NASA has selected two missions, dubbed DAVINCI+ and VERITAS, to study the “lost habitable” world of Venus. Each mission will receive approximately US$500 million for development and both are expected to launch between 2028 and 2030.
It had long been thought there was no life on Venus, due to its extremely high temperatures. But late last year, scientists studying the planet’s atmosphere announced the surprising (and somewhat controversial) discovery of phosphine. On Earth, this chemical is produced primarily by living organisms.
The news sparked renewed interest in Earth’s “twin”, prompting NASA to plan state-of-the-art missions to look more closely at the planetary environment of Venus — which could hint at life-bearing conditions.
Ever since the Hubble Space Telescope revealed the sheer number of nearby galaxies, astronomers have become obsessed with searching for exoplanets in other star systems, particularly ones that appear habitable.
But there are certain criteria for a planet to be considered habitable. It must have a suitable temperature, atmospheric pressure similar to Earth’s and availabile water.
In this regard, Venus probably wouldn’t have attracted much attention if it were outside our solar system. Its skies are filled with thick clouds of sulphuric acid (which is dangerous for humans), the land is a desolate backdrop of extinct volcanoes and 90% of the surface is covered in red hot lava flows.
Despite this, NASA will search the planet for environmental conditions that may have once supported life. In particular, any evidence that Venus may have once had an ocean would change all our existing models of the planet.
And interestingly, conditions on Venus are far less harsh at a height of about 50km above the surface. In fact, the pressure at these higher altitudes eases so much that conditions become much more Earth-like, with breathable air and balmy temperatures.
If life (in the form of microbes) does exist on Venus, this is probably where it would be found.
The DAVINCI+ probe
NASA’s DAVINCI+ (Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble gases, Chemistry, and Imaging) mission has several science goals, relating to:
Atmospheric origin and evolution
It will aim to understand the atmospheric origins on Venus, focusing on how it first formed, how it evolved and how (and why) it is different from the atmospheres of Earth and Mars.
Atmospheric composition and surface interaction
This will involve understanding the history of water on Venus and the chemical processes at work in its lower atmosphere. It will also try to determine whether Venus ever had an ocean. Since life on Earth started in our oceans, this would become the starting point in any search for life.
Surface properties
An artist’s concept of the NASA DAVINCI+ probe descending in stages to the surface of Venus. NASA/GSFC
This aspect of the mission will provide insights into geographically complex tessera regions on Venus (which have highly deformed terrain), and will investigate their origins and tectonic, volcanic and weathering history.
These findings could shed light on how Venus and Earth began similarly and then diverged in their evolution.
The DAVINCI+ spacecraft, upon arrival at Venus, will drop a spherical probe full of sensitive instruments through the planet’s atmosphere. During its descent, the probe will sample the air, constantly measuring the atmosphere as it falls and returning the measurements back to the orbiting spacecraft.
The probe will carry a mass spectrometer, which can measure the mass of different molecules in a sample. This will be used to detect any noble gases or other trace gases in Venus’s atmosphere.
In-flight sensors will also help measure the dynamics of the atmosphere, and a camera will take high-contrast images during the probe’s descent. Only four spacecraft have ever returned images from the surface of Venus, and the last such photo was taken in 1982.
Maat Mons is the highest shield volcano on Venus and the second-highest mountain on the planet. NASA
VERITAS
Meanwhile, the VERITAS (Venus Emissivity, Radio Science, InSAR, Topography, and Spectroscopy) mission will map surface features to determine the planet’s geologic history and further understand why it developed so differently to Earth.
Historical geology provides important information about ancient changes in climate, volcanic eruptions and earthquakes. This data can be used to anticipate the possible size and frequency of future events.
The mission will also seek to understand the internal geodynamics that shaped the planet. In other words, we may be able to build a picture of Venus’s continental plate movements and compare it with Earth’s.
In parallel with DAVINCI+, VERITAS will take planet-wide, high-resolution topographic images of Venus’s surface, mapping surface features including mountains and valleys.
At the same time, the Venus Emissivity Mapper (VEM) instrument on board the orbiting VERITAS spacecraft will map emissions of gas from the surface, with such accuracy that it will be able to detect near-surface water vapour. Its sensors are so powerful they will be able to see through the thick clouds of sulphuric acid.
Key insight into conditions on Venus
The most exciting thing about these two missions is the orbit-to-surface probe. In the 1980s, four landers made it to the surface of Venus, but could only operate for two days due to crushing pressure. The pressure there is 93 bar, which is the same as being 900m below sea level on Earth.
Then there’s the lava. Many lava flows on Venus stretch for several hundred kilometres. And this lava’s mobility may be enhanced by the planet’s average surface temperature of about 470°C.
Meanwhile, “shield” volcanoes on Venus are an impressive 700km wide at the base, but only about 5.5km high on average. The largest shield volcano on Earth, Mauna Loa in Hawaii, is only 120km wide at the base.
There are only three bodies in our solar system with confirmed active fire volcanoes: Earth, Mars and Jupiter’s Io moon. But recent research has proposed Idunn Mons (pictured), a volcanic peak on Venus, may still be active. EarthSky
The information obtained from DAVINCI+ and VERITAS will provide crucial insight into not only how Venus formed, but how any rocky, life-giving planet forms. Ideally, this will equip us with valuable markers to look for when searching for habitable worlds outside our solar system.
Gail Iles 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.
NASA has selected two missions, dubbed DAVINCI+ and VERITAS, to study the “lost habitable” world of Venus. Each mission will receive approximately US$500 million for development and both are expected to launch between 2028 and 2030.
It had long been thought there was no life on Venus, due to its extremely high temperatures. But late last year, scientists studying the planet’s atmosphere announced the surprising (and somewhat controversial) discovery of phosphine. On Earth, this chemical is produced primarily by living organisms.
The news sparked renewed interest in Earth’s “twin”, prompting NASA to plan state-of-the-art missions to look more closely at the planetary environment of Venus — which could hint at life-bearing conditions.
Ever since the Hubble Space Telescope revealed the sheer number of nearby galaxies, astronomers have become obsessed with searching for exoplanets in other star systems, particularly ones that appear habitable.
But there are certain criteria for a planet to be considered habitable. It must have a suitable temperature, atmospheric pressure similar to Earth’s and availabile water.
In this regard, Venus probably wouldn’t have attracted much attention if it were outside our solar system. Its skies are filled with thick clouds of sulphuric acid (which is dangerous for humans), the land is a desolate backdrop of extinct volcanoes and 90% of the surface is covered in red hot lava flows.
Despite this, NASA will search the planet for environmental conditions that may have once supported life. In particular, any evidence that Venus may have once had an ocean would change all our existing models of the planet.
And interestingly, conditions on Venus are far less harsh at a height of about 50km above the surface. In fact, the pressure at these higher altitudes eases so much that conditions become much more Earth-like, with breathable air and balmy temperatures.
If life (in the form of microbes) does exist on Venus, this is probably where it would be found.
The DAVINCI+ probe
NASA’s DAVINCI+ (Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble gases, Chemistry, and Imaging) mission has several science goals, relating to:
Atmospheric origin and evolution
It will aim to understand the atmospheric origins on Venus, focusing on how it first formed, how it evolved and how (and why) it is different from the atmospheres of Earth and Mars.
Atmospheric composition and surface interaction
This will involve understanding the history of water on Venus and the chemical processes at work in its lower atmosphere. It will also try to determine whether Venus ever had an ocean. Since life on Earth started in our oceans, this would become the starting point in any search for life.
Surface properties
An artist’s concept of the NASA DAVINCI+ probe descending in stages to the surface of Venus. NASA/GSFC
This aspect of the mission will provide insights into geographically complex tessera regions on Venus (which have highly deformed terrain), and will investigate their origins and tectonic, volcanic and weathering history.
These findings could shed light on how Venus and Earth began similarly and then diverged in their evolution.
The DAVINCI+ spacecraft, upon arrival at Venus, will drop a spherical probe full of sensitive instruments through the planet’s atmosphere. During its descent, the probe will sample the air, constantly measuring the atmosphere as it falls and returning the measurements back to the orbiting spacecraft.
The probe will carry a mass spectrometer, which can measure the mass of different molecules in a sample. This will be used to detect any noble gases or other trace gases in Venus’s atmosphere.
In-flight sensors will also help measure the dynamics of the atmosphere, and a camera will take high-contrast images during the probe’s descent. Only four spacecraft have ever returned images from the surface of Venus, and the last such photo was taken in 1982.
Maat Mons is the highest shield volcano on Venus and the second-highest mountain on the planet. NASA
VERITAS
Meanwhile, the VERITAS (Venus Emissivity, Radio Science, InSAR, Topography, and Spectroscopy) mission will map surface features to determine the planet’s geologic history and further understand why it developed so differently to Earth.
Historical geology provides important information about ancient changes in climate, volcanic eruptions and earthquakes. This data can be used to anticipate the possible size and frequency of future events.
The mission will also seek to understand the internal geodynamics that shaped the planet. In other words, we may be able to build a picture of Venus’s continental plate movements and compare it with Earth’s.
In parallel with DAVINCI+, VERITAS will take planet-wide, high-resolution topographic images of Venus’s surface, mapping surface features including mountains and valleys.
At the same time, the Venus Emissivity Mapper (VEM) instrument on board the orbiting VERITAS spacecraft will map emissions of gas from the surface, with such accuracy that it will be able to detect near-surface water vapour. Its sensors are so powerful they will be able to see through the thick clouds of sulphuric acid.
Key insight into conditions on Venus
The most exciting thing about these two missions is the orbit-to-surface probe. In the 1980s, four landers made it to the surface of Venus, but could only operate for two days due to crushing pressure. The pressure there is 93 bar, which is the same as being 900m below sea level on Earth.
Then there’s the lava. Many lava flows on Venus stretch for several hundred kilometres. And this lava’s mobility may be enhanced by the planet’s average surface temperature of about 470°C.
Meanwhile, “shield” volcanoes on Venus are an impressive 700km wide at the base, but only about 5.5km high on average. The largest shield volcano on Earth, Mauna Loa in Hawaii, is only 120km wide at the base.
There are only three bodies in our solar system with confirmed active fire volcanoes: Earth, Mars and Jupiter’s Io moon. But recent research has proposed Idunn Mons (pictured), a volcanic peak on Venus, may still be active. EarthSky
The information obtained from DAVINCI+ and VERITAS will provide crucial insight into not only how Venus formed, but how any rocky, life-giving planet forms. Ideally, this will equip us with valuable markers to look for when searching for habitable worlds outside our solar system.
Gail Iles 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.
At the tail end of winter in 2015, the ground in the Wimmera in northeastern Victoria had been a little dry but conditions weren’t too bad for farmers. The crop season was going well.
The start of September looked promising. It was cool, and there were decent rains. One Wimmera lentil grower said, “As long as it doesn’t get too hot, we should actually be OK.”
A few weeks later, summer weather had arrived early. At the start of October, the soils were baked dry. Lentils and other pulse crops were devastated.
This kind of event, where drier-than-normal conditions transform into severe or extreme drought in the space of weeks, is called a “flash drought”. While flash droughts are still not well understood, our research studies how they occur in Australia – which may help move us toward being able to warn of flash drought in advance.
The different kinds of drought
Scientists typically talk about drought as a lack or deficit of available moisture to meet various needs, such as in agriculture or for water resources. We often classify different types of drought depending on where there is a lack of water, or what its effects are:
meteorological drought is a deficit of rain or other precipitation
agricultural drought is a deficit of moisture in the soil and evaporating or transpiring into the air
hydrological drought is a deficit of water in runoff and surface storage such as dams
socioeconomic drought is a lack of water that affects the supply and demand of economic goods and services.
Different types of drought can occur at the same time, or a drought may evolve from one type to another. Droughts can last from months to decades, and can cover areas from a local region to most of the continent.
The different types of drought, showing how long they last and the size of the area they affect. Ailie Gallant, Author provided
Recently, a new characterisation of drought has been added to the drought spectrum: “flash” drought.
What causes flash droughts?
Flash droughts are droughts that begin suddenly and then rapidly become more intense. Droughts only occur when there is insufficient rainfall, but flash droughts intensify rapidly over timescales of weeks to months because of other factors such as high temperatures, low humidity, strong winds and clear skies.
These conditions make the air “thirsty”, which meteorologists call “increased evaporative demand”. This means more water evaporates from the surface and transpires from plants, and moisture in the soil is rapidly depleted.
Under these conditions, evaporation and transpiration increase for as long as moisture is available at the surface. When this moisture is depleted and there is no rain to replenish it, the lack of water limits evaporation and transpiration – and vegetation becomes stressed as drought emerges.
When there is a lack of rain accompanied by high temperature, low humidity, strong wind and clear skies, conditions are right for flash drought. Tess Parker, Author provided
Why haven’t we heard about flash drought before?
Flash droughts have always existed, and were first described in 2002. However, some particularly devastating flash droughts over the past decade have led to a surge of interest among researchers.
One such drought happened in the US Midwest. In May 2012, 30% of the continental United States was experiencing abnormally dry conditions. By August, that had extended to more than 60%. Although other rapidly developing droughts had been seen before, the widespread impacts of this event caught the attention of the US public and government.
Flash droughts are also increasingly a focus of attention in China and Australia. One of the few studies of flash drought in Australia examined an event when conditions in the country’s east suddenly changed from wet in December 2017, to dry in January 2018.
Anecdotal reports from farmers in the northern Murray–Darling Basin indicated removal of livestock from properties, and sheep numbers at record lows. By June 2018, there were reports of trees dying and a desert-like landscape, with little grass cover.
What happened in the Wimmera?
Our recent study of flash drought in Australia used several different measurements to capture a range of conditions related to drought.
precipitation describes the supply of moisture from the atmosphere to the surface
evaporative demand is the atmospheric demand for moisture from the surface
evaporative stress is the supply of moisture from the surface relative to the demand from the atmosphere
soil moisture is the wetness or dryness of the land surface.
The index we used to determine the atmospheric demand shows that the speed of development and the intensity of flash drought are driven by high temperatures, low humidity, strong winds and clear skies. All of these increase the demand for moisture from the surface.
After a drier than normal winter, southeast Australia experienced a cool and wet start to September 2015, with some rain in the first week of the month. Humidity and surface air pressure were roughly average, and surface sunshine below average, suggesting normal evaporative demand.
A warm spell began in mid-September, and intensified into a severe heatwave by early October, with temperatures over 35℃ persisting for several days in some areas. Throughout this period the overlying air became very dry. A persistent high-pressure system brought clear skies and increased sunshine.
By the end of October, the Wimmera was in severe or extreme drought conditions, devastating pulse and grain crops. Analysts estimated wheat production fell by 23%, with a loss of A$500 million in potential yields.
Flash drought in Australia
Flash droughts in Australia occur in all seasons. In the Wimmera, flash droughts are most frequent in summer and autumn. They can end as rapidly as they start, but in some cases may last many months.
In several instances, flash droughts in the Wimmera have started in summer or autumn, and the region has remained in drought through the following winter, and sometimes into spring. In this way, flash drought can be the catalyst for the common droughts lasting 6-12 months typical of southeast Australia.
But there is some potential good news. We have long known that seasonal-scale droughts in Australia are strongly related to the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), which gives us some ability to predict them.
ENSO strongly affects rainfall, which means it can also be linked to flash droughts in winter and spring.
Further, sub-seasonal forecasting, which predicts the climatic conditions weeks to a month in advance, has improved considerably in recent years. Given flash droughts occur on these timescales, we can be optimistic that prediction of flash droughts may be possible.
This research was funded by the Australian Government’s National Environmental Science Programme Earth Systems and Climate Change Hub (NESP-ESCC)
Ailie Gallant receives funding from the Australian Research Council through the Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes, and from the National Environmental Science Programme Earth Systems and Climate Change Hub (NESP-ESCC). She is the Deputy Director of the Monash Climate Change Communications Research Hub.
In the beginning there was no New Zealand honours system at all. New Zealanders received British honours as British subjects. So the very local honours handed out this Queen’s Birthday weekend also recognise how far Aotearoa New Zealand has come since the colonial era.
The British honours system originated in medieval times when knights on steeds fought chivalrously for ladies. In rewarding service, loyalty and gallantry, the monarchy was moving away from gifting land and money to the favoured few towards offering orders of chivalry identified by insignia.
The modern system advanced with empire. From a small number of highly exclusive orders restricted to the aristocracy and high-ranking military, British subjects serving in the colonies began to receive honours in the 19th century.
In 1848 George Grey – soldier, governor, premier and scholar – was the first New Zealand resident to receive a Knight Commander of the Civil Division of the Most Honourable Order of the Bath (KCB).
By the first world war, honours had expanded beyond military and public service to include science, the arts and commerce. From 1917, the Order of the British Empire became popular for colonials, cultivating national identity out of British values.
As New Zealand evolved from crown colony to dominion to self-governing constitutional monarchy within the Commonwealth, the British honours system itself continued to evolve and grow — according to historian Karen Fox, quoting author and historian Philip Temple, as part of the “imperial hangover”.
The 2009 investiture ceremony for the 72 New Zealand dames and knights who took up the offer of redesignation after the government reinstated titular honours.
The colonies grow up
By 1919, unimpressed by unpopular awards and honours-selling scandals in Britain, Canada was questioning its deference to the British system and stopped making recommendations. The Order of Canada was established in 1967, emphasising equality by being non-titular.
The Australian Labor Party had also been keen to end titles from 1918, but it took until 1975 for Gough Whitlam’s government to institute the Order of Australia. Originally non-titular, Malcolm Fraser added knights and dames in 1975, only for Bob Hawke to remove them again in 1986. (They were briefly brought back by Tony Abbott in 2015, but just as quickly dropped.)
Meanwhile, loyal New Zealand retained British honours until 1975 when an embryonic national awards system began with the Queen’s Service Order (QSO) and Queen’s Service Medal (QSM).
Despite the Order of New Zealand (ONZ) being created in 1987, a confusing mix of British and New Zealand awards persisted until 1996, when a single system was finally established with the New Zealand Order of Merit (NZOM). The NZOM includes five tiers, the top two (mildly controversially) being titular.
Elitism in an egalitarian land
The British imperial honours system had been an increasingly uneasy fit with New Zealand’s self-image as an egalitarian, new world society. In that vein, the Labour government removed the remaining titles in 1999, only for the next National government to reinstate them ten years later.
Of those eligible to retroactively take up the title of dame or knight, nearly all (72 of 85) of the 2000–2008 recipients did. Two of the 13 who declined already had a title.
From 1987, the ONZ has reigned as the country’s single highest honour. It recognises “outstanding service to the Crown and people of New Zealand in a civil or military capacity”.
Whereas the Order of Canada and Order of Australia became widely awarded in those countries, the ONZ is limited to 20 living people (although additional and honorary members can be appointed).
While proudly non-titular, putatively egalitarian and nation-centred, the ONZ actually resembles the truly elite British Order of Merit. Also non-titular, this is restricted to 24 members who have excelled in the arts, learning, literature and science.
Lingering male bias
What does an analysis of the 32 ordinary and additional ONZ appointees from 2000 reveal about New Zealand’s most esteemed citizens?
First, it appears chivalry is not quite dead: 75% of ONZ appointees are men, leaving women starkly under-represented. Furthermore, Karen Fox’s analysis of 20th-century dames in New Zealand shows they were considered exceptions to the rule.
After all, the modern honours system has evolved from clearly masculine origins, as we can see in the “courtesy” title of “lady” for those married to knights. The husband of a dame, awarded in her own right, does not have any reciprocal right to be called “sir”.
It has been observed of the Australian honours system that the higher the award, the fewer women receive it — and this appears to hold for New Zealand, too.
Balancing the tendency to recognise traditionally masculine roles in the military and civil service, there have been more awards for voluntary community service. Of course, this is often the site of women’s unpaid labour, and these awards are at the bottom of the honours hierarchy.
Youngest ONZ: Richie McCaw lifts the Webb Ellis Cup following the All Blacks’ second consecutive Rugby World Cup victory in 2015. GettyImages
An antidote to individualism and celebrity
Perhaps unsurprisingly, ONZ recipients tend to be older, with an average age of 73 at appointment. Recognition has come after a lifetime of achievement, their service record largely complete. The exception is former All Black Richie McCaw, who in 2015 received the ONZ aged 35, shortly after leading New Zealand to a second consecutive Rugby World Cup victory.
But as a snapshot of national values, New Zealand’s honours system represents a kind of continuity. Monarchs rewarded service and loyalty to power and authority, and politicians still make up the biggest ONZ recipient group.
On the other hand, in a nuclear-free, peace-keeping society, military service has seen only one appointment — and that was Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh. Given its focus on profit rather than service, business makes only a small appearance.
Significantly, the nation-building qualities of the creative arts are highly valued. Sport, science and social sciences, and Te Ao Maori feature strongly, with religion, law and health noticeably present. Reflecting the country’s developing multiculturalism, there is a Pasifika presence, too.
Ironically, there seems to be more unease about honours in the former imperial centre than elsewhere. In 2004, former British prime minister John Major suggested “Excellence” might be substituted for “Empire” in the OBE. The system’s complicity in colonisation and racism has also been questioned. There have been recent calls for reform to recognise acts of service and bravery in the battle with COVID-19.
Currently, though, New Zealand seems comfortable with its quaint, devolved, largely uncontroversial system. In an age of individualism and celebrity, these regular rewards for service to community and nation are generally seen as a welcome tonic and well worth toasting.
Katie Pickles does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
The idea of cute puppy dogs playing a role in leading us out of this pandemic is about as tantalising a story anyone could conjure up right now.
It’s the type of good-news story you see at the end of the evening news bulletin involving cute animals making us healthier or happier. This time it involves using sniffer dogs to detect COVID-19.
So can dogs sniff out COVID-19? Before examining the evidence, there’s no suggestion dogs would replace the PCR test, the best diagnostic test we have for COVID-19 presently.
Instead, researchers hope dogs will be used for mass screening. This might be useful for quickly picking out individuals with COVID-19 in large crowds, say at airports, sports stadiums or concerts.
How do we know if dogs are up to the job?
The best way to evaluate the performance of a test (in this case a trained dog’s nose) is to compare its results with the best test available (in this case the PCR test).
