing power of Australian incomes.
That’s a pretty good summary of the concerning trends documented in the rest of the report.
Let’s take Brennan’s second observation first.
The end of the mining boom – you have to squint a little to ignore the current iron-ore price – has seen the Australian dollar drop from about parity with the US dollar to the range of 75-80 US cents. This makes buying goods largely denominated in US dollars – from mining equipment to point-of-sale terminals to computers – more expensive for Australian businesses and households.
It is a good reminder that the oft-mentioned claim a lower Australian dollar is good for exports, while true, ignores the fact we buy lots of capital equipment and consumption goods from overseas. A weaker dollar is bad news for buyers of those goods.
Now to Brennan’s first observation – that the productivity slowdown is a global phenomenon.
It has been clear for many years that we live in an age of “secular stagnation” – a term former US Treasury head Larry Summers popularised in 2013.
Simply put, there is a huge volume of global savings chasing fewer big investment opportunities.
Desperately seeking investment opportunities
Once capital was quite scarce. Now there are now massive sovereign wealth and retirement savings funds all looking to put their money to work. There are also many more billionaires with money to invest.
But where? Once it required huge amounts of capital to build the US railroads, or big oil and steel companies. Now some of the most valuable companies in the world have been created by brilliant students with a laptop in a dorm room.
An even more pessimistic view is that modern technologies are just not that revolutionary.
The leading proponent of this “techno-pessimism” is Robert Gordon of Northwestern University in Illinois. He argues in The Rise and Fall of American Growth (Princeton University Press, 2017) that the information technolgy revolution is a footnote compared to the prosaic inventions of the second industrial revolution, such as electricity, motor vehicles and aircraft.
There are, also, techno-optimists who point to the revolutionary potential of machine learning and other innovations.
Wherever one lands on this spectrum, it’s hard to get away from the idea that to drive living standards upward we need to harness technologies to relentlessly improve productivity.
The Productivity Commission is on the case. Now we just need Australia’s policy makers to embrace the type of economic reforms pulled off in the 1980s and 1990s, under governments of both political stripes.
Richard Holden is president-elect of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Westaway, Australian Research Council Future Fellow, Archaeology, School of Social Science, The University of Queensland
An aerial view of an Aboriginal stone arrangement in the Channel Country of Central Australia. Such arrangements may be associated with initiation ceremonies and exchange of marriage partners, as well as trade. The main structure is around 30 metres long. Mithaka Aboriginal Corporation
Bruce Pascoe’s Dark Emu is in the news again, with the publication of a new book critiquing Pascoe’s arguments. Dark Emu builds on an earlier, less known work by archaeologist Rupert Gerritsen, who argued a number of regions across Australia should be considered centres of Aboriginal agriculture.
Historians Billy Griffiths and Lynette Russell, and now anthropologist Peter Sutton and archaeologist Keryn Walshe, have argued Pascoe has fallen into a trap of privileging the language of agriculture above hunter-gatherer socioeconomic systems.
We have been working in a landscape that provides an important test of the Dark Emu hypothesis. In partnership with the Mithaka Aboriginal Corporation, who occupy the Channel Country in Central Australia, we have begun investigating Aboriginal settlement sites, pit dwelling huts (known as gunyahs) and quarries.
Our landscape study, published in the journal Antiquity, has found over 140 quarry sites, where rock was excavated to produce seed grinding stones. We have also developed a method to locate traces of long-lost village sites.
Were First Australians farmers or hunter-gatherers? Contemporary archaeological research suggests it’s not such a simple dichotomy. Understanding the Mithaka food production system may well tell us whether such terms are a good fit for defining socio-economic networks in Aboriginal Australia.
The location of Mithaka country within the trade network of Pituri. Pituri leaves (some of which are from the Mulligan river region) are a narcotic and highly valued. This map shows the direction of trade and market centres and also the location of other important items of exchange. Illustration by Nathan Wright
An extraordinary landscape
The Channel Country spreads across the Lake Eyre Basin, found in parts of Queensland, Northern Territory and South Australia. It is the world’s last unregulated desert channel system (meaning there has been no intensive irrigation or damming) and one of Australia’s richest beef cattle areas. The meandering channels are fed infrequently by monsoonal rains from the north, which transform large sections of the desert into a lush, green landscape.
