Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Philip Zylstra, Adjunct Associate Professor at Curtin University, Honorary Fellow at University of Wollongong, University of Wollongong

The Black Summer bushfires burned far more temperate forest than any other fire season recorded in Australia. The disaster was clearly a climate change event; however, other human activities also had consequences.

Taking timber from forests dramatically changes their structure, making them more vulnerable to bushfires. And, crucially for the Black Summer bushfires, logged forests are more likely to burn out of control.

Naturally, the drivers of the fires were widely debated during and after the disaster. Research published earlier this month, for example, claimed native forest logging did not make the fires worse.

We believe these findings are too narrowly focused and in fact, misleading. They overlook a vast body of evidence that crown fire – the most extreme type of bushfire behaviour, in which tree canopies burn – is more likely in logged native forests.

Crown fires vs scorch

The Black Summer fires occurred in the 2019-20 bushfire season and burned vast swathes of Australia’s southeast. In some cases, fire spread through forests with no recorded fire, including some of the last remnants of ancient Gondwanan rainforests.

Tragically, the fires directly killed 33 people, while an estimated 417 died due to the effects of smoke inhalation. A possible three billion vertebrate animals perished and the risk of species extinctions dramatically increased.

Much of the forest that burned during Black Summer experienced crown fires. These fires burn through the canopies of trees, as well as the undergrowth. They are the most extreme form of fire behaviour and are virtually impossible to control.

Crown fires pulse with such intense heat they can form thunderstorms which generate lightning and destructive winds. This sends burning bark streamers tens of kilometres ahead of the fire, spreading it further. The Black Summer bushfires included at least 18 such storms.

Various forest industry reports have recognised logging makes bushfires harder to control.

And to our knowledge, every empirical analysis so far shows logging eucalypt forests makes them far more likely to experience crown fire. The studies include:

• A 2009 paper suggesting changes in forest structure and moisture make severe fire more likely in logging regrowth compared to undisturbed forest

• 2012 research concluding the probability of crown fires was higher in recently logged areas than in areas logged decades before

• A 2013 study that showed the likelihood of crown fire halved as forests aged after a certain point

• 2014 findings that crown fire in the Black Saturday fires likely peaked in regrowth and fell in mature forests

• 2018 research into the 2003 Australian Alps fires, which found the same increase in the likelihood of crown fire during regrowth as was measured following logging.

The combined findings of these studies are represented in the image below:

Crown fires take lives

The presence of crown fire is a key consideration in fire supression, because crown fires are very hard to control.

However, the study released last week – which argued that logging did not worsen the Black Summer fires – focused on crown “scorch”. Crown scorch is very different to crown fire. It is not a measure of how difficult it is to contain the fire, because even quite small flames can scorch a drought-stressed canopy.

Forestry studies tend to focus more on crown scorch, which damages timber and is far more common than crown fires.

But the question of whether logging made crown scorch worse is not relevant to whether a fire was uncontrollable, and thus was able to destroy homes and lives.

Importantly, when the study said logging had a very small influence on scorch, this was referring to the average scorch over the whole fire area, not just places that had been logged. That’s like asking how a drought in the small town of Mudgee affects the national rainfall total: it may not play a large role overall, but it’s pretty important to Mudgee.

The study examined trees in previously logged areas, or areas that had been logged and burned by fires of any source. It found they were as likely to scorch on the mildest bushfire days as trees in undisturbed forests on bad days. These results simply add to the body of evidence that logging increases fire damage.

Read more: I’m searching firegrounds for surviving Kangaroo Island Micro-trapdoor spiders. 6 months on, I’m yet to find any

Managing forests for all

Research shows forests became dramatically less likely to burn when they mature after a few decades. Mature forests are also less likely to carry fire into the tree tops.

For example during the Black Saturday fires in 2009, the Kilmore East fire north of Melbourne consumed all before it as a crown fire. Then it reached the old, unlogged mountain ash forests on Mount Disappointment and dropped to the ground, spreading as a slow surface fire.

The trees were scorched. But they were too tall to ignite, and instead blocked the high winds and slowed the fire down. Meanwhile, logged ash forests drove flames high into the canopy.