We want to know how good dogs’ noses are at correctly identifying people who:
have COVID-19 (as determined by a PCR test), a measure known as sensitivity
don’t have COVID-19 (as determined by a PCR test), a measure known as specificity.
A good screening test will have both a high sensitivity and a high specificity. If a test has a low sensitivity, it will often misclassify people as not having the disease when they do (false negatives). And if a test has a low specificity it will often misclassify people as having the disease when they don’t (false positives).
The great news is dogs seem to perform exceptionally well in screening for COVID-19. Two recent preliminary studies suggest they can do this with high sensitivity and high specificity.
One study, which has yet to be independently verified by other researchers (peer reviewed), involved training six dogs to alert their handlers when they detected the scent of COVID-19 on clothing from an infected person. This study found a sensitivity of 82-94% and a specificity of 76-92%.
A secondstudy, which was presented at a conference and again has not been independently verified, involved training nine dogs. They identified cases from pieces of fabric that had been wiped on people’s armpits and put in a jar. This found a sensitivity of 97% and a specificity of 91%.
Taken together, it seems dogs are very good at rapidly detecting individuals with COVID-19 and don’t often get it wrong.
But hang on a minute
It’s important to temper our enthusiasm with the usual caveats:
we need to interpret all study findings cautiously until they are independently verified by other researchers (peer reviewed)
it would give us more confidence in the findings if other researchers reproduced these findings using more people
there is a big difference between dogs detecting COVID-19 in the controlled laboratory environment and the real world, which is messy, chaotic and full of other smells and distractions.
Yet, I think these results are promising enough to justify some serious tail wagging.
But there are a few important operational limitations, the kind only revealed when you move dogs out of the laboratory. According to a Thai researcher:
5pm is their dinner time. When it’s around 4.50, they will start to be distracted. So, you can’t really have them work anymore. And we can’t have them working after dinner either because they need a nap.
These are limitations we can all relate to and shouldn’t detract from the cutest possible addition to our fight against COVID-19.
Hassan Vally does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
If you gaze at the ocean this winter, you might just be lucky enough to spot a whale migrating along Australia’s coastline. This is the start of whale season, when the gentle giants breed in the warm northern waters off Australia after feeding in Antarctica.
This north-south migration happens every year, but the whales can still surprise us. Thanks to a citizen scientist and his drone, humpback whales were seen feeding in a mass super group and “bubble-net feeding” off the New South Wales coast last year.
As my new research paper confirms, this a big deal for two reasons: it’s only the second time a super group of humpbacks has been observed in the southern hemisphere (a first for Australia) and the first time bubble-net feeding has been seen in Australia.
So what is bubble-net feeding, and why are these observations so important?
Blowing bubbles, catching krill
Bubble-net feeding is when whales deliberately blow bubbles from their noses to encircle their food — krill and fish — like a net, concentrating their prey into a tight ball. Then, the whale or group of whales swim together from beneath, rise to the surface opening their mouths, and gulp up their prey.
It remains a mystery as to why the whales feed in this way and how they learned to do it.
Drone footage of a super group of humpback whales, some of which are bubble-net feeding. Video: Brett Dixon.
2020 was a year full of unprecedented events, and the humpback whales certainly didn’t disappoint.
Humpback whales in this eastern Australian population are usually observed lunge feeding on their side, or feeding below the surface. Bubble-net feeding, on the other hand, is mostly documented in some Northern Hemisphere populations.
But we know there are individual whales in the eastern Australian humpback population who bubble-net feed in Antarctic waters. This means the unique behaviour in Australian waters may have evolved independently, or through cultural transmission (learning new behaviours from different whales).
The drone footage and observations made in September from whale-watching boats was the first to document bubble-net feeding. To add to the excitement, citizen scientists also documented bubble-net feeding behaviour further south of Tasmania a month later.
Drone footage captures humpback whales feeding in large numbers off the New South Wales coast. Brett Dixon
Using stills from the September drone footage, an estimated 33 humpback whales can be seen feeding at the same time. Unfortunately, it’s not known exactly what the whales were feeding on.
Until then, humpback whale congregations this large had never been observed in Australian waters.
In fact, the only other time a mass humpback feeding event has been seen in the Southern Hemisphere was off South Africa in 2011 (this now occurs regularly there). This was the first time the term “super group” was used to describe a group of 20 or more whales feeding this way.
Humpback whale rising up in the middle of a visible bubble-net to engulf its prey. Jessica Millar/Sapphire Coastal Adventures
But why were they feeding in ‘breeding waters’ anyway?
The majority of the east Australian humpback whale population spends the summer months feeding in Antarctic waters. They then head north to warm breeding waters in the Great Barrier Reef during winter (June-August) to mate and give birth.
They forego feeding for love — humpbacks can go for months without eating, relying instead on energy reserves in order to reproduce. Animals that do this are called capital breeders.
From August to November, humpbacks migrate southward back to Antarctica. Along the way, they sometimes take a “pit-stop” on parts of Australia’s east coast to feed.
It was originally thought this population never fed along the migratory route. However, we know they do now to possibly supplement their energy intake as they migrate.
Humpback whales migrate along the east coast of Australia annually for warmer breeding waters in the Great Barrier Reef. Dr Vanessa Pirotta
So why are these observations important?
Whales play important an important role in the ecosystem of the ocean because they feed in one area and poo in another.
This action — known as the “whale pump” — moves nutrients around the ocean. Their poo feeds tiny organisms, such as plankton, which are eaten by krill, and then eaten by whales.
Seeing these super group feedings highlights changes in our marine environment we might not have otherwise been aware of.
Bubble net feeding in Antarctica.
One possible explanation for this behaviour could be favourable environmental conditions. A combination of ideal water temperatures and nutrients may have resulted in an abundance of food, which saw large numbers of humpback whales feeding in the same area.
Or perhaps it has something to do with the recovery of the east coast humpback whale population, which has been increasing in numbers since whaling ended in the 1960s.
Humpback whales engulfing their prey after bubble-net feeding cooperatively off the New South Wales coast. Wayne Reynolds/Sapphire Coastal Adventures
Regardless, it’s important to understand how changes in the marine environment influence the extent humpback whales depend on feeding opportunities along their migratory route.
This will help to predict how whale populations respond to future changes in the ocean. This includes climate change, which will warm ocean temperatures and alter when and where the prey of humpback whales are found. As a result, humpback whales will also move to different locations.
One thing, at least, is abundantly clear: more eyes on land and sea through citizen science will provide a valuable opportunity to document such exciting future events. So keep your eyes peeled for whales this season, and be sure to tell a scientist if you see something unexpected.
Vanessa Pirotta 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.
As part of efforts to decarbonise urban transport, Australianstates and the ACT have announced various zero-emission bus trials and targets for replacing diesel buses. These trials are designed to help resolve some of the complex technical and contractual issues facing bus operators and public transport agencies.
It is important to remember the vital role of buses, and public transport more generally, in decarbonising the transport sector — Australia’s third-largest source of greenhouse gas emissions. We fear this point has been lost in recent climate advocacy highlighting the slow pace of the transition to green propulsion for private cars in Australia.
Our research aims to learn more about the obstacles to an effective transition to zero-emission buses. We are engaging mainly with groups connected with the trial announced by the Victorian Department of Transport in late 2020, but the issues are similar across Australia.
Why can’t we rely on electric cars?
Even if Australia’s transition to green-electric cars is successful, the climate benefits will be less than we need. The carbon costs of manufacturing replacements for Australia’s 20 million-strong vehicle fleet will be equivalent to around 20 years’ emissions from Australia’s dirtiest brown coal generator at Yallourn. And tonnes of concrete and bitumen will continue to be laid for new toll roads and car parks.
A city of electric vehicles will also perpetuate the fatal burdens of car dependence: urban sprawl, inequitable access to the riches of city life, suppression of cycling and walking, and a host of health risks ranging from physical inactivity to air pollution. Even if exhausts were cleaner, recent UK research shows a significant proportion of damaging particulates come from worn tyres and brake linings.
To protect the climate and to make city life safer, fairer and healthier, we need policies that take cars off the roads, regardless of how they are fuelled.
Apart from emissions, electric cars won’t solve the other problems associated with heavy car use – such as traffic jams – and could even make them worse. Orderinchaos/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA
The technical complexities of the transition to zero-emission buses could, if we are not careful, lead governments to lose sight of this bigger picture. Buses can help reduce demand for car travel, but only if they operate as effective links in a seamless public transport network.
In Melbourne, for example, many buses run almost empty. Routes are convoluted and services infrequent. It would be a travesty to invest millions in moving to greener buses without improving services in ways that increase patronage.
The first technical challenge is to decide between electric battery and hydrogen power. Most governments are leaning towards batteries. This is largely because the technology and its support systems are more evolved.
However, not all battery buses are created equal. One configuration might work well for a bus that will operate on short routes and can easily return to base to recharge. A bus that will operate on longer or steeper routes might need a different set-up. Operators will need to understand these trade-offs before they order new vehicles.
One of Sydney’s ‘Electric Blu’ buses running on the Balmain route – operators must select battery-powered buses that suit their intended route. MDRZ/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA
As established supply chains and cost structures for fossil fuels become obsolete, operators will also need to come to grips with the intricacies of Australia’s electricity market. At the same time, the power industry is grappling with new forecasts for demand and the infrastructure required for secure supply. Added to this, there are fears of a repeat of the “gold-plating” by private energy providers and distributors that has plagued the industry in recent years.
The change of power source also creates new challenges for fleet managers. If the transition takes several years, how will an operator manage the changing demands on depot space for refuelling and maintenance? Are depots in the right locations for new patterns of refuelling and deployment? How will the workforce gain the new skills they will need?
These issues and other technical questions can certainly be resolved. However, the institutional framework in which this must occur makes it hard to imagine it can be done quickly.
In Melbourne, buses operate under more than 15 different contracts, some with multinationals and others with tiny family businesses. These contracts vary in their provisions for determining routes and frequencies, for fleet and depot ownership, and for rollover or re-tendering. This complexity is a historical legacy compounded by decades of political and bureaucratic inertia.
The challenge for governments is to find a path to introducing zero-emission buses and reforming bus networks that deals with the technical uncertainties and the allocation of cost and risk in a fragmented market. The arrival of new commercial players — offering combined bus procurement, operation, charging infrastructure and energy supply — makes the market all the more complex. Nevertheless, success is crucial for the climate and for the health of our cities.
John Stone has received funding from the ARC and other Australian and international research bodies and has consulted to state and local governments. He provides volunteer support to the Friends of the Earth Sustainable Cities campaign.
Iain Lawrie and Nat Manawadu 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.
The Australian Securities & Investment Commission issued an information sheet this week regarding so-called “activist short selling”.
The document outlines a number of “better practices” it wants short sellers to adhere to, and some “actions that we may take” if they don’t.
Translation: “Hey hedge-fund folks, do this stuff or we’ll make life difficult for you.”
The problem is not that the corporate regulator can’t do so. It is that these “better practices” are likely to lead to less efficient markets.
In short (pun absolutely intended), this is bad idea.
What is activist short selling?
Short selling involves selling a security (like a share of stock in an exchange-listed company) you don’t own. The way this is typically done is to borrow that security from someone who does own it, with a promise to return it at a later date.
The idea is that when the security goes down in price, you can buy a replacement security for the person you borrowed from at a cheaper price than what you sold theirs, thus pocketing the difference.
Basically it’s a bet that the price of something is going to go down. For an alternative explanation see this scene from The Big Short, the 2015 film about the housing bubble and subprime mortgage crisis that led to the Global Financial Crisis of 2007-2008.
Short selling explained by Margot Robbie in ‘The Big Short’.
Activist short selling involves taking a short position and then publicising it. This could be through media interviews, social media posts or otherwise providing detailed accounts of concerns with the target entity.
Perhaps the best example of this was investor George Soros’ 1992 bet against the British Pound (and other currencies) he rightly thought were overvalued against Germany’s Deutsche Mark and were being propped up by central banks like the Bank of England.
ASIC itself says its research indicates “activist short selling campaigns tend to target entities with complex and opaque corporate structures and accounting practices, or poor disclosure”.
So short selling can help discourage such practices. That’s a good thing. Yet ASIC wants to discourage shorting. What gives?
Short selling improves market efficiency
Why was there a housing bubble in the US in the early 2000s?
There were many causes, including absurdly lax lending standards and outright fraud by those issuing loans and the creation of complex financial products such as synthetic collateralised debt obligations (synthetic CDOs).
For an explanation of these see this, also from the Big Short, by Nobel prize-winning University of Chicago economist Richard Thaler and the almost-as-famous actor and recording artist Selena Gomez.
Thaler and Gomez on synthetic CDOs.
But there was also little that those who believed the housing market was dangerously overvalued could do to “bet against” it.
Eventually, as Michael Lewis’ book The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine (on which the movie is based) recounts, a handful of unusual characters managed to get Wall Street to create a specialised instrument called a “credit default swap” to let them do so.
Had there been an easy way to short the housing market earlier, the bubble might never have gotten out of control. The horrific crash of 2008 that caused the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression might have been avoided.
Short selling punishes speculation by putting a check on out-of-control markets.
It motivates investors to keep an eye on fundamentals, not just get carried away with what John Maynard Keynes labelled “animal spirits” – the impulses that help drive speculative bubbles and busts.
There’s only so much that can be done with the housing market, which is inherently difficult to bet against.
But Australia’s corporate regulator wants to restrict short selling in the stock market, in which it’s relatively easy to take a short position.
ASIC is obviously aware of the argument that short selling improves market efficiency, but has chosen to discount it. It has opted for rules that push Australia closer to European countries rather than the US – the largest, most liquid, and most important capital market in the world.
Australian short sellers are being told to stop
The corporate watchdog has outlined a number of “actions” it might take if short sellers don’t play ball:
engaging with market operators (such as the Australian Stock Exchange) on the timing of trading halts
examining trading activity of short sellers, particularly “short and distort” campaigns
assessing if a short seller has conducted a financial service in Australia and holds the necessary licence
testing the veracity of claims and how conflicts of interest are disclosed
where an activist short seller is based abroad, engaging with their “home regulator”
taking action for breaches of the law.
Many of these may sound mild but are in fact quite extraordinary. They constitute a (very) thinly veiled message that overseas hedge fund managers should knock it off with activist shorting in Australia.
This combines, to a remarkable degree, ugly nativism and regulatory capture – the phenomenon by which a regulator, even without malicious intent, comes to represent the interests of those it regulates, rather than the public good. (The theory of regulatory capture was pioneered by another Chicago economist and Nobel winner, George Stigler.)
Who will breathe easier as a result of ASIC’s new guidelines? Companies with opaque accounting practices, inadequate corporate disclosures and even those that may be acting unlawfully.
The losers are equally easy to identify. Some rich hedge fund folks in Greenwich, Connecticut, sure. But also the Australian public, whose superannuation funds are invested in Australian markets.
We all have a big interest in ensuring the informational efficiency and market transparency. Bubbles are bad for regular investors. Regulations and securities laws play a crucial role in achieving those goals. So do activist short sellers.
ASIC should reconsider its stance. It will only serve to damage the credibility of Australian securities markets, the Australian public, and their own reputation as a wise regulator.
Richard Holden is president-elect of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia.
A crocodile known locally as ‘Barrat’ emerges from the water of the lower Daintree River, Far North Queensland.Kevin Crook
The wet season in tropical Australia begins with tension. Physical tension, caused by the friction of earth and clouds. Mental tension, caused by the heat, and the expectation of rain and relief. It is also an ecological tension, where every plant and animal is poised — genetically, physiologically — to grow, reap, sow and copulate within a few short months.
We call it the build-up. The tension builds, and then it breaks. It was at the point of breaking when Val Plumwood, a young philosopher from the temperate south, was taken by a crocodile.
She was an environmental activist, exploring Kakadu to experience the wilderness she’d had a hand in protecting. She was paddling upstream in a small, red, low-sided canoe when it began to rain. There are many attacks on visitors to the tropics, especially those in small watercraft, but we know more about this one than any other.
When Val began fighting for the protection of wild places in the 1970s, the saltwater crocodile was rare almost to the point of extinction. By the mid ‘80s they were protected, plentiful, and in remote places, lacked memory of the hunters’ gun. When Val climbed into her vessel that morning in 1985, she did so in good faith. They were not a known threat to someone travelling by canoe in a back channel lagoon.
But crocodiles are a threat. Young salties eat fish and crabs. As they grow, they move on to larger prey — dogs, pigs, people, horses and buffalo. Our species fits comfortably in their diet, slipping into the line-up between pigs and horses.
Crocodiles may be opportunistic hunters, but their encounters with prey aren’t chance. They think about it. They watch, and they learn. Wash your pots and pans on the riverbank every evening, and you are inviting an attack. For people along the coastline of the tropical arc between Eastern India and Australia, they colour the water’s edge with a lurking malice and the threat of a violent death.
A crocodile in Kakadu. Dean Lewins/AAP
We share our world with other dangerous animals. Sharks, for instance, kill every year. Poisonous snakes too. However, there is a difference. Snakes strike when threatened, usually by an unintentional kick in the ribs. Sharks do bite when unprovoked, but rarely, and they almost never consume us. We share our beaches with them, but you can spend your life in the water and never get bitten. The saltwater crocodile is a different beast, and it boils down to intent. As crocodile researcher Professor Grahame Webb has put it:
There is no way of avoiding nor sugarcoating the predatory nature of saltwater crocodiles. If you dive off the Adelaide River bridge, 60 km east of Darwin’s city centre, and start swimming, there is a 100% chance of being taken by a saltwater crocodile. It is not the same as swimming with sharks.
Like Val Plumwood, I too had come up north from the temperate south, and was not used to sharing my world with something that wanted to eat me.
There is a mountain range in north Queensland, cut off from the mainland by the sea. The space between is filled with a tangle of mangrove trees and snaking waterways. Heading down one of these channels in the early morning, my small boat cut around a bend, and on the far bank I saw a crocodile basking in the sun.
Hinchinbrook Channel, North Queensland. Kevin Crook
I eased back on the throttle and let my boat drag through the water. This was my chance to see one up close, as long as I didn’t scare it off. I was a young scientist, new to the tropics, and hadn’t yet seen a croc up close. I’d glimpsed them sliding off the banks as I motored past, or as eyes above the waterline, following my boat with interest.
I drifted closer, engine idling.
It was big. I turned the engine off to let momentum and the current take me closer. I didn’t want to disturb the creature. Apart from the occasional snapping of pistol shrimp in their burrows, the air was still and quiet. The forest around us was a deep green, reflected in the greasy green of the water. The mud bank was almost black with silt; waist-deep, from recent experience. I could see the heft of the animal as I approached.
Its muscular tail rested in an arc, and the great mass of its body bulged, unsupported on dry land. It didn’t flinch as I drew closer, it held its jaws open in a permanent, basking yawn.
Now I was close enough to see very clearly its long pointed teeth ringing the muscular bed of the lower jaw. I could see sinew and texture in the enormous muscle that connects upper and lower jaw, allowing it to slam the two shut with the bite force of Tyrannosaurus rex. I could see it too well. Current and momentum had conspired to bring me right to the bank where the animal lay. I was no longer worried about disturbing the creature. I was within striking distance. I was an outsider, intruding, and I was afraid.
The fear and fascination never quite reconciled. I had seen the crocodile as an indicator, both in the ecological sense, as my training had described, but also in a personal sense.
A crocodile in the mangroves of the lower Daintree River, Far North Queensland. Kevin Crook
Ecologists like indicator species, because they tell us about a complex world in a very simple way. They stand in for a whole range of factors.
A caddis-fly larva can tell you about the purity of the alpine pond you found it in, how recently it was frozen and the stability of the seasons. A stingray can tell you about the flooding patterns of a sandbank and the abundance of invertebrates therein. They do this just by showing up. Crocodiles, to me, indicated nutrient rich tropical waters providing a glut of large bodied prey. Warm winters and big barramundi.
The author baiting a camera trap. Sheree Marris
They indicated the sanctuary of the wild. Here was a place beyond the realm of humankind, remote, beautiful, and my place of work. They punctuated the landscape, and their presence transformed the place. In the temperate south, a bank in an inlet might be a good place to pull up for lunch, or cast a line. Here, it’s a place you don’t want to linger.
A floating log becomes an object of suspicion, and the value of a swimming hole, no matter how inviting, is measured in downstream barriers. We tend to hold crocs up as a symbols, and dangle the fact of their existence in front of southerners and tourists to prove our rugged credentials. But I had not reckoned with the animal itself.
As I fumbled for the ignition, the crocodile turned its full attention to me and slid down the bank. In one easy motion it slipped under the surface, and swam toward our boat.
I kicked the engine into gear. As the roar of my 15-horse motor sped us to safety, I wondered how on earth we live alongside these creatures. I also wondered how many of those 15 horses that croc could eat in its lifetime.
Living on the water’s edge
Crocodiles are not symbols — I was about to learn — they are living beasts capable of real material damage. I could venture into their world, but spent most of my time high above the waterline. For other people in that Indo-Pacific arc, contending with these animals is daily life. Work brought me to the islands of Papua New Guinea, where crocodiles are a threat to both people and property. While it might sound far flung, New Guinea is closer to my home in North Queensland than any Australian capital. It’s part of the same great landmass of Sahul, and shares a recognisable fauna and flora.
In the places I worked, people built their villages at the water’s edge, on volcanic black-sand beaches. That strip of coast contains all of everyday life; houses, fishing nets, canoes, livestock, children, dogs and cooking fires. So, when the largest reptile in the world crawls from the ocean of a nighttime, and carries away a squealing pig, it seems a reasonable price to pay. Especially considering the other potential prey sleeping in their beds.
Moving through a back channel of the Langalanga estuary, West New Britain, Papua New Guinea. Michael Bradley
I came across one of these sacrificial pigs, postmortem. I was investigating the small estuaries along the coast with a local man named Alfonse. We turned into a small creek, hidden from view by the angle of its entrance and a tall forest of mangrove trees. Estuaries in the tropics have a certain smell caused by things that want to rot, but don’t have the air to do so. Sealed under the mud, they turn black and change their chemistry. Mixed in with this is the salt, and the fresh-sap of the mangrove leaves. Some people hate it, but I relish it.
