Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tony Walker, Vice-chancellor’s fellow, La Trobe University

What a difference a year makes in international diplomacy.

A year ago, then-US President Donald Trump was obliged to abandon his plans for a G7 summit at the presidential retreat of Camp David outside Washington.

Various excuses were advanced by participants, including the inadvisability of travelling across the world in the midst of a pandemic. But in reality few, if any, G7 leaders wanted to associate themselves with Trump in what was hoped would be the last days of an ill-starred presidency.

A year later, these same leaders gathered at an English coastal retreat – in the shadow of a persistent COVID-19 pandemic – to celebrate the end of a disruptive chapter in diplomatic history. Relief was palpable in the interactions of representatives of the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Japan, Italy and Canada.

America was back, not in its “America First” guise, but as the proclaimed leader of the free world, to use an old-fashioned description.

However, in the four years of the Trump presidency, during which Washington effectively abandoned its global leadership role in favour of an inward-looking posture defined by its embrace of an America First doctrine, the world had changed, and shifted dramatically.

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Grattan on Friday: Scott Morrison’s quest to be a Biden ‘bestie’

In 2016, the final year of the Obama administration, the G7 summit in Japan focused on the issue of climate in the wake of the Paris Agreement signed in April of that year. Its other priorities were disputes in the South China Sea and, interestingly enough, the need to strengthen a global response to pandemics in light of experiences with the Ebola virus in Africa.

That global response has been found to be inadequate. This prompts the question: what notice did global health authorities, principally the World Health Organization, take of the G7’s 2016 communique?

Five years later, the challenges identified in the 2016 document have been vastly magnified. This has been brought about by a combination of lack of US leadership on issues such as climate, and a broader global failure to manage China’s rise.

In 2016, China’s activities in the South China Sea in defiance of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) were a growing concern, as were signs of its increasing assertiveness under its nationalist leader, Xi Jinping.

But the consensus view then was that China’s rise could be accommodated without undue disruption to a rules-based international order. That has proved a significant miscalculation.

Fast-forward to the 2021 G7 in Cornwall, where concerns about China’s rise in its various dimensions stalked the round-table discussions and bilateral meetings. No other issue came close to matching worries about China: not climate change, nor the ongoing challenges of the pandemic.

In the end, the G7 communique was relatively restrained on China. This reflected differences of opinion among participants about how to manage a difficult situation. The US and Canadians would have liked stronger language. The Europeans favoured a less hawkish approach. Japan was somewhere in the middle.

References to China were nevertheless pointed, in contrast to previous G7 communiques, which have danced around the issue of Beijing’s challenges to a rules-based global order.

From an Australian perspective, the communique’s reference to China’s resort to economic reprisals to punish those who found themselves at odds with its policies will have been welcome:

With regard to China, and the competition in the global economy, we will continue to consult on collective approaches to challenging non-market policies and practices which undermine the fair and transparent operation of the global economy.

On human rights, the G7 was commendably forthright:

We will promote our values by calling on China to respect human rights and fundamental freedoms, especially in relation to Xinjiang and those rights, freedoms and high degree of autonomy for Hong Kong enshrined in the Sino-British joint declaration and the Basic Law.

Significantly, Taiwan made its way into a G7 communique for the first time. Here, the world’s leading democracies issued a fairly blunt warning to Beijing not to further destabilise relations across the Taiwan Strait:

We underscore the importance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait, and encourage the peaceful resolution of cross-Strait issues. We remain seriously concerned about the situation in the East and South China Seas and strongly oppose any unilateral attempt to change the status quo and increase tensions.

Predictably, Chinese commentators dismissed the G7 process as a sideshow, claiming “the world’s economic and political centre of gravity had shifted”, as the nationalist Global Times put it.

Morrison, as an official guest, will have been relieved the G7 did not reach a consensus on the timing for a phase-out of coal for generating electric power. On the other hand, he will not have overlooked strong language in the communique calling for a commitment to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions “as soon as possible”.

Australia will have had no issue with other G7 initiatives such as calls for a global minimum tax to ensure greater global equity. Nor will it object to a proposal for liberal democracies to contribute to an infrastructure fund to compete with China’s Belt-and-Road initiative in the developing world.

Morrison will no doubt have been disappointed he did not have a “one-on-one” meeting with US President Joe Biden. Instead, he had to make do with a three-way conversation involving the summit’s host, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson. It is not clear whether this was a snub, but those briefing journalists in advance of the G7 should not have raised expectations.

In one respect, Morrison will have found the Cornwall G7 awkward. No other leader of a Western liberal democracy had aligned themselves as closely with the Trump White House.

Read more:
Spot the difference: as world leaders rose to the occasion at the Biden climate summit, Morrison faltered

In his attempts to position himself alongside Trump, Morrison echoed the then US president’s antagonism towards international institutions, broadly summed up by the Morrison’s reference to “negative globalism” in a Lowy Institute speech in 2019. These were sentiments the former US president used to promote his version of an America First policy, in contrast to the multilateralist tendencies of his predecessors.

Morrison’s adoption of this Trumpism, now quietly discarded in his public statements, sits uncomfortably with the new president’s emphasis on Washington’s global leadership in partnership with like-minded countries and institutions.

Pointedly, the G7 communique reiterated liberal democracies’ commitment to “multilateralism”.

If nothing else, Australia’s prime minister should have concluded in Cornwall that his own personal investment in a Trump presidency was not the most prudent course. The world has shifted.

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.

– ref. G7 showed that post-Trump, the world has shifted – https://theconversation.com/g7-showed-that-post-trump-the-world-has-shifted-162598

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Noor Gillani, Deputy Editor, Science and Technology

Speculation has been rife about the contents of an unclassified report set to be released later this month from the Pentagon’s Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) task force.

The document, expected to drop on June 25, will supposedly provide a comprehensive summary of what the US government knows about UAPs — or, to use the more popular term, UFOs.

While the report is not yet public, the New York Times recently published what it claimed was a preview of the findings, provided by unnamed senior officials who were privy to the report’s contents.

According to the Times’s sources, the report does not provide any clear link or association between more than 120 incidents of UFO sightings from the past two decades, and a possibility of Earth having been visited by aliens.

If the Times’s sources are to be believed, there’s clearly still no good reason to interpret an unexplained object in the sky as evidence of aliens. But does that mean aliens aren’t out there, somewhere else in the universe? And if they are, could we ever find them? Or might they be so different to us that “finding” them is impossible in any meaningful sense?

We asked five experts.

Four out of five experts said aliens do exist

Here are their detailed responses:

If you have a science or technology-related question you’d like posed to Five Experts, email it to: noor.gillani@theconversation.edu.au

Read more:
The US military has officially published three UFO videos. Why doesn’t anybody seem to care?

– ref. Do aliens exist? We asked five experts – https://theconversation.com/do-aliens-exist-we-asked-five-experts-161811

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Benjamin T. Jones, Lecturer in History, CQUniversity Australia

Today, many Australians are enjoying a public holiday. For republicans, days off are great, but celebrating the queen’s birthday rather than an Australian achievement is bizarre. Without constitutional change, we will soon be taking a day off in honour of King Charles.

Surely we can find a better reason.

Fortunately, the republic is back on the public agenda. The royal scandals surrounding Prince Andrew, the Palace Letters, and the explosive Oprah interview with Harry and Meghan (and ongoing fallout) have seen the debate take off anew.

Even the passing of the queen’s husband, Prince Philip has prompted reflection on Australia’s relationship with the monarchy.

We can be sure that when the queen’s long reign comes to an end, it will also spark a new push for an Australian republic.

The Australian Republic Movement’s new approach

Since the defeated referendum in 1999, the Australian Republic Movement has been neutral on what model should be used. Its position has been for a plebiscite asking only if people support a republic, before the exact model is determined. Critics have claimed this is asking for a policy blank cheque.

In a change of policy, the Australian Republic Movement now plans to unveil its preferred model later this year.

This is significant because it was the model, not the monarch, that sunk the republic in 1999. Some republicans were so opposed to the option on offer they campaigned with the official “no” team. Ultimately, the success of a new republic referendum will depend on the ability of the model to unite republicans, not the popularity of the monarch.

So, what are the options for a republic and what are their pros and cons?

Another minimal model

Under the minimal model from the 1999 referendum, the head of state would have been appointed by a two-thirds majority of parliament.

Despite its failure in 1999, many republicans still insist this is the best fit for Australia. The appointment by parliament is similar to the systems used in India, Israel, and Greece, and seeks to ensure a non-partisan appointment and reinforce the titular nature the position. Variations include the McGarvie model (proposed by former governor of Victoria, Richard McGarvie), which has a council of former governors to act on the prime minister’s advice and select a worthy candidate.

For supporters, this model guards against populism, or candidates using their wealth or celebrity to gain the position. However, critics argue a minimal model has already failed the ultimate test.

Malcolm Turnbull, who led the 1999 “yes” campaign, argued at a recent Australian Republic Movement event that support for direct election is a “mile wide but an inch deep”. In other words, people instinctively support it but often change their minds when they consider the consequences.

Minimal model supporters insist that the referendum failed because of constitutional ignorance and an effective scare campaign. They suggest a minimal model can succeed with much wider community consultation and public education.

Direct election

Direct electionists argue that without a popular vote, Australia would only have a “politicians’ republic”. Leading up to the 1999 referendum, former independent MPs Phil Cleary and Ted Mack, and former Brisbane lord mayor Clem Jones, among others, formed the Real Republic, urging people to vote “no”. Now led by chair of the Clem Jones Trust, David Muir, the group is still active on Facebook.

Read more:
After Oprah: what will it take to revive an Australian republic?

In theory, direct election means anyone could be the head of state. Critics argue it could actually reduce the pool of candidates. Winning an election generally requires substantial finances and resources. Direct election could mean that only the rich or famous can realistically run.

Supporters counter this by claiming a mature nation can make up its own mind. If the people democratically elect someone like Clive Palmer or Shane Warne, then so be it.

A hybrid model

The third option is a hybrid of minimalism and direct-election. Former Western Australia Premier Geoff Gallop put forward the Gallop Model at the Constitutional Convention in 1998. He proposed that the federal parliament select at least three suitable nominees who are then put to a popular vote.

Another hybrid is the 50-50 model created by government consultant Anthony Cianflone. Under this model, anyone can nominate. Then there is both a popular vote and a parliamentary vote, each worth 50%.

Read more:
The Oprah interview is a royal PR nightmare, but republicans shouldn’t get their hopes up just yet

Previously, I have proposed a hybrid model, with each state and territory parliament selecting a nominee, and then those eight going to a popular vote. The logic behind this system was that it provided a double hurdle for candidates. Only an exceptional candidate would gain the confidence of both an elected parliament and the people.

Critics of hybrid models say they are not democratic enough. Under a 50-50 model, the problematic situation could arise where the most popular candidate with the people is effectively vetoed by parliament. Critics of the Gallop model or mine could say it is undemocratic to only let people vote from a pre-approved list.

Further, public confidence in our parliaments is at a low point. Explaining my model to a friend recently, he exclaimed, “why let politicians anywhere near it?”

Other considerations

The method for choosing the head of state is the most important element in any republican model but there are other considerations.

Should gender equality be written into the constitution? Australian National University professor Kim Rubenstein has argued the head of state should alternate between women and men. Similarly, Griffith University professor and Waanyi and Jaru man Gregory Phillips has argued for direct election, but every second term the nominees must be Indigenous.

As the 1975 Whitlam dismissal showed, the governor-general has great reserve powers, even if they are rarely used. As a republic, Australia could continue to rely on protocol and trust the head of state to treat the position as titular and ceremonial.

Another option is to codify the head of state’s powers and have strict rules outlining exactly when and how they can be used. Under direct election models especially, this may be an important safeguard. Without it, a head of state may see their election as a popular mandate for political interference. Under any model, only codification can guarantee the dismissal is never repeated.

A way forward?

It was only in 1973 with the passage of the Royal Style and Titles Act that the queen was given a unique Australian title, the “Queen of Australia”. Without constitutional change, Charles will become the first official “King of Australia”.

When coins bearing Charles’s face come into circulation, we can expect many will question the benefit of a foreign head of state living on the other side of the world. Nevertheless, the fate of an Australian republic does not rest with the next monarch.

Whichever model goes to a vote, the mathematics is simple. Republicans will either unite and probably win or divide and certainly fail.

Benjamin T. Jones is a life member of the Australian Republic Movement.

– ref. Forget Charles — an Australian republic hinges on the model we adopt, not the monarch – https://theconversation.com/forget-charles-an-australian-republic-hinges-on-the-model-we-adopt-not-the-monarch-158873

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Colin Zhang, Lecturer, Department of Actuarial Studies and Business Analytics, Macquarie University

For senior Australians who cannot live independently at home, residential aged care can provide accommodation, personal care and general health care.

People usually think this is expensive. And many assume they need to sell their home to pay for a lump-sum deposit.

But that’s not necessarily the case. Here’s what you need to consider.

Read more:
So you’re thinking of going into a nursing home? Here’s what you’ll have to pay for

You may get some financial support

Fees for residential aged are complex and can be confusing. Some are for your daily care, some are means-tested, some are for your accommodation and some pay for extras, such as cable TV.

But it’s easier to think of these fees as falling into two categories:

• an “entry deposit”, which is usually more than $A300,000, and is refunded when you leave aged care

• daily “ongoing fees”, which are $52.71-$300 a day, or more. These cover the basic daily fee, which everyone pays, and the means-tested care fee.

To find out how much government support you’ll receive for both these categories, you will have a “means test” to assess your income and assets. This means test is similar (but different) to the means test for the aged pension.

Generally speaking, the lower your aged-care means test amount, the more government support you’ll receive for aged care.

With full support, you don’t need to pay an “entry deposit”. But you still need to pay the basic daily fee (currently, $52.71 a day), equivalent to 85% of your aged pension. If you get partial support, you pay less for your “entry deposit” and ongoing fees.