Despite decades of opportunity to show otherwise, the only story for eucalypt forests remains this: logging increases the impact of bushfires. This fact should inform forest management decisions on how to reduce future fire risk.

We need timber, but it must be produced in ways that don’t endanger human lives or the environment.

Read more: ‘We know our community better than they do’: why local knowledge is key to disaster recovery in Gippsland

– ref. Native forest logging makes bushfires worse – and to say otherwise ignores the facts – https://theconversation.com/native-forest-logging-makes-bushfires-worse-and-to-say-otherwise-ignores-the-facts-161177

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Tregear, Principal Fellow, The University of Melbourne

Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana is one of only a handful of 20th century classical concert pieces that can claim to have become embedded in popular culture. Its opening movement in particular has featured in epic film battle scenes, coffee, beer and cologne commercials, dancefloor hits and even inspired an internet meme about misheard lyrics.

Both the origins of the work and its composer are, however, much less known. Born in Munich in 1895, Orff’s lasting musical contribution outside composition was in the field of music education.

What we know today as Orff Schulwerk is an approach to teaching music that encourages children to explore and develop their musical creativity through singing, improvisation, movement, and rhythmic play.

Orff Schulwerk became influential across the West in the years after the second world war (and helped make percussion instruments in particular part of the standard kit of the school music room) but Carmina Burana — the sound of which reflects some of the vocal and percussive interests of the Schulwerk approach — dates from just before the onset of that war.

Premiering in June 1937 at the Frankfurt Opera, its compositional history therefore also intersects with aspects of the racial, cultural and aesthetic cultural policies the Nazi Party introduced across Germany after its rise to power in 1933.

An earthy manuscript

The title simply means “Songs from Beuern” in Latin. Beuern is a variant of the German word for Bavaria, Bayern, but here it specifically refers to a village south of Munich at the foothills of the Bavarian Alps.

The village was home to a Benedictine monastery founded in 733. When it was dissolved in 1083, its library was transferred to the Court Library at Munich.

There, in 1847, a modern edition was made of perhaps the most remarkable work in the collection: a beautifully illuminated manuscript of secular poems in both Latin and Middle High German. These “Carmina Burana” soon became well-known across Europe.

In the mid 1930s Orff asked the German poet and jurist Michel Hofmann to organise 24 of those poems into a libretto for what he envisioned as a kind of secular oratorio with staging elements. The original poems had been preserved with their own melodies, but Orff was not aware of their existence when composing his own settings.

The full title — Songs of Beuern: Secular songs for singers and choruses to be sung together with instruments and magical images — reminds us the original performances were more than concerts. They were envisioned as theatrical events.

The famous opening chorus, O Fortuna, velut Luna (O Fortune, like the moon) refers to the Wheel of Fortune and the vagaries of fate. Returning in full at the end, the chorus gives the work a dramatic and musical frame.

Inside that frame, Orff and his librettist placed three groups of poems that deal with, respectively, the transient joys of springtime (Primo Vera), the tavern (In Taberna), and erotic love (Cour d’amours).

Much of the pleasure I suspect we receive from Carmina Burana comes not just from the high literary quality of these poems but also from the fact they concern themselves with topics far from what we might imagine were the usual interests of a benedictine monastery. They can be punchy, earthy, funny — and sometimes surprisingly confronting.

I would challenge any carnivore to hear the extraordinary twelfth movement Olim Lacus Colueram (“Once I lived on lakes”) which gives voice to a roasting swan, and not be drawn to contemplate – if only for a moment – vegetarianism.

But is it fascist?

In his book The Twisted Muse (1997), musicologist Michael Kater asserts that Orff was a central figure in what he describes as a “School of Nazi modernism” which also included composers Werner Egk, Boris Blacher, Gottfried von Einem and Rudolf Wagner-Régeny.

A popular and critical success from its first performance, Carmina Burana was performed regularly in Germany throughout the second world war. The subject matter certainly appealed to Nazi sensibilities that sought to legitimise the Third Reich through association with past empires, particularly the Germany of the medieval era.

But what about the music?