This creek had an altogether different odour. It was the smell of rotting flesh, but not the dry waft of roadkill by the side of the road. This was wet-rot. The pig had been stashed in a dead tree on the bank, and its skin was beginning to trail in the current. Crocodiles don’t like a fresh kill; they like to let it soften. That pig would have fed a village and perhaps been the central meal of a wedding or a funeral. Now it was bloating in the muddy water.
On a different trip, Alfonse told me the story of a fatal attack in his village. Alfonse is a serious man with a young family, a gentle sense of humour and a legitimate hatred of Malaysian logging companies. We were working in a system called the Langalanga, a great palm swamp, almost cut off from the sea. In the slanted afternoon light, the marine palms reflect crazily on the black water, and their fruit-rot nectar clots the air.
Some of Alfonse’s family were camped on the edge of the swamp, and had set out in a canoe to collect mussels — a happy scene repeated on occasion throughout the seasons.
A few years back, another family was doing the same, when the father was taken by a crocodile. As he was being dragged under by the legs, his wife held on to his arms, and in that brief battle there was enough time for him to say “take care of the kids”. By the time I left, a man from our team was taken by a crocodile somewhere in that same labyrinth of palms.
Late afternoon in the palm swamp, Langalanga estuary, West New Britain, Papua New Guinea. Michael Bradley
We are food
Crocodiles are murderous creatures. Not indifferent to our suffering, but actively in pursuit of it. They crave us, like we might crave a pizza, and they act on those impulses.
Val Plumwood learned this too, from the vantage point of her red canoe, as her path converged suspiciously with a floating log. The log was a crocodile, and from that point on, she was prey. The animal charged her craft several times. She tried to escape by climbing an overhanging tree. It burst from the water between her legs and clamped down on her torso. In that moment, in the force of realisation that accompanied the puncture wounds to her abdomen, she saw very clearly that she was food.
Murderous creatures: a crocodile in Kakadu. Dean Lewins/AAP
She was thrown into a death roll — crocodiles thrash with such force that all the air and struggle is sucked out of their prey, which they then hold underwater until drowned. Val, somehow, survived this experience. It was then repeated.
Incredibly, she surfaced and climbed to safety in the overhanging tree. She was plucked from the tree again, by her left leg, and the horror was repeated for the final time.
But, inexplicably, the crocodile’s jaws relaxed. Val wrestled free and scrambled up the mud bank. Her lower half was shredded, and she could see the raw meat of her leg muscle hanging from the bone. She staggered back through the bush until she began losing consciousness.
She gave out at the edge of the swamp, as the wet season floodwater rose around her. Here she accepted her end as food for the crocodiles waiting in the rising lagoon.
We know so much about this attack because Val survived it. But also because she was a philosopher. She didn’t just survive it, she thought about it, she examined its consequences, and she wrote about it.
The Australian philosopher Val Plumwood pictured in 1990. In her work, Val interrogated the human-nature dualism that lies at the heart of modern culture. Wikimedia Commons
One of the key Australian thinkers of our time, she challenged the way we look at the natural world. It took her the rest of her life to fully reckon with the experience of being prey. The result is a revelation of a book, pulled together posthumously, (Plumwood died of a stroke in 2008), called The Eye of the Crocodile. Val’s experience has become a centre point for me, around which all my encounters with crocodiles now pivot. The anchoring wisdom in a confusing set of facts and impulses.
At the heart of her insight is the knowledge that we are food — “juicy, nourishing, bodies” for the rest of the animal kingdom. We forget that. Or perhaps, we never really come to know it. Val knew, but when she found herself as prey, she rejected the idea. I’ll let her speak for herself here:
My disbelief was not just existential but ethical — this wasn’t happening,
couldn’t be happening. The world was not like that! The creature was breaking the rules, totally mistaken, utterly wrong to think I could be reduced to food. As a human being, I was so much more than food. Were all the other facets of my being to be sacrificed to this utterly undiscriminating use, was my complex organisation to be destroyed so I could be reassembled as part of this other being?
With indignation as well as disbelief, I rejected this event. It was an illusion! It was not only unjust but unreal! It couldn’t be happening. After much later reflection, I came to see that there was another way to look at it. There was illusion alright, but it was the other way around. It was the world of ‘normal experience’ that was the illusion, and the newly disclosed brute world in which I was prey was, in fact, the unsuspected reality, or at least a crucial part of it… both I and the culture that shaped my consciousness were wrong, profoundly wrong —about many things, but especially about human embodiment, animality and the meaning of human life.
In the end, we are just another animal, scratching around on the surface of the earth. Like a few other terrestrial vertebrates, we sometimes forage in shallow seas and there, form part of the coastal food chain. In the Indo-Pacific arc, at this moment in ecological history, that food chain finishes with the saltwater crocodile.
They are simply the inheritors of their evolutionary mantle, held long before we ever dipped our toes in the water. In our brief history on this earth, we have rarely been at the top of our own food chains.
We are food, and not just for crocodiles. We live our lives trying to avoid eye contact with the fact, but it is always there in our peripheral vision. We are victim to a constant gnawing of insects, bacteria, fungus, and when we die — no matter how hard we try to bury and embalm — we finally succumb. Diseases like Ebola haunt our collective imagination, but their worst symptoms are simply the failing of our own immune system to hold back the flood of decay that will find us all when we stop breathing.
‘Life as a circulation’
Ecologists no longer talk about food chains as if there is a top and a bottom. Food loops, cycles of productivity and nutrients, hold the great ecosystems of this earth in place, as vast organised structures of recycling viscera. Our denial of our place in them is what Val came to see as “dualism” — the belief in a hierarchy of nature with ourselves at the top; different, unique, separate. Outsiders on our own planet. Because of this, crocodiles seem like monsters of a senseless world, a world to be feared.
We think of ourselves as somehow separate from the rest of nature’s bloom and rot. This man vs wild illusion butts up against reality in ways that now threaten our existence.
The experience of being outside of nature allows us to deny the urgency of the many crises now facing our planet. We see the signs, but it is easy to distance the collapse of the natural world from the continuity of our own lives, and hold an unreasonable faith that the human world will go on indefinitely. But this is denial. Nature, as we know, can crush us in its jaws. To face the reality that confronts us as a species, we must feel like insiders — part of our own planet. But what would that look like?
In Arnhem Land, where Val was attacked, people have lived alongside crocodiles for thousands of years. They see themselves differently — not as outsiders, but as part of the landscape. Indigenous philosophies, such as those of the Yolngu, see human or animal life as existing for others, not just itself. The crocodile is not hideous for eating humans. They are animals to be understood and respected, through the kind of insider knowledge gained over thousands of years. They take life, but are also capable of acting in good faith.
A saltwater crocodile named Brutus pictured on the Bloomfield River, north of Daintree in Queensland, in 2014. Mike Darcy/AAP
Their maternal tenderness is equally important. They punctuate the landscape as powerful beings, reminding us to tread carefully, because the world is not arranged for our pleasure alone. This resonated with Val who understood “life as a circulation, as a gift from a community of ancestors”. Death, whether by crocodile or otherwise, is recycling, a “flowing into an ecological and ancestral community of origins”.
In the time it took me to write this, a man named Andrew Heard was taken from his dingy in that tangle of creeks in North Queensland where I still work. The police found his vessel upside down and some of his remains in the mangroves. They caught a four-metre crocodile, cut it open, and found the rest of him inside.
Then they killed another one. We could just keep going, get rid of them all. Fifty years ago, we almost did. At a time like this, with everyone reeling in shock, and grappling with some measure of personal fear, I understand the impulse.
I’m going out there again tomorrow, as usual. Older now, my fear and fascination have turned into something else. Despite their intentions for us, I like having them around. To me, they are indicators — but they indicate more than warm winters and big barramundi. They indicate a living world, giving and taking, and a society that’s starting to find its place in it.
As I motor down the creek, they punctuate the landscape, reminding me that we’ve decided, together, there are lives that matter beside our own. That despite the pain we may face in the future, we’re beginning to find our way. They indicate hope.
This essay received an Honourable Mention in the 2021 Nature Writing Prize.
Michael Bradley 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.
Indonesia has cut off the internet in West Papua to conceal its crackdown on the peaceful liberation movement, says a leading Papuan campaigner.
Benny Wenda, interim president of the United Liberation Movement of West Papua (ULMWP), has condemned the internet gag while Indonesia’s leading English-language daily newspaper, The Jakarta Post, has also criticised Jakarta’s actions.
In an editorial last Friday, the Post said that many people “suspect that the disruption to the [Papua] internet service in April was actually a deliberate move to silence anti-government critics and activists”.
“The government has been cutting off Papua from the outside world for decades by measures that included restricting foreign visitors, especially foreign journalists,” the newspaper said.
Jakarta remained “stubbornly insistent on maintaining its isolation policy for Papua”.
Erik Walela, secretary of the ULMWP’s “Department of Political Affairs”, is now in hiding, and two of his relatives — Abi, 32, and Anno, 31 — were arrested by the Indonesian colonial police on June 1.
Victor Yeimo, spokesperson of the KNPB, had already been arrested.
Stigmatised as ‘terrorists’ “I am concerned that all the ULMWP leaders and departments inside West Papua are now at risk after Indonesia has tried to stigmatise us as ‘terrorists’,” said Wenda.
“The head of Indonesia’s National Counterterrorism Agency (BNPT) has stated that it considers the entire liberation movement, including anyone associated with me, to be terrorists.
“Anyone who stands up to injustice in West Papua is now in danger. Indonesia is cutting off the internet to conceal its crackdown and military operations, continuing its long tradition of concealing information from the world by banning international journalists and spreading propaganda.
“The only way anyone can currently access the internet inside is by standing near a military, police, or government building.”
Wenda said Indonesian authorities had tried to label Papuan pro-independence groups “separatists”, “armed criminal groups”, and in 2019, “monkeys’”.
“Now they are labelling us ‘terrorists’. This is nothing but more discrimination against the entire people of West Papua and our struggle to uphold our basic right to self-determination,” he said.
“I want to remind the United Nations and the Pacific and Melanesian leaders that Indonesia is misusing the issue of terrorism to crush our fundamental struggle for the liberation of our land from illegal occupation and colonisation.”
Papua New Guinea’s Minister for Climate Change is calling on the international community to take responsibility for a food security crisis in the Carteret Islands, and some of the other remote atolls of Bougainville.
Minister Wera Mori recently returned from a fact finding mission to the region and he was “horrified” by what he saw.
He said the PNG government was taking steps to ensure that food could be grown elsewhere, and supplies to those who need them were maintained.
But he said that in the long term, industrialised nations, which he accused of causing the climate change related crisis in the first place, needed to step in and assist with measures to prevent the islands from slipping any further under the waves.
“One of the big islands, part of it has been covered by the sea, so basically now instead of one island, you have two,” Mori told ABC’s Pacific Beat.
“Parts of Bougainville, south-east of Solomon Islands … we have coastlines that have been washed away.”
Scott Morrison operates on former Labor powerbroker Graham Richardson’s well-tried “whatever it takes” principle.
“What it takes” in the COVID era is never-ending public money and policy flexibility. We’ve seen both from the Morrison government.
It also takes highly competent implementation, of which we are not seeing enough at the moment.
This week Morrison tried to hold out on giving assistance to Victorians, hoping the state’s latest lockdown would last only seven days. He didn’t want to provide what he regards as encouragement for shuttering.
But with the extension of the closure in Melbourne, the prime minister had to capitulate. He went out of his way, however, to insert as much federal control as he could, with a “temporary COVID disaster payment” that will go to affected workers in a “hotspot” identified by the Chief Medical Officer under the Commonwealth definition.
This will apply in any state when lockdowns last beyond a single week. While there’s no dispute between the CMO and the Victorian government that Melbourne is at present a “hotspot”, if a federal-state difference arose in future, the federal rule would apply.
Morrison might be furious at Victoria’s caution in managing COVID, very different from NSW’s less restrictive but effective approach. But, as the PM has been reminded so often during this crisis, the premiers (or in Victoria’s case the acting premier) have the say. And it’s no good bitching about them, because the “quiet Australians” don’t like such fighting.
Meanwhile the government is dipping into the till to finalise a deal on a stand-alone quarantine facility near Melbourne. This is just weeks after senior cabinet minister Peter Dutton dismissed Victoria’s plan as “political smoke and mirrors”.
It will be some days before it’s clear whether Victoria is on top of the present outbreak (which originated in South Australia). A frightening development came when it started to touch nursing homes – so far, thankfully, exposure has been extremely limited.
But politically, the Morrison government this week has had maximum and very negative exposure on aged care, which is its responsibility.
Not only was parliament sitting but the Health Department had two days before a Senate estimates committee, occasions that leave most news conferences for dead when it comes to applying heat to feet.
Aged Care Services Minister Richard Colbeck received yet another doing over, as did Health Department Secretary Brendan Murphy. Colbeck couldn’t say how many aged care workers have been vaccinated. Murphy was quizzed (among much else) on Morrison using him as a shield for the PM’s unfortunate “it’s not a race” line.
In question time in the House, Health Minister Greg Hunt had to admit to getting a key number wrong.
The various interrogations added to the existing picture of a rollout that’s been, and continues to be, shambolic.
It was always going to be difficult. But among the many issues, there is no excuse for the aged care tardiness and other failures (and it’s worse in the disability sector). And why chemists haven’t been accelerated into the general rollout remains a mystery. Anyone who has a flu shot knows it’s quicker and easier to get it at a pharmacy than go to a doctor.
Although Morrison is very aware that in the pandemic it is never a good time to leave the country, he regards the G7 meeting, to which Australia has been invited, as a top priority, not least because it will enable his first face-to-face meeting with Joe Biden since he became president.
With fingers crossed, Morrison departs for Britain next week, travelling via Singapore and leaving Michael McCormack as acting PM, which carries the risk of a foot-in-mouth outbreak. The PM will miss part of the next parliamentary fortnight and be on remote (in quarantine) for the rest of it.
The government will endure a lot of political pain over the rollout for months to come. But by early next year the job surely will be more or less done, though a portion of the population will remain, for one reason or another, unvaccinated. Will what’s happening – or not happening – now be affecting Morrison’s fortunes then?
Assuming the virus does not in coming months erupt into a big new wave – and those cautious premiers are the best protection against that – Morrison may have shed much of today’s rollout baggage by then.
He told his party room again this week the election would be next year. We know from 2019 it’s unwise to predict results. But the underlying conditions at the moment set Morrison up well.
No state or territory leader has lost an election since the pandemic started. Apart from governments’ success in containing COVID, people are wary of change in these uncertain times.
This week’s national accounts reaffirmed the economy is recovering strongly (1.8% growth in the March quarter, 1.1% annual).
And, although its COVID attack is sharp and to the point, the opposition is weak at a more fundamental level. Anthony Albanese is still struggling to make his mark, and Labor has serious policy dilemmas, including on climate and energy and its stance on the 2024-25 legislated tax cuts.
For many voters, the opposition’s “story” is not, at least at this point, a compelling read. Nor is it obvious how it can make it so.
Despite the pressure he and his government are under on the rollout, Morrison has a united team behind him (with one notable qualification – he’s constrained on climate and energy policy, these days mostly by vocal Nationals outriders).
Given the extent of Morrison’s authority, the spectacle of him and senior ministers being cut down to size by Speaker Tony Smith in this parliamentary fortnight was all the more arresting.
Smith has been an impressive, fair-minded speaker, but the House’s question time has remained unruly, and ministers have babbled on rather than addressing the questions asked by the opposition.
Smith suddenly decided to up the ante, cracking down on the chaotic behaviour from both sides, and forcing discipline on ministers. The latter came as an unpleasant shock to Morrison, Hunt, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg and other frontbenchers.
Morrison was humiliated last week in an exchange after Smith insisted he be relevant to the question. “I’m happy to do that, Mr Speaker,” Morrison said, to which Smith snapped back, “I don’t care whether you’re happy or not.”
“Okay,” said a startled PM.
For an instant, Morrison found he wasn’t the most powerful person in the room. It was a character-building moment.
Smith told the House on Thursday: “Obviously in the course of the last week I’ve enforced the standing orders vigorously. I intend to keep doing that.”
The reason, he said, was “to get an improvement in parliamentary standards”.
Some old hands on the Liberal backbench have been stunned at the length to which Smith has been willing to go. They recalled the fate of the late Bob Halverson, who became speaker after the election of John Howard in 1996, only to be pushed out of the position two years later because the government thought he was too impartial.
Smith is not at any immediate risk of such a fate. But what about after the election if the government is returned?
Smith’s commendable courage suggests he thinks one of two things. He judges his position is secure as long as he wants it and the Coalition is in government. Or he believes the cause is important enough to say to hell with the consequences.
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.
Samoa’s Court of Appeal (CA) ruled yesterday that Article 44(1A) of the Constitution requires that six women should sit in Parliament. With all due respect, I believe that the CA’s decision was incorrect.
This is on the grounds that the CA has overreached its powers by encroaching on the law-making powers of Parliament and has made an unpragmatic (or impractical) decision that has now prolonged and further complicated Samoa’s constitutional crisis.
While the CA’s decision is final and cannot be appealed, I believe that it is still important that this decision be critiqued because the decision has set a dangerous precedent for future judges interpreting the Constitution — a precedent which essentially signals to them that they can disregard the clear and unequivocal words of the Constitution and insert their own words as they see fit.
To be clear, nothing in this critique should be taken as my disapproval or dissatisfaction with the fact that more women are now required to sit in Parliament.
It goes without saying that having only six women in a Parliament with 51 seats is shameful for any country and is representative of a deeply entrenched gender inequity problem in Samoa that must be addressed.
Fuimaono Dylan Asafo … “it’s important for all Samoans to understand both the dangerous precedent that’s been set by the CA and the wider implications.” Image: RNZ
However, I believe that it is important for all Samoans to understand both the dangerous precedent that has been set by the CA and the wider implications of the decision on Samoa’s constitutional crisis.
Accordingly, I set out three reasons here why I believe that that the CA’s decision was incorrect:
1. The CA encroached on the law-making powers of Parliament by ignoring the explicit wording of Article 44 of the Constitution As stated in the Supreme Court’s judgment, the court’s function is to “give primary attention to the words used, and the Court does not have the power and ability to go beyond the clear and unequivocal words used”. This function was made clear in three previous landmark Court of Appeal cases on constitutional interpretation: Attorney-General v Saipaia Olomalu, Mulitalo v Attorney General, and Jackson & Ors v Attorney General.
This statement of the court’s function recognises the fundamental importance of the doctrine of separation of powers in any democracy. The doctrine of separation of powers follows that it is only for the democratically elected Parliament to make and amend the law (including the Constitution) and the courts, as the unelected independent body, should only interpret and apply the law as Parliament intended and not make or amend the law themselves.
In this case, the “clear and unequivocal words” of Article 44(1A)(a) that the Court of Appeal had to apply are: “…women Members of the Legislative Assembly shall: (a) consist of a minimum of 10 percent of the Members of the Legislative Assembly specified under clause (1) which for the avoidance of doubt is presently 5”.
Therefore, the CA’s decision to ignore the explicit wording of Article 44(1A) demonstrates that it consciously chose not to take the correct approach to interpret the Constitution that has been laid down in key landmark cases.
In the CA’s judgment, they state that “there is a principled way to resolve the two ideas which are presently before the court…guided by well-established principles of interpretation from earlier rulings of this Court”.
In my view, the CA’s approach to constitutional interpretation was not at all “principled”, but bizarre and dubious in a way that hopefully would not be adopted by any courts after them. This dubious approach was supported and encouraged by the arguments submitted by counsel for the appellants, that in my view, were insincere and unduly motivated by political gain.
In adopting this dubious approach, the CA deliberately ignored the great (if not determinative) significance of the passing of the Constitution Amendment Act 2019. This 2019 Act amended Article 44 to increase the number of seats in Parliament from 49 to 51 specifically for the “2021 general elections”
The wording of Article 44 in the Samoan Constitution.
If they gave proper consideration to the impact of the 2019 Act, the CA would have recognised that if Parliament wanted to increase the minimum number of seats for women to six, they would have changed “five” to “six” while amending Article 44 for the “2021 general elections” when they had the chance. However, Parliament did not do this, and the courts are not authorised to do this for them.
Parliament’s choice to leave “five” in Article 44(1A)(a) untouched while amending other parts of the Article 44 specifically should be taken as a clear indication that they intended the minimum number of women to remain “five” and not “six” for the “2021 general elections”. Again, it should be emphasised that under the doctrine of the separation of powers, only Parliament can amend the Constitution as the democratically elected body – not the unelected judiciary.
In an attempt to reason or justify their disregard for the clear and unambiguous wording of the Constitution, the CA looked to the overall purpose of Article 44(1A) and said that: “We consider that Article 44 1A [of the constitution] is ambiguous as to the ideas it promotes and that primacy should be given to whichever of the competing ideas best promotes the establishment of human rights practice in Samoa.”
However, the CA knew, or should have known, that it is not for them, as a body of unelected apolitical justices, to consider political matters like what “best promotes the establishment of human rights practice in Samoa”. It is only for Parliament to do so as the democratically elected body which has been chosen by the people of Samoa to debate and legislate on these political issues.
This particular separation of powers is in place for a very good reason — Parliament is the only body that has the capabilities, time and resources to consider submissions from people in Samoa, (including experts and groups specialising in the relevant issues) in order to make the best laws possible that represent the will of the people. In contrast, the courts do not have the capabilities, time and resources to fully consider matters of great importance before making or amending the law (including the Constitution).
More fundamentally, judges and justices of the courts have not been elected by the people or appointed by elected officials based on their political views or sensibilities as MPs have. In fact, they have the constitutional mandate to act apolitically and objectively when interpreting and applying the law.
Therefore, I believe that the CA’s decision sets a dangerous precedent for other courts to possibly follow, where they have signalled to other judges and justices who’ll interpret the Constitution that they’re permitted to disregard clear and unequivocal words of the Constitution and insert their own words as they see fit.
2. The CA has encroached on the law-making powers of Parliament by creating its own process for Article 44(1A)
Another major part of the CA’s decision is the finding that a sixth woman can only be added only after all petitions and potential byelections have been completed.
For reasons similar to the ones I have given above, I argue that the CA’s creation of a process for Article 44(1A) was an overreach of their powers because it is only for Parliament to design and explicitly set out this process in the Constitution or any relevant legislation (i.e. the Electoral Act).