Read more:
How to check if your mum or dad’s nursing home is up to scratch

You don’t need a lump sum

You don’t have to pay for your “entry deposit” as a lump sum. You can choose to pay a rental-style daily cost instead.

This is calculated as follows: you multiply the amount of the required “entry deposit” by the maximum permissible interest rate. This rate is set by government and is currently at 4.01% per year for new residents. Then you divide that sum by 365 to give a daily rate. This option is like borrowing money to pay for your “entry deposit” via an interest-only loan.

You can also pay for your “entry deposit” with a combination of a lump sum and a daily rental cost.

As it’s not compulsory to pay a lump sum for your “entry deposit”, you have different options for dealing with your family home.

Option 1: keep your house and rent it out

This allows you to use the rental-style daily cost to finance your “entry deposit”.

Pros

• you could have more income from rent. This can help pay for the rental-style daily cost and “ongoing fees” of aged care

• you might have a special sentimental attachment to your family house. So keeping it might be a less confronting option

• keeping an expensive family house will not heavily impact your residential aged care cost. That’s because any value of your family house above $173,075.20 will be excluded from your means test

• you can still access the capital gains of your house, as house prices rise.

Cons

• your rental income needs to be included in the means test for your aged pension. So you might get less aged pension

• you might need to pay income tax on the rental income

• compared to the lump sum payment, choosing the rental-style daily cost means you will end up paying more

• you are subject to a changing rental market.

Read more:
Home-owning older Australians should pay more for residential aged care

Option 2: keep your house and rent it out, with a twist

If you have some savings, you can use a combination of a lump sum and daily rental cost to pay for your “entry deposit”.

Pros

• like option 1, you can keep your house and have a steady income

• the amount of lump sum deposit will not be counted as an asset in the aged-care means test.

Cons

• like option 1, you could have less pension income, higher age-care costs and need to pay more income tax

• you have less liquid assets (assets you could quickly sell or access), which could be handy in an emergency.

Option 3: sell your house

If you sell your house, you can use all or part of the proceeds to pay for your “entry deposit”.

Pros

• if you have any money left over after selling your house and paying for your “entry deposit”, you can invest the rest

• as your “entry deposit” is exempt from your aged pension means test, it means more pension income.

Cons

• if you have money left over after selling your house, this will be included in the aged-care means test. So you can end up with less financial support for aged care.

Read more:
What adds value to your house? How to decide between renovating and selling

In a nutshell

Keeping your house and renting it out (option 1 or 2) can give you a better income stream, which you can use to cover other living costs. And if you’re not concerned about having access to liquid assets in an emergency, option 2 can be better for you than option 1.

But selling your house (option 3) avoids you being exposed to a changing rental market, particularly if the economy is going into recession. It also gives you more capital, and you don’t need to pay a rental-style daily cost.

This article is general in nature, and should not be considered financial advice. For advice tailored to your individual situation and your personal finances, please see a qualified financial planner.

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

– ref. Is it worth selling my house if I’m going into aged care? – https://theconversation.com/is-it-worth-selling-my-house-if-im-going-into-aged-care-161674

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sven Teske, Research Director, Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology Sydney

The International Energy Agency (IEA) last month made global headlines when it declared there is no room for new fossil fuel investment if we’re to avoid catastrophic climate change.

However, our new research suggests the horse may have already bolted. We found even if no new fossil fuel projects were approved anywhere in the world, carbon emissions set to be released from existing projects will still push global warming over the dangerous 1.5℃ threshold.

Specifically, even with no new fossil fuel expansion, global emissions would be 22% too high to stay within 1.5℃ by 2025, and 66% too high by 2030.

However, keeping global warming under 1.5℃ is still achievable with rapid deployment of renewables. Our research found solar and wind can supply the world’s energy demand more than 50 times over.

The stunning potential of wind and solar

While our findings were alarming, they also give us a new reason to be hopeful.

We analysed publicly available oil, gas and coal extraction data, and calculated the future production volume. We worked under the assumption no new fossil fuel extraction projects would be developed, and all existing projects would see production declining at standard industry rates.

We found fossil fuel projects already in the pipeline will, by 2030, produce 35% more oil and 69% more coal than what’s consistent with a pathway towards a 1.5℃ temperature rise.

Fossil fuels are the main driver of climate change, accounting for more than 75% of carbon dioxide emissions. Continuing to expand this sector will not only be catastrophic for the climate, but also for the world’s economy as it locks in infrastructure that will become stranded assets.

Ultimately, it’s not enough to simply keep fossil fuels in the ground. To meet our climate goals under the Paris Agreement, we must phase down existing production.

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Solar and wind power technologies are already market ready and cost competitive. And as our analysis confirms, they’re ready to be scaled up to meet the energy demands of every person on the planet.

We mapped all the potential areas where wind and solar infrastructure can be built, and the energy potential across six continents.

Even after applying a set of robust, conservative estimates that take environmental safeguards, land constraints and technical feasibility into account, we found that solar and wind energy could meet the world’s energy demand from 2019 — 50 times over.

It’s clear we don’t need new fossil fuel development to ensure 100% energy access in the future.

Australia’s laggard status

In Australia, the Morrison government refuses to set new emissions reduction targets, and continues to fund new fossil fuel projects, such as a A$600 million gas plant in the New South Wales Hunter Valley.

Despite Australia’s laggard status on climate change, there are positive moves elsewhere around the world.

The progress was evident ahead of the G7 summit this past weekend, where climate change was firmly on the agenda. Ahead of the summit, environment ministers worldwide agreed to phase out overseas fossil fuel finance and end support for coal power.

And in recent weeks, three global fossil fuel giants – Shell, Chevron and ExxonMobil – faced legal and shareholder rebukes over their inadequate action on climate change.

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Coming on top of all that, the IEA last month set out a comprehensive roadmap to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. It included a stark warning: no new fossil fuel projects should be approved.

Natural carbon storage is key

However, the IEA’s findings contradict our own on several fronts. We believe the IEA underestimated the very real potential of renewable energy and relied on problematic solutions to fill what it sees as a gap in meeting the carbon budget.

For example, the IEA suggests a sharp increase in bioenergy is required over the next 30 years.

This would require biofuels from energy plantations — planting crops (such as rapeseed) specifically for energy use.

But conservationists estimate the sustainable potential for biofuels is lower. They also say high volumes of bioenergy might interfere with land use for food production and protected nature conservation areas.

Our research found the exact opposite is needed: rapid phase out of deforestation and significant reforestation alongside the decarbonisation of the energy sector.

Bioenergy should be produced predominantly from agricultural and organic waste to remain carbon neutral.

Read more:
International Energy Agency warns against new fossil fuel projects. Guess what Australia did next?

Likewise, the IEA calls for an extreme expansion of carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects — where carbon dioxide emissions are captured at the source, and then pumped and stored deep in the ground.

In its roadmap, the IEA expects CCS projects to grow from capturing 40 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (as is currently the case), to 1,665 million tonnes by 2030.

This is quite unrealistic, because it means betting on expensive, unproven technology that’s being deployed very slowly and is often plagued by technical issues.

Establishing natural carbon sinks should be prioritised instead, such as keeping forest, mangrove and seagrass ecosystems better intact to draw carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Phasing out early

As a wealthy country, Australia is better placed than most to weather any economic disruption from the energy transition.

Our research shows Australia should phase out fossil fuels early and urgently. The Australian government should also ensure communities and people reliant on fossil fuel industries are helped through the transition.

We must also support poorer countries highly dependent on fossil fuels, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region.

There is new international momentum for climate action, and the future of the fossil fuel industry looks increasingly dire. The technologies to make the transition are ready and waiting – now all that’s needed is political will.

Read more:
Tracking the transition: the ‘forgotten’ emissions undoing the work of Australia’s renewable energy boom

Sven Teske received research funding from the Leonardo Di Caprio Foundation, the European Climate Foundation and the Stand-Earth Foundation.

Sarah Niklas received research funding from the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation, the European Climate Foundation (ECF) and the Stand.Earth Foundation.

– ref. Even without new fossil fuel projects, global warming will still exceed 1.5℃. But renewables might make it possible – https://theconversation.com/even-without-new-fossil-fuel-projects-global-warming-will-still-exceed-1-5-but-renewables-might-make-it-possible-162591

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Craig Jeffrey, Professor of Geography, The University of Melbourne

South Asia is crucial to the future of Australia. But Australia has just one (small) program focused on South Asian studies across its many universities.

This has not always been the case. In the mid-1970s, 13 of Australia’s universities offered undergraduate subjects on South Asia (India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, and the Maldives). Students could learn about South Asian coins at ANU and Sanskrit at the University of Wollongong.

Australia boasted some of the leading scholars on South Asia. ANU nurtured subaltern studies – the study of social groups excluded from dominant power structures – which became a global movement in the field of post-colonial analysis. Leading post-colonial scholar Dipesh Chakrabarty was based at the University of Melbourne. Other luminaries active in that period include A.L. Basham, Anthony Low and Robin Jeffrey.

But, even as the Australian university sector has expanded since the 1970s, it has withdrawn support for Asian studies, and South Asian studies in particular. There is currently only one South Asia or India program – at ANU.

Only five of the 40 Australian universities offer semester-length subjects on India or South Asia. Six universities offered an Indian language in 1996. Now only two do so.

Read more:
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Several universities, often supported by government grants, have launched country or regional research initiatives since 1990. The National Centre for South Asian Studies, based at Monash, is one of these. But Australian universities have not built any strong or sustainable South Asia programs for students.

A trend at odds with national priorities

This point sits oddly alongside a high-level commitment to South Asia in Australia. The Australian government is exploring new forms of engagement with India, including the Quad security dialogue involving India, Australia, Japan and the US.

At a social level, Australia is increasingly Indian. In 2019 more than 700,000 people in Australia claimed Indian descent. Hindi is among the fastest-growing languages in Australia, and India is the country’s leading source of skilled migrants.

Historically, there are fascinating connections between Australia and South Asia. The lives and work of Australia’s “Ghans” (cameleers) is one famous example.

Moving forward, Australia needs a knowledge base to match this longstanding and increasingly important commitment to India and South Asia more generally.

Read more:
From lascars to skilled migrants: Indian diaspora in New Zealand and Australia

Out of step with global academic practice

Australian universities could learn from their counterparts in other parts of the world how to integrate area studies into their teaching. Outside of Australia, most of the top universities in the world make great play of their area studies expertise. Area studies enables people to apprehend their own distinctive humanity, anchors innovative cross-disciplinary teaching across the university, and provides a basis for re-evaluating assumptions about a person’s disciplinary field.

Students arriving at Oxford, Yale or Columbia know that if they are studying law, business, art, politics, education, design, technology, anthropology, economics, agriculture, military affairs or modern media, they will need to think about how to apply their disciplinary knowledge to specific places. A “whole of university” commitment to area studies teaching, including South Asian studies, has long been a key mechanism for drawing on multiple disciplines.

Even with small numbers of area studies majors, the world’s best universities do not see area studies as a niche endeavour. On the contrary, they see it as a central feature of their global mission. Strong universities without robust, independent, and widely accessible area studies programs open themselves up to accusations of antiquated parochialism and a poor understanding of the interdisciplinary trends that powerfully shape our world.

Read more:
Axing protection for national strategic languages is no way to build ties with Asia

What should South Asian studies offer?

Today, South Asian studies programs in Australia should include internships, opportunities to study abroad and virtual classrooms connecting Australian students to their counterparts elsewhere.

Asian studies programs should also include language options, because effective communication with rising regions like South Asia is essential. Keep in mind that only 10% of India’s population speak English.

At its most fundamental, good area studies and good South Asian studies allow people to understand that they are, as French philosopher Michel de Montaigne put it in an essay on global education written 450 years ago “like a dot made by a very fine pencil” on the world map. It teaches them how they fit within a global whole.

Beyond this, area studies helps people understand and confidently engage with forms of difference and diversity. It fosters key skills for interacting with peers overseas as well as global diasporas. This includes connecting with foreign organisations, managing communications and cultivating an active sense of global citizenship.

Area studies allows us to develop an understanding of our common humanity across national boundaries – something Indian scholar Veena Das has written about in her book Critical Events.

Now is the time for Australian universities to place area studies teaching at the core of an internationally engaged education. We must provide a much larger number of Australians with a deeper understanding of South Asia.

Craig Jeffrey receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

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

– ref. From 13 unis to 1: why Australia needs to reverse the loss of South Asian studies – https://theconversation.com/from-13-unis-to-1-why-australia-needs-to-reverse-the-loss-of-south-asian-studies-161006

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Hawkins, Senior Lecturer, Canberra School of Politics, Economics and Society and NATSEM, University of Canberra

Nayib Bukele, president of El Salvador, has got himself a pair of laser eyes – on his Twitter profile at least.

Laser eyes are something social media users give themselves to show they love cryptocurrency – and Bukele proved his crypto-enthusiasm last week by having El Salvador become the world’s first nation to make Bitcoin legal tender.

El Salvador’s parliament passed Bukele’s proposed legislation on June 9, after he announced his plan just a few days earlier. The law will take effect in September.

Some Bitcoin fans have leapt on this as a step towards much broader acceptance. But the changes in Bitcoin’s market value since Bukele announced his plan gives crypto-sceptics reason for doubt.

Over the past week Bitcoin’s value was as high as US$38,200 (about A$49,000) and as low as US$31,428. Over the past month it has fallen from more than US$58,000. This isn’t the type of price volatility any government generally wants to see in a currency.

Such fluctations show Bitcoin’s weakness as a viable alternative to central bank currencies – good only for transactions you don’t want traced and as a speculative investment.

So what is Bukele thinking in wanting to make Bitcoin legal tender for the small central American nation (population about 6.5 million) whose economy accounts for less than 0.05% of global GDP?