Being approved by a fascist regime does not in and of itself make something fascist. And, in any case, it is notoriously difficult to try and define what a fascist music might be as we are more wont to do in the case of, say, architecture.

As I have suggested elsewhere, we could be forgiven in fact for concluding that Nazism (and fascism more generally) is something which happens to music and musicians, and not something with which a musical work can be complicit in a uniquely musical way.

Read more: How the Nazis used music to celebrate and facilitate murder

Yet I do think it is possible to explore such a possibility — albeit with due caution. Hannah Arendt, who spent a great deal of her later life trying understand how Germany had descended into fascism, described in her book The Origins of Totalitarianism one tell-tale characteristic of fascism as being the “emancipation of thought from experience”: a kind of willed stupidity.

Can a piece of music encourage or mimic such thinking? Can it foster a kind of of “stupid” listening? Well, as far as Carmina Burana is concerned, we might note its heavy reliance on the repetition of small musical motives does lend the work a sense of unquestioned (or, at worst, unquestionable) ritualistic force which might lead us to think something similar.

A visual parallel might be Albert Speer’s infamous Cathedrals of Light, the array of spotlights he used to monumentalise the Nazi Party rallies in Nuremberg around the same time as Orff was composing Carmina Burana. Here we are certainly presented with an effect without just cause – the awe-inspiring vista (also achieved in no small part by the sheer blunt force of repetition) overwhelms us without encouraging us to reflect on whether that response is actually merited by what the spotlights accompany.

The deployment of artistic effects without legitimate justification is, however, not just a property of fascist aesthetics. It is also a commonly asserted property of kitsch. Should we be surprised, then, to find that the opening chorus of Carmina Burana also now pops up in concerts by the so-called King of Classical kitsch, André Rieu?

Read more: André Rieu gives his audience exactly what they want: entertainment

The frequent use of this opening chorus as an advertising jingle is also, I think, revealing. A famous Carlton and United advertisement for draught beer declared to its audience that they were watching, simply, “a big ad.”

Here, the ad-makers themselves seem to have recognised, named, and exploited the empty grandiosity some would say indeed lies at the heart of the music.

That opening chorus has also made an appearance in the soundtracks of numerous feature films, most notably 1981’s Excalibur, where the shared medieval fantasy elements no doubt made some dramatic sense. But it has also been frequently applied to subject matter far removed from medieval topics; and often for comic and ironic effect.

In a 2001 essay for the New York Times the renowned musicologist Richard Taruskin went as far as to suggest that Orff’s music “can channel any diabolical message that text or context may suggest, and no music does it better”.

He continued “it is just because we like it that we ought to resist it”.

Nevertheless, as another commentator subsequently noted, Taruskin’s description of the work’s effect is also “almost the definition of a guilty pleasure.”

Maybe that’s the best place for us to start our engagement with the work today. Let’s continue to enjoy and be impressed by Carmina Burana — but also let’s not forget to ask ourselves why we might find it so enjoyable and impressive in the first place.

The Sydney Philharmonia Choir performs Carmina Burana this weekend and Melbourne Symphony Orchestra will perform it in July.

– ref. Decoding the music masterpieces: how Carmina Burana, based on Benedictine poems, travelled from Bavaria to a beer ad – https://theconversation.com/decoding-the-music-masterpieces-how-carmina-burana-based-on-benedictine-poems-travelled-from-bavaria-to-a-beer-ad-159057

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By George Newhouse, Adjunct Professor of Law, Macquarie University

Geoffrey Robertson is one of Australia’s most acclaimed international jurists and human rights advocates. His latest book, Bad People – and How to Be Rid of Them, explains the history of international human rights law and acknowledges its failings.

Bad People is not a textbook; it is aimed at anyone with an interest in the international human rights framework and its enforcement mechanisms.

Most importantly, it is a call to action for Australians and others in democracies to demand the introduction of “Magnitsky laws”.

Magnitsky laws are named after a Russian whistleblower, Sergei Magnitsky, who was tortured and died after exposing a massive tax fraud scheme involving Russian officials. These laws seek to combat human rights abuses by naming, blaming and shaming individuals, denying them the right to enter democratic nations, stripping them of ill-gotten funds, and barring them and their families from local schools and hospitals.