This was rightfully respected by Justice Tuatagaloa and Justice Vaai in the Supreme Court, who observed in their joint judgment that Parliament needed to provide:
“Some clarity as to the ‘process’ to be followed when Article 44(1A) is activated. There is no process provided in regards to a woman candidate appointed pursuant to Article 44(1A). Section 84 of the Electoral Act refers to successful candidates or elected candidates. Section 2 of the Electoral Act defines the word ‘election’ means the election of a Member in a general election or byelection to represent a constituency. The woman candidate coming in through Article 44(1A) is (in our view) not ‘elected’.”
Here, Justice Tuatagaloa and Justice Vaai acknowledge that Parliament (in 2013 and 2019) unfortunately did not provide a clear process for the activation of Article 44(1A). However, both justices chose not to go beyond their constitutional powers to engineer and create this process themselves.
Instead, they appreciated that it is only appropriate for Parliament to create this process lawfully and transparently after they have taken the time to fully consider the merits of different options and ideas.
Unfortunately, the CA did not show such respect for Parliament and the separation of powers and decided to engineer and create their own process for Article 44(1A) in less than three days.
In my view, the CA should have simply interpreted the clear and unambiguous words of Article 44(1A) as mentioned above, and stated that it was therefore unnecessary for them to discuss the process as this was a matter for Parliament to determine.
While the CA attempted to design their process with some regard to the practical realities surrounding election petitions, counter petitions and potential byelections — it was still wrong for them to create this process in the fraught context of a dispute in which arguments from parties, namely the appellants, are motivated by political gain.
Therefore, it would not be surprising if the rushed and unprincipled manner in which the CA created the process provides even more confusion, ambiguity, conflict and controversy in the near or distant future. In any case, it is hoped that the new Parliament takes the time needed to fix the problems with Article 44(1A), before designing a new process following its activation, fairly and democratically.
3. The CA’s process for Article 44 is unpragmatic for prolonging and further complicating Samoa’s constitutional crisis
Aside from the issues with the CA’s problematic interpretation of the Constitution, the CA’s decision should also be criticised as being unpragmatic (or in other words, impractical) for having the effect of prolonging and further complicating Samoa’s constitutional crisis.
The CA’s finding that a sixth woman can only be added after all petitions and potential byelections have been completed (and there are still only five women MPs), means that the addition of another woman MP could be several months away. This is due to the sheer volume of petitions that the courts are due to consider next week, a reality the CA was no doubt aware of.
While the courts are not necessarily required to be influenced by what is pragmatic and best for the general wellbeing and smooth running of the country, it is hoped that they at least do not go out of their way to make decisions that would create further uncertainty and delay in a country suffering from an already drawn out constitutional crisis.
Of course, there is already a degree of uncertainty around which party would hold the majority of seats due to the unprecedented number of petitions that have been filed and are yet to be heard,
However, adding the potential activation of Article 44(1A) to the mix does not help things at all. This has already been seen by how both the leaders of the FAST party and the HRPP have interpreted the CA’s decision to mean that their parties hold the majority in judgement and should be able to govern until the election petitions and any potential by-elections are completed.
In my view, had the CA interpreted Article 44(1A) in the correct, honest and principled manner (to find that the minimum number of seats for women is “five” and not six) this would not be a legitimate dispute as the leader of the HRPP would not have any real reason to believe that a sixth woman MP could be added as a 52nd seat in parliament in their favour.
FAST would then have a clearer path for transitioning into the government — a path which I believe they legitimately have because in my view, their convening of parliament was legitimate and constitutional in the extraordinary circumstances Samoa was facing. [NOTE: Although the constitutionality of FAST’s swearing-in on 24 May 2021 is another matter due to be heard by the courts on Friday, I have argued in a previous opinion piece that their swearing-in was constitutional and that the courts should declare this when they do rule on this case — most likely sometime next week.]
Another practical problem the CA could have (and should have) avoided was the risk of creating an even-numbered hung Parliament of 52, with each party having 26 seats. When Article 44(1A) was introduced in 2013, the parliament of that day (and any day up to the 2021 general election) didn’t foresee that its activation could lead to an even-numbered hung parliament which could create major issues in the future. For example, a hung 52 seated parliament (with 26 seats for both parties) could lead the Head of State to use their powers under Article 63 to dissolve parliament and call for a new general election on the grounds that the office of the Prime Minister has vacant beyond a “reasonable period” of time (Article 63(2)) or that the Prime Minister does not command the majority in parliament (Article 63(3)). With due respect, it can only be hoped that this wasn’t the underlying motivation behind the CA’s decision.
In any case, there is an urgent need for a government to come into power to govern Samoa. This is not only because Samoa is in a global pandemic, but also because the government should have already set and announced its annual budget by this time in the year. Therefore, the CA’s decision shows an unfortunate lack of pragmatism for which the people of Samoa will continue to bear the costs.
A case of ‘judicial activism’? Some might celebrate and defend the CA’s decision as a case of “judicial activism” because it was apparently decided in the interests of gender equality and human rights in Samoa.
“Judicial activism” is a term that refers to when judges go outside their apolitical and objective roles to become “activists” in the courtroom pursuing their political agendas. They do this by interpreting and applying laws in a way that is obviously incorrect and contrary to established legal principles because they believe that the outcome would be morally unacceptable and unjust according to their political beliefs if they did not.
One key instance of “judicial activism” in New Zealand was in the 1985 case of Finnigan v New Zealand Rugby Football. In this case, the Court of Appeal of NZ disregarded well established legal principles in order to prevent the All Blacks from touring South Africa during the nation’s apartheid era.
It is well known now that the justices hearing this case were influenced not only by anti-apartheid protests outside the courtroom but by their own values and beliefs against South Africa’s racist system.
Of course, anyone committed to anti-racism (and the fundamental human right to freedom from discrimination) would not question or fault the Court of Appeal of NZ for being judicial activists in the Finnigan case. However, in my view, the CA’s decision should not be seen or understood as a legitimate and justified case of “judicial activism” like that in Finnigan.
Some may disagree and argue that the need to have six women (rather than five) in Parliament is a critically urgent and important human rights and social justice issue that is analogous or comparable to the moral dilemma the NZ justices faced in the Finnigan case.
However, if anything, this litigation has shown that Article 44(1A) is a deeply flawed mechanism for ensuring the representation of women in Parliament and upholding Samoa’s obligations under the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). In my view, instead of further complicating a deeply flawed mechanism during a constitutional crisis, the CA should have upheld the observations of Justice Tuatagaloa and Justice Vaai in the Supreme Court to allow Parliament (and the people of Samoa whose voices they represent) to improve Samoa’s deeply entrenched gender inequity issue in the fair and transparent manner that is expected of a democratic state.
In terms of what a new gender-based quota system for Samoa would look like, it is clear that the new Parliament will need to pay closer attention to the laws and experiences of other democratic countries that have introduced similar gender-based quota laws, such as Finland, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark who have since achieved an average of 40 percent women in their parliaments.
It’s also important that the new Parliament tackle deeply entrenched gender inequity in Samoan politics more broadly. A 2015 report on “Political Representation and Women’s Empowerment in Samoa” by the Centre for Samoan Studies at the National University of Samoa (NUS) found that Article 44(1A) would “not address what this research found to be the core issue: the barriers to women’s equal participation in local government” and that Samoa does not have gender parity laws and candidate pre-selection mechanisms that other countries like France, Timor-Leste, Senegal and Rwanda have introduced to increase the number of women in their parliaments.
Similarly, Kiki Matire has commented that while Article 44(1A) would increase the representation of women in Samoa’s parliament, “much more needs to be done to address the cultural and tangible obstacles to women as political leaders”.
Fuimaono Dylan Asafo is a law lecturer at the Faculty of Law at the University of Auckland. He holds a Master of Laws from Harvard University and a Master of Laws (First Class Honours) from the University of Auckland. This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama describes FRIEND as a “proxy for the opposition”. Video: Fiji Village
By Dhanjay Deo in Suva
Opposition National Federation Party (NFP) leader Professor Biman Prasad says this week’s attack by Economy Minister Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum on the non-government organisation, Foundation for Rural Integrated Enterprises Development (FRIEND) is “shameful and disgraceful”.
Prasad said this in Parliament yesterday after Sayed-Khaiyum had claimed that FRIEND was making a “lot of political mileage” for its work and was the only organisation that the opposition kept talking about.
Dr Prasad said FRIEND was doing a lot of good work for the people.
Sayed-Khaiyum had said in Parliament that there were several other faith-based organisations and NGOs that were doing their work quietly and did not seek public attention. They also did not get in touch with politicians.
He said there were many members of NGOs and civil society organisations that had given food ration packs to members of the public who needed it as they had not been working in areas like Nadi and Lautoka.
Fiji Village tried to get comments from FRIEND director Sashi Kiran, who later said she was “flabbergasted” by the attack.
Fiji Labour Party leader Mahendra Chaudhry also described Sayed-Khaiyum’s attack on FRIEND, well known for its charitable works, as not only unwarranted but “disgusting and shameful”.
Chaudhry said FRIEND was not a political organisation and its work in promoting the welfare of the rural communities and assisting the needy was much appreciated and admired by the people.
He said thousands of people were grateful for the help they had received from FRIEND when the government failed to reach them.
Chaudhry said instead of being critical, Sayed-Khaiyum should have acknowledged and thanked FRIEND for their good work.
The leaders of Samoa’s two main political parties have finally found something to agree upon since the April 9 general election – they will meet.
Following yesterday’s Court of Appeal ruling, both the caretaker prime minister Tuila’epa Sa’ilele Malielegaoi and prime minister-elect, FAST Party leader Fiame Naomi Mata’afa, announced they plan to meet.
Fiame told local media that with those numbers, they will be looking to meet with Tuila’epa to discuss his departure from office.
“We hope to meet with Tuila’epa, the leader of the HRPP and one who has been at the helm of our government, so we can discuss a transition based on the results as they stand of 26 FAST and 25 HRPP,” she said.
Tuila’epa, however, said he believed that his government was still the caretaker government until all election petitions and any resulting by-elections were completed.
In its decision the court said it held that the determination under Article 44(1A) of the Constitution must be made on the basis of the general election results as finally determined after the results of any electoral petitions under the Electoral Act 2019 and byelections pursuant to the terms of that Act.
Tuila’epa said it is clear that Parliament cannot convene until then.
“We have a chance to settle this in the traditional way,” he said.
It is not known when the meeting will take place.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
A Court of Appeal decision today may pave the way for the FAST party to assume control of the Samoan government.
Samoa’s Court of Appeal has voided the legal challenge by a Human Rights Protection Party (HRPP) women’s candidate, who said she was wrongly removed as an MP.
Ali’imalemanu Alofa Tuuau had been appointed as the sixth woman’s MP by the Electoral Commissioner, but then had her appointment rescinded in a decision by the Supreme Court.
That decision gave the newcomer Fa’atuatua i le Atua Samoa ua Tasi (FAST) party the slimmest majority in the new Parliament, and this latest decision now confirms that.
But, as FAST party lawyer Taulapapa Brenda Heather-Latu explained, the court also ruled that six women MPs was the correct number under the Samoan system of reserving parliamentary seats for women.
“But, that the decision whether or not to add a woman to make up the six cannot be determined until after the electoral petitions and the byelections are complete,” she said.
“So that there is certainty as to the exact members that make up the Parliament.”
Attempts by FAST to assume power have been thwarted at several points by HRPP leader Tuila’epa Sa’ilele Malielegaoi, who had been prime minister since 1999.
What does this decision mean? HRPP leader Tuila’epa welcomed the Court of Appeal’s decision in clarifying the interpretation of Article 44 of the Constitution, which allows for no less than 10 percent of the elected members of parliament to be women.
The decision clarified that 10 percent of the elected members should be calculated as six women, and not five, as the FAST Party argued.
But the Court of Appeal did not allow the Electoral Commissioner’s appeal, and said he acted unconstitutionally when he appointed the sixth woman member, Ali’imalemanu Alofa Tuuau.
The Appeal Court panel of Chief Justice Satiu Simativa Perese and Justices Tafaoimalo Leilani Tuala-Warren and Fepulea’i Ameperosa Roma said the sixth women’s seat could not be declared until all election petitions, and any subsequent byelections, were completed.
Speaking on TV3 this afternoon, Tuila’epa confirmed that his party now had 25 seats.
The ruling indicated that if a woman should win a byelection then there would be no need to activate Article 44 of the Constitution.
Tuila’epa said he would again seek a meeting with the leadership of FAST to discuss the way forward, but he argued that his caretaker government would remain until all petitions and byelections had been completed.
Last week, the FAST party swore themselves in as the next government, installing leader Fiame Naomi Mata’afa as the Prime Minister.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Samoa’s 59th Independence Day has come and gone, without the usual fanfare and intense patriotism we have grown accustomed to from previous years.
What we’ve seen for the last few weeks and indeed months has tested the strength of our democracy at the highest of levels and the lowest of lows.
Our Independence document, our Constitution, set out the supreme law for self-governance. The preamble outlines what Samoa stands for as a sovereign nation.
IN THE HOLY NAME OF GOD, THE ALMIGHTY, THE EVER LOVING WHEREAS sovereignty over the Universe belongs to the Omnipresent God alone and the authority to be exercised by the people of Samoa within the limits prescribed by God’s commandments is a sacred heritage. WHEREAS the Leaders of Samoa have declared that Samoa should be an Independent State based on Christian principles and Samoan custom and tradition AND WHEREAS the Constitutional Convention, representing the people of Samoa, has resolved to frame a Constitution for the Independent State of Samoa WHEREIN the State should exercise its powers and authority through the chosen representatives of the people WHEREIN should be secured to all the people their fundamental rights WHEREIN the impartial administration of justice should be fully maintained AND WHEREIN the integrity of Samoa, its independence, and all its rights should be safeguarded NOW THEREFORE, we the people of Samoa in our Constitutional Convention, this 28th day of October 1960, do hereby adopt, enact and give to ourselves this Constitution.
The founding document of our government has undergone the toughest stress test it has ever had to go through, with poking and prodding and pulling and tugging from legal minds, concerned citizens, inquisitive media and the endless electioneering of politicians.
All while the silent backdrop of a global pandemic and economic recession keeps us wary of possibly greater perils.
So what is there to feel proud of this Independence Day?
Well, despite the challenges and political instability, we have not descended in to chaos or a state of anarchy. The people of this country continue to keep the engines moving, whether they are the struggling private sector or threatened public service.
While the question of Parliamentary majority remains unknown with an appeal pending before the Courts, and both the Faatuatua i le Atua Samoa ua Tasi (FAST) and Human Rights Protection Party (HRPP) staking their claims on the executive government, Samoa has remained peaceful and mostly respectful of each other.
Where we find deficiencies in leadership, we take the reins and steer our own families and communities towards peaceful accord.
There may be passionate differences of opinion, but for the most part we are still in this rocky boat together.
As we have seen with the unusual sight of protests in recent weeks, our people are able to defy cultural norms and use their constitutional rights to protest peacefully.
The Samoa Solidarity International Group (SSIG) protests were led by a woman. The Women Empowerment march was led by women. These are the pae and auli of our families and communities. They are generally seen to be the background advisors and soothsayers. And yet there they were, front and center on the national stage, speaking up for what they believe.
This year’s Independence may be a muted affair, but its significance is great as we remember the rights and privileges that come with being citizens of a sovereign nation.
All citizens have the right to freedom of speech and expression; to assemble peaceably and without arms; to form associations or unions and to move freely throughout Samoa and reside in any part.
We have seen this exemplified in recent weeks and months with the people of this country using their right to assemble and listen to election campaigning, to form supporter groups and debate one another on the merits of their chosen political affiliations.
This newspaper has also used its privilege to bring to light issues that best reflect its values and adherence to journalism standards and ethics.
All people are equal before the law and entitled to equal protection under the law. We have seen this in action as our Police have done their best to provide protection and lawful interventions across the board during this political crisis.
The Head of State’s Independence Address calls for a return to Christian values as a way to solve the political impasse. He called on the people of Samoa to reflect and remember our ancestors and those who fought for Samoa’s freedom, whose sacrifices enabled us to live as an independent nation.
This was his first public statement in over a week; since his proclamation to suspend an earlier call for Parliament to convene. He called on all leaders – church, government, private sector, political – and every citizen to seek guidance from God to solve the current political impasse.
The carefully worded speech by the Head of State acknowledges that our crisis will take all of us to fix. His reference to youth is also noteworthy.
“On this day, the youth of Samoa should feel the special pride of being citizens of a free nation; let us ensure this is a legacy they will be proud to pass on,” he said.
At this very moment in our history, the impasse is not a legacy anyone should be proud to pass on. But the peacefulness of our people, in this crisis, most definitely is.
Last year’s announcement of a muted national celebration, without a parade and the singing and dancing of villages assigned the honour of entertaining our dignitaries and our country, was met with disappointment. But we accepted the decision due to concerns over the coronavirus.
This year, a call to have another virtual ceremony to mark our 59th Independence, appears to be less about public health concerns and more about our political instability.
After all, how would you host an official celebration with two prime ministers staking their claim on this country?
So we are grateful for the resilience and independent spirit of our people, who took it upon themselves to host their own celebrations.
As shown in our Tuesday edition, Samoa Primary held their own Independence Day fete on Monday with tributes to Samoan tradition such as artwork displays, dancing and singing, the preparation and serving of Samoan food. They even had a float parade.
“Every year’s celebration is remembering our forefathers who have fought for the independence of Samoa and for that we give the opportunity to the students to expand their minds and research former leaders and also those who were fighting for the sake of our country,” said principal Anne Leauga.
On Independence Day itself, we witnessed a few community events starting with Falelauniu, where the Church of Nazareth braved the rain and put on a parade in the early hours of Tuesday morning.
Pastor Toeleiu Alatise told this newspaper that he hoped the youth find the spirit of Independence, despite there not being any national celebrations.
“It took two weeks to prepare this event for the children as we had received news that there will be no Independence celebrations, so we prepared this,” he said.
The Marist Old Pupils Association also came together and hosted their own Independence parade, flag raising and celebrations.
The keynote address was given by the Association’s Patron, 81-year-old Tuala Tom Annandale.
“I am happy to see each and every one of our Marist brothers participating in the celebration of the 59th independence day of Samoa,” he said.
“We leave politics aside and focus on the celebration itself as we are all one; we are all called the children of Mother Mary.
“Once you enter the gate, whatever title you have will stay behind gates. We are known as one.”
In whatever way you celebrated Samoa’s 59th Independence Day, we hope you did so in the spirit of appreciation for the great privilege we have been given, to live freely and to choose our own paths as individuals and as a nation.
The Samoa Observer editorial on 2 June 2021. Republished with permission.
“We, the TPNPB under the leadership of General Goliath Tabuni reject [a bipartite] dialogue with Jakarta,” said Sambom, reports CNN Indonesia.
However, the armed resistance is urging the Indonesian government to hold tripartite negotiations with the TPNPB-OPM Tabuni leadership and all components of the Papuan liberation movement who have been resisting Jakarta rule.
This dialogue, he said, must be mediated by a third party, and the third party must come from the United Nations.
“We don’t have an agenda for a dialogue, but our agenda is tripartite negotiations, namely negotiations mediated by a UN organisational body,” he said.
“So a Jakarta-Papua dialogue will not be realised, if the main actor is not involved,” he explained.
Earlier, the TPNPB-OPM designated Puncak Ilaga, Papua, as a battleground against joint forces from the TNI (Indonesian military) and Polri (Indonesian police). It designated this region because it was far away from civilian settlements and would not endanger Papuan civilians.
Negotiations rather than war On the other hand, the TNI was not concerned about the designation of Puncak Ilaga as a battleground to fight the OPM.
However, Regional Representatives Council (DPD) member from Papua, Filep Wamafma, is asking that the Indonesian government endeavour to open diplomatic communications with the TPNPB-OPM rather than conducting an open war in Ilaga.
“I hope that there will be political diplomacy between the TNI, Polri and the OPM in order to reach the best solution, to safeguard civilians,” Wamafma told CNN Indonesian.
CNN Indonesia has attempted to contact Join Regional Defence Command III spokesperson Colonel Czi IGN Suriastawa and Coordinating Minister for Security, Politics and Legal Affairs Mahfud MD by text message and telephone about the offer to mediate with the involvement of the UN.
Neither Suriastawa nor Mahfud had responded when this article was published.
Even by the standards of previous Israeli coalitions, the new government that’s just been announced includes strange bedfellows.
The eight parties in the coalition range from the right-wing nationalist Yamina party to social-democratic Labor and left-wing Meretz. And for the first time in Israeli history, the coalition includes an Arab-Israeli party, Ra’am, whose four Knesset (parliament) seats enable the coalition to reach a majority.
Another oddity of the new government is that Yamina leader Naftali Bennett will have the first two-year turn of a rotating four-year prime ministership with Ya’ir Lapid, leader of centrist party Yesh Atid.
The new government still has to survive a confidence vote in the Knesset, which is expected within the next week.
Given its ideological differences, the common goal uniting the new coalition is ousting Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been prime minister since 2009. Netanyahu is desperate to hold onto power, not least because being in office provides him with some protection against fraud charges now making their way through the courts.
Netanyahu was bolstered by his handling of the recent conflict with Hamas, but it wasn’t enough for him to hold onto power. Sebastian Scheiner/AP
In the coming days, Netanyahu is expected to offer blandishments to everyone in the coalition in an effort to entice even one to defect. If he can do that, a new election would be likely (Israel’s fifth since 2019), giving him another chance to survive.
Ra’am leader Mansour Abbas will also be under pressure. Other Israeli-Arab parties and Palestinians in the Occupied Territories have criticised him as a defector. His response is that by joining the coalition he will win increased social and economic benefits for all Arab-Israelis.
No new impetus for a two-state solution
A further consequence of the coalition’s fragile make-up: it will almost certainly eschew initiatives to advance negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority for a two-state solution.
Bennett, the prime-minister-in-waiting, is in some ways more right-wing than Netanyahu.
Netanyahu paid lip service to a two-state solution during his long time in office, mainly to placate the US, though he never sought to advance it. Bennett, by comparison, has made his name in Israeli politics through strong support of the West Bank settler movement. He has also rejected a separate Palestinian state and called for Israeli annexation of the settler blocs.