In 2017, Mithaka Elder George Gorringe led a small expedition to an ancient clay-pan (an old lake bed) where one of us had recorded a burial site some years before. But the plan dramatically changed when monsoonal rains in the tropics flooded the land, diverting the expedition from north to the south.
The extensive flood plains turned green as life-giving water irrigated native grasses and other plant species. George led the expedition to a series of sites he knew about from his father, Bill Gorringe, and from his previous work on numerous stations and as a council road works foreman. They included massive sandstone quarry sites, stone arrangements and the remains of Aboriginal pit dwelling huts (gunyahs): excavated structures with branches constructed over the top.
A gunyah, believed to be from the 19th century, on the floodplains. Nathan Wright
This largely intact archaeological landscape has the largest seed grinding quarry sites in the country. Archaeologist Mike Smith has discussed the importance of seed grinding implements for the economy of this region. Grinding stones were used to process native grasses and produce a form of bread. Axes scattered across the area also indicate trade with the Kalkadoon people from the Mount Isa quarries in the north.
It became clear from this first trip that this extraordinary landscape had enormous potential to investigate questions relating to Aboriginal trade and exchange, settlements systems and food production.
Excavating a quarry site known as the Ten Mile. Michael Westaway
Reconstructing the past
When Europeans first stumbled across this landscape in the 1870s, as historian Ray Kerkhove discovered in the archives, they observed “civilised blacks” living in villages and maintaining intensive fishing industries. In 1871, for example, a sub inspector of the Queensland Native Police, James Gilmour, came across a “village” of 103 huts at the southern end of Thunderpurty lagoon while looking for evidence of the missing explorer Ludwig Leichardt.
History also records practices in the region including cultivation associated with ceremony, and fish trap and storage systems equating to aquaculture.
This landscape was very different to other areas in arid Australia well documented by historians and modern anthropologists. Unlike the more marginal desert environments in the centre, Channel Country could support large numbers of cattle. This indicated it was also able to support larger populations of Aboriginal people.
Higher population numbers and the economic value of Channel Country to European pastoralists resulted in significant conflict, devastating the traditional Mithaka economic system. Archaeology thus plays a prominent role in reconstructing the past here.
Some cultural stories from Mithaka country were documented from the early 1900s by amateur ethnographer Alice Duncan Kemp, who lived on Mooraberrie Station until the late 1920s. An innovative researcher, trusted and respected by senior Aboriginal informants, Alice provides an important account of the complexity of the Mithaka social system, tying it into the landscape.
We are now using drones to record in 3D enormous quarries, which appear to be on an industrial scale. Archaeologist Doug William’s excavations, supported by the work of dating expert Justine Kemp, show quarrying at one site may have begun more than 2,000 years ago.
Josh Gorringe, a trained helicopter pilot, operates a small quadcopter drone over quarry sites at Glengyle. A range of fixed wing and smaller drones have enabled documentation of the cultural landscape . Michael Westaway
If this is the case, the transcontinental trade system referred to by pioneering Australian archaeologist John Mulvaney as the “Chain of Connection” (extending from the Gulf of Carpentaria to the Flinders Ranges) may be at least twice as old as previously thought.
Could this trade system have played a role in the development of more intensified quarrying activity and more sedentary settlement systems? We are working on understanding the relationship between the archaeology and this remarkable social and economic network.
Seasonal or permanent village sites?
We have investigated eroding burial sites to see if the remains of the Mithaka ancestors themselves can provide clues to the past.
Limited analysis so far provides evidence of bio-mechanical stress to the upper limbs, likely a result of intense seed grinding. By studying geochemical signatures (isotopes) in human teeth we hope to establish if people maintained a large foraging range or were more sedentary, living in more restricted clan boundaries.
We have built a background isotopic map to help us understand people’s mobility in the past. When people live in a landscape they ingest its isotope signature. Investigating the mobility of the Mithaka populations through isotopes will be an important test of whether documented village sites were seasonal or permanent.