Read more:
El Salvador’s façade of democracy crumbles as president purges his political opponents

What does ‘legal tender’ mean?

Before we get to that, let’s clarify what making Bitcoin legal tender means.

Using Bitcoin is already legal in El Salvador, as it is in most countries. If you want to pay for something in bitcoins, and the recipient is willing to accept them, it’s all good.

Making bitcoins legal tender mean a payee will have to accept them. As the new legislation states, “every economic agent must accept Bitcoin as payment when offered to him by whoever acquires a good or service”.

El Salvador making this move isn’t as significant as it would be for most nations, because it is one of about a dozen countries – most of them micro-states such as Andorra and Nauru – without its own currency (or a common currency such as the Euro).

El Salvador abandoned its own currency (the “colon”, named after Christopher Columbus) in 2001 and adopted the US dollar as its legal tender. This process of “official dollarisation” was seen as a reform that would curb inflation and increase trade with the US (by far its major trading partner).

So El Salvador has less to lose than other nations in adopting a second currency as legal tender. There is no controversy about losing sovereignty and monetary policy autonomy. There will be no loss of “seignorage” – the profit made on issuing currency that’s worth a lot more than the cost of making it.

Highly volatile

But having two legal tenders will complicate matters – particularly when one of those currencies is subject to wild swings in its value.

Consider the provision in the new law that “all obligations in money expressed in USD, existing before the effective date of this law, may be paid in bitcoin”.

Even that is complicated. How, and by whom, will the amount of bitcoins necessary to pay a debt be determined? Will it be based on the Bitcoin price at the time the debt was incurred, or when the debt falls due?

The difference of even a few days could be significant.

If the expectation is the price of Bitcoin is going to rise, why would you want to buy things with it? Why not wait? If the expectation is the price is going to fall, why would you want to accept it? For most transactions, using US dollars will still make the most sense.

So making Bitcoin legal tender could help destabilise El Salvador’s economy.

Read more:
Bitcoin: this year I stand to make $200 million more than Elon Musk

Increasing El Salvador’s GDP

Things would have been simpler if El Salvador had adopted a “stablecoin” whose price is fixed at one US dollar – such as Tether, the third-largest cryptocurrency.

But that would have not been nearly so newsworthy, and would have defeated the apparent reason Bukele has championed this move.

Bukele’s reasoning, delivered via Twitter on June 6, is that Bitcoin has “a market cap of US$680 billion” and:

If 1% of it is invested in El Salvador, that would increase our GDP by 25%.

This argument – which appears to be the only “analysis” Bukele has made public – seems very confused.

Market capitalisation typically refers to a listed company’s valuation, based on multiplying the share price by the number of shares. The $US680 billion Bitcoin market cap Bukele referred to represents the currency’s market value multiplied by the number of bitcoins created so far. (For comparison, the market cap of Tether’s 63 billion coins in circulation is US$63 billion.)

But it is flawed logic to think Bitcoin’s total market value equals money bitcoin owners around the globe are looking to invest anywhere.

In very few cases do people buy bitcoins to invest in other things. Bitcoins are their investment. Neither major funds nor average punters holding bitcoins are likely to want to start investing in El Salvador.

Nor is foreign investment a component of GDP (which is the value of market transactions in an economy). Foreigners using bitcoins to buy assets such as land in El Salvador would bid up its price but not necessarily increase GDP. A surge in foreign investment into new infrastructure and businesess that increase productive capacity would contribute to GDP, but there’s no reason to think giving Bitcoin legal tender status will make this more likely.

Facilitating remittances

A second reason given by Bukele is that Bitcoin “will have 10 million potential new users” and is “the fastest growing way to transfer 6 billion dollars a year in remittances”.

This apparently refers to both the population of El Salvador (about 6.5 million) and Salvadorans living abroad, many of whom send money home to help their families. In 2020 these remittances totalled US$5.9 billion, or 23% of El Salvador’s GDP.

While any cryptocurrency can well facilitate more efficient transfers (without the charges banks impose), the significance of remittances to the Salvadoran economy points to another issue. El Salvador is a poor country, with one of the lowest rates of internet use in the Americas – 33% in 2017, according to World Bank data.

How many vendors, street hawkers or farmers are equipped to handle cryptocurrency transactions? US dollars will more than likely remain the default currency.

The benefits of making Bitcoin legal tender are far from clear. El Salvador is already facing higher interest rates as international investors are worried about the move. There are concerns wider use of Bitcoin will facilitate the black economy and make tax avoidance easier.

So this is a great experiment.

Read more:
Bitcoin: El Salvador’s grand experiment

For the sake of El Salvador’s people, let’s hope it is successful. But the odds are on it being further evidence of the cryptocurrency’s unsuitability for use as a real currency – confirmation that Bitcoin is nothing more than a speculative gamble.

John Hawkins formerly worked for the Bank for International Settlements and two central banks,

– ref. Can Bitcoin become a real currency? Here’s what’s wrong with El Salvador’s crypto plan – https://theconversation.com/can-bitcoin-become-a-real-currency-heres-whats-wrong-with-el-salvadors-crypto-plan-162348

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Christine Judith Nicholls, Honorary Senior Lecturer, ANU, Australian National University

Eminent Australian anthropologist Peter Sutton and respected field archaeologist Keryn Walshe have co-authored a meticulously researched new book, Farmers or Hunter-gatherers? The Dark Emu Debate. It’s set to become the definitive critique of Bruce Pascoe’s Dark Emu: Black Seeds — Agriculture or Accident?

First published in 2014, Pascoe’s Dark Emu has spawned numerous derivatives. Pascoe contends that in pre-contact times, Australian Aboriginal people weren’t “mere” hunter-gatherers, but agriculturalists. Descriptors like “simple” or “mere” are anathema to people like me who’ve lived long-term with hunter-gatherers.

For many Australians, Pascoe’s book is a “must-read”, speaking truth to power. For such readers, Dark Emu seems a breakthrough text. Not so, in Sutton and Walshe’s estimation. Nor mine.

Underpinning Dark Emu is the author’s rhetorical purpose. This proselytising is partly achieved by painstaking “massaging” of his sources, a practice forensically examined by Walshe and Sutton. It has led to converts to Pascoe’s dubious proposition. But this willingness to accept Pascoe’s argument reveals a systemic area of failure in the Australian education system.

On the basis of long-term research and observation, Sutton and Walshe portray classical Australian Aboriginal people as highly successful hunter-gatherers and fishers. They strongly repudiate racist notions of Aboriginal hunter-gatherers as living in a primitive state.

In their book, they assert there was and is nothing “simple” or “primitive” about hunter-gatherer-fishers’ labour practices. This complexity was, and in many cases, still is, underpinned by high levels of spiritual/cultural belief.

Not agriculturalists

As Sutton attests, seeds were and are occasionally deliberately scattered. But in classical Aboriginal societies they were never planted nor watered for agricultural purposes. Such aforementioned rituals are collectively called “increase ceremonies”. Sutton’s alternative term, “maintenance ceremonies”, invokes spiritual propagation as opposed to oversupply.

Their objective was continuing subsistence. Australia’s hunter-gatherer-fishers left an extremely light carbon footprint — the diametric opposite of many contemporary agricultural/industrial practices. The photo below, taken in 1932 or earlier, shows Pilbara people throwing yelka (nutgrass) — not threshing or scattering seeds.

Pascoe’s sources and approach

Pascoe draws on records of explorers and early colonists, also citing recent works, including Bill Gammage’s The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines made Australia. Dark Emu leans most heavily on the work of the late historian/ethnographer Rupert Gerritsen.

Read more:
Friday essay: Dark Emu and the blindness of Australian agriculture

Counter-intuitively, Pascoe mainly cites non-Aboriginal sources. There is no real “voice” given to the few remaining people who lived traditional lives as youngsters, or are cited in books or articles.

While some have described Dark Emu as fabrication, Sutton and Walshe are more measured. They methodically show that in Dark Emu, Pascoe has removed significant passages from publications that contradict his major objectives. This boosts his contention that all along Aboriginal people were farmers and/or aquaculturalists.

One example concerns Pascoe’s quoting of the journal entries of the explorer Charles Sturt. Sutton writes:

Sturt is quoted [by Pascoe] on his party’s discovery of a large well and ‘village’ of 19 huts somewhere north of Lake Torrens in South Australia.

This “village” concept arose from colonial records, and is still sometimes used in recent articles.

Pascoe’s edit of Sturt’s original 1849 text breathes oxygen into Dark Emu’s polemical edge. It’s misleading at best. For Sturt’s diary reveals Aboriginal people didn’t live in “houses” in any single site all year round.

Such accounts destabilise Pascoe’s argument, reinforced by ethnographic, colonial, and archaeological records.

Hunter-gatherers did alter the country in significant ways — most Australians know about the ancient practice of firing the country, recently discussed in depth owing to our increasingly devastating bush-fires. This involved ecological agency and prowess. But expert fire-burning isn’t an agricultural practice, as Pascoe avers.

Read more:
Indigenous expertise is reducing bushfires in northern Australia. It’s time to consider similar approaches for other disasters

Misidentification of implements

In a key chapter, Walshe homes in on Pascoe’s mis-interpretations of hunter-gatherer implements, which he labels “agricultural” tools. For instance, Pascoe misconstrues grooved “Bogan Picks” as heavy stones used for agricultural activity.

Walshe disputes Pascoe’s claim, stating that, “with their adze-shaped end and grooved midline for hafting, they were likely used in a similar way to stone axes.”

Wooden digging sticks were also used for breaking up the earth to extract yams when in season, among various other purposes — not for “tilling” or “ploughing” the soil in preparation for planting seeds.

Language used by early colonists and explorers — words like “village” and “picks” — befuddles readers. British colonists’ monolingualism meant they used English words, often imposed arbitrarily, to name never-before-seen hunter-gatherer implements. For example, “Bogan Pick” references the nearby Bogan River.

Hunter-gatherer mobility and stasis

Sutton expertly summarises the experience of escaped convict, William Buckley, who spent 32 years travelling around country with the Wathawurrung people in Central Victoria.

Over time, Buckley became fluent in the language of his Wathawurrung hosts. Later, his oral account of the hunter-gatherer group’s approximate lengths of mobility and stasis at numerous sites was transcribed. It’s a unique document covering a significant timespan.

This account reinforces earlier chapters in Dark Emu Debate. Sutton and Walshe make it crystal clear that Aboriginal people weren’t “simple nomads” wandering around randomly, opportunistically searching for food and water. They knew their country intimately.

Rather, hunter-gatherers engaged in purposeful travel to sites with which they familiar and able to source seasonally available food, water and shelter at variable times of year.

Another conspicuous weakness in Dark Emu’s approach, pinpointed by Sutton and Walshe, is Pascoe’s penchant for choosing exceptions to the general rule, implying that these atypical practices were widespread or universal. It’s another strategy to consolidate his argument but involves eliding vital information.

Pre-contact aquaculture

Pascoe offers two examples of “aquacultural” practice, one in Brewarrina (NSW) in the bed streams of the Barwon River, and the other in Lake Condah, in south-western Victoria.

He seizes on rock use in the Brewarrina fishery and Lake Condah’s fish and seasonal eel trapping as “proof” of Aboriginal people’s aqua/agricultural prowess — giving the impression they created these complex hydrological systems from scratch.

But Sutton writes, “The fish traps of Brewarrina … were not claimed as the ingenious works of human beings, but … regarded as having been put there in the Dreaming, by Dreamings.” Both he and Walshe readily acknowledge the fact that Aboriginal people use/d their human agency to create modifications. It’s not an either/or matter.

However, a chapter written by Walshe throws light on the seismic activity that forged Lake Condah’s unique terrain and waterways. This area, she writes, is part of

a volcanic system … last active … 9,000 years ago, with a major eruption much earlier, about 37,000 thousand years ago, causing a massive lava flow across the pre-existing drainage system.

The natural tilt southwards, she explains, facilitated “naturally formed ancient river channels … to reach the Southern Ocean”.

This enabled migratory fish to spawn. Fish, and at certain times of year, eels, swam through both fresh and salty water — making for ease of catching. Local Aboriginal people moved the heavy stones into semi-circular formations to enable netting, spearing or grabbing by hand, possibly creating further semi-captivity of these food staples.

In this way, hunter-gatherers consistently and constantly “value-added” to, or enhanced, nature’s creation.

Read more:
The detective work behind the Budj Bim eel traps World Heritage bid

Not a bunfight

Pascoe’s skilful editing of his sources involves conscious, deliberate intervention. Does he hope Dark Emu will convince people to change their belief in the noxious evolutionary ladder, once uniformly, but still sometimes, applied to different groups of homo sapiens?

Or was his book written to prove Aboriginal people were/are more like Europeans, which could perhaps lead to much needed progress on reconciliation? Perhaps that accounts for its rapturous reception by many Australians, especially the young.

Why not simply celebrate the long-term achievements of hunter-gatherers?

Hunter-gatherers worked in concert with the natural world, not against it as most humans do today, resulting in insoluble difficulties such as overcrowding, pandemics and toxic agricultural and aquacultural practices. Survival depends on this. For eons, it ensured the continuity and the continuing existence of Australia’s hunter-gatherer people and their culture.

Farmers or Hunter Gatherers? The Dark Emu Debate needs to be read carefully, keeping an open mind. The book’s focus is on both material and spiritual economies and their misrepresentation. Despite racist commentary from some, this isn’t an exclusively right or left-wing issue or a bunfight.

Bruce Pascoe’s Dark Emu will continue to be granted recognition, if not immortality. But Sutton and Walshe’s Dark Emu Debate will undoubtedly be acclaimed. As a critique of Pascoe’s book, it’s just about perfect — a volume with the twin virtues of rigour and readability.

Farmers or Hunter Gatherers? The Dark Emu Debate is published by Melbourne University Press and will be released 16 June 2021.