Any moves in that direction are probably on hold for now because they would almost certainly cause Meretz and Ra’am to leave the coalition. Instead, the new government is expected to concentrate on domestic concerns, chief among them rebuilding the economy in the wake of the pandemic.
This leaves Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza in a bind – but also with an opportunity.
On the face of it, they face a seemingly dire situation if the new government is confirmed. The Palestinians already feel deserted by two Arab states, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, when they signed an accord with Israel last year. They must now be fearful that Ra’am’s move undermines them further.
Moreover, the Palestinian movement is split between Fatah, which predominates in the West Bank, and Hamas, which has ruled Gaza since 2007. Israeli politicians regularly claim Israel is ready to negotiate but has “no partner for peace”.
Israel, regardless of its governing coalition, is comfortable with the current situation. It’s under no pressure to make concessions to the Palestinians. And when conflict breaks out with Hamas, it deploys overwhelming force to quell it – “mowing the grass,” as Israeli military strategists describe it.
The US approach is little more than formulaic. Following the latest Gaza flare-up, President Joe Biden called for resumption of talks on a two-state solution – which his advisers, if not he, must know is now out of reach.
But Biden has also made clear he wants out of the Middle East so he can focus on more pressing foreign policy problems, like China.
There remain two alternatives for the Palestinians: maintaining the status quo with recurring conflict stretching into the future – or a one-state solution.
Revisiting a one-state solution
The one-state solution would merge Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip into one country. This idea started to emerge among Palestinians as Israeli settlements in the West Bank grew after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and took on permanent status.
It fell out of favour when Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, signed the Oslo Accords in 1993. This agreement provided a framework for negotiations aimed at a two-state solution. But these talks have continued to no avail.
A one-state solution is not perfect, either. For starters, it would require Palestinians to give up their claims to a separate state. They would have to acknowledge Israel’s creeping annexation in the West Bank has made a second state in historical Palestine unviable. They would have to accept they are part of one state controlled by the Israeli government.
To jettison the two-state ideal would be contrary to the self-determination that generations of Palestinian nationalists have demanded and fought for. Both Fatah and Hamas would likely both reject it, as they would also lose power in the areas they nominally control.
Any Israeli government would also likely reject such a proposal. To accept it would undermine the Zionist ideal on which Israel was established.
Palestinians in Israel and the Occupied Territories already outnumber Jewish Israelis. As such, it would no longer be realistic for Israeli governments to designate Israel a Jewish state, which happened when the Knesset passed the “nation-state law” in 2018 – effectively making Palestinian Israelis second-class citizens.
What it would take to get there
But under such a system, Palestinians could demand equal citizenship, with all the civil rights now denied to them. And for Israel, it would offer a path towards a real peace, though it would require major compromises on its founding ideology.
To counter the self-interest of their politicians and hard-line attitudes on both sides, ordinary Palestinians would have to start a grassroots movement to push for this solution. This would require the emergence of more enlightened Palestinian leadership. It would also require support from liberal Jewish Israelis.
Both might be difficult to achieve. Although support for one state has increased among Palestinians, it’s still only favoured by a third of those living in the West Bank and Gaza, according to a recent poll. And just 10% of Jewish Israelis support such a plan, according to a 2020 poll.
Critics of the one-state solution will say it is unrealistic, that there is too much accumulated hatred on both sides. But at this stage Palestinians have nothing to lose. As it is, they are effectively living in one state now, with Palestinians in Israel having fewer rights than Israelis, and Palestinians in the Occupied Territories living under Israeli laws they have no say in making.
And Palestinians would be putting the negotiating ball firmly in Israel’s court – which is where Israel’s new government does not want it.
Ian Parmeter does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has announced a new temporary payment to support workers locked down in Melbourne.
This follows growing pressure to provide specific support to those without work and heading into their second week of lockdown — particularly since JobKeeper ended in March.
What is it, who can get it, and who misses out?
What is the payment?
The payment is $500 or $325 — depending on a perspon’s pre-lockdown work hours. The payment is temporary and will be made on a week-by-week basis.
It will be part of a broader national scheme, called a “temporary COVID disaster payment”. It will be paid if a lockdown lasts for more than a week and the federal government defines a location as a “hotspot”.
Who can get it?
Those in greater Melbourne will be able to apply from next Tuesday, June 8. The payment will be available to people over 17 who have less than $10,000 in liquid assets.
Melbourne has been locked down four times since the pandemic began. Luis Ascui/AAP
In terms of the two levels of payment, people who usually work more than 20 hours a week will be eligible for the full $500. Those who work fewer, will receive the $325.
A person must declare that had it not been for lockdown, they would have worked and will now lose income. They must have used up all their pandemic sick leave or other leave if their employer offers it. This does not include annual leave.
We are talking about somebody getting through the next week. Someone who would normally be in an economic situation where every dollar counts.
Given this, it is surprising people who receive other kinds of support payments from the federal government, like JobSeeker, will not be able to access the payment.
Virtually by definition, people receiving income support are the poorest in the community. Our income support system has also been designed to encourage people in this situation to work part-time to supplement their very low payments, which are some of the lowest among developed nations in the OECD.
We know many welfare recipients work
Government data also tells significant numbers of people who receive welfare payments also do some work.
April 2021 figures from the Department of Social Services show nearly 29% of women and 16% of men receiving JobSeeker were receiving earnings (other than their welfare payments). This adds up to 22% of the total 1.06 million Australians on JobSeeker.
Of the nearly 117,000 people receiving Youth Allowance for the unemployed, 29% of the women and 19% of the men (24% of the total) were also receiving earnings.
Of the total number of people receiving either JobSeeker or Youth Allowance for the unemployed, around 23% were in Victoria. This suggests there are more than 50,000 in these groups potentially facing income losses in the state.
On top of this, nearly 30% of people receiving Parenting Payment Single and 40% of those receiving Youth Allowance as students also reported earnings in March 2021 .
The number in Melbourne will of course be less than the overall state figure, as many restrictions will lift for regional Victoria by Friday.
Also, those on JobSeeker, Youth Allowance or Parenting Payment will receive some partial compensation for lost earnings because of the income tests applying to these payments. For every dollar they earn over the income test free area, their welfare support drops by between 40% and 60% of their earnings. So, any losses in earnings will mean their payments increase correspondingly.
Debate should not just be about who pays
Nevertheless, these groups — clearly those who have the greatest difficulty in making ends meet and paying rent — will see their incomes fall.
National cabinet is due to discuss how the scheme will be funded on Friday. In among the debate about who will pick up the cheque, it is important that all those adversely affected by the necessary lockdowns are able to continue to meet their existing financial needs.
Peter Whiteford has received funding from the Australian Research Council and the Department of Social Services. He is a Policy Advisor to the Australian Council of Social Service and a Fellow of the Centre for Policy Development.
Peter Carroll and Mandela Mathia in The Cherry Orchard, Belvoir St Theatre.Belvoir/Brett Boardman
Review: The Cherry Orchard, directed by Eamon Flack, Belvoir.
In 1904, when Anton Chekhov wrote his last and greatest play, The Cherry Orchard, Russia was still 13 years away from the Bolshevik Revolution. But the conditions for those future events were already all around him.
Rapid industrialisation and urbanisation had ensured old relationships with the land and between people were no longer sustainable. Serfdom, which had tied peasants to landowners in the bonds of slavery, had been abolished a generation before. Old certainties were slipping away in favour of a future that was probably already there but out of focus.
In the play, the cherry trees on the vast estate of the bankrupt landowner, Ranevskaya, have become so old and tired they only fruit every second year. There is nobody left who can remember what to do with them when they do.
And all the while, the sound of axes chopping down the trees. Belvoir/Brett Boardman
A future out of focus
Belvoir’s production is timely. We are still emerging, bleary-eyed into a world we know has changed, and has been changing economically and environmentally for decades now. But we have no collective capacity to see or to control the horizons against which this change is taking place. Will this future that is already happening have room for people who live, behave and consume like we do? Probably not.
So, how should we behave now? Is it okay to cling to the past for as long as we can? Or should we already be living differently, be different? What does it mean to still laugh and enjoy company if these are the very things that might be shielding us from reality?
At the height of the gloriously insane third act of the play, Ranevskaya — here played by Pamela Rabe in a role she embraces with all of her considerable resources — shouts out, “This might not have been the best moment for a party!” You think?
As she and her extended family await the fate of the auction on their home, they drink, laugh, sing and dance. Until they don’t.
But Chekhov and director Eamon Flack both want us to laugh, and to laugh loud at the absurdities and ironies of the situation in which they find themselves. Chekhov insisted on his play being a comedy and Flack draws out its capacities for absurdity with what Belvoir audiences have come to recognise as his customary generosity of spirit.
This is a big, warm-hearted production. And the third act is central to this as characters all cling to actions and habits that make increasingly little sense in terms of their actual situation: from the brilliantly comic turns of Lucia Mastrantone as the governess Charlotta to the futile love affairs of Sarah Meacham’s Dunyasha.
Flack has a great directorial eye for presenting actions and gestures that have become unmoored from the social contexts that gave them meaning.
This sense of a future that is already disrupting the present condenses itself in the character of Lopakhin, here played brilliantly by Mandela Mathia. Lopakhin is the offspring of serfs who previously worked on the estate. He is now a wealthy bidder for the property.
Casting a Black actor in this role vividly adds racial context around the narrative of slave turned financial saviour.
Serf turned saviour, played by Mandela Mathia. Belvoir/Brett Boardman
The play does not shy from its potential for tragedy. The last words go to the family’s old butler, here played to comic perfection by the inimitable Peter Carroll.
Firs is a servant who regrets the emancipation of the serfs and wishes he were still indentured to the family. As he lies down, alone and left behind in the deserted old house, he finally faces his situation: “Well, that was my life,” he says. “It’s just as if I’d never lived at all”.
All this to the soundtrack of the axes finally being taken to the cherry orchard, now auctioned off to recover the family’s debts. How to craft a comedy in the face of an ending that is seemingly so bleak?
Chekhov was famously upset The Cherry Orchard’s first director, Konstantin Stanislawski, played it for more fully for is there an extra word? its pathos and tragedy than its levity. But the ongoing critical question of the play’s tone or genre misses the point.
The play is a tragicomedy: not just a mix of the tragic and comic but an attempt to come to terms with their complex overlap.
Key to genuine tragicomedy is a sense of forgiveness: that we can forgive ourselves as much as we can forgive others. Take the ending of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale. For that play to achieve the wonder of its final moments, the characters have to have gone through years of coming to terms with the tragic events that have set up the play’s narratives of loss and estrangement.
There is potential for forgiveness, too, in The Cherry Orchard, but it is a mark of the play’s modernity that we can’t quite be sure it will bring off a happy ending.
Playing tragedy for laughs. Belvoir/Brett Boardman
In one of the most affecting scenes of Belvoir’s production, Rabe’s Ranevskaya confronts the young student, Petya (Priscilla Doueihy plays the traditionally male role), angry at her idealistic and unforgiving belief she might be able to rise above current circumstances.
The older woman demands a more forgiving attitude that accommodates the attachments of the past. And that forgiveness is forthcoming, both from the young student and the production. She — and we — understand why so many of these people want to blind themselves to the abuses of the past and attach themselves to its comforting memories. And we forgive them for it.
But this forgiveness doesn’t bring reconciliation. The future happens anyway, whether we dance or not. The cherry orchard still gets chopped down.
Huw Griffiths does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
The December 9 2019 eruption struck when 47 people were on the small island; 22 people died and survivors were left with severe or critical injuries.
But what will really be on trial when proceedings resume, most likely in September? Ultimately, it comes down to how the individuals present on the day perceived the natural hazard and risk, and especially its uncertainty.
This understanding rests on processes we have in place to communicate and manage risk for workers and tourists exposed to unpredictable natural environments. It is really these processes that should be on trial.
Scientists are at the frontline of understanding volcanic nature. They use physical, chemical and geological methods to delve into volcanic systems.
This knowledge is the first step in a long chain: feeding models of volcanic processes, which are used to produce hazard forecasts that, finally, are converted to hazard maps and public warnings. But each step has its uncertainties, and no scientist is certain of the future — only the odds.
To monitor a volcano like Whakaari, we cannot look directly below the eruption vent. Instead, we interpret internal processes indirectly, using seismic sensors, gas output, heat flow and satellite measurements — and then work out what the data mean. There isn’t always a straight answer.
For instance, if gas and heat output drop, it might mean the system is cooling or magma has waned. Or, it could be that a clay or liquid sulphur seal has formed, trapping gas and heat. The difference in risk and consequence is obviously huge.
Whakaari White Island has a network of instruments that measure seismic waves. Phil Walter/Getty Images
We rely heavily on seismic data (ground vibrations mostly too small for people to feel) collected by GeoNet in real time. But the volcanic system is “noisy” thanks to ocean waves, wind or rain. Some seismic signals are distinct, such as the cracking of rock when magma rises, others are diffuse, such as fluids moving through voids.
We are constantly learning about new features of Whakaari’s volcanic system. The vent area changes after each eruption and is affected by deep and shallow processes, such as magma intrusion, a lake over the crater or landslide debris.
Magma rises in unusual ways, sometimes abruptly, but mainly slowly at Whakaari. It often just stalls well below the crater, slowly crystallising and degassing in place.
Communicating monitoring information to forecast hazard and risk requires a degree of simplification. It is generally impossible to say in black and white whether people should go onto a volcano. Thresholds of acceptable risk need to be set, often with little quantitative guidance in terms of the probability of an eruption.
What went wrong at Whakaari
For those guides traversing the volcano every day, familiarity breeds a false impression of safety. Even with a full understanding of risks, after the novelty of the first few visits, fear dissipates and familiarity leads to an expectation that it will always be safe.
But risk is cumulative with exposure time. Feeling safer over time is the opposite of reality. How much of a factor was overconfidence of tourism operators who had visited Whakaari for decades without major incident?
People gathering for a memorial service one year after the eruption of Whakaari White Island. Phil Walter/Getty Images
Different people are involved in decision making in tourism activities, and they perceive hazard differently. For a visitor present for two hours, the risk is much lower due to their brief exposure, but how can the magnitude of risk be expressed to short-term visitors adequately?
Say there is a 0.1% chance of an eruption today: would you visit the volcano and take the 1 in 1,000 risk? But visit every day over a year, and that grows to a 1 in 3 chance.
A better approach is to distinguish days when it is safe (say, 1 in 10,000 risk) from those that are marked as “eruption possible” (1 in 50). These assessments are possible now, although they are plagued by data uncertainties, human biases and methodological arguments.
One focus during the trial will be risk messaging. Two weeks before the eruption, the Volcanic Alert Level was changed to 2 (level 3 means an eruption is occurring). The last communication before the event had contrasting messages:
The monitoring observations bear some similarities with those seen during the 2011-2016 period when Whakaari/White Island was more active and stronger volcanic activity occurred.
And:
While the [fountaining] activity is contained to the far side of the lake, the current level of activity does not pose a direct hazard to visitors.
This shows how difficult it is to address uncertainty in observation through to forecasting. With 20/20 hindsight it is easy to judge the outcome, even if it is grossly unfair to those doing their best at the time to provide expert judgement and balance.
An added factor is that Whakaari is privately owned and sits in an unusual administrative “grey” zone. It was unclear who would have a mandate to “close” the island. While GNS Science provided warning information, it had no jurisdiction or control.
This brings into question the role of the National Emergency Management Authority (NEMA), local authorities and indeed the owners of the island.
One of the most important considerations we must take forward from the tragedy is the cumulative nature of volcanic risk. The length of exposure time is critical. In basic risk calculations, using conservative figures and OECD accepted life-safety models, repeated visits to Whakaari by tour guides place them near unacceptable limits.
To get better at forecasting different levels of eruption risk requires advances in our basic science, as well as automated systems that can dispassionately judge risk and raise concerns. It also requires a more rigorous regime that ties warning systems to restrictions in access.
Even with this, the compounding uncertainties of how we measure and interpret this natural system mean it will never be completely safe.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nancy Baxter, Professor and Head of Melbourne School of Population & Global Health, The University of Melbourne
James Ross/AAP
A man from Wollert, a suburb in Melbourne’s north, breezed into Melbourne from South Australian hotel quarantine, stopped at a 7-11, had a curry, shopped in Epping, took a train, and at some point, had a passing encounter with a stranger. Perhaps he coughed or spoke, or was simply breathing, but that was enough for a waft of aerosol to transmit COVID-19 to Melbourne’s missing link.
Three weeks later, at least 63 people in Victoria are infected with the Kappa variant (B.1.617.1), the whole of Victoria is in lockdown, there’s political conflict and fallout about South Australia quarantine and the bungled aged care vaccine rollout, and Victorians are rushing to get vaccinated.
Let’s rewind time and pick an alternate universe. Let’s say the Wollert man returns to Melbourne from quarantine in Adelaide, stops at a 7-11, has a curry, left his keys at the restaurant and had to go back and get them before going to shop in Epping. Luckily, he had no fleeting encounters with a stranger where aerosol wafted from him to them carrying the virus. Melbourne escaped a lockdown, without even knowing it, all because a man forgot his keys.
Life is random, and COVID is very much so. A difference in seemingly innocuous circumstances can lead to very different outcomes.
The key point is that chance matters. It’s unlikely Victoria is doing anything that “makes us” more likely to have outbreaks leading to lockdowns.
The butterfly effect
Even a very small difference early in a chain of events can lead to a vastly different outcome.
This might be a potential superspreader deciding to go hiking alone for the weekend, not to his Aunt’s birthday party. Or an aged care worker picking up an extra shift at a second facility. Or a man from Wollert forgetting his keys.
In simulation modelling, we call this “stochasticity”. We incorporate stochasticity into our models to reflect the chance events which happen in real life. Using this approach to modeling, when we simulate transmission of COVID-19 infections in groups of people, we see very different outcomes each time the model is run, even when the parameters we set for the model are exactly the same.
Each run shows us a different possible unfolding of the future. This is because a seemingly small random difference can alter the whole future.
In our COVID-19 Pandemic Tradeoffs website, you can see this for yourself by drilling down to look at some of the 100 runs (stochastically varying) we do for each of 600+ scenarios. Each individual scenario has the same “initial conditions”, including the same reproductive rate, which refers to how many people on average one person with the virus will infect. But there’s still a huge component of chance in each of its 100 runs.
Author provided
For example, the graph above shows 100 stochastic simulations of what the daily infection rate with COVID-19 might be in Victoria under the following circumstances:
if we continue to have ongoing COVID-19 introductions, due to inadequacies in our hotel quarantine system
if our vaccine roll out was progressing as originally planned (remember the October timeline?)
if the vaccine reduced transmission moderately well
if we relax our thresholds to go into lockdown as our vaccine coverage increases. So, if we used a NSW-like moderate elimination approach early on during Phase 1 of the vaccine rollout, and over time evolved into a more South Korea-like tight suppression approach in Phase 2B when we are vaccinating all remaining adults.
Each line represents a run of the simulation.
The key thing to note is how the runs vary from each other. In some cases the infections fizzle out. In others, case numbers rise. Because of chance events, each simulation of the future looks different. But now is different from last year due to a more infectious variant.
The figure below is for the exact same scenario as above, except the infectiousness of the virus is higher, more in line with the Kappa (B.1.617.1) variant we’re now dealing with in Victoria.
Some of the runs now have high daily infection rates (by Australian standards), but notably in some scenarios the infection rate continues to be low. This is how random chance events play out on a population level.
Author provided
What about contact tracing, weather, and good public transport?
Contacting tracing was inadequate in Victoria at the start of the pandemic, but since our second wave, our contact tracing has been outstanding. Deficiencies there do not explain the frequency of our lockdowns.
Could it be our interconnectedness and good public transportation? Well, with outbreaks affecting many commuter cities — think Phoenix and Los Angeles in the United States — it doesn’t appear travelling in your car and staying in your suburb protects you.
We have had lockdowns in summer and in winter, so our colder climate does not necessarily explain it either.
What makes Melbourne distinct in terms of culture and geography can never explain why the Wollert man transmitted COVID to the missing link. At the end of the day we have chance, stochasticity, and some butterflies not flying our way. We have just been unlucky.
Oh, and if we want to improve our luck, let’s do something about hotel quarantine.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
As Melbourne prepares to begin a second week of lockdown, it’s important to recognise the serious toll this is likely to take on many people’s mental health.
Research during earlier COVID lockdowns in Australia found lockdowns were associated with poorer mental health, such as symptoms of depression and anxiety, among young people and adults.
A variety of factors play into this — from financial stress, to concerns about contracting COVID-19, to disruptions to work or study, to separation from friends and family.
For Melburnians, this latest lockdown will come as an especially upsetting setback. Victoria faced the longest lockdown in the country last year, and in recent months there’s been largely no COVID in the community.
If you’re a Melburnian and you’re feeling more stressed, uncertain, anxious, lonely or burnt out, or are worrying more about COVID-19, these reactions are completely normal.
But there are a variety of ways you can look after your mental health during this time, which will hopefully make it a little easier.
1. Stay connected with others
Lockdown can be extremely lonely, especially for people who are separated from loved ones, or living alone. Fortunately, the “single social bubble” is again in place, where people who live alone or single parents can nominate one person who is able to visit their home.
Keeping in touch with others — via phone, text, social media, or in other ways — can help avoid isolation and depression. Plan these catch ups so they are in your diary.
2. Think about what’s in your control, and what’s not
When facing the prospect of more uncertainty, disruption, and plans turned upside down, it can seem futile to have any expectations at all. You may be left feeling helpless.
Take the time to acknowledge this, but focus on things you can still do, and that you enjoy, or the small things you can do each day to make the day better. For example, doing a hobby you enjoy, exercising, relaxing, listening to music, or watching TV.
Focusing on the smallest of positives, the silver linings, or the things you are grateful for, can help improve mood.
It also helps to recalibrate your expectations so you’re not holding yourself or other people to unrealistic standards (which can cause more distress). Try asking yourself what you’re expecting of yourself or someone else and whether that’s realistic right now. Maybe good enough is good enough, just for one more week.