The US was the first country to pass such laws in 2012 to sanction Russian officials and Chechen warlords, sending a strong signal to the Kremlin that action could and would be taken for human rights breaches.

Since then, the US has used the Global Magnitsky Act to impose sanctions on more than 200 individuals and entities from two dozen countries, including Saudi Arabia, China, South Sudan, Myanmar, Iraq and Cambodia.

Robertson’s response to the failure of the international human rights framework is to promote powerful Magnitsky laws as a “plan B” to coordinated international action.

How international courts have been weakened

Robertson charts the rise of human rights immediately after the horrors of the second world war, and then despairs of the growing trend of nations retreating from the jurisdiction of international courts or refusing to comply with their rulings.

Robertson describes how the United Nations succeeded in establishing a coherent human rights regime, but failed to carve out effective accountability mechanisms to enforce breaches. Instead, enforcement relies on individual nations’ leaders being motivated to legislate human rights into their domestic laws.

Although the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights has been broadly accepted, punishment for war crimes and crimes against humanity has been inconsistent and complex.

Consequently, Robertson argues the International Criminal Court (ICC) does not serve as a deterrent to perpetrators of most human rights abuses.

Eroded confidence in international law

The book provides a useful history of the ICC and the way the US, China and Russia have limited its operations by using their veto powers when legal action is proposed against them or their allies.

In the past four years, for instance, Russia has vetoed ICC action 14 times, China five times and the US twice. Robertson suggests the mere threat of a veto by superpowers behind the scenes have seen other initiatives withdrawn.

As a result, Robertson laments the once-powerful ICC is now confined to punishing rebel warlords and leaders of pariah countries.

More than 70 years after the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the growing threats of isolationist foreign policies and anti-democratic regimes are pulling at the threads of our international human rights framework. Shifting geopolitical balances and the populist politics of Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Narendra Modi, Donald Trump and the Brexit campaign have eroded confidence in a global system of law and order.

Read more: Australia must do more to ensure Myanmar is preventing genocide against the Rohingya

Australia is not immune from this trend. In February 2020, the ICC prosecutor described Australia’s offshore detention regime as “cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment”.

But, the ICC decided not to prosecute the Australian government, despite saying its actions appeared “to constitute the underlying act of imprisonment or other severe deprivations of physical liberty” forbidden under international law.

The problem with Magnitsky laws

Robertson’s solution is to impose sanctions against individuals, corporations and other entities.

He argues Magnitsky laws are not an alternative to coordinated international criminal justice, but an assertion of the fundamental values that countries insist should be respected by other nations.

The problem is these types of sanctions can be abused for political reasons. We have already seen the tit-for-tat actions of nations that bring sanctions against the citizens of their enemies, such as the Russian counter-sanctions against US citizens in 2013, including former Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff.

Read more: Canada’s growing challenges with economic sanctions

Among democratic nations, it is unlikely Magnitsky laws would ever be used against friendly allies. Can you imagine any of Australia’s allies sanctioning an Australian official for a First Nations’ death in custody or for the over-representation of First Nations people in the country’s criminal justice system?

If enforcement of human rights breaches is seen as political or inconsistent, then Magnitsky laws may not be the universal panacea Robertson suggests. However, this doesn’t mean the push for individual accountability is not justified. As he writes,

human rights are not rights in any meaningful sense unless they are capable of enforcement.

Robertson leaves us with a sensible pathway to a better world through laws that hold individuals accountable for their evil deeds. Magnitsky sanctions might, at least, make murderers, crooks and abusers think twice before implementing their plans.

Geoffrey Robertson will be speaking across Australia in the coming weeks, with engagements in Melbourne on May 22 and Sydney on May 25 and 26, to be followed by Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth.

– ref. Book review: Geoffrey Robertson makes the case for naming and shaming human rights abusers – https://theconversation.com/book-review-geoffrey-robertson-makes-the-case-for-naming-and-shaming-human-rights-abusers-160985

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Whyte, Deputy Director, Centre for Behavioural Economics, Society and Technology, Queensland University of Technology

As behavioural scientists, we have a keen interest in how people make decisions, and particularly how these decisions incorporate a range of emotional, cognitive and psychological factors.