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

– ref. Book review: Farmers or Hunter-gatherers? The Dark Emu Debate rigorously critiques Bruce Pascoe’s argument – https://theconversation.com/book-review-farmers-or-hunter-gatherers-the-dark-emu-debate-rigorously-critiques-bruce-pascoes-argument-161877

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tristan Kennedy, Senior Lecturer In Indigenous Studies, Macquarie University

Social media offers many benefits to Indigenous peoples, such as ways to establish and navigate identity, build and maintain strong connections to family and community, and seek and offer mutual support. While there are these positive experiences, many people also report having negative encounters online.

Recent research in the Department of Indigenous Studies at Macquarie University, with the support of Facebook Australia, has investigated the benefits of social media, as well as the impacts of negative and harmful content for Indigenous peoples.

The findings shed light on the types of harmful content Indigenous people are facing. These include references to white supremacy, Indigenous identity being challenged, and conflicts within Indigenous communities (also known as lateral violence) in which people attack or undermine each other, often based on colonial ideas about legitimate Indigenous identities.

Our research, which included Indigenous peoples from across Australia, was primarily concerned with identifying how negative content is conceptualised, identified and dealt with from Indigenous Australian perspectives.

Indigenous communities are facing a crisis in mental health, with harmful content on social media a major contributor to increased Indigenous suicide rates Our research responds to this crisis and can potentially help policy makers and social media companies make their platforms safer for Indigenous peoples.

Indigenous peoples’ experiences of social media: the good and the bad

Participants in our study were quick to identify the positive contributions that social media makes in their lives. 83% of respondents confirmed they had positive experiences on social media on a daily basis. In fact, every respondent in the study noted they had positive experiences at least weekly.

Among the most positive aspects, respondents cited accessing creative arts, Indigenous storytelling, and making contact with community members and services. Another positive was the ability to engage in political conversations — that is, to raise issues that are important to Indigenous people which may not receive adequate attention in mainstream media.

Despite these positive opportunities, there is a less comfortable side to social media which must be addressed. Bullying and harassment are having devastating effects on our young people and communities.

In 2019, academics Bronwyn Carlson and Ryan Frazer pointed to research that suggested

victims of cyberbullying are more likely to experience psychological ill-health, most seriously in the forms of depression, anxiety and thoughts of suicide.

Participants in our study agreed negative content was commonplace on social media. 63% of respondents said they experienced negative content on social media on a daily basis, while 97% reported witnessing negative content at least weekly.

Much of this content is grounded in ways of talking about Indigenous people and racist ideas that have pervaded Australian settler-colonial history.

This includes assimilationist policies that were based on the idea that Indigenous culture could be “bred out”. This line of thinking underpins assertions on social media that Indigenous people who live in cities or have fair skin are not genuinely Indigenous.

Read more:
Why is it so offensive to say ‘all lives matter’?

How can moderators and social media platforms help?

It comes as no surprise harmful speech exists on (and off) social media. What remains troubling, however, is that the cultural subtleties of offensive content are not readily identified by non-Indigenous platform moderators.

Our research included Indigenous voices in the discussion about what needs to be done to address these concerns. They identified a need to employ more Indigenous peoples in society generally – particularly in government, policy making institutions and education.

Indigenous perspectives and voices, which for too long have been silenced or ignored, need to be heard in these settings.

Participants also suggested social media platforms could employ more Indigenous people to assist with learning from Indigenous communities how to identify the cultural subtleties of harmful content online.

Indigenous people who contributed to this study had some advice for non-Indigenous individuals, too. They suggested people connect with Indigenous-led social media pages that showcase diverse cultures and knowledges.

In the wake of National Reconciliation Week, there is no better time to make an effort to reach out via social media and connect with Indigenous community pages and websites.

By listening to and engaging with Indigenous peoples’ opinions and perspectives on social media, non-Indigenous people can learn about the history of their local area and find out what is happening around them.

Most of all, they can learn about what is important to Indigenous communities and how we can work together toward a safer online, and offline, society.

Tristan Kennedy received funding from Facebook Australia in support of this research project.

– ref. 97% of Indigenous people report seeing negative social media content weekly. Here’s how platforms can help – https://theconversation.com/97-of-indigenous-people-report-seeing-negative-social-media-content-weekly-heres-how-platforms-can-help-162353

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Evangeline Mantzioris, Program Director of Nutrition and Food Sciences, University of South Australia

Research Checks interrogate newly published studies and how they’re reported in the media. The analysis is undertaken by one or more academics not involved with the study, and reviewed by another, to make sure it’s accurate.

Diets that exclude meat and fish (vegetarian) or all animal products including dairy and eggs (vegan) are becoming increasingly popular for health, environmental and ethical reasons.

Past research in adults has linked vegetarian and vegan diets with a reduced risk of heart disease but a greater risk of fractures, caused by low calcium intakes. But the impact on children has not been evaluated, until the release of a new study this week.

The researchers found a link between shorter heights and lower bone mineral content among vegan children, compared to meat-eaters. But they didn’t show vegan diets caused the difference. Nor can they say the differences will last into adulthood.

How was the study conducted?

The paper, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, examined the differences in children aged five to ten years of age in Poland.

They looked at 187 healthy children between 2014 and 2016 who had been on their respective diets for at least one year: 72 children were omnivores (meat eaters), 63 were vegetarians and 52 were vegans.

The research team looked at the children’s nutrient intakes, body composition and cardiovascular risk – how likely they are to have heart disease or a stroke in the future.

The study was observational, so researchers didn’t make any changes to the children’s diets. They recruited children who were already eating these diets.

Specifically, it was a type of observational study called a cross-sectional study. They looked back at the children’s diets, growth and cardiovascular risk factors at a given time point.

The research team ensured the children in the vegan and vegetarian group were similar to children in the omnivore group, in factors that impact growth and cardiovascular risk factors. These include sex, age, parental smoking, parental education, clinical characteristics of their mother’s pregnancy and, importantly, their parents’ height.

Read more:
Are there any health implications for raising your child as a vegetarian, vegan or pescatarian?

What did the researchers find?

The researchers found that compared to children on omnivore diets, children on vegan diets had a healthier cardiovascular risk profile, with 25% lower levels of low-density lipoprotein (LDL, or unhealthy cholesterol).

However the vegan children had an increased risk of nutritional deficiencies. They were more likely to have lower levels of vitamin B12, calcium, vitamin D and iron in their diet.

Children on vegan diets had about 5% lower bone mineral content and were on average 3cm shorter in height. This is important, as the higher the bone mineral content, the higher the bone mineral density.

This 5% difference is concerning, as people have a limited period of time at this age in which they can optimise their bone mineral density; 95% of bone mass is attained by about 20 years of age. Lower bone densities are linked to higher rates of fractures in later life.

Vegetarians showed less pronounced nutritional deficiencies but, unexpectedly, a less favourable cardiovascular risk profile compared to both meat-eaters and vegans. The authors attributed this to a lower-quality diet, with these children consuming more processed foods.

Are there any problems with the study?

Observational studies are only able to tell us if something is linked, not if one thing caused another. This study only tells us there is a link between these diets and the outcomes they looked at.

But in this study, there are plausible biological links between bone development and growth in children.

Calcium, vitamin D and protein are critical for bone development and growth. These nutrients may be lower in vegan diets, as they come mainly from animal products:

• calcium is found in dairy products
• vitamin D, which we normally get from exposure to sunlight on our skin, is also found in animal foods but in smaller amounts
• protein from plant foods is considered of lower biological value than animal sources.

One single plant source of protein won’t provide you with all the essential amino acids (the protein building blocks your body is unable to make for itself) that are needed. Vegans need to make sure they eat a variety of plants so they get a good mix of all the essential amino acids.

So, why didn’t the researchers carry out an intervention study and change the diets of the children?

First, it would be difficult to find children and their families who are willing to change their diets for a long period.

Second, it would be unethical to put children on a diet potentially affecting their growth and cardiovascular risk factors.

This study, conducted in Poland, is the only one to look at growth and cardiovascular outcomes in vegan and vegetarian children.

One small study in children aged five to ten years isn’t enough for the scientific community to say these results are valid and we must act on them.

But it does give us clues about potential problems and what we can look out for.

As the researchers indicated, more observational studies are needed, and in different countries.

Read more:
Have you gone vegan? Keep an eye on these 4 nutrients

So what does it mean for children on vegan and vegetarian diets?

This doesn’t mean every child who follows these diets is going to have these nutritional and health benefits or problems. And we also can’t say whether these problems will persist into adulthood.

But it does highlight potential risks which health practitioners and parents need to be aware of. And it’s a reminder to either find suitable replacements that align with the family’s diet philosophy, or prescribe supplements if a deficiency is diagnosed through a blood test.

In particular, parents and caregivers need to be careful their children are maintaining a good intake of protein from a variety of vegan sources (beans, lentils, nuts) and calcium (from calcium supplemented plant milks).

Whether you’re following a vegan, vegetarian or meat-eating diet, you still need to make sure the diet is balanced across all food groups.

The study is also a reminder to minimise your family’s intake of processed foods which are high in salt, sugar and saturated fat, which are risk factors for heart disease and stroke.

If you’re concerned about your children’s diet, talk to your GP or an accredited practising dietitian, who can assess their growth and diet. – Evangeline Mantzioris

Blind peer review

The reviewer has provided an accurate assessment of the research paper.

The study highlights the importance of meal planning to optimise food and nutrient intakes of children whose usual dietary pattern is vegan or vegetarian and the need for regular use of fortified foods and/or dietary supplementation with vitamin B12 and vitamin D and potentially calcium and iron, particularly for vegans.

However, the results of the study may be a “best case scenario”, given most families participating were highly educated and hence likely to be more invested in planning family meals. It is possible other families might have less healthy dietary patterns, and therefore greater nutritional deficits.

Together with the results highlighted by the reviewer about bone mineral content and height, as well as iron and cholesterol levels, this study confirms both the potential risks and benefits associated with vegan and vegetarian diets in children.

A key message is that families following plant-based diets need more advice and support to optimise their food and nutrient intakes, and their children’s diet-related health and well-being. – Clare Collins

Read more:
Pregnant women and babies can be vegans but careful nutrition planning is essential

Evangeline Mantzioris receives funding from National Health & Medical Research Council.

Clare Collins is affiliated with the Priority Research Centre for Physical Activity and Nutrition, the University of Newcastle, NSW. She has received research grants from NHMRC, ARC, MRFF, Hunter Medical Research Institute, Diabetes Australia, Heart Foundation, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, nib foundation, Rijk Zwaan Australia, WA Dept. Health, Meat and Livestock Australia, and Greater Charitable Foundation. She has consulted to SHINE Australia, Novo Nordisk, Quality Bakers, the Sax Institute and the ABC. She was a team member conducting systematic reviews to inform the Australian Dietary Guidelines update and the Heart Foundation evidence reviews on meat and dietary patterns.

– ref. Do vegan diets make kids shorter and weaker? – https://theconversation.com/do-vegan-diets-make-kids-shorter-and-weaker-162420

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tristan Kennedy, Senior Lecturer In Indigenous Studies, Macquarie University

Social media offers many benefits to Indigenous peoples, such as ways to establish and navigate identity, build and maintain strong connections to family and community, and seek and offer mutual support. While there are these positive experiences, many people also report having negative encounters online.

Recent research in the Department of Indigenous Studies at Macquarie University, with the support of Facebook Australia, has investigated the benefits of social media, as well as the impacts of negative and harmful content for Indigenous peoples.

The findings shed light on the types of harmful content Indigenous people are facing. These include references to white supremacy, Indigenous identity being challenged, and conflicts within Indigenous communities (also known as lateral violence) in which people attack or undermine each other, often based on colonial ideas about legitimate Indigenous identities.

Our research, which included Indigenous peoples from across Australia, was primarily concerned with identifying how negative content is conceptualised, identified and dealt with from Indigenous Australian perspectives.

Indigenous communities are facing a crisis in mental health, with harmful content on social media a major contributor to increased Indigenous suicide rates Our research responds to this crisis and can potentially help policy makers and social media companies make their platforms safer for Indigenous peoples.

Indigenous peoples’ experiences of social media: the good and the bad

Participants in our study were quick to identify the positive contributions that social media makes in their lives. 83% of respondents confirmed they had positive experiences on social media on a daily basis. In fact, every respondent in the study noted they had positive experiences at least weekly.

Among the most positive aspects, respondents cited accessing creative arts, Indigenous storytelling, and making contact with community members and services. Another positive was the ability to engage in political conversations — that is, to raise issues that are important to Indigenous people which may not receive adequate attention in mainstream media.

Despite these positive opportunities, there is a less comfortable side to social media which must be addressed. Bullying and harassment are having devastating effects on our young people and communities.

In 2019, academics Bronwyn Carlson and Ryan Frazer pointed to research that suggested

victims of cyberbullying are more likely to experience psychological ill-health, most seriously in the forms of depression, anxiety and thoughts of suicide.

Participants in our study agreed negative content was commonplace on social media. 63% of respondents said they experienced negative content on social media on a daily basis, while 97% reported witnessing negative content at least weekly.

Much of this content is grounded in ways of talking about Indigenous people and racist ideas that have pervaded Australian settler-colonial history.

This includes assimilationist policies that were based on the idea that Indigenous culture could be “bred out”. This line of thinking underpins assertions on social media that Indigenous people who live in cities or have fair skin are not genuinely Indigenous.

Read more:
Why is it so offensive to say ‘all lives matter’?

How can moderators and social media platforms help?

It comes as no surprise harmful speech exists on (and off) social media. What remains troubling, however, is that the cultural subtleties of offensive content are not readily identified by non-Indigenous platform moderators.

Our research included Indigenous voices in the discussion about what needs to be done to address these concerns. They identified a need to employ more Indigenous peoples in society generally – particularly in government, policy making institutions and education.