Getting a good night’s sleep, doing some physical activity, and eating healthily can help give you more energy, motivation, and help manage the emotional fallout of the extended lockdown. Limiting alcohol and drugs is also key.
Looking after your physical health can be helpful for your mental health. Jonathan Borba/Unsplash
4. Manage anger and frustration
Repeated lockdowns are likely to evoke feelings of frustration and resentment. We might vent our anger in ways we wouldn’t normally, that make us feel ashamed or hurt our relationships.
If you feel an outburst bubbling up, step out of the room or away from your phone. Spend ten minutes writing down what you’re feeling and who is to blame. This is just for you, so don’t censor yourself. Once you have your thoughts down on paper, you’ll likely be calmer and clearer.
Then, ask yourself what more you need to know about the situation and the people in it before yelling or pointing fingers. Try asking questions rather than hurling accusations. A bit more information or another person’s perspective can soothe anger and help us understand each other better.
For those who work, be mindful of the hours you’re working and the amount of time you’re “switched on” — for example looking at emails — even after you’ve clocked off.
Working from home blurs the boundaries between home and work life, and increases the tendency to work harder, for longer. Being mindful of this, ensuring you’re taking breaks, and switching off at night can help reduce exhaustion and burnout.
If you feel like your colleagues or boss are expecting things you can’t deliver at the moment, consider talking to them and coming up with a plan for the remainder of lockdown.
Feeling stressed, uncertain or anxious is normal. Shutterstock
6. Seek support
When you’re not feeling like yourself, or you’re exhausted or burnt out, it can be hard to tell the difference between what’s a “normal reaction”, versus when it’s a problem that needs professional help.
If you’re feeling like you may not be coping, talk to a GP you trust, call a telephone counselling service, or contact a mental health professional. They can help assess whether you might benefit from additional support or treatment.
While public health measures to protect us from COVID-19 are important, this pandemic has shown us mental health care should be top of the agenda too.
Building positive coping strategies now can help set you up for positive mental health long term.
If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call Lifeline on 13 11 14 or Beyond Blue on 1300 224 636.
Jill Newby receives funding from the Australian Medical Research Future Fund, and the HCF Research Foundation.
Peter Baldwin 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.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this article contains names of people who have passed away, and descriptions of these deaths.
One year has passed since George Floyd’s death under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer. Floyd’s name is imprinted upon our consciousness, as it should be.
While Floyd’s death and the Black Lives Matter movement sparked extensive media attention, Australian Indigenous deaths in custody have had a harder time attracting sustained coverage, particularly from mainstream news outlets. Media attention on the issue has been episodic and too often absent.
The Great Australian Silence continues
As Darumbal and South Sea Islander journalist Amy McQuire says, there is a national apathy in response to First Nations deaths in custody. McQuire, who consistently reports on deaths in custody as an independent journalist, says: “When Aboriginal people die in custody there is a national silence”. Some deaths in custody break through, but many more pass unnoticed.
The royal commission stated that to reduce Aboriginal deaths in custody it is critical to reduce imprisonment rates (which have doubled since 1991), and to improve the exercise of the duty of care owed to people in custody.
Two Indigenous deaths in custody, 20 years apart, demonstrate the failure to achieve both.
In 1994, 30-year-old Aboriginal woman Ms Beetson died of treatable heart disease in Sydney’s Mulawa women’s prison.
She was admitted to prison unwell; previous open-heart surgery and other concerns were highlighted on her admittance form. She was given a cursory medical examination and her symptoms were put down to drug withdrawal. Over a week, she became weaker and sicker, received no effective medical attention and died alone in a cell.
In 2014, Yamatji woman Ms Dhu, 22, was arrested for unpaid fines, against royal commission recommendations. She was held in a South Hedland, WA, police watch house for three days in intense pain and growing sicker.
The usual assumptions were made about drug withdrawal and that she was “faking it”. She died of staphylococcal septicaemia and pneumonia.
Twenty years apart, the circumstances around Ms Beetson’s and Ms Dhu’s deaths reflect the same inadequate medical treatment, inhumanity, lack of professionalism and failures. Both medical conditions were treatable and both deaths preventable.
But the story of Ms Dhu’s case broke through, due to local and effective activism, and because the media landscape had started to change.
The year before Ms Dhu’s death, The Guardian began publishing an online Australian edition. Guardian journalist Calla Wahlquist reported at least one story every day from the inquest into Ms Dhu’s death.
The Guardian’s sustained deaths in custody reporting and its “Deaths Inside” database have made a difference to deaths in custody coverage.
Australian media needs to keep addressing deaths in custody
Media attention was important in helping to create the conditions for the royal commission’s establishment. Among the more influential and agenda-setting stories were those by Western Australian freelance journalist Jan Mayman reporting on Roebourne teenager John Pat’s 1983 death for The Age, and a 1985 Four Corners program presented by David Marr.
In its report and recommendations, the royal commission recognised the important role of the media as a form of “collective conscience”, contributing to the possibility of increased justice for Aboriginal people.
The release of the royal commission’s final report was a Black-lives-just-could-matter moment in Australia.
Here was the blueprint for transforming the life chances of Aboriginal people, and the relationship between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians. Implementing the report’s 339 recommendations could reduce imprisonment rates, deaths in custody, inequality and disadvantage.
When the report was released, the media was again interested and engaged. Aboriginal people’s points of view were heard, and Aboriginal deaths in custody became an important story that put individual deaths into context. However, this kind of reporting soon fell away.
Four years after the report, governments were claiming successful implementation of the royal commission’s recommendations. However, the Australian Institute of Criminology was reporting deaths in prison at record levels.
Research by the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism found the media uncritically reported government implementation claims as if they were true.
Non-Indigenous journalists need to step up
While First Nations journalists, such as Amy McQuire, Gamilaraay and Yawalaraay woman Loreena Allam and Muruwari man Allan Clarke, are telling stories of injustice meted out to Aboriginal people, non-Indigenous journalists must also keep telling stories about the injustices caused by colonisation.
It took an event in the US to spark the Indigenous lives matter response across Australia. Journalists must continue to report on the chain of events that lead to Black deaths at the hands of the state.
How we can do this:
We can report the facts, for instance, Indigenous adult and youth apprehension and imprisonment rates, Aboriginal youth and adult suicide rates, coronial inquest findings and recommendations.
We can interview witnesses, family members and representatives, police and prison officers, and other experts and report what they and other informed commentators say about the facts, consequences and causes of those deaths.
We can investigate and discern the patterns emerging from these deaths; the similar facts and common factors, the same systemic failures, the ongoing evidence of institutional racism.
Through our journalism we need to honour each person who has died, and try to bring some comfort to their affected families and communities.
Australia, we can do better and we must do better.
See here for resources and guides for what we as journalists can do.
Bonita Mason does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kylie Soanes, Postdoctoral Fellow, School of Ecosystem and Forest Sciences, The University of Melbourne
Shutterstock
If trees are cut down in the city, where will possums live? – Millie, age 9, Sydney.
Hi Millie.
Thanks for your question. I worry about this too.
Trees are really important to possums in the city. Like lots of Australian animals, possums depend on hollows — a hole that forms in trees as they get older. Because possums are nocturnal (meaning they only come out at night), they need somewhere safe to curl up and sleep during the day. A nice cosy tree hollow is the perfect place.
Tree hollows are special because they take a long time to make. They usually happen when a tree gets injured and the place where it broke starts to rot away, eventually forming a hole. Most types of gum tree don’t even start making hollows until they’re more than 100 years old. Usually, the bigger the tree, the more hollows you’re likely to find.
Out in the bush, a possum might have lots of different trees and hollows to choose from. Some kinds of possum might have 12 different hollows – 12 bedrooms! Can you imagine?
But in the city, we don’t have as many big trees with hollows, so possums can’t be as picky about their bedrooms. And when a big old tree dies or is cut down, even if we plant a new one we might have to wait hundreds of years before it provides a good possum house. This means the possums have to look for somewhere else to live.
People often find possums sleeping in their roof. Shutterstock
Now, there are a few other places that possums might find in the city.
They want somewhere dark, dry and warm, and they don’t mind if they’re not supposed to be there.
That’s why people often find possums sleeping in their roof, in old pots in the garden, or even inside a barbecue!
Tiny possums can squeeze into even smaller places. Sugar gliders are sometimes found in electricity boxes, and feathertail gliders might nest in a drainpipe.
It’s amazing how resourceful animals can be! But these aren’t very safe places for possums to make a home. So there are two things we can do to help.
Tiny possums can squeeze into even smaller places. Sugar gliders are sometimes found in electricity boxes. Shutterstock
1. Protect our city’s big trees
There aren’t many left, so every single tree is important. And it’s not just gum trees — lots of types of trees make hollows or provide food for native animals. Even dead trees!
Great big trees can get dangerous as they get older because if they drop branches or fall over they could hurt someone. Sometimes tree experts can use cables to keep the trees upright and safe, or only cut down the dangerous branches.
Or sometimes we can fence the area so that people don’t walk underneath. If a tree does have to be cut down, scientists came up with an idea to move the whole tree to a new spot — like a tree transplant! The tree can’t grow anymore, but it still has all the hollows possums and other animals need to make their homes.
Sometimes local councils will use a chainsaw to carve holes into trees to make new homes for wildlife.
And other scientists are using 3D printers to make hollows that mimic the same shapes as real hollows (but we need to make sure the designs are safe).
City trees are so important. They help keep us cool in summer, make the air nice and fresh, and they’re nice to look at. Some of them have been here longer than the buildings.
So protecting trees in the city isn’t just good for possums. It’s good for humans, too.
Hello, Curious Kids! Have you got a question you’d like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to curiouskids@theconversation.edu.au
Kylie Soanes has previously received funding from the Clean Air and Urban Landscapes Hub and the Threatened Species Recovery Hub of the Australian Government’s National Environmental Science Program. She provides advice to local councils and other land managers on ways to promote biodiversity in cities and towns.
A View from Afar delivered by Selwyn Manning and Paul G Buchanan.
A View from Afar
PODCAST - Manning and Buchanan on Australia-NZ-China Is This the Tipping-Point?
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A View from Afar: Selwyn Manning and Paul Buchanan present this week’s podcast, where they analyse the Australia-China-New Zealand relationship. Has this reached a tipping-point? Also, Israel. How stable will this cobbled together coalition of anti-Netanyahu parties be?
But first, Australia, China, and New Zealand:
What are the main take-away points from the New Zealand-Australia leaders bilateral meeting this week?
AU PM Scott Morrison referenced ANZUS while NZ PM Jacinda Ardern spoke of NZ’s defence requirements as an independent consideration.
So who is correct here? Does Australia and New Zealand’s re-stated commitment to being a Trans-Tasman family drag NZ into supporting any future Australian conflict?
And then there’s China’s foreign ministry response, that states: “The leaders of Australia and New Zealand, with irresponsible remarks on China’s internal affairs relating to Hong Kong and Xinjiang as well as the South China Sea issue, have made groundless accusations against China…”
Does AU and NZ governments’ renewed sense of self-identity indicate a rebalancing of a regional and global order? And has the PRC’s dominating influence in AU and NZ politics reached its zenith?
And does the PRC’s increased authoritarianism at home and abroad reflect leadership weaknesses rather than strength?
*** Israel.
In the last quarter of this episode, Buchanan and Manning will discuss the latest from the Middle East.
Will a cobbled-together coalition of anti-Netanyahu politicians succeed in creating a new Israel Government? How stable will it be, and, what does this mean for Palestinians in the West Bank of Gaza?
WE INVITE YOU TO PARTICIPATE WHILE WE ARE LIVE WITH COMMENTS AND QUESTIONS IN THE RECORDING OF THIS PODCAST:
You can comment on this debate by clicking on one of these social media channels and interacting in the social media’s comment area. Here are the links:
Threat.Technology placed A View from Afar at 9th in its 20 Best Defence Security Podcasts of 2021 category. You can follow A View from Afar via our affiliate syndicators.
Amid public debate about consent and how we define it legally, there is a push to create the lesser offence of “negligent rape”. The NSW Bar Association has long made the call. More recently, NSW Police sex crimes boss detective superintendent Stacey Maloney and education advocate Chanel Contos have echoed the call.
The calls for “negligent rape” occur against a backdrop of overwhelming evidence the police and court systems are letting down sexual violence survivors. Only one in ten even report to police.
But would this type of offence actually help combat sexual violence?
What is ‘negligent rape’?
The proposal for a lesser offence of “negligent rape” is based on the idea that a person who engages in non-consensual sex through recklessness is less culpable than somebody who deliberately and knowingly disregards a person’s lack of consent.
For example, in 2018, the NSW Bar Association argued,
[s]exual assault is a serious crime with severe maximum penalties, reserved for behaviour that is so seriously wrong as to be deserving of such criminal punishment — it should not be satisfied by a form of negligence.
The proposal would effectively create two rape offences. One offence would capture offenders who commit rape while knowing the victim-survivor was not consenting, and another would apply where the person acted recklessly.
Sweden adopted negligent rape as an offence in 2018. This has seen rape convictions rise. However, before the change, “rape” could only be established if the prosecution proved the accused had forced the other person to engage in the act through violence.
So the inclusion of negligent rape captured cases that were being ignored by the Swedish justice system. Comparable cases in Australia, by contrast, already fall within our criminal law.
The ‘mental element’
Several Australian states have recently held reviews of sexual consent laws. This comes in response to growing community awareness of the failures of the criminal justice system when responding to sexual violence.
Queensland’s review saw legislation passed through parliament in March 2021. This codified the existing case law but made no substantive changes. The Queensland parliament voted down a Greens-backed amendement that would have put in place an affirmative consent model. This would have required a clear agreement before having sex.
The New South Wales government, by contrast, announced last week it wants to legislate affirmative consent in the state.
The focus of these reviews has included not only the definition of consent, but also the standards of knowledge required for defendants to be convicted of sexual offences. This is known as the “mental element” of a criminal offence.
This mental element differs across jurisdictions. Most states recognise someone who has sex with another person without their consent is guilty of an offence if they did not have an honest and reasonable belief the other person was consenting.
In some states, such as NSW, the law also outlines a specific provision of recklessness. So recklessness as to whether or not the complainant was consenting is enough for the law to find culpability.
Recklessness and the law
Though recklessness isn’t defined in the NSW legislation, case law provides that it can be proven in two ways. The prosecution must prove that either the accused person didn’t turn their mind to whether the other person was consenting, or they realised there was a chance the other person was not consenting, but continued anyway.
In other states that don’t specifically provide for recklessness, these circumstances may be criminalised since the accused would be considered not to have a reasonable belief in consent.
This approach makes sense. A circumstance where a person does not bother to consider whether their potential sexual partner is consenting — or where they consider it and ignore the potential that they are not — would not be consensual sex for most people.
Creating a rape ‘hierarchy’ is not the answer
Despite the need to improve justice for survivors, there are strong reasons not to split sexual offending into two types, as a negligent rape offence would do. The myth that “real rapes” are perpetrated by strangers and involve overt violence is widespread in both society and the courtroom.
These types of cases are more likely to be prosecuted and result in convictions. This is partly because it is easier to establish the mental element of the crime. A stranger who attacks someone using force can more easily be proven to know the other person is not consenting.
This means, the only situation where the “lesser” offence of negligent rape would be used is where the victim and defendant are known to each other. This is precisely the context in which most rapes occur — as Contos’ recent petition calling for better consent education at school, and decades of research, have highlighted.
The proposed new offence could effectively create a hierarchy of sexual offences: rape by strangers and rape by acquaintances. However, suggesting rapes committed by someone known to the victim are not as “seriously wrong” as rapes committed by strangers is deeply offensive — and untrue.
Calls for “negligent rape” reflect a valid frustration with the criminal justice system’s inability to support survivors of sexual violence. However, treating some forms of rape as less serious than others would be a leap in the wrong direction.
Rachael Burgin is Executive Director of Rape and Sexual Assault Research and Advocacy.
Jonathan Crowe is Director of Research at Rape and Sexual Assault Research and Advocacy.
Bri Lee does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
The Australian Curriculum is going through a review process with proposed changes released for public consultation at the end of April.
When Australian state education ministers commissioned the review in June 2020, the terms of reference specified the aim to “refine and reduce the amount of content across all eight learning areas […] to focus on essential content”.
The Review looks to improve the Australian Curriculum by refining, realigning and decluttering the content so it focuses on the essential knowledge and skills students should learn and is clearer for teachers on what they need to teach.
But is the curriculum actually “cluttered” or “crowded” as commonly claimed? And what does that even mean?
Who says it’s crowded?
Claims of the Australian Curriculum being “crowded” have been heard far and wide. For instance, in December 2018 then Federal Education Minister Dan Tehan told a conference:
Teachers tell me that there is too much being taught and we should be concentrating on developing a deeper understanding of essential content.
Preliminary research from the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority’s (ACARA) does reveal teachers are in the chorus line of those voicing concerns about the need to refine and reduce the curriculum’s content.
ACARA’s Director of Curriculum Janet Davey said teachers are looking to the review for clarity about “what it is we want teachers to teach and what it is we want learners to learn”.
Today’s teachers are increasingly called on to play an active role in translating a wide range of contemporary social agendas into age-appropriate curriculum content for their students. This includes fostering young people’s understandings of respectful relationships , consent , cultural awareness and the environment.
While few would reject the importance of these issues having a presence in the contemporary curriculum, they inevitably add to the time and content demands already placed on teachers.
At the heart of accusations of a crowded or cluttered curriculum are concerns learning in key areas — such as literacy and numeracy — will be compromised by an insidious creep towards a breadth of content, such as gender and environmental issues.
Of course schools have always been active sites for the delivery of important social policy. Key social agendas associated with population health, welfare, security, nutrition and hygiene have all had prominence in the curriculum at various moments in history.
A historical example of curriculum adaptation to accommodate national priorities can be readily tracked during times of war. Both world wars saw an increase in gender segregation in the curriculum, in which greater emphasis was placed on the disciplining and conditioning of boys, while welfare and health education were heightened for girls.
Going ‘back to basics’
Accusations of a crowded curriculum are often amplified following the publication of international educational test results. At the end of 2019, the OECD released the latest results of its Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). The results showed, since PISA first assessed reading literacy in 2000, Australia’s mean score had declined by the equivalent of around three-quarters of a year of schooling.
Australia also trailed 23 countries in maths, and 12 countries in science.
Whenever the comparative performance of Australian students is seen to fall against their international counterparts a blame-game is set in motion.
For instance, Dan Tehan had said he was disappointed with the results and would “take a chainsaw” to the Australian Curriculum — again saying it was too “cluttered”. Together with this is generally the declaration for an urgent need to, “go back to basics”.
Indeed, successive federal education ministers have called-out the crowded curriculum as a major reason for Australia’s international underperformance in literacy and numeracy (see, Christopher Pyne, Dan Tehan and current Education Minister Alan Tudge.)
It’s not so simple
While the rhetoric around stripping back the so-called crowded curriculum has an appealing simplicity, its application is considerably more problematic.
At stake here are the perceived merits of each of the eight key learning areas that comprise the Australian Curriculum.
It would be a hotly contested decision to declare the content associated with any of the eight Learning Areas (English, Maths, Science, The Arts, Humanities, Technologies, Health and Physical Education and Languages) should be purged.
So rather than concede the curriculum is crowded, ACARA has opted to describe it as cluttered. The prevailing view here is that it is not excessive curriculum content causing teacher angst, but uncertainty about its structure.
ACARA’s CEO David de Carvalho believes clarifying the structure of the Australian Curriculum and the relationship between the three dimensions of the curriculum — Learning Areas, General Capabilities (key skills and dispositions) and Cross-Curriculum Priorities (regional, national and global priorities) — will go a long way to addressing current teacher concerns.
Indeed, ACARA defends the current curriculum’s breadth as necessary for preparing young people for active citizenship in an increasingly complex world.
A complex world
So the challenge is to strike a balance between the competing curriculum demands for “back to basics” and the need for “formative futures” — understood as the fundamentals for effective personhood in an increasingly complex world. Numeracy and literacy may be important but they are not enough to prepare young people to be active shapers of the world they live in.
Yes, the curriculum is busy and requires regular updating and refining. But breadth is not the enemy of depth. A balanced curriculum has the power to deliver a wide range of important lessons.
So, rather than rehearsing old rhetoric about the curriculum being crowded, we should shift the focus to the quality of the learning experience, and how we can best nurture productive interactions between teachers and students.
Chris Hickey 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.
Historically, many of the attempts to convince drivers to obey road rules have relied on strategies that highlight the risks associated with the offence. However, findings from a Queensland-based study suggest some motorists may acknowledge the risks associated with speeding and continue to offend anyway.
Humans are well designed to recognise and respond appropriately to risk, which is largely connected to our drive to avoid pain and seek pleasure. In other words, if we know the risks and dangers associated with a behaviour, we are expected to not do it.
When it comes to speeding, campaigns typically focus on the negative consequences of doing it, ranging from receiving a ticket to the destruction and loss associated with a fatal traffic injury. It is intended that each time we view one of these campaigns, we are reminded that engaging in these dangerous driving behaviours increases our risk of a negative outcome.
But what if motorists don’t think the risks apply to them? Or what if they acknowledge the risks and continue offending anyway?
Our research explored these questions by looking at motorists’ perceptions of the risks of being involved in a crash due to speeding, and of getting a speeding ticket. We asked what they perceived was the likelihood of these events for them compared to a driver of the same age and sex.
A total of 760 Queensland motorists were involved in the research. Participants were members of the public, recruited in shopping centres, online and at a Queensland university.
The research found speeding was common, but participants considered their risk of being involved in a crash to be lower than that of other drivers (72% of sample). Importantly, 74% considered their driving ability to be better than other drivers’.
However, a closer look at the factors related to speeding highlighted that those who reported offending more often recognised that, compared to a similar driver (of the same age and sex), they believed themselves to be more likely to be involved in a crash due to speeding, and more likely to get a speeding ticket. However, they considered their driving ability to be better than other drivers’.
Drivers who sped frequently were also more likely to report being involved in a traffic crash in the past and having lost their licence. Therefore, frequent offenders were aware of the dangers of their behaviour but continued to offend anyway.
The challenge of changing behaviour
The research findings suggest those who break the speed limit are aware of the possible risks. For some, these risks remain “hypothetical”, with drivers dismissing them with inflated perceptions of their own driving ability. For others, not even previous crash involvement (or receiving a ticket) is enough to change driving behaviours.