One logical place to start an investigation of past food production systems is to look where people once lived. Early historic accounts record large village sites, so we have developed a methodology to find these places.
Kelsey Lowe identifies a series of magnetic anomalies during her geophysical survey of the Ten Mile quarry site. Michael Westaway
Geoarchaeologist Kelsey Lowe has used a magnetometer, designed to detect magnetic anomalies beneath the earth surface, to search for signs of ancient houses (gunyahs). By investigating standing gunyahs, dating back to the 19th century, we have detected distinct magnetic signatures for these dwellings.
Fish and plants
Archaeobotanists Nathan Wright and Andrew Fairbairn are carefully sifting through deposits to identify wood charcoal and evidence of plant use. Expertise in recovering not only ancient seeds and plant remains, but importantly, burnt plant remains in ancient fireplaces will play a key role in telling the past economic story.
Zooarchaeologist Tiina Manne has begun a study of recovered animal bones, which also include the inner ears (otoliths) of fish (yellowbelly). These may provide insights into past aquaculture systems hinted at in the historical record.
Archaeologist Jason Kariwiga and archaeobotanist Nathan Wright discuss the excavation of the gunyah site. Cemre Ustunkaya
We have started to document fish traps in the landscape. And geoarchaeologist Mike Morley has taken molds of excavation pits to analyse microscopic evidence of hut floors and the areas in front of the gunyahs.
Botanist Jen Silcock is working with Mithaka Elders to understand more about plant use. Important food and medicinal plants such as native millet, sorghum and different species of desert shrubs will be investigated by plant geneticist Robert Henry. He will see if we can find evidence of people deliberately moving plants and identify traits of domestication within the genomes of important species.
Palynologist Patrick Moss has taken cores from lake sediments to recover ancient pollen sequences associated with known village site locations. He will examine how the environment changes over time and whether he can detect any shifts in pollen, which may represent more intensified use of plants.
Historian Tom Griffiths, meanwhile, has begun to investigate the history of conflict in the landscape, as Europeans and Native Police raged a war with the traditional owners of Mithaka country in the late 1800s.
This is important to understand because elsewhere in the country, archaeologists have suggested the development of village settlements may have been a response to colonial violence, rather than representing a traditional settlement system.
For one of us (Michael), the ideas generated through Gerritsen’s research and Pascoe’s popularised account have inspired and stimulated a different way of thinking about Aboriginal food production systems, and how we might investigate an archaeological record for Aboriginal village settlements.
And for the other (Josh), Dark Emu provides a different account of the Aboriginal past, written by an Aboriginal person outside of the academy, which challenges us to think differently about how we might define Aboriginal people. Josh believes it is up to archaeologists now to test Pascoe’s hypothesis.
Elder Betty Gorringe and archaeobotanist Andy Fairbairn survey a complex of eight mound sites and numerous earth ovens in a landscape rich with artefacts. Michael Westaway
Hidden in the Mithaka landscape is a cultural narrative with great power to tell new and important stories. Multidisciplinary research involving traditional owner knowledge, even when fragmented by the ravages of past conflict and displacement, can re-energise landscapes.
It can provide a context for a richer, more nuanced and more comprehensive understanding of ancient Australia, creating a space for cultural learning, education and respect.
Participants in the Mithaka field research project include: Doug Williams (Austral Archaeology and Griffith University), Kelsey Lowe (University of Queensland), Nathan Wright (University of New England), Ray Kerkhove (University of Queensland), Andrew Fairbairn (University of Queensland), Tiina Manne (University of Queensland), Mike Morley (Flinders University), Tom Griffiths (Australian National University), Justyna Miszkiewicz (Queensland University of Technology), Justine Kemp (Griffith University), Patrick Moss (University of Queensland) and Robert Henry (University of Queensland).
Michael Westaway receives funding from the Australian Research Council.
Joshua Gorringe works for Mithaka Aboriginal Corporation (MAC) a registered native title body corporate. MAC has received funding from the QLD state government through the Looking after Country grant scheme to fund field research and conservation.