Indigenous perspectives and voices, which for too long have been silenced or ignored, need to be heard in these settings.

Participants also suggested social media platforms could employ more Indigenous people to assist with learning from Indigenous communities how to identify the cultural subtleties of harmful content online.

Indigenous people who contributed to this study had some advice for non-Indigenous individuals, too. They suggested people connect with Indigenous-led social media pages that showcase diverse cultures and knowledges.

In the wake of National Reconciliation Week, there is no better time to make an effort to reach out via social media and connect with Indigenous community pages and websites.

By listening to and engaging with Indigenous peoples’ opinions and perspectives on social media, non-Indigenous people can learn about the history of their local area and find out what is happening around them.

Most of all, they can learn about what is important to Indigenous communities and how we can work together toward a safer online, and offline, society.

Tristan Kennedy received funding from Facebook Australia in support of this research project.

– ref. 97% of Indigenous people report seeing negative content weekly. Here’s how platforms can help – https://theconversation.com/97-of-indigenous-people-report-seeing-negative-content-weekly-heres-how-platforms-can-help-162353

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

University of Canberra Professorial Fellow Michelle Grattan and University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor and President Professor Paddy Nixon discuss the week in politics.

This week Michelle and Paddy discuss the G7 summit which is set to take place in Cornwall, where Prime Minister Scott Morrison will be meeting with some of the world’s leaders and discussing COVID-19, climate change, and China.

Crucially, it will be Morrison’s first face-to-face meeting with US President Joe Biden.

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

– ref. VIDEO: Michelle Grattan on the G7 summit and the Biloela Tamil family – https://theconversation.com/video-michelle-grattan-on-the-g7-summit-and-the-biloela-tamil-family-162595

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nerilie Abram, Professor; ARC Future Fellow; Chief Investigator for the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes; Deputy Director for the Australian Centre for Excellence in Antarctic Science, Australian National University

Senator Matt Canavan sent many eyeballs rolling yesterday when he tweeted photos of snowy scenes in regional New South Wales with a sardonic two-word caption: “climate change”.

Canavan, a renowned opponent of climate action and proponent of the coal industry, appeared to be suggesting that the existence of an isolated cold snap means global warming isn’t real.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has previously insisted there is “no dispute in this country about the issue of climate change, globally, and its effect on global weather patterns”. But Canavan’s tweet would suggest otherwise.

The reality is, as the climate warms, record-breaking cold weather is becoming less common. And one winter storm does not negate more than a century of human-caused global warming. Here, we take a closer look at the cold weather misconception and two other common climate change myths.

Myth #1: A cold snap means global warming isn’t happening

Canavan’s tweet is an example of a common tactic used by climate change deniers that deliberately conflates weather and climate.

Parts of Australia are currently in the grip of a cold snap as icy air from Antarctica is funnelled up over the eastern states. This is part of a normal weather system, and is temporary.

Climate, on the other hand, refers to weather conditions over a much longer period, such as several decades. And as our climate warms, the probability of such weather systems bringing record-breaking cold temperatures reduces dramatically.

Just as average temperatures in Australia have risen markedly over the past century, so too have winter temperatures. That doesn’t mean climate change is not happening. In a warming world, extremely cold winter temperatures can still occur, but less often than they used to.

In fact, human-caused climate change means extreme winter warmth now occurs more often, and across larger parts of the country. Record-breaking hot events in Australia now far outweigh record breaking cold events.

Myth #2: Global warming is good for us

Yes, climate change may bring isolated benefits. For example, warmer global temperatures may mean fewer people die from extreme cold weather, or that shorter shipping routes open up across the Arctic as sea ice melts.

But the perverse benefits that may flow from climate change will be far outweighed by the damage caused.

Extreme heat can be fatal for humans. And a global study found 37% of heat-related deaths are a direct consequence of human-caused climate change. That means nearly 3,000 deaths in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne between 1991 and 2018 were due to climate change.

Extreme heat and humidity may make some parts of the world, especially those near the Equator, essentially uninhabitable by the end of this century.

Global warming also kills plants, animals and ecosystems. In 2018, an estimated one-third of Australia’s spectacled flying foxes died when temperatures around Cairns reached 42℃. And there is evidence many Australian plants will not cope well in a warmer world – and are already nearing their tipping point.

Heatwaves also damage oceans. The Great Barrier Reef has suffered three mass bleaching events in just five years. Within decades the natural wonder is unlikely to exist in is current form – badly hurting employment and tourism.

Read more:
Climate change is making ocean waves more powerful, threatening to erode many coastlines

Myth #3: More CO₂ means Earth will definitely get greener

In January last year, News Corp columnist Andrew Bolt caused a stir with an article that suggested rising carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions were “greening the planet” and were therefore “a good thing”.

During photosynthesis, plants absorb CO₂. So as the concentration of CO₂ in the atmosphere increases, some researchers predict the planet will become greener and crop yields will increase.

Consistent with this hypothesis, there is indirect evidence of increased global photosynthesis and satellite-observed greening. There is also indirect evidence of increased “carbon sinks”, whereby CO₂ is drawn down from the atmosphere by plants, then stored in soil.

Rising temperatures lead to an earlier onset of spring, as well as prolonged summer plant growth – particularly in the Northern Hemisphere. Researchers think this has triggered an increase in the land carbon sink.

However, there’s also widespread evidence some trees are not growing as might be expected given the increased CO₂ levels in our atmosphere. For example, a study of how Australian eucalypts might respond to future CO₂ concentrations has so far found no increase in growth.

Increased plant growth may also cause them to use more water, causing significant reductions in streamflow that will compound water availability issues in dry regions.

Overall, attempts to reconcile the various lines of evidence of how climate change will alter Earth’s land vegetation have proved challenging.

So, are we doomed?

After all this bad news, you might be feeling a bit dejected. And true, the current outlook isn’t great.

Earth has already warmed by about 1℃, and current policies have the world on track for at least 3℃ warming this century. But there is still reason for hope. While every extra bit of warming matters, so too does every action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

And there are promising signs of increasing ambition to reduce greenhouse gas emissions on the global front – from the United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union, Japan and others.

Unfortunately, Australia is far behind our international peers, instead pushing the burden of action onto future generations. We now need the political leadership to set our country, and the world, on a safer and more secure path. Ill-informed tweets by senior members of the government only set back the cause.

Read more:
Spot the difference: as world leaders rose to the occasion at the Biden climate summit, Morrison faltered

Nerilie Abram receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Martin De Kauwe receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. Matt Canavan suggested the cold snap means global warming isn’t real. We bust this and 2 other climate myths – https://theconversation.com/matt-canavan-suggested-the-cold-snap-means-global-warming-isnt-real-we-bust-this-and-2-other-climate-myths-130878

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Patrick Rule, Research Fellow, Monash University

Monk seals are one of the most endangered marine mammals alive today, with just over 2,000 individuals remaining in the wild. These seals live in warm waters, specifically the tropics and the Mediterranean.

Hunting by sailors in the past resulted in the extinction of the Caribbean monk seal by the end of the 1950s. It also heavily reduced the numbers of the two remaining populations, in Hawaii and the Mediterranean.

Given how rare monk seals are today, it is hard to imagine a time when they were abundant. However, fossils from Australia show monk seals used to be much more widespread.

Two fossils from Beaumaris and Hamilton in Victoria have turned out to be the remains of ancient monk seals. This discovery, part of an ongoing effort to investigate Melbourne’s globally important marine fossils, was outlined by our team in a paper published in the Journal of Systematic Palaeontology.

How are monk seals different from other seals?

Monk seals are from a completely different group to the fur seals and sea lions that live in Australian waters today. Australia’s warm environment in the past made it an ideal habitat for true seals, the group to which monk seals belong.

These seals would have coexisted with Australia’s ancient megafauna, such as giant kangaroos and the oddball palorchestids.

Read more:
In a land of ancient giants, these small oddball seals once called Australia home

This discovery was made when our team revisited two fossils from Museums Victoria’s collections, the identity of which has been a mystery for 40 years.

When we analysed them, they turned out to be the oldest evidence of monk seals found so far, at roughly 5 million years old. The fossils are earbones, the part of the skull that contains the structures needed for hearing. The anatomy of earbones means they are very useful for helping palaeontologists identify what animal fossils belong to.

Together with the recently discovered Eomonachus (a 3 million-year-old New Zealand monk seal), these fossils demonstrate that monk seals had a long history in Australasia. These discoveries have now almost doubled the number of geographic regions monk seals used to occupy in the past, and confirm they used to be a much larger group.

What happened?

If monk seals were so widespread down under in the past, why are they no longer here? The short answer is climate change.

Around 2.5 million years ago, the onset of the ice ages changed the world’s oceans, making the waters colder and sea levels lower. This led to extinctions in many marine mammal groups, including the monk seals. In short, monk seals disappeared in the southern hemisphere, leaving them only present in the Mediterranean and the tropics.

Read more:
Scientists thought these seals evolved in the north. 3-million-year-old fossils from New Zealand suggest otherwise

Despite monk seals being protected from hunting today, these fossil discoveries suggest their troubles may be far from over. Their fossil relatives have now demonstrated they are susceptible to environmental change.

Rising sea levels are already threatening the Hawaiian species, and human-driven changes also endanger the Mediterranean species.

Without continued protection, the remaining monk seals may soon disappear along with their extinct relatives.

James Patrick Rule received funding from an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship and a Robert Blackwood Scholarship.

Erich Fitzgerald receives support for research on The Lost World of Bayside from Bayside City Council, Community Bank Sandringham, Beaumaris Motor Yacht Squadron, Bayside Earth Sciences Society, Sandringham Foreshore Association and generous community donations to Museums Victoria.

Justin W. Adams receives funding from the Australian Research Council and Monash University.

– ref. The most endangered seals in the world once called Australia home – https://theconversation.com/the-most-endangered-seals-in-the-world-once-called-australia-home-162523

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ella Henry, Associate Professor, Auckland University of Technology

While I am always happy to celebrate any accolades my country and city might garner on the international stage, seeing Auckland/Tāmaki Makaurau awarded the top ranking in a recent “most liveable cities” survey left me somewhat flummoxed.

In particular, I would argue that many Māori whānau in Auckland do not enjoy the benefits of this supposed “liveability”.

This is important, given Māori comprised 11.5% of the Auckland population in the 2018 Census. Roughly one in four Māori in Aotearoa New Zealand are living in the greater Auckland region.

The survey was conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit, sister company of The Economist, and looked at 140 world cities. Auckland was ranked 12th in 2019, but took top spot this year for one obvious reason:

Auckland, in New Zealand, is at the top of The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Liveability rankings, owing to the city’s ability to contain the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic faster and thus lift restrictions earlier, unlike others around the world.

Alternative liveability criteria

Each city in the survey was rated on “relative comfort for over 30 qualitative and quantitative factors across five broad categories: stability, healthcare, culture and environment, education and infrastructure”.

Overall rankings depended on how those factors were rated on a sliding scale: acceptable, tolerable, uncomfortable, undesirable, intolerable. Quantitative measurements relied on “external data points”, but the qualitative ratings were “based on the judgment of our team of expert analysts and in-city contributors”.

Read more:
Recession hits Māori and Pasifika harder. They must be part of planning New Zealand’s COVID-19 recovery

The methodology, particularly around culture and environment, seems somewhat subjective. It’s predicated on the judgement of unnamed experts and contributors, and based on similarly undefined “cultural indicators”.

To better understand the living conditions of Māori in Auckland, therefore, we might use more robust “liveability” criteria. The New Zealand Treasury’s Living Standards Framework offers a useful model.

This sets out 12 domains of well-being: civic engagement and governance, cultural identity, environment, health, housing, income and consumption, jobs and earnings, knowledge and skills, time use, safety and security, social connections and subjective well-being.

The Māori experience

Applying a small handful of these measures to Māori, we find the following.

Housing: According to recent reports, Auckland house prices increased by about NZ$140,00 on average in the past year. That contributed to Auckland being the fourth-least-affordable housing market, across New Zealand, Singapore, Australia, the US, UK, Ireland, Canada and Hong Kong.

Next to that sobering fact, we can point to estimates that Māori made up more than 40% of the homeless in Auckland in 2019. We can only assume this rapid increase in house prices has made homelessness worse.

Poverty: Alongside housing affordability is the growing concern about poverty in New Zealand, and particularly child poverty. While there has been an overall decline in child poverty, Māori and Pacific poverty rates remain “profoundly disturbing”.

Read more:
Wage restraint aims to lift the lowest-earning public servants, but it won’t fix stubborn gender and ethnic pay gaps

Employment: As of March 2021, the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment recorded a Māori unemployment rate of 10.8%, well above the national rate (4.9%). This is particularly high for Māori youth (20.4%) and women (12.0%).

Health: Māori life expectancy is considerably lower than for non-Māori, and mortality rates are higher for Māori than non-Māori across nearly all age groups. Māori are also over-represented across a wide range of chronic and infectious diseases, injuries and suicide.

The digital divide: The Digital Government initiative has found Māori and Pasifika are among those less likely to have internet access, thus creating a level of digital poverty that may affect jobs and earnings, knowledge and skills, safety and security, and social connections.

Read more:
If New Zealand can radically reform its health system, why not do the same for welfare?

Making Auckland liveable for all

Taken together, these factors show a different and darker picture for far too many Māori than “liveable city” headlines might suggest.

I say this as someone who has lived in Auckland for the majority of the past 60 years. It is a city I love, and I acknowledge the grace and generosity of the mana whenua of Tāmaki Makaurau, with whom I share this beautiful whenua and moana.

I am also part of a privileged group of Māori who enjoy job security, a decent income, a secure whānau and strong social networks.

But, until we address and ameliorate the inequities and disadvantages some of our whānau face, we cannot truly celebrate being the “most liveable city in the world”.