The findings further highlight the challenge of improving road safety, particularly in regard to influencing drivers.
From a different perspective, the perceived risks of speeding might not outweigh some of the benefits or “driving forces” that motivate speeding. Previous speeding research has found:
motorists may be more likely to speed if they have influences (such as peers or parents) that endorse and promote speeding behaviour, so the benefit of peer acceptance may outweigh the risks
some people have a greater tendency towards sensation-seeking and may seek experiences from which they derive sensation (such as dangerous driving)
many mainstream movies portray risky driving behaviours in a glamorised way, which may encourage motorists to adopt similar behaviours
Deterring drivers who understand the risks but offend anyway
The findings remind us that biases are common and so is speeding. Both may contribute to the road toll refusing to go down. Put simply, the link between increased speed and crash outcomes is well documented, yet motorists are still willing to take the risks.
While punishing offenders remains a key ingredient, new approaches are badly needed to ensure motorists regularly recognise (and respond appropriately to) road risks. That is, the risk is real and extends beyond one’s own driving ability, as it should not be forgotten that we share the roads with many others.
While humans are considered the apex creature for learning, this capacity does not always extend to the roads. Until the autonomous self-driving machines arrive and potentially save us, we need to enhance our willingness to respond to ever-present risks in order to save ourselves and others.
Laura Mills receives funding from the Motor Accident Insurance Commission (MAIC).
James Freeman receives funding from the Motor Accident Insurance Commission (MAIC)
Verity Truelove receives funding from the Motor Accident Insurance Commission.
There’s been much talk in recent days about the demographic and travel behaviour differences between Melbourne and Sydney and to what extent they may help explain why Victoria appears to be struggling with COVID outbreaks, while New South Wales isn’t.
Recent commentary has suggested transport, age, jobs, migrant population and other factors among the reasons that may help explain the difference.
As I outlined in a recent thread on Twitter, pure luck or random chance play a role in virus outbreaks — but you can also unpack some of these questions using publicly available statistics.
A tale of two states
When considering virus outbreaks, population characteristics and behaviours are crucial. The data doesn’t support the suggestion population and behaviour differ greatly between the states. When you look at the numbers, Victoria and NSW just aren’t all that different.
Is Victoria younger than New South Wales? No, median age and age distribution among the working age population (the most socially interactive group) aren’t all that different.
Is Victoria younger than New South Wales? No. ABS It’s not a huge difference. ABS
One theory circulating is that there are a lot of migrants in Victoria and that these communities are more likely to live together, visit and support each other. Are there more migrants in Victoria versus NSW? Not really, the proportion of the population born overseas is similar in NSW to that in Victoria.
The proportion of the population born overseas is similar in NSW to that in Victoria. ABS
What about population density, then?
Is Melbourne more densely populated than Sydney? Not overall.
It’s true the ABS said in a 2021 data release the most densely populated areas in Australia were inner-city Melbourne (22,400 people per sq km), followed by Potts Point-Woolloomooloo (16,700) and Pyrmont-Ultimo (16,500), both in inner Sydney. But, as the ABS points out:
Population density can also be explored at a finer level by breaking Australia up into 1 km² grid cells.
Grid cells can be grouped into population density classes, ranging from no population to very high.
Sydney had the largest combined area in the high and very high density classes (193 km²), followed by Melbourne (77 km²) and Brisbane (15 km²).
The word “combined” there is very important.
Do people in Melbourne use active transport (meaning public transport, biking and walking) more than those living in Sydney? No, Sydneysiders have the highest rate of active transport use in the country.
Sydneysiders have the highest rate of active transport use. ABS
Do people in Victoria live in more crowded housing situations than in New South Wales? No, overcrowding appears to be a bigger problem in New South Wales where it is estimated there are 49,333 people living in overcrowded housing compared to 28,710 people in Victoria.
Average commute distances are similar for Victoria and NSW. ABS
Do people in Melbourne travel around more than those in Sydney? No, the data doesn’t support that based on travel to work information.
In short, it would appear Victoria and NSW have more in common, demographically, than many think.
Liz Allen 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.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jan-Hendrik May, Senior Lecturer, School of Geography, Earth & Atmospheric Sciences, Faculty of Science, The University of Melbourne
Mark Aldenderfer, Author provided
Few parts of the world would seem as inhospitable to humans as the highlands of the Tibetan Plateau, near the Himalayas. Archaeologists have long wondered when, where and how our ancestors began to explore and occupy these landscapes.
But evidence of early human presence on the plateau has been scarce — and dating the few remaining traces has proven an ongoing challenge.
Using a recently developed dating technique, our research team has now produced the first solid evidence for human presence on the central-southern Tibetan Plateau more than 5,000 years ago. Our findings are published today in Science Advances.
Lithic surface artefacts occur at the site of Su-re. Luke Gliganic, Author provided
The challenge of dating surface artefact scatter
The dry highlands of Tibet are considered to be among the last areas on Earth to have been settled by humans. The high altitude of the region, in the shadow of Himalayan peaks more than eight kilometres high, makes for extreme conditions.
The question of where and when the peopling of this remote region occurred has been debated among archaeologists. Many studies have come from research conducted at open-air locations, with abundant evidence of stone tool use or manufacture, such as rock flakes found on the ground.
These sites are referred to as “lithic artefact scatters”. They are among the most commonly preserved archaeological sites in the world, and hold potential to reconstruct human settlement patterns and explore various aspects of past human behaviour.
Panoramic view towards the southwest from the Su-re archaeological site. Note the large boulders in foreground that bear signs of quarrying by early Tibetans. Jan-Hendrik May, Author provided
Yet it has been extremely difficult to interpret the archaeological significance and ages of these sites unambiguously. Most artefacts are made from stone, which makes it difficult to determine when the tools were manufactured, or if they were moved after being discarded.
Artefacts on the surface are prone to erosion, and movement by wind and water, over hundreds or even thousands of years since humans first produced them. Consequently, they’re often found “out of context”, so a clear relationship can’t be drawn between them and their immediate surroundings.
Developing new techniques
To overcome this limitation, our team spent the past several years in the Innsbruck OSL (optically-stimulated luminescence) dating laboratory in Austria led by Michael Meyer at the University of Innsbruck, developing a new technique suitable for dating ancient stone tools.
Stone tools found among Su-re lithic artefact scatter, some of which could be dated to more than 5,000 years in the past. Mark Aldenderfer, Author provided
OSL dating has become one of the main dating methods in archaeology and the earth sciences. It’s based on the accumulation of energy in the crystal structure of sand grains.
When grains are shielded from daylight, such as when they’re buried, their crystal accumulates energy due to low-level radiation from surrounding rocks and sediment.
This can then be measured in the laboratory, through controlled exposure to blue and green light, which releases the energy as a “luminescence signal”. The longer the grains have been buried, the more luminescence we will measure from them.
In this 2017 video, our team leader Michael Meyer explains how OSL dating is carried out at the University of Innsbruck laboratory.
Instead of looking at sand for our research, we used an approach called “rock surface burial dating”. It’s the first ever approach to focus on the signal stored beneath the surface of rock artefacts at a scatter site.
The luminescence signal built up within a rock is almost infinitely high, due to the extremely long time that has passed since the rock was formed by geological processes.
However, once a rock surface is exposed to daylight, such as when an artefact is first produced and used, the luminescence signal is erased at the surface and just beneath (but not at the centre). The erasure of the signal is strongest at the surface and tapers off towards the centre of the artefact.
When the artefact is thrown away and becomes shielded from daylight — either from beneath, or from being covered by sediment — the signal starts to build again.
This leads to varying levels of signal intensity found at different depths beneath the artefact’s surface. We can measure this signal distribution to determine the overall age and history of a stone artefact.
Field work and sampling of surface artefacts at Su-re, southern Tibet. Michael Meyer, Author provided
5,000 years in the shadow of Mount Everest
The large potential of this new way of using OSL had been shown in previous archaeological and geological contexts, but hadn’t been rigorously tested on artefact scatter sites.
Accompanied by experienced high-altitude archaeologist Mark Aldenderfer from the University of California at Merced, and supported by mineralogist Peter Tropper from Innsbruck, we set out to test the suitability of this promising method at the lithic artefact scatter site of Su-re, in southern Tibet.
View over the lithic surface scatter site into the Su-re valley, with large quartzite boulders that have been partly quarried (middle of image). M. C. Meyer, Author provided
At an elevation of 4,450 metres, in a large valley descending from the highest peaks in the world – Mount Everest and Cho’Oyu — Su-re had been known for decades for its dense accumulation of diverse surface artefacts. This suggested a long history of site use by humans. But how long?
Using our dating approach, we dated the oldest artefacts found at the Su-re site as being between 5,200 and 5,500 years old. These tools were likely related to quarrying activities at the site.
While some older sites have been discovered in central and southeastern Tibet, our dataset has made Su-re the oldest securely dated site in the central-southern Tibetan Plateau near the high Himalaya.
This finding is particularly exciting considering the proximity of Su-re to the “Nangpa La” mountain pass. This pass has historically connected local Tibetans in the highlands with Nepali Sherpas in the Himalayan valleys and lowlands.
Our new approach to analysing surface artefacts can be considered the beginning of a road to new archaeological perspectives. In the future it could help uncover the secrets of lithic artefact sites around the world.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tim Lindsey, Malcolm Smith Professor of Asian Law and Director of the Centre for Indonesian Law, Islam and Society, The University of Melbourne
No one really knows true state of the COVID-19 pandemic in Indonesia, and that means it is unpredictable. But there are good reasons to worry about what will happen next.
Fifteen months after Indonesia reported its first case of COVID-19, testing for the coronavirus remains among the lowest in Asia. Perhaps because it is not free, testing has reached only around 40 per 1,000 people, compared with 115 in the Philippines, 373 in Malaysia, and more than 2,000 in Singapore.
Testing is better even in Myanmar, where a military coup has triggered daily protests and an increasingly fraught security situation.
And Indonesia’s test results are not reliable. The country is still excessively reliant on rapid antigen tests, which are less accurate than PCR (polymerase chain reaction) tests.
Indonesia’s official death reports are questionable too. LaporCovid-19, an independent website established to provide accurate information about the pandemic, noted a discrepancy between the 48,477 COVID-related deaths reported by the government in May and its own total of 50,729. It reached its tally by simply adding the death tolls of each province – and that was with out-of-date data from six provinces and none from Papua.
In fact, researchers and journalists have long pointed to significant “excess deaths” as evidence of significant under-reporting of COVID fatalities in Indonesia.
Excess deaths refer to the number of deaths occurring beyond what would be expected in a normal year. One study found a 61% increase in excess deaths in Indonesia in 2020 compared with the previous five years, which was not reflected in the official data.
Indonesia’s COVID deaths surged in late January, but may be on the rise again. Achmad Ibrahim/AP
Concerns of a super-spreader event
But even on the clearly inadequate official data available, COVID case numbers are now on the rise. Indonesia reported 2,385 new cases on May 15. Two weeks later, daily cases had more than doubled to 6,565.
If numbers keep growing at this rate, Indonesia’s health system will not be able to cope. When daily cases peaked earlier this year at 10,000-14,000 new cases per day (officially), Jakarta’s hospitals were overwhelmed and COVID patients were turned away.
And there is a real possibility the numbers will get this high again — maybe even worse.
Countries in the region that had managed the pandemic well through 2020, such as Vietnam, Thailand and Malaysia are now experiencing deadly third and fourth waves. In early May, Indonesian authorities also reported cases of the UK variant (B.1.1.7), South African variant (B.1.351) and Indian variant (B.1.617.2), which are more contagious than the original strain.
To make matters worse, Indonesia just experienced a national super-spreader event: Eid al-Fitr, the most important Islamic holiday.
Traditionally, millions of Muslims return to their home villages to see family and friends during this time — a mass event known as mudik. Fearing a repeat of last year, when daily cases shot up by 93% after mudik, the government banned travel this year — the second time it has tried to halt mudik.
But, as is so often the case in Indonesia, enforcement was badly lacking, and mudik rolled on, even if numbers were down. WhatsApp groups were ablaze with ways to avoid police checkpoints.
Over the past fortnight, Indonesians have been gradually returning to the cities, fuelling concerns of a major outbreak.
This is happening in next-door Malaysia, where the government has announced a post-Eid total lockdown of the entire country as consecutive days of record infections catapulted its total caseload above 550,000.
In Vietnam, as well, the government has just imposed a two-week lockdown on the largest city, Ho Chi Minh City, with plans to test all 9 million residents.
The government recently expanded its social restrictions nationwide through June 14, requiring schools to shut, shops and restaurants to close by a certain time each night, and limits on employees allowed in offices. However, a more robust lockdown still appears only a remote possibility.
Indonesia’s vaccine rollout may offer a slim ray of hope. More than 27 million vaccine doses have now been delivered and nearly 4% of Indonesia’s population (10 million of 270 million) has been fully vaccinated, compared with 3.6% in Malaysia, 2.7% in Japan and a woeful 2% in Australia.
Indonesia’s vaccine program began in January with a combination of AstraZeneca, procured through the World Health Organization’s COVAX scheme, and the Chinese-made Sinovac vaccines. But AstraZeneca shortages exacerbated by the recent COVID surge in India have led to greater reliance on China.
In April, the Indonesian government approved Sinopharm for emergency use, and supplies of the China’s CanSino and the Russian Sputnik V vaccines are on the way.
There are concerns about the efficacy of these vaccines, but most Indonesians would agree they are better than nothing.
A two-track vaccination system has now been developed. The government is offering Sinovac or AstraZeneca vaccines free to health workers, senior citizens and public servants, and for a fee to anyone else.
At the same time, a program self-funded by companies is offering their employees Sinopharm vaccines supplied by the government.
This two-pronged approach will help increase vaccination numbers, but only a little. The corporate program is costly, and most medium-to-small enterprises — which represent 99% of businesses in Indonesia — simply can’t afford it.
And the young, poor and unemployed — a fast-growing group as the economy continues to slide – have little hope of getting a jab.
Scandals and data leaks
Price-gouging, corruption and other crimes are only make things worse. Several civil servants were arrested last month, for example, for allegedly stealing Sinovac vaccines intended for a prison, to sell to the public.
Worse still, former social affairs minister Juliari Batubara stands accused of taking 17 billion rupiah (A$1.5 million) in bribes related to the distribution of COVID-19 aid for the poor.
And, most recently, the social security data of 279 million Indonesians — both alive and dead — is believed to have been leaked and sold on the dark web.
Pandemic fatigue has well and truly set in, and these high-profile scandals threaten to further deepen distrust between Indonesians and the government. The country will not fare well if predictions of an even bigger outbreak fuelled by new variants of the virus come true.
If this happens, the government will may well find itself facing a looming health catastrophe, rising social unrest and perhaps serious political tensions, too.
Tim Lindsey has received funding from Australian Research Council
Max Walden is a PhD Candidate under the Australian Research Council-funded project “Indonesia’s refugee policies: responsibility, security and regionalism”.
This isn’t a painting or a stained-glass window — it’s a microscope image of light shining through the Earth’s mantle. Heather Handley, Author provided
Environmental scientists see flora, fauna and phenomena the rest of us rarely do. In this series, we’ve invited them to share their unique photos from the field.
Volcanic activity is a constant global threat. It’s estimated over 1 billion people live within the potential, direct impact range of volcanic eruptions.
Just recently, lava flows from the eruption of Mount Nyiragongo, a volcano in the Democratic Republic of Congo, killed 32 people, with many more missing. Tens of thousands of people have been forced to flee the city of Goma.
This shows why understanding more about the inner workings of volcanoes is critical to improve the safety of those living in their shadows.
As a volcano scientist, my research takes me across Australia and all over the world. But sometimes, the most stunning revelations actually occur in the lab.
Heather Handley at Ambrym volcano in Vanuatu, wearing a mask due the hazardous volcanic gases present. Heather Handley, Author provided
I take a microscopic look at volcanic rocks and fragments of the Earth’s mantle to estimate just how fast molten rock (magma) moves from deep in the Earth to the surface. This can help us prepare for future eruptions.
A slice of the Earth’s mantle under a microscope, and the colourful crystals it reveals. Different types of crystals (minerals) and different orientations of the same minerals produce the range in colours seen when cross-polarised light passes through them. Heather Handley, Author provided
Australia’s fiery past — and future
Since the demise of the dinosaurs to recent human settlement, magmatic activity has left behind a trail of volcanoes stretching over 4,000 kilometres down Australia’s eastern margin, forming one of the world’s most extensive volcanic belts.
The last mainland eruptions took place at Mount Gambier and Mount Schank in South Australia around 5,000 years ago, a mere blink of a geological eye.
These eruptions were witnessed by local Aboriginal people and incorporated into oral traditions that have been passed down for hundreds of generations.
View from the crater of Mount Schank volcano, one of the youngest volcanoes in Australia. Credit Heather Handley.
Based on the time since the last eruption, there are potentially two active volcanic regions in mainland Australia: in the northeast (southwest of Cairns) and southeast (from Melbourne across into South Australia).
The Mount Gambier and Mount Schank volcanoes are two of more than 400 volcanoes in the active southeast region called the Newer Volcanics Province, which has been active for at least the last 4.5 million years.
It’s considered likely there’ll be a future eruption in this province, but it’s not known when or where exactly the eruption will be.
Yasur volcano in Vanuatu, one of the most active volcanoes on the planet. Heather Handley, Author provided The volcanic deposits of Ohakune volcano in New Zealand. The different coloured layers represent variations in eruption style and explosive power. Heather Handley, Author provided
So how much warning time might we have?
To answer this question, we have to unravel the secrets held by past eruptions, now locked away in the erupted rocks and the crystals within them.
Our first clue is that many of the dark black volcanic rocks that erupted in the Newer Volcanics Province (and others) contain chunks of green rock, called peridotite.
These dense green rock fragments are, in fact, pieces of the Earth’s upper mantle that were plucked out by the rising magma and carried all the way to the surface from depths of greater than 30 or 40 kilometres below our feet.
A black volcanic bomb from Mount Noorat volcano in the Newer Volcanics Province containing peridotite xenoliths — green fragments of the Earth’s upper mantle. Heather Handley
These fragments can sink back down through the liquid rock during its ascent, like a pebble dropped into a cylinder of honey. So in order to reach the surface, the rising magma had to move fast — likely taking just a few days from the source.
Volcanic crystal balls
In the same way tree rings can tell you about what the climate was like when the tree grew, the crystals within volcanic rocks and the mantle fragments they carry preserve memories of the environment on their upward journey through the Earth.
In the photo below, you can see how light passing through the mantle rock reveals a mosaic of colourful crystals. The darker part is the enclosing volcanic rock.
This thin slice of rock is just 30 microns in thickness, about half the thickness of a typical human hair.
Microscope image of a rock from Mount Quincan volcano in the Atherton Volcanic Province, Queensland. Heather Handley A section of lava from Mount Gambier, the youngest volcano in Australia. The larger crystals grew before the smaller crystals, which formed near or at the surface. Heather Handley, Author provided Using a microscope to look at thin sections of volcanic rocks. Heather Handley, Author provided
Now let’s take a look through a scanning electron microscope at the border where the mantle crystals make contact with the now-solidified magma.
In the two photos below, you can see the rim of the crystals has become lighter in colour, which means it changed its chemical composition. This is so it could adapt to its new magma environment on ascent in a process called diffusion.
The dark grey expanse is the mantle fragment. It has a light coloured rim due to its interaction with the rising magma. On the right, bits of mantle crystals are breaking off. Heather Handley, Author provided A crystal fragment (130 microns in width) from a peridotite mantle within a volcanic rock from Mount Gambier. The light grey rim has a different chemical composition to the darker area inside. Heather Handley, Author provided
We use the sharpness of this chemical boundary to estimate how long mantle fragments sat in the magma before the rock erupted.
In other words, the minimum time magma took to travel from source to surface — an eruption warning time.
I can also use the chemistry and shapes of crystals that grew within the magma itself to map out the plumbing system beneath the volcano — the route magma takes to the surface.
The photos below show some of the different shapes crystals can form as the magma rises to the surface, cooling along the way. The spiky and skeleton-shaped crystals grow when the rising magma cools fast and by a large degree.
The small (5 to 10 microns in size), spikier crystals are clear in this image. The black areas are holes from trapped gas bubbles. Heather Handley, Author provided Skeleton-shaped olivine crystal in a volcanic rock from Mount Gambier. 500 microns in width. Heather Handley, Author provided The same volcanic crystal, but through a regular microscope. Heather Handley, Author provided
And we’re finding so far that individual volcanoes in the Newer Volcanics Province can take strikingly different pathways to the surface. This could result in varying eruption warning times.
Australia isn’t prepared
With likely maximum warning times of some past eruptions in Australia on the order of days, it’s worth considering how prepared we are for future eruptions — and not just from within Australia. If the global pandemic has taught us anything, it’s to expect the unexpected.
Microscopic view of a mantle fragment brought to the surface during a volcanic eruption at Mount Quincan in the Atherton Volcanic Province, Queensland. Heather Handley, Author provided A mantle fragment from Mount Quincan in the Atherton Volcanic Province, Queensland. Heather Handley, Author provided
Large volcanic events are far from recent human memory, but in the Asia-Pacific region, they occur with a frequency of around every 400 years.
The federal government’s recent announcement of A$600 million towards establishing a new National Recovery and Resilience Agency will help Australia adapt to some climate change-associated hazards. But volcanic events appear to be excluded.
Preparing for the next potentially cataclysmic volcanic event in Australia’s neighbouring Ring of Fire should be part of Australia’s risk and resilience conversation.
Heather Handley receives funding from the Australian Research Council. Heather is a General Governing Councillor of the Geological Society of Australia and Co-Founder and President of the Women in Earth and Environmental Science Australasia (WOMEESA) Network. She is a 2021-2022 Science and Technology Australia Superstar of STEM.
Academic freedom is widely championed as the foundation of a good university. It is seen as vital in speaking “truth to power” – to borrow from influential political philosopher Hannah Arendt – and in ensuring universities are oriented towards the common good, not select elite interests.
Academic freedom also ensures universities can lead research, education and public debates that are responsive to today’s global challenges and crises, ensuring their relevance in a volatile and complex world. In this way, universities help prepare graduates not simply for a career but also for a meaningful life in our “uncertain and unequal world”.
The latest special issue of Australian Universities’ Review is devoted to Academic Freedom’s Precarious Future. Contributing authors identify how the pressures on universities in Australia and overseas are hindering academic freedom. The consequences are dire and broad-ranging. These trends raises questions about just who, and what interests, universities are intended to serve.
Since their foundation in the 19th and early 20th centuries in Australia, universities have been tied to the political concerns of the settler colonial nation state and the economic interests of global capitalism. Settler colonial power has always ensured its interests are woven into the fabric of universities (alongside other institutions). The rise of corporate and neoliberal agendas over recent decades has reinforced these dynamics.
Universities have become further entangled with vested interests, including the private sector and philanthro-capital, such as the controversial Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation. As Andrew Bonnell and Richard Hil set out in this special issue, these developments enable corporate and political influence across research, curriculum and the very infrastructure of university campuses.
The spread of neoliberal managerialism has also created a workplace culture of hyper-surveillance. This includes rigid performance appraisals, the use-value of research assessed via “impact” criteria and other metrics, as well as student evaluations that can affect educators’ careers. This bears down upon university staff and crushes academic freedom.
Such practices have emerged alongside what Jeannie Rea describes as increasingly precarious work and funding. Academics are encouraged to compete with – rather than care for – one another. This erodes collegiality and collective organising.
These workplace conditions and culture are at odds with the pursuit of academic freedom. Yet rather than turning the spotlight on the structural forces that curtail it, conservative interests frequently hijack debates about academic freedom. This distracts attention from the very real freedoms that are under threat, as Rob Watts argues.
Crisis is now all too familiar, threatening ecologies, human life and livelihoods. We are grappling with the climate emergency, the COVID-19 pandemic, structural racism, sexual violence and more. These are all redefining our relations with one another, including both the human and non-human world.
In the midst of such crises, contributors to this special issue consider the purpose and responsibilities of universities, as well as the rights and interests they might support. The defence of academic freedom is identified as being vital to, and intertwined with, teaching, research, advocacy and service that are responsive to the conditions of our volatile world.
Academic freedom can provide the mandate for universities – their staff, students and graduates – to move through the world with purpose, care, and even love. This includes acting on the responsibilities that come with recognising that universities are part of, and in relationship with, diverse ecologies, people and the unceded territories on which they sit.
Creating the conditions for academic freedom
Jeannie Rea describes the vital work of Scholars at Risk in defending academic freedom. They include those who speak out against military, religious and state regimes, often jeopardising their lives to do so.
Gerd E. Schroder-Turk provides the compelling case for good governance. His essay includes a critique of the ways university councils are able to self-select external members. As a result, universities are increasingly governed by those with little expertise in teaching and research.
Peter Greste is among the contributors to the special issue. Joel Carrett/AAP
Peter Greste and Fred D’Agostino differentiate academic freedom from broader freedom of speech debates. They then consider some of the responsibilities that might underpin academic freedom.
In the afterword to this special issue, Canadian scholar Sharon Stein (and member of the Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures collective) sets out the conditions in which academic freedom may flourish. This includes valuing diverse knowledges, practising intellectual humility and embracing difficult conversations. It also includes acknowledging our interdependence with one other, and with the non-human world.
The hope is this special issue moves academics, policymakers and diverse publics towards engagement with these ideas, leading to outcomes that support the conditions needed for academic freedom to flourish. This will be vital if universities are to have purpose and a meaningful place in facing the uncertainties of our lifetime.
Australia doesn’t expect to reopen its international borders until well into 2022.
The border has been closed since March 2020. That decision has been instrumental in the nation containing COVID-19, but there are big social and economic costs.
The social costs – of families separated, of students and others losing their jobs but being denied government assistance and so on – are hard to quantify.
But we’ve done our best to calculate some of the economic cost. By our reckoning every day the borders remain largely closed is costing at least $36.5 million in lost expenditure.
Calculating the costs of the closed border
There are a variety of ways to calculate the cost of the closed border. For this exercise we’ve focused on international tourists and international students. These two groups have a significant impact on the economy as Australia’s top two service exports.
We’ve left out other elements affected by the border closure. The following chart shows how the Australian Bureau of Statistics counts arrivals. Most significantly we’ve excluded permanent arrivals – migrants – from our estimates. Migration certainly brings significant economic benefits, but quantifying them for this exercise would be difficult.
In 2019, the Australian Bureau of Statistics recorded a total of 10,067,650 short-term and long-term visitor arrivals – an average of 27,582 a day. Over the whole year, according the Reserve Bank of Australia, they spent about A$65 billion on Australian goods and services.
In 2020, visitor numbers dropped to 2,023,020 – 1,971,490 of those in the first three months. Since April 2020 the average number of visitor arrivals has been about 219 a day.
Short-term international visitors buy goods and services made both domestically and overseas. The following chart provides a breakdown of all spending by primary purpose of trip, using data from Tourism Research Australia.
For our calculations, we’ve excluded spending on imported goods and focused on expenditure by international visitors on Australian goods and services. RBA data indicates in 2019 this is about $23 billion – or an average of about $63 million a day. Since April 2020 it has been negligible.
It wouldn’t be accurate, though, to say Australia is losing more than $63 million every day due to closed borders. If the border was open it is unlikely tourist arrivals would snap back to pre-COVID levels.
So what level is reasonable to assume?
One way is to look at international tourism trends in countries that have kept borders open. Statistics from the OECD published in December 2020 show declines between 50% (for Croatia) and 57% (for Germany). On this basis, we have assumed an open border would result in about half the number of international tourists pre-pandemic.
In keeping the border closed, therefore, this means losing expenditure of about $11.5 billion a year – or $31.5 million a day.
But, you might be thinking, what about the fact the closed border is also stopping Australians going overseas and taking money out of the economy?
This is true, but that “saved” money only helps the local economy if the dollars are spent here. From what we know, household saving rose to record levels last year and domestic tourism spending also declined. Both factors suggest lost international tourist dollars are not being offset in any significant way by higher domestic spending by Australians unable to travel overseas.
Losses from international students
The international student market in 2019 was worth about $40 billion to the Australian economy, according to the Reserve Bank. About $17 billion of that was in tuition fees, and $23 billion for living expenses. That’s equivalent to about $109 million a day.
Since the border closure, more than 100,000 students enrolled in Australian educational institutions have been prevented from coming into the country. Many have continued their studies online, but total enrolments have also fallen, as the following chart showing the number of international student visa holders over 2020 shows.
If the borders were open, we can’t assume total student numbers would bounce back to pre-pandemic levels. But we can reasonably assume many of those overseas studying online at an Australian institution would choose to come here.
According to the latest March 2021 data, there are about 112,435 international students in this situation. To be conservative, we’ve assumed 70% – about 78,700 – would return to study onshore.
To get an idea how much this would add to the economy, we’ve calculated each student would spend about $24,090 a year – $66 a day –on Australian goods and services. This is based on a total of about 952,00 international students enrolled in Australia in 2019 spending $23 billion on living expenses (per the Reserve Bank figures). This estimate is admittedly inexact because enrolments are not the same as the number of international students, but it is the best we have.
On this basis, we conclude the closed border is keeping about 78,700 international students out of the country and costing the economy $5.2 million a day – let’s round it down to $5 million a day to be conservative.
Keeping the international borders closed, therefore, is costing about $36.5 million a day in lost expenditure from tourists and international students. We calculate that equates over a year to about 72,000 jobs.
We acknowledge this is not a complete reckoning. Other methods might arrive at different figures. We’ve had to make many assumptions, and pick from statistics that differ between agencies (and even the same agency depending on the date). We’ve left out migrants, who bring critical skills and increase demand for goods and services, as well as business travel that facilitates investment and trade.
But we’ve done our best to use the most solid statistics available to provide a firm answer as to what Australia’s closed border is costing the economy.
That cost underlines the importance of a speedy vaccine roll-out – the key to relaxing border restrictions.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Samuel Beckett originally subtitled his 1953 play Waiting for Godot “a tragicomedy in two acts”. Vivian Mercier, the critic for the Irish Times, dubbed it “a play in which nothing happens, twice.”
Two tramps, Vladimir and Estragon, wait on the side of a country road. Each act begins with the pair reunited after spending the night apart. As they await their enigmatic patron, Godot, Estragon laments being beaten by nameless figures during the night, and Vladimir seeks to pass the time by stirring his companion into repartee.
These two are ill-starred but well-suited: Estragon’s feet are in constant pain, and Vladimir’s unspecified affliction induces frequent and painful urination. Estragon’s shoes stink, while Vladimir adheres to a diet of garlic to ease the symptoms of his condition. Vladimir remembers, and Estragon forgets.
Memory stretches into the deep past. The present sits on the cusp of a hopeful future. Time’s recurrence is marked by the moon and the sun. The endless wait for a rendezvous … for what, exactly?
To receive instructions? To be delivered from this tormented life? To relieve the tramps of their little canters, their bombastic declarations, their pleas? To relieve the steadfast audience?
From its first performances in the 1950s, Waiting for Godot enjoyed a positive critical reception. Yet its earliest audiences thought otherwise, ensuring the interval was the most popular part of the play by voting with their feet. Over time, though, Godot would become a celebrated avant-garde play, and a popular cultural reference for fruitless waiting.
This waiting is eerily prescient in a time of pandemic.
From Dublin to Paris
Samuel Beckett photographed in 1977. Wikimedia Commons
Samuel Beckett was born in Dublin in 1906. As a child he boarded at the Portora Royal School in Enniskillen (Oscar Wilde’s alma mater), before a degree in Modern Languages and Literature at Trinity College Dublin.
His enduring relation with Paris began soon after. During his two-year position as lecteur d’anglais at the Ecole Normale Superiéure (1928-29) Beckett met and became close with James Joyce, who introduced him to the Parisian literary and artistic avant-garde.
Beckett spent two years in London (1933-35) undergoing a course of psychoanalysis under Walter Bion at the Tavistock Clinic, during which he wrote his first published novel, Murphy (1938). Following travels in Germany and Italy, Beckett settled in Paris in 1938, as war looked increasingly likely.
Beckett joined the French Resistance but his cell was infiltrated and he was forced to flee to Roussillon for the duration of the war, where he composed the novel Watt (published in 1953) in English. Back in Paris, Beckett embraced French and embarked upon one of modern literature’s most eccentric and fruitful monastic episodes: the “siege in the room” which yielded the trilogy Molloy (1951), Malone Dies (1953) and The Unnamable (1953).
The script opens with the stage directions ‘A country road. A tree. Evening.’, as in this New Orleans street art. Derek Bridges/flickr, CC BY-NC-SA
Beckett’s trilogy contributed to the new wave of French postwar novels renowned for their spare style and forensic treatment of plot, a movement that came to be known as the nouveau roman (“New Novel”).
Beckett wrote Waiting for Godot between October 1948 and January 1949. It was his first play to reach the stage — his first full playscript, Eleuthéria, was written in 1947 but only published posthumously.
Nothing, twice
Despite appearances, Godot is a surprising blend of suspense and dramatic action. Themes repeat over both acts: the same waiting, the same fights. A messenger boy appears in each act — or, perhaps, two different boys in each act, brothers. The horizon of time is scanned twice, once in each act.
The symmetry of Vladimir and Estragon, endlessly waiting for the unseen Godot, is echoed by another pair, Pozzo and Lucky, who pass by in each act. In Act 1, Pozzo is the grand landlord — a revenant of the Irish Big House literary tradition — whipping his servant Lucky into service.
Pozzo’s pomposity is matched by Lucky’s silence, and when Pozzo compels Lucky to speak, finally, Lucky’s cascade of logorrhea stands in contrast to Pozzo’s grandiloquence.
In Act 2 Pozzo returns, blinded, his authority diminished to the merely rhetorical. His final speech echoes Macbeth on time and the brevity of life. In Shakespeare’s play, Macbeth pronounces:
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player / That struts and frets his hour upon the stage / And then is heard no more
Pozzo’s final passionate outburst reduces life to:
the same day, the same second […] They give birth astride the grave, the light gleams an instant, then it’s night once more.
Estragon’s complete indifference to Pozzo’s swansong has Vladimir wonder at his own dilemma, inducing an irrevocable moment of clear vision:
At me too someone is looking, of me too someone is saying, he is sleeping, he knows nothing, let him sleep on.
This burden of recognition places Valdimir within a tragic mode, out of step with the farcical tragicomedy around him. He is no longer immersed in the condition of waiting, but breaks through to understand the act of waiting as a condition of life.
Audible yawns – from those who stayed
Godot premièred at the Théâtre du Babylone in Paris in January 1953. The play drew positive attention from reviewers and from some of the biggest names in French theatre and literature. Its fame rose slowly — then abruptly, when a fistfight broke out in the interval of one performance, between the play’s defenders and those offended or shocked by its (in)action and the cruel plight of the character Lucky.
Its English-language premiere in London in August 1955 was met with “waves of hostility” and audible yawning from audience members who remained after interval.
The play’s fate in the United States was little short of catastrophic: billed as “the laugh sensation of two continents”, its opening night in January 1956 at the Coconut Grove Playhouse in Miami was farcical.
Even Alan Schneider’s expert direction couldn’t salvage the play from a disruptive rehearsal atmosphere, complicated sets and an ill-suited venue. The interval, again, turned out to be the most popular part of the performance.
Bert Lahr (who played the Lion in 1939’s The Wizard of Oz) played Estragon in Miami and would be instrumental in the play’s success later that year on Broadway, an event that remained one of his career highlights.
Waiting for Godot played on Broadway for only 10 weeks, but Bert Lahr’s performance was immortalised by Columbia Records. Internet Archive
During those early years, Godot was also performed in prisons, including a landmark production by the San Francisco Actors Workshop at San Quentin State Prison in 1957. Inmates were astounded a playwright could capture limbo with such insight and sensitivity.
All of us are waiting
Over time its fame has grown to the point where Godot is a definitive meeting point of the avant-garde and popular culture. The play has inspired numerous parodies and spin-offs, perhaps most notably the 1996 mockumentary Waiting for Guffman, in which the cast of a small-town musical production in Missouri awaits the arrival of a legendary Broadway producer.
The claustrophobia of Beckett’s next play, Endgame (1957), might capture the experience of lockdown in the current pandemic (“Beyond [the wall] is the other hell”), but Godot captures the distortions of time combined with the uncertainty of respite.
Populations across the globe have endured various kinds of waiting: waiting for published infection numbers, for hospital beds, for oxygen supplies, for borders to reopen, for opportunities to see loved ones. Running through our individual narratives, waiting has proved to be a truly global, shared experience.
How do we remember pre-pandemic times – that past “a million years ago,” as Vladimir pronounces in the play – and what do we forget?
Estragon exclaims: “Nothing happens. Nobody comes, nobody goes. It’s awful.” But dilatory time and static place also offer opportunities for new perception: a long moment to consider our circumstances and ourselves anew.
Mark Byron 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.
Despite this week’s strong economic figures, the pandemic is not as distant in the rearview mirror as many had hoped it would be by now.
In Victoria, cluster outbreaks have forced the state into a new lockdown. With cases amongst aged care workers and residents, the state waits nervously as health authorities battle to contain the situation.
As Shadow Minister for Health and Ageing, Mark Butler is focused on scrutinising the federal government’s handling of pandemic and the aged care sector, and what more should be done.
“The problem is distribution[…] We need to ramp up the aged care vaccination and disability care vaccination. And that just means the Commonwealth needing to engage more teams to do the job.
“They’re doing that in Melbourne right now. But still, we have hundreds and hundreds of aged care facilities that haven’t yet received their second dose. And 98% of residents in disability care haven’t received their second dose. These are priority groups. So that is what the Commonwealth should be doing as a matter of urgency.”
Butler is a former national president of the Labor party and sits on its national executive. This week, rebel backbencher Joel Fitzgibbon called for Labor to scrap the rank and file component in selecting its leader. Currently the Labor leader is elected on a 50-50 basis between the caucus and party membership. Butler firmly rejects the Fitzgibbon call for change.
Indeed, he says he’s held a “strong view” for “many, many years” that there should be more rank and file decision making in the party – not less. But the complication is that with party membership decreasing, membership decisions skew a certain way.
“There is an obligation. You can’t rely upon a shrinking group of party members[…]but what I do know is that it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy if we continue to disrespect our members and just expect them to roll up to polling booths every election day and not really do much else.”
Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Victoria’s lockdown is to be extended for another week to get on top of the growing number of community cases, which now stands at 60.
But questions remain about what’s behind some of these cases.
Victoria’s COVID-19 testing commander Jeroen Weimar said yesterday in about four or five cases, the virus was transmitted after only “fleeting contact”.
Today, we heard from Victoria’s Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton about one case suspected to have been infected when visiting a site some two hours after an infectious person had left. The source case had been there for some time, and it was described as a poorly ventilated space.
Nonetheless, this is consistent with the aerosol transmission we have become increasingly concerned about, and perhaps this is the first documentation of this outside hotel quarantine.
Today we also heard that health authorities have reported about 10% of cases are linked with more casual exposures, including at “tier two” sites (Victoria describes exposure sites according to risk, with a tier one site being the most risky).
So is it the virus, or more focused efforts in tracking cases, that’s led us to finding such casual exposures?
Despite today’s news, people are not more likely now to get infected by brushing past someone on the street.
In the vast majority of cases, people have become infected by very close contacts, or at certain “tier one” exposure sites when there at the same time as a known case.
There is evidence the variant associated with India is more infectious. This particular lineage of the Indian variant B.1.617.1, however, may not be as infectious as other lineages.
It reinforces how important it is that outbreaks are contained as early as possible where this increased risk of spread is still manageable.
On average, with variants of concern like the one currently circulating in Victoria, a case might infect 15% of household contacts instead of 10% seen in 2020. When new case numbers are high later in an outbreak, this difference in transmission translates to much bigger jumps in case numbers.
The way the virus spreads in clusters has also not changed, with some cases not passing the virus on, while a small number pass it on to many.
If this strain of the virus were vastly more transmissible than the original strain, we’d expect to see many cases. This strain has been in our community for a month now, undetected and running free for more than two weeks. There would be many more than 60 cases if this were true.
The main thing that’s changed since Victoria’s second wave last year is that we have forensic analysis of every case and we’re better at finding casual links between cases.
We’re now publishing lists of venues with exposure times and more people are coming forward for testing than at the peak of Victoria’s second wave. We also have check-in data for many venues.
This results in more reliable measures of both the total spread and routes of virus transmission, than in the second wave, or any community outbreak of this size.
Transmission associated with more casual exposures would have been much more likely to be missed before. Even if these cases were picked up, they might have been counted among the “mystery cases” that comprised 18% of all cases in 2020. We didn’t know where these cases were infected as there were no apparent links between them and known cases.
We are doing much better this time with only three transmission events that not yet fully understood.
How about this ‘fleeting contact’?
The four or five cases Weimar mentioned yesterday relate to a range of indoor exposure sites including a display home, a Telstra shop, local grocery stores, and a shopping strip.
This is where people may have been in direct contact with a case, but where no definitive exposure event is documented, there is no check-in and people don’t know each other.
So from what we know so far, there’s been a crossover between when most cases were present and where their contacts became infected. And 90% of these are in the settings we know are high transmission risk — households and workplaces in particular, where there is extended and repeated indoor contact.
The more casual contacts described yesterday, in a display home or at the Telstra shop, there might have been some overlap with a case in a small enclosed area for sufficient time to receive an infecting dose.
A further example Sutton provided today was an infection that started with someone sitting in the same outdoor area as a case at a hotel bistro. We know there is less risk in outdoor settings generally, but on a still autumn day, we now know this is all it takes.
Now, as we have transmission in the beer garden, all those nearby will be recategorised as primary close contacts and asked to quarantine for a full 14 days, even if they have returned a negative test. Better to be safe than sorry.
That’s why it’s so important to check in with a QR code. You don’t always know the name of the person who’s standing (or sitting) next to you. It is also why check-ins will now be required at more retail and public venues across the state. Being able to identify contacts in these settings will remove some of the fear associate with this more casual spread.
So what are we to make of this?
This latest news reinforces the importance of QR codes and checking in. You never know who you’re standing next to in a long queue while shopping.
Extending our QR codes into further settings whether retail, grocery stores or display homes, which we now know are a risk, is a good move.
The message remains the same, get tested if you have symptoms or when directed to by public health officials, and isolate when necessary. In particular, keep an eye on those exposure sites, even if you only dropped in to grab a coffee.
But we shouldn’t be overly concerned about COVID-19 spread by “fleeting contact”. The precautions we all know (hygiene, distancing and masks) still work and are our best forms of protection.
Catherine Bennett receives funding from National Health and Medical Research Council and the Medical Research Future Fund.
A View from Afar host Selwyn Manning and political scientist Paul G. Buchanan.
A View from Afar: Selwyn Manning and Paul Buchanan present this week’s podcast, where they analyse the Australia-China-New Zealand relationship. Has this reached a tipping-point? Also, Israel. How stable will this cobbled together coalition of anti-Netanyahu parties be?
What are the main take-away points from the New Zealand-Australia leaders bilateral meeting this week?
AU PM Scott Morrison referenced ANZUS while NZ PM Jacinda Ardern spoke of NZ’s defence requirements as an independent consideration.
So who is correct here? Does Australia and New Zealand’s re-stated commitment to being a Trans-Tasman family drag NZ into supporting any future Australian conflict?
And then there’s China’s foreign ministry response, that states: “The leaders of Australia and New Zealand, with irresponsible remarks on China’s internal affairs relating to Hong Kong and Xinjiang as well as the South China Sea issue, have made groundless accusations against China…”
Does AU and NZ governments’ renewed sense of self-identity indicate a rebalancing of a regional and global order? And has the PRC’s dominating influence in AU and NZ politics reached its zenith?
And does the PRC’s increased authoritarianism at home and abroad reflect leadership weaknesses rather than strength?
*** Israel.
In the last quarter of this episode, Buchanan and Manning will discuss the latest from the Middle East.
Will a cobbled-together coalition of anti-Netanyahu politicians succeed in creating a new Israel Government? How stable will it be, and, what does this mean for Palestinians in the West Bank of Gaza?
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