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

– ref. Auckland is the world’s ‘most liveable city’? Many Māori might disagree – https://theconversation.com/auckland-is-the-worlds-most-liveable-city-many-maori-might-disagree-162503

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kevin O’Sullivan, Conjoint Senior Lecturer, UNSW

As a judicial officer, being subject to death threats not only for you but your family is a concern […] you are expected to simply soldier on and go to work the next day.

You can’t un-see or un-hear the material; and it’s impossible to forget, particularly when it involves very young children.

There is a cumulative effect for me, getting worse year by year.

These are some of the distressing sentiments that judges in NSW revealed as part of a recent study I conducted with colleagues at UNSW on the stresses they face in their jobs.

In surveys of 205 serving and retired members of state courts, we found the majority were exposed to alarming levels of traumatic experiences on a daily basis.

This included a high incidence of threats of physical harm to themselves and their families. Perhaps most worrying were the 47 respondents (about 25%) who had received death threats, and those whose families and/or children had been threatened with harm or death.

These types of threats are typically made by individuals with the means and motive to carry them out — namely, defendants in criminal cases and their associates. Said one respondent,

An offender smuggled a knife into the courtroom and was waiting for an opportunity to stab me. An attentive sheriff intervened before the opportunity arose.

Read more:
Jury is out: why shifting to judge-alone trials is a flawed approach to criminal justice

‘Soldier on and go to work the next day’

Added to these stresses is the sometimes daily exposure to the cruel and sadistic behaviour of defendants to other adults and children, including physical and sexual violence.

Three-quarters of our respondents reported being exposed to events associated with trauma, and 30% reported symptoms consistent with trauma-related effects from being exposed to these types of cases on a daily basis.

Many respondents described the soul-destroying repetition of nastiness to which they are privy in both written and oral evidence. They also described the expectation that they “simply soldier on and go to work the next day”.

Said one participant:

The cumulative effect of witnessing violence towards and the degradation of others is a trauma which has a detrimental effect on one’s life, functioning and relationships. It is like an osmosis and manifests itself both physically and psychologically.

Judges frequently don’t have anyone to discuss these things with. Nor can they take on “other duties” to have an occasional respite from the grind. They live with their trauma and it can take a heavy toll on their health.

On top of this, and because of the very public nature of their roles, judges are considered fair game for criticism. This can sometimes be extreme and amount to vilification: they’re incompetent, they’re soft, they’re out of touch, they should have their face “smashed in”.

Sometimes this criticism comes from those in positions of power, which can carry greater weight. For instance, three federal ministers — Greg Hunt, Alan Tudge and Michael Sukkar — narrowly avoided contempt of court charges in 2018 after criticising what they perceived as lenient sentences for terrorism offences.

Usually, judges have little or no recourse to challenge such comments. The vast majority of respondents in our study said they did nothing about such vilification. Only a very small number said they had taken legal action, which, in the case of defamation, is a costly and precarious path.

Read more:
Victoria’s criminal courts are critically backlogged. This is how we can speed up justice

The toll on judges’ health

The costs of these pressures and repeated traumatic experiences are shown in two psychological indices we used to gauge our respondents’ well-being, the K10 and the Impact of Event Scale.

On both, the study participants scored significantly worse than the general public. I am a clinician and if someone were referred to me with these scores, I would know I was looking at serious clinical issues.

The suicide of Melbourne judge Stephen Myall in 2018 shows just how taxing and unrelenting the job can be. Myall was said to be overwhelmed by an enormous caseload and had attended a well-being course two weeks before his death.

Another judge, Guy Andrew, was found dead in Queensland last year after he was ordered to undergo counselling and mentoring following complaints about his behaviour on the bench.

A public-facing job with high costs

In societies that value the rule of law, judges are seen as the pinnacle of the system and are held in high esteem, paid well, and honoured. Their task is to weigh evidence impartially and to speak without fear or favour.

In the courtroom, the judge is the only person who sits facing the court, on show to all. This arrangement is not accidental. Justice is supposed to be public and transparent.

But judges have historically paid a high price for their status.

Judges have been murdered in recent decades in Italy (by the Mafia), the United States, the United Kingdom, and other countries. Others have survived attempts on their lives.

In Australia, a man named Leonard Warwick, who was embroiled in a dispute with his ex-wife, targeted several Family Court judges in the early 1980s — shooting to death one and killing another one’s wife in a bombing of his home. Warwick also bombed the Family Court at Parramatta.

Ways forward

If there was a silver lining in our study, it was the extraordinarily high response rate. Our judicial officers are engaged and keen to have a say in how to improve the working conditions for themselves and their fellow judges.

There were many suggestions about how to do things better, and a degree of optimism about the future. Among the initiatives put forward were

• devising formal mechanisms of mutual support for judges

• making stress and trauma legitimate topics of discussion in the legal community

• increasing safety and security precautions in courtrooms

• instituting an annual mental health check for judicial officers.

As one of our participants expressed to us, change can only come from listening to judicial officers and hearing their concerns.

Thank you for doing this [survey]. […] I see people working so hard with no real voice and a desire to do right by all. It’s pretty sad.

Read more:
Deep cultural shifts required: open letter from 500 legal women calls for reform of way judges are appointed and disciplined

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

– ref. ‘Waiting to stab me’: new research reveals the threats and daily trauma judges face in their jobs – https://theconversation.com/waiting-to-stab-me-new-research-reveals-the-threats-and-daily-trauma-judges-face-in-their-jobs-145012

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ruggiero Lovreglio, Senior Lecturer, Massey University

Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) aren’t just for gaming anymore, they’re also proving to be useful tools for disaster safety research. In fact, they could save lives.

Around the world, natural and human-made disasters such as earthquakes, bushfires and terrorist attacks threaten substantial economic loss and human life.

My research review looked at 64 papers on the topic of using AR and VR-based experiments (mostly simulating emergency scenarios) to investigate human behaviour during disaster, provide disaster-related education and enhance the safety of built environments.

If we can investigate how certain factors influence people’s decisions about the best course of action during disaster, we can use this insight to further construct an array of VR and AR experiments.

Finding the optimal fire desing

Research has shown the potential of AR and VR in myriad disaster contexts. Both of these technologies involve digital visualisation. VR involves the visualisation of a complete digital scene, whereas AR allows digital objects to be superimposed over a real-life background.

VR has already played a key role in designing safety evacuation systems for new buildings and infrastructure. For example, in past research my colleagues and I have used VR to identify which signage is the best to use in tunnels and buildings during emergency evacuations.

In these studies we asked participants to rank different signs using a questionnaire based on the “theory of affordances”, which looks at what the physical environment or a specific object offers an individual. In other words, we explored how different signs can be sensed, understood and used by different people during emergencies.

Before building expensive new infrastructure, we can simulate it in VR form and test how different evacuation signage performs for participants. In the case of signage for tunnel exits, research showed:

— green or white flashing lights performed better than blue lights

— a flashing rate of one flash per second or four flashes per second is recommended over a slower rate of, say, one flash per four seconds.

— LED light sources performed better than single and double-strobe lights.

In another non-immersive VR study, we observed participants’ behaviours and identified which sign was the best to direct people away from a specific exit in case of an emergency (as that exit might lead towards a fire, for instance).

The results showed red flashing lights helped evacuees identify the sign, and the sign itself was most effective with a green background marked with a red “X”.

VR and AR are uniquely positioned to let experts study how humans behave during disasters — and to do so without physically harming anyone.

Read more:
What is augmented reality, anyway?

From Pokemon Go to earthquake drills

Research projects have tested how AR superimpositions can be used to guide people to safety during a tsunami warning or earthquake.

In theory, the same approach could be used in other contexts, such as during a terror attack. AR applications could be built to teach people how to act in case of terror attacks by following the rule of escape, hide and tell, as advised by the government.

Such virtual applications have great potential to educate thousands of people quickly and inexpensively. Our latest VR study indicated this may make them preferable to traditional training.

Read more:
Antarctica without windchill, the Louvre without queues: how to travel the world from home

In some of our experiments, several participants were immersed in simulated fire emergencies where they had to evacuate. We investigated the factors that influenced how participants navigated a space to reach an exit, and how they chose between several exits in different fire and social conditions.

Studies on this front have highlighted humans are social animals. In line with “social influence theory”, they tend to follow other people during emergencies. This is a crucial consideration for authorities tasked with designing or implementing disaster evacuation protocols.

Another common behaviour observed was that participants tended to use exits they were already familiar with.

While these findings aren’t necessarily surprising, they help confirm existing theories about public evacuation behaviours. They also help reinforce observations made during real-life evacuation scenarios — where human lives can hang in the balance.

The next challenge is to ensure that in the future, advanced AR and VR-based training applications do not traumatise or distress participants.

The myth of overwhelming panic

It’s worth noting that in the experiments there were no signs of “panic” among participants. Indeed, research has shown feeling panicked is very rare in fire scenarios.

Rather, participants took several factors into account before choosing what they deemed was the best option. Generally, people in disaster situations try hard to choose the most reasonable option; whether it leads to danger is another matter.

Our research can help enhance the safety design of buildings, transport terminals and general evacuation protocols. In the meantime, it’s reassuring to know people will more or less rely on their rationality in emergency situations.

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.

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

– ref. Proceed to your nearest (virtual) exit: gaming technology is teaching us how people respond to emergencies – https://theconversation.com/proceed-to-your-nearest-virtual-exit-gaming-technology-is-teaching-us-how-people-respond-to-emergencies-160623

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Jackson, Researcher, Faculty of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Monash University

Under Australia’s original COVID-19 vaccination rollout plan, community pharmacies were meant to be involved in administering vaccines from phase 2a.

Phase 2a includes all adults over 50, among other priority groups, and began at the beginning of May via mass vaccination hubs, followed by GP clinics.

We’re now technically into phase 2b, with certain age groups under 50 newly eligible, depending on the state or territory.

Pharmacists have been found to be capable, willing and ready to help with Australia’s vaccine rollout. But with the exception of Queensland, where 49 regional and remote community pharmacies are now allowed to deliver the vaccine, we have yet to see the government engage pharmacists in a meaningful way.

A bit of background

On February 5 this year, the federal government called for expressions of interest from community pharmacies to be involved with the vaccine rollout. Approximately 3,900 of the 5,700 pharmacies nationwide were deemed “suitable”.

The Pharmacy Guild of Australia has estimated allowing these pharmacies to administer the vaccine would accelerate Australia’s vaccination rollout by three months. Their modelling also suggested involving the pharmacy sector would save the government A$77 million.

In April, National Cabinet agreed pharmacies could be engaged in the states’ and territories’ rollout plans in locations where there are no or limited other places for people to be vaccinated.

In May, Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt announced up to 56 community pharmacies in regional Queensland would be approved to administer COVID vaccines, following a proposal from the Queensland government.

We’ve seen that begin this week, and it’s great news for those Queensland communities with no medical practice. It’s expected jurisdictions with large hinterlands including New South Wales and Western Australia will follow soon.

But we haven’t seen engagement of pharmacies more broadly, beyond filling the gaps that exist outside city centres (and even that we’ve only seen in Queensland so far). At the Australian Pharmacy Professional Conference in May, Minister Hunt stated the pharmacy sector would need to wait until “the latter part of the year” to be involved.

In personal communications with the department of health, inadequate supplies of vaccines at the state and territory level has been cited as the reason for delayed implementation of pharmacy-based vaccination, even in a “filling the gap” role.

This doesn’t help those Australians living in towns or in outer suburbs of the cities where there is an approved pharmacy but no GP. Nor does it help people whose GPs don’t provide COVID-19 vaccinations, or who are elderly or frail and unable to travel to mass vaccination hubs.

Read more:
Pay pharmacists to improve our health, not just supply medicines

Pharmacists are well-placed to deliver vaccines

Pharmacists have been a fundamental part of Australia’s vaccination workforce since 2014. Depending on the state, pharmacists can administer influenza, whooping cough, measles, mumps, rubella, meningococcal, diphtheria and COVID-19 vaccines.

Approval for pharmacies to offer vaccination requires training to the same skill level as other vaccinators (such as nurses and doctors), appropriate private space within the pharmacy, and the capacity to upload patients’ vaccination records to the Australian Immunisation Register.

Once pharmacies get the green light for greater involvement, the lead time for the profession to come on board will be short as these factors are largely already in place.

With the expectation of assisting with the COVID-19 vaccination program, we’ve seen an upsurge in pharmacists completing vaccination training this year.

Storage changes will make it easier

The Therapeutic Goods Administration recently approved changes to the storage requirements of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

This COVID vaccine belongs to a family of a new technology called mRNA vaccines, and initially required storage at around -60℃. During development of the mRNA vaccines, scientists didn’t know whether the vaccines would be stable in a refrigerator, but testing has since demonstrated they can be stored safely for one month at a normal fridge temperature of 2-8℃.

The capability to store vaccine in unopened vials in normal fridges, as opposed to ultra-cold freezers, will allow greater flexibility in vaccine delivery. This will be particularly useful for remote communities where deliveries can be complicated.

The storage change also enables administration of COVID-19 mRNA vaccines in community pharmacies which all have fridges with temperature monitors.

Read more:
We’re gathering data on COVID vaccine side effects in real time. Here’s what you can expect

Addressing vaccine hesitancy

With Australia starting COVID-19 vaccination later than many places and slipping further behind comparable countries, all available resources should be brought to bear in assisting the population to accept and access vaccination.

We can look overseas to see government programs which engage community pharmacy in COVID-19 vaccination.

In the United States, for example, a collaboration between national and state governments and 40,000 pharmacies makes it easier for people to access COVID-19 vaccination locally, improving vaccine uptake and decreasing the logistical and operational burden on health departments.

Also in the US, the Pharmacy Partnership for Long-Term Care Program involves community pharmacies vaccinating residents and staff on-site at more than 62,000 residential aged-care facilities.

While issues of global supply and vaccine storage have affected distribution, public concern about efficacy and side effects have contributed to vaccine hesitancy and affected uptake.

Public health messaging is important but these are complex and personal matters. Many people have questions, like “which vaccine is best for me taking into account my medical situation?” and “what are the potential side effects?”. Pharmacists are well-placed to answer these sorts of questions.

Read more:
4 ways Australia’s COVID vaccine rollout has been bungled

John Jackson is President of the Victorian Branch of the Pharmaceutical Society of Australia and has been engaged in negotiation within the profession and with the Victorian government on how and when pharmacists may be engaged in COVID-19 vaccination.

Harry Al-Wassiti received funding from Monash University and The Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF) to develop mRNA Covid19 vaccine. He collaborates, consults for or and receives funding from Pharmaceutical industry collaborators biotechnology and government bodies involved in the technological development of vaccines. No affiliation with Pharmacy councils or assoications.

– ref. Here’s how pharmacies could boost Australia’s COVID vaccine rollout – https://theconversation.com/heres-how-pharmacies-could-boost-australias-covid-vaccine-rollout-161894

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hugh Saddler, Honorary Associate Professor, Centre for Climate Economics and Policy, Australian National University

World leaders including Prime Minister Scott Morrison will gather in the UK this weekend for the G7 summit. In a speech on Wednesday ahead of the meeting, Morrison said Australia recognises the need to reach net-zero emissions in order to tackle climate change, and expects to achieve the goal by 2050.

So has Australia started the journey towards deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions?

In the electricity supply system, the answer is yes, as renewables form an ever-greater share of the electricity mix. But elsewhere in the energy sector – in transport, industry and buildings – there has been little or no progress.

This situation needs to change. These other parts of the energy system contribute nearly 40% of all national greenhouse gas emissions – and the share is growing. In a new working paper out today, we propose a way to track the low-carbon transition across the energy sector and check progress over the last decade.

A stark contrast

The energy sector can be separated into three major types of energy use in Australia:

• electricity generation
• transport and mobile equipment used in mining, farming, and construction
• all other segments, mainly fossil fuel combustion to provide heat in industry and buildings.

In 2018-19, energy sector emissions accounted for 72% of Australia’s national total. Transition from fossil fuels to zero-emissions sources is at the heart of any strategy to cut emissions deeply.

The transition is already happening in electricity generation, as wind and solar supplies increase and coal-fired power stations close or operate less.

But in stark contrast, elsewhere in the sector there is no evidence of a meaningful low-emissions transition or acceleration in energy efficiency improvement.

This matters greatly because in 2019, these other segments contributed 53% of total energy combustion emissions and 38% of national greenhouse gas emissions. Total energy sector emissions increased between 2005 (the reference year for Australia’s Paris target) and 2019.

As the below graphic shows, while the renewables transition often gets the credit for Australia’s emissions reductions, falls since 2005 are largely down to changes in land use and forestry.

Let’s take a closer look at the areas where Australia could do far better in future.

1. Transport and mobile equipment

Transport includes road and rail transport, domestic aviation and coastal shipping. Mobile equipment includes machinery such as excavators and dump trucks used in mining, as well as tractors, bulldozers and other equipment used in farming and construction. Petroleum supplies almost 99% of the energy consumed by these machines.

Road transport is responsible for more than two-thirds of all the energy consumed by transport and mobile equipment.

What’s more, prior to COVID, energy use by transport and mobile equipment was steadily growing – as were emissions. The absence of fuel efficiency standards in Australia, and a trend towards larger cars, has contributed to the problem.

Electric vehicles offer great hope for cutting emissions from the transport sector. As Australia’s electricity grid continues to decarbonise, emissions associated with electric vehicles charged from the grid will keep falling.

2. Other energy emissions

Emissions from all other parts of the energy system arise mainly from burning:

• gas to provide heat for buildings and manufacturing, and for the power needed to liquefy gas to make LNG
• coal, for a limited range of heavy manufacturing activities, such as steel and cement production
• petroleum products (mainly LPG) in much smaller quantities, where natural gas is unavailable or otherwise unsuitable.

Emissions from these sources, as a share of national emissions, rose from 13% in 2005 to 19% in 2019.

These types of emissions can be reduced through electrification – that is, using low- or zero-carbon electricity in industry and buildings. This might include using induction cooktops, and electric heat pumps to heat buildings and water.

However the data offer no evidence of such a shift. Fossil fuel use in this segment has declined, but mainly due to less manufacturing activity rather than cleaner energy supply.

And in 2018 and 2019, the expanding LNG industry drove further emissions growth, offsetting the decline in use of gas and coal in manufacturing.

How to track progress

Over the past decade or so, Australia’s emissions reduction policies – such as they are – have focused on an increasingly narrow range of emission sources and reduction opportunities, in particular electricity generation.

Only now are electric vehicles beginning to be taken seriously, while energy efficiency – a huge opportunity to cut emissions and costs – is typically ignored.

Our paper proposes a large set of new indicators, designed to show what’s happening (and not happening) across the energy sector.

The indicators fall into four groups:

• greenhouse gas emissions from energy use

• primary fuel mix including for electricity generation

• final energy consumption including energy use efficiency

• the fuel/technology mix used to deliver energy services to consumers.

Our datasets excludes the effects of 2020 COVID-19 lockdowns. They’re based on data contained in established government publications: The Australian Energy Statistics, the National Greenhouse Gas Inventory and the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ national accounts and population estimates.

By systematically tracking and analysing these indicators, and combining them with others, Australia’s energy transition can be monitored on an ongoing basis. This would complement the great level of detail already available for electricity generation. It would also create better public understanding and focus policy attention on areas that need it.

In some countries, government agencies monitor the energy transition in great detail. In some cases, such as Germany, independent experts also conduct systematic and substantial analysis as part of an annual process.

The road ahead

Australia has begun the journey to a zero-emissions energy sector. But we must get a move-on in transport, industry and buildings.

The technical opportunities are there. What’s now needed is government regulation and policy to encourage investment in zero-emissions technologies for both supplying and using all forms of energy.

And once available, the technology should be deployed now and in coming years, not in the distant future.

Read more:
Check your mirrors: 3 things rooftop solar can teach us about Australia’s electric car rollout

Frank Jotzo leads externally funded research projects and has received Australian government funding. There are no conflicts of interest regarding this article.

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

– ref. Tracking the transition: The ‘forgotten’ emissions undoing the work of Australia’s renewable energy boom – https://theconversation.com/tracking-the-transition-the-forgotten-emissions-undoing-the-work-of-australias-renewable-energy-boom-162506

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jed Montayre, Senior Lecturer (Nursing), Western Sydney University

Longevity and healthy ageing programs worldwide have embraced the slogan “adding life to years”. Ageing well is driven by a combination of factors, including lifelong education and civic participation. That points to the need to promote age-friendliness in higher education, also known as the age-friendly university initiative.

The Age-Friendly University (AFU) Global Network started in Ireland. It encourages universities and other higher education institutions to step up and respond to the educational needs of ageing populations such as Australia’s.

Universities are naturally committed to equity and celebrate diversity. However, they have more work to do to support the increasing numbers of both mature-age students (those who haven’t come straight out of school) and older learners.

Read more:
‘A lot of us can relate to struggling to keep on top of everything.’ This is what mature-age students need from online higher education

The AFU Global Network has adopted ten principles of age-friendly universities. These encompass the themes of inclusion, opportunities for older people and the ability to actively participate, contribute and optimise learning opportunities such as late-life qualifications and research degrees. Universities around the world have started to embrace these principles.

As well as health care and community support services, age-friendly universities are an important piece of the whole age-friendly environment puzzle. An inclusive approach that values every generation will advance society.

Read more:
This is how we create the age-friendly smart city

Why should universities become age-friendly?

Age-friendly policies that promote inclusivity and diversity benefit the whole university community.

Inclusive university education typically involves supporting individuals to finish a degree, ensuring the best learning experience and establishing promising careers. However, the concept of having second-career, older learners is new to some.

Support mechanisms for older learners are rarely discussed, or relegated to disability support services. Surely, “being old is not a disability”. Disability is different from ageing.

Hence, engaging and supporting older students, staff or the retired community need not be based on deficits. The focus should be on optimising their potentials and abilities.

Read more:
‘Ageing in neighbourhood’: what seniors want instead of retirement villages and how to achieve it

What distinguishes an Australian age-friendly university?

Enriching the exchange of knowledge and experiences would be a strong feature of age-friendly universities. Doing so would build on the increasingly diverse student populations of our universities. They have students from more than 150 countries of origin.

Older people have experience of different cultures and of living in earlier times. They would be able to share historical events, life experiences and real-world contexts with younger students.

Another feature of age-friendly Australian universities is wide geographical reach. They have campuses and operations in regional and metropolitan areas.

Older residents in rural areas are keen to take on opportunities for learning. They also want to actively contribute to their own community. Age-friendly universities would enable them to do both.

Read more:
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Age-friendliness benefits higher education

Being age-friendly offers multiple benefits for universities and the communities they serve.

An age-friendly university is friendly to all ages.

Meeting the needs of older learners results in a system that is friendly to other students. It may be as simple as easy-to-access online tools and websites.

An emphasis on age-friendliness should also stimulate educators to embrace robust approaches to teaching that suit individual learning needs and life experiences.

Age-friendly education delivers intergenerational benefits.

Age-friendly universities provide an environment for intergenerational learning and knowledge exchange. Such programs are increasingly popular, but most of these to date have been between older people and preschool children. While this approach has proven personal and health benefits, intergenerational learning should extend beyond the early learning and grandparenting concepts.

At university level, an intergenerational learning environment engages young and older citizens in collaborative learning, scholarly discussions and solving real-life societal problems.

Read more:
What younger people can learn from older people about using technology

Universities’ retired communities have much to contribute.

Active engagement of the university’s own retired community is vital. They can contribute to teaching, professional training and research.

Australia is a world leader in volunteering programs at both the international and local levels. Nevertheless, this generosity of spirit is not commonly put to use in universities.

If we can harness the untapped potential of older volunteers from the retired communities, the impacts on student learning experiences and the university are likely to be substantial.

Education does not have an age limit

The World Health Organisation’s first Global Report on Ageism outlined the goals of healthy ageing and strategies to reduce ageist attitudes at all levels of society. One of these strategies involves intergenerational educational programs. Clearly, universities have an active role to play here.

The time is right for Australian universities to join the Age-Friendly Universities Global Network. The University of Queensland is the first Australian member of the network, while others might still be contemplating membership. Regardless, age-friendly principles should be clearly articulated in all universities as they work towards responsive and inclusive education for all.

Jed Montayre receives funding from the World Health Organization for a project focusing on age-friendly programs and healthy ageing initiatives.

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

– ref. Australian universities need to be more age-friendly — what does that look like in practice? – https://theconversation.com/australian-universities-need-to-be-more-age-friendly-what-does-that-look-like-in-practice-160440

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amanda Davies, Professor of Human Geography, The University of Western Australia

Australians have been told to stay home during lockdowns to prevent the spread of COVID-19. While evidence of the efficacy of this approach as a public health strategy during a pandemic is compelling, lockdowns and mobility restrictions are inevitably disruptive for many – virtually everyone. However, a group that has largely been overlooked is Australia’s nomadic population. Periods of lockdown are particularly challenging for these people, who live in vans, RVs, caravans and boats.

The impacts of restrictions on small businesses, travellers, people in low-paid and insecure jobs who cannot work from home, school children and homeless people have all been widely reported. But with little known about Australia’s nomads, this group has been largely left to their own devices to find secure accommodation and navigate through mobility and border restrictions.

Read more:
Australia’s mishmash of COVID border closures is confusing, inconsistent and counterproductive

While nomads do not have a conventional single residential address, or live in a brick and mortar home, they are not homeless. Their van, RV, caravan or boat enables them to be permanently mobile while living in their permanent home.

The viability of their nomadic lifestyle depends on being able to freely move from place to place. Free movement enables nomads to access work and social networks as well as minimise living costs.

With the focus now on vaccinating Australians and working out longer-term strategies for managing COVID-19, more attention must be given to this permanently mobile population.

Who are nomads?

The recently released US film Nomadland follows the travels of a middle-aged woman who lives permanently in van. The film has raised awareness about the growing nomadic population in the US, and the complex economic and social drivers of this growth.

In modern societies, nomads are best thought of as a diverse group of people who are consciously seeking an alternative housing solution that enables them to balance their social and economic resources, needs and aspirations. Their lives and lifestyles are closely connected to life on the road. For those still in the workforce, a nomadic lifestyle can enable them to find seasonal work year-round.

In Australia, the term nomad has been most often associated with “grey nomads”, a broad group of people who are typically retired or semi-retired. They travel seasonally to warmer areas for winter and to cooler areas for summer.

Read more:
Grey nomad lifestyle provides a model for living remotely

How many nomads live in Australia?

Our new research has revealed the exact size and characteristics of the Australian nomad population are unknown and challenging to determine. Estimates vary dramatically from between 2,500 to 40,000, depending on how the group is defined.

Our official population statistics struggle to “capture” the realities of a whole range of population subsets that do not have one permanent place of “usual residence”, which compounds the challenge. The Australian Census, for example, has only three categories for residents: being “at home”, “away from home”, or homeless on census night.

Without knowing the size of the nomad population, it is difficult to determine if the population is growing or by how much. However, recent reports from the UK and US suggest that, largely in response to financial pressures, those countries’ nomadic populations have grown.

As Australia’s property market tightens and housing affordability worsens, it is plausible that more people may opt to sell up their brick and mortar assets (or rent these out for an income) to live a more affordable nomadic lifestyle.

Read more:
Soaring housing costs are pushing retirees into areas where disaster risks are high

Searching for a place to stay

The closure of national and state parks and informal camping grounds has caused problems for permanent grey nomads. While they are not homeless – their van, RV, caravan or boat is their home – the closure of parks and camping grounds forces them to find alternative safe locations.

For those who are working, travel is often planned to align with seasonal work needs in particular areas. Mobility restrictions and border closures are particularly problematic for those who rely on seasonal work.

An underpinning assumption of Australia’s public health measures to restrict the spread of COVID is that homes are generally not mobile and that people can remain within a location – albeit with disruption. Better information about the size, routes and characteristics of Australia’s nomad population may improve capacity to support them during periods of restrictions.

The rise of the digital nomad

While COVID-19 restrictions have thrown up many challenges, it appears opportunities are also emerging. Globally, many workplaces are moving work online and the digital nomad population has grown.

Digital nomads are people who work online to maintain a nomadic lifestyle.

Read more:
What inspired digital nomads to flee America’s big cities may spur legions of remote workers to do the same

So, while there is an urgent need to better ensure Australia’s nomads receive the supports and services they need during COVID-19 lockdowns and more broadly, it’s also worth keeping an eye on the growth of the digital nomad population. We need to consider what might be necessary to support this growing population into the future.

Sarah Prout Quicke has in the past received funding from both State and Federal governments to conduct independent research that examines different aspects of Australian population change and development.

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

– ref. Our own Nomadland: the Australians caught in a COVID blind spot – https://theconversation.com/our-own-nomadland-the-australians-caught-in-a-covid-blind-spot-161907

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

Once again folks are pointing to the potential danger of Australia’s low interest rates.

This week a poll of so-called “market economists” by ratings agency Fitch had only 12% of respondents in favour of the Reserve Bank of Australia’s current stance, with 68% saying its monetary policy was too loose – that is, interest rates are too low.

In Australia there is understandable concern about housing prices. Our already serious housing affordability problem seems to have been made worse by a heady combination of low interest rates, light at the end of the COVID-19 tunnel and a large dash of irrational exuberance.

But, as I’ve said before, the housing market should not be the focus of the Reserve Bank when setting monetary policy. The central bank must focus on its inflation target and maintaining credibility.

Comments in recent weeks by the bank’s deputy governor, Guy Debelle, and the bank’s actions over the past two years or so make clear the bank understands that.

Housing affordability is a pressing problem, but reforming tax concessions such as negative gearing and relaxing zoning restrictions are the appropriate instruments to address it.

Read more:
Vital Signs: The RBA wants to cut unemployment, and nothing — not even soaring home prices — will stand in its way

The US inflation debate

That said, the prospect of inflation in the next few years is still an important consideration for central banks around the world.

There has been a spirited debate in the US in recent months about whether the Biden administration’s huge US$1.9 trillion spending plan will trigger a serious shift in inflation.

Two of the finest economists of their generation – Larry Summers and Olivier Blanchard – have been the intellectual leaders of such concerns.

There are great minds on the other side of this debate too, including Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, Nobel laureate Paul Krugman and Federal Reserve Chair Jay Powell.

Read more:
Why the return of high inflation can no longer be excluded

What lessons should we in Australia take from this debate?

The Australian government has phased out its biggest pandemic support measures, JobKeeper and JobSeeker. Its federal budget embraced the use of fiscal policy (spending) but in moderation compared to the Biden administration’s plan. So Australia does not face the same immediate considerations as the US.

Nonetheless there is still an important lesson we should take from the US inflation debate.

Can inflation be fine-tuned?

The big intellectual argument driving inflation concerns in the US is that it is unwise to think inflation can be fine-tuned.

According to three decades of central bank practice around the world, inflation can be dialed up or down with careful tweaks of monetary policy.

Sure, extraordinary times call for extraordinary monetary policy – hence zero to negative interest rates and quantitative easing since the 2008 financial crisis – but central bankers maintain the belief they can keep inflation in the “Goldilocks zone”.

That zone is inflation of about 2-3%, maintained by central banks setting monetary policy independently of governments.

In many ways the experience since the central-bank independence movement took hold has borne this out. Sort of.

Cautionary inflationary tales

Japan is the classic cautionary tale of a country that has battled to avoid a deflationary spiral, in which prices are expected to fall rather than rise, leading people to save rather than spend, thereby fulfilling those expectations.

What about too much inflation rather than too little?

In recent decades that hasn’t been a problem in advanced economies with competent, independent central banks.

But it has been a problem in countries like Zimbabwe and Venezuela, where printing money has led to hyperinflation. Similar policies in France in the 1980s and Germany in the 1990s – of a much smaller magnitude, granted – triggered inflationary outbursts that were caught just in time.

The real question is this: can a country like Australia end up like Zimbabwe or Venezuela?

Read more:
What caused hyperinflation in Venezuela: a rare blend of public ineptitude and private enterprise

The short and uncomfortable answer is “yes”.

The more nuanced answer is “yes – although it’s not very likely”. But that doesn’t mean we should act as if it can’t happen.

Aiming for the Goldilocks zone

Economies, markets and expectations can be at equilibrium in both good and bad ways.

There is a good equilibrium where inflation is in the Goldilocks zone, people believe it will stay there, and the central bank can wield monetary policy like a scalpel.

But there is also a bad equilibrium where people lose faith in inflation staying in the Goldilocks zone. Killing off an inflationary outburst then takes a dramatic hike in interest rates. Monetary policy goes from being a scalpel to a chainsaw.

Paul Volcker, the US Fed’s chairman from 1979 to 1987, wielded that chainsaw to get rampant inflation under control in the early 1980s. But there was a lot of pain involved.

Summers, Blanchard and others now worried about inflation are essentially concerned about shifting to a bad equilibrium that requires painful policy moves to remedy.

Those who are less concerned essentially think we will stay in the current good equilibrium. Some even feel that talking about it is risky – potentially contributing to inflation expectations shifting.

Whatever happens in the US, we in Australia should watch carefully, and not be complacent about our ability to fine-tune the economy.

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

– ref. Vital Signs: It’s not the Reserve Bank’s job to worry about housing prices – https://theconversation.com/vital-signs-its-not-the-reserve-banks-job-to-worry-about-housing-prices-162499

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Haworth, Senior Research Officer, Monash University

The black swan is an Australian icon. The official emblem of Western Australia, depicted in the state flag and coat-of-arms, it decorates several public buildings. The bird is also the namesake for Perth’s Swan River, where the British established the Swan River Colony in 1829.

The swan’s likeness has featured on stamps, sporting team uniforms, and in the logo for Swan Brewery, built on the sacred Noongar site of Goonininup on the banks of the Swan.

But this post-colonial history hides a much older and broader story. Not only is the black swan important for many Aboriginal people, it was also a potent symbol within the European imagination — 1500 years before Europeans even knew it existed.

Native to Australia, the black swan or Cygnus atratus can be found across the mainland, except for Cape York Peninsula. Populations have also been introduced to New Zealand, Japan, China, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Right now, the breeding season of the black swan is in full swing across southern Australia, having recently ended in the north. In waterways and wetlands, people are seeing pairs of swans — a quarter of which are same-sex — tending carefully to their cygnets, seeing off potential threats with elaborate triumph ceremonies, or gliding elegantly across the water, black feathers gleaming in the winter sun.

Yet once upon a time in a land far away, such birds were described as rare or even imaginary.

The impossible black swan

In the first century CE, Roman satirist Juvenal referred to a good wife as a “rare bird in the earth, and very like a black swan”.

Casual misogyny aside, this is an example of adynaton, a figure of speech for something absurd or preposterous — like pigs flying, or getting blood from a stone.

Read more:
Guide to the Classics: Juvenal, the true satirist of Rome

Over the centuries, versions of the phrases “black swan” and “rare bird” became common in several European languages, describing something that defied belief. The expressions made sense because Europeans assumed, based on their observations, that all swans were white.

Around the same time that Juvenal coined these phrases, Ptolemy devised a map of the world that included an unknown southern continent, Terra Australis Incognita. Many believed this distant southland was populated with monsters and fabulous races, like the Antipodes, imagined by Cicero as “men which have their feet planted right opposite to yours”.

In a quirk of history, both the impossible black swan and the hypothetical southland were indeed real. Even more unbelievably, they would be found at the same geographic coordinates.

Once they were white

Black swans are significant totems for many Aboriginal people and incorporated within songlines and constellations (where they are called Gnibi, Ginibi, or Gineevee).

Yet the Noongar people in WA, and the Yuin and Euahlayi in New South Wales, tell ancestral stories about white swans, which had most of their feathers torn out by eagles.

In the Noongar story Maali, the swan, is proud and boastful of its beauty, and has its white feathers ripped out by Waalitj, the eagle, as punishment. In the Yuin story the swan, Guunyu, humble and quiet, is attacked because the other birds are jealous of his beauty.

And in the Euahlayi story, two brothers are transformed into swans, or Byahmul, as part of a robbery. Later they are attacked by eagles as an act of revenge.

In each story, after the swans have their white plumage torn out, crows release a cascade of feathers, turning the swans black, except for their white wing tips. Their red beak still shows blood from the attack.

These stories are keenly observant of, and offer an explanation for, the black swan’s colouration. They acknowledge the possibility swans could be white — even though it’s unlikely First Nations people observed white swans in their surroundings prior to British settlement.

This contrasts starkly with the European assumption that, having never seen a black swan, they couldn’t possibly exist.

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From myth to wonder

European assumptions were destined to shatter once Dutch ships began visiting Australia’s western coastline in the 1600s. Seeing the mythical black swan in the flesh must have been like seeing a unicorn emerge from the shadows of the forest.

In 1636, Dutch mariner Antonie Caen observed black birds “as large as swans” at sea off Bernier Island — probably the first recorded European sighting.

In 1697, Willem de Vlamingh’s expedition to the west coast sighted many swans on what they dubbed Swarte Swaane Drift or Black Swan River. Noongar people know this river as Derbarl Yerrigan. If de Vlamingh was amazed at the sight of black swans, he did not record it, simply noting, “They are quite black”. Three swans were captured and taken to Batavia (Jakarta), but died before they could be brought to Europe.

Reports of the black swan made it back to the Netherlands and then to England, but it took another century for its mythical status to dissipate completely.

English ornithologist John Latham gave the black swan its first scientific name, Anas atrata, in 1790. Yet knowledge of its existence was still not widespread.

In 1792, the botanist on Bruni d’Entrecasteaux’s expedition, Jacques Labillardiere, made note of black swans at Recherche Bay in Tasmania, apparently unaware they were already known to Europeans.

In 1804, Nicolas Baudin’s expedition brought the first living specimens to Europe. These became part of the Empress Josephine Bonaparte’s garden menagerie at the Château de Malmaison.

The black swan had migrated from myth to the far edge of reality, joining the kangaroo and the platypus as awe-inspiring wonders from the distant, topsy-turvy southland — real, but only just.

Good versus evil

Black swans never established large populations in the wild after being brought to Europe. It’s speculated this is because black animals were considered bad omens, in league with witches and devils, and often driven away or killed.

Beliefs like these reflect the ancient assumption, found everywhere from the Dead Sea Scrolls to Star Wars, that darkness and the colour black represent evil and corruption, and that light and the colour white represent goodness and purity.

Frantz Fanon once argued that “the colonial world is a Manichean world”, in which light and dark, white and black, and good and evil are starkly divided. These divisions have been deeply implicated in the histories of colonialism and racism — often with devastating consequences.

Two swans, one dancer

The symbolic contrast of light and dark features heavily in Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s most famous ballet, Swan Lake. Prince Siegfried falls in love with Odette, the innocent and virtuous white swan. But he is tricked into promising himself to her double, the seductive and malevolent Odile.

The ballet’s story was inspired by a long tradition of European fairy tales depicting Swan Maidens, but Tchaikovsky was also reportedly inspired by the life of King Ludwig II of Bavaria, known as the Swan King. Both Ludwig II and Tchaikovsky were caught between the societal pressure to marry and their own same-sex desires.

The roles of Odette and Odile are often played by the same ballerina, a tradition that started in 1895, two years after Tchaikovsky’s death. But it was not until 1941 that Odile was first depicted wearing black, and afterwards became known as the black swan.

Swan Lake suggests a Manichean worldview in which good and evil are polar opposites, as far away from each other as Europe is from the Antipodes. By having the same ballerina portray both roles, the ballet also suggests the world is not so simple — things can be black or white, or both at once.

False black swans

For 1500 years, Europeans had been spectacularly wrong about the black swan. Once its existence was accepted, its transmogrification from myth to reality became a metaphor within the philosophy of science. The black swan had shown the difficulty of making broad claims based on observable evidence.

Austrian philosopher Karl Popper used the black swan in 1959 to illustrate the difference between science that can be verified versus science that can be falsified.

To verify that all swans are white is practically impossible, because that would require assessing all swans — yet a single black swan can disprove the theory. In 2007, essayist and mathematic statistician Nassim Nicholas Taleb argued organisations and individuals should be robust enough to cope with “black swan events”: consequential but unexpected moments in history.

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The white black swan

This Australian winter, those enjoying the sight of black swans and their cygnets might assume, based on observable evidence, that all Australian native swans are black. But as black swans have shown, and as Taleb argued, we should expect the unexpected.

Last month, some four centuries after Europeans were awe-struck by the sight of black swans on our waters, Tasmanian fisherman Jake Hume rescued a white-plumaged black swan, the only one known to exist.

The swan is not an albino, because it still has pigmentation around its beak and eye. Its white feathers are the expression of a rare genetic mutation. First sighted in the area in 2007, the bird was found riddled with shotgun pellets. It is recovering in Bonorong Wildlife Sanctuary until ready to be released.

Simultaneously a black swan, a white swan, and a metaphor, this assumption-shattering “rare bird” captures the complex cultural history surrounding this species.

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

– ref. Friday essay: a rare bird — how Europeans got the black swan so wrong – https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-a-rare-bird-how-europeans-got-the-black-swan-so-wrong-161654