Choosing a life partner is arguably one of the most important decisions a person can make. And research has shown the most common way to do this these days is to go online.

As increasing numbers of people wade cautiously through the digital dating market, many still subscribe to stereotypical ideas about what men and women find attractive in a partner.

Our latest research, published today in PLOS One shows the truth, as ever, is more nuanced.

Using survey data from 7,325 heterosexual users of dating websites, aged 18 to 65, we show there is no absolute difference between the preferences of men and women when it comes to choosing a mate. Both essentially desire the same qualities, but prioritise them slightly differently.

The democratisation of dating?

Dating in the 21st century is a truly unique experience. For millennia, the human search for companionship had been constrained by access, distance and resources. Most people had to find a partner through close or extended family, or religious, cultural or social organisations.

Today, online dating allows seemingly unrestrained and “nonsequential” decision-making.

Imagine if you met someone at a bar and told them to wait around for two hours, just in case you managed to find someone better. It sounds bizarre, but that’s what online dating allows. You can search through thousands of people and never have to make a decision.

This is good news for researchers of human behaviour. With such a vast and growing pool of data, we can study mating choices in a way we never could before.

Pressure to play the evolutionary game

Obviously, a huge part of sexual attraction comes down to personal preference regarding what makes someone “sexy”. That said, there are many stereotypes relating to what heterosexual men and women find sexy.

It’s often assumed women favour more emotional, personality, intelligence and commitment-based traits in men, while men are often said to prefer physical attractiveness.

From an evolutionary psychology angle, these stereotypes aren’t unfounded. In the game of life, the main aim is to pass on your genes — and once you do, to ensure your offspring achieve the same success.

Naturally, men and women play different roles in the reproduction process. From an evolutionary standpoint, it makes sense for women to seek a man with traits that will benefit her offspring in both the short and long term, as women bear a bigger reproductive cost than men.

They have internal gestation for nine months and then must successfully give birth, all while facing discomfort and risk. They will then continue to nurse and care for the child.

Men, at its simplest, need only to invest time into copulation to have offspring. Theoretically, then, the specific selection pressures on men and women to pass on their genes should be observable in the characteristics of the mates they choose.

Many of these assumptions fall under a school of thought called “parental investment theory”, developed in the early 1970s by evolutionary biologist Robert Trivers.

More recent theories in gender studies and social and evolutionary psychology have countered the notion of absolute differences. They demonstrate men and women are far more similar in their preferences than previously thought.

Our research reinforces one such theory, referred to as “mutual mate choice”. We found both men and women essentially desire the same qualities in a partner, differing only in the relative emphasis placed on each trait at different life stages.

Read more: Should I stay or should I go? Here are the relationship factors people ponder when deciding whether to break up

If men are from Mars, women are too

We asked survey participants to rate from 0 to 100 the importance they placed on nine traits when looking for a mate. They fell into three categories:

• aesthetics, such as age, attractiveness and physical features
• resources, such as intelligence, education and income
• and personality, such as trust, openness and emotional connection.

Both genders rated aesthetics as highly important, along with all three personality traits, while income was much less important.

Women, however, rated factors including age, education, intelligence, income, trust and emotional connection about 9 to 14 points higher than men. Men placed relatively more emphasis on attractiveness and physical build.

Importantly, the way both genders prioritised traits changed with age. Both cared less about physical attractiveness as they got older, whereas emphasis on personality increased. This makes sense, considering we require different things from a partner at different life stages.

Our findings reinforce that both men and women tend to give similar emphasis to certain traits, depending on their individual needs at a particular stage in life.

Men and women can both be very picky

One interesting revelation came when we grouped participants’ preference data together.

Of those individuals who said one specific trait was very important to them, it turned out the majority of traits were very important to them. On the other hand were respondents who said they didn’t have a strong preference for any particular trait at all.

So while some people were happy to go with the flow, many of the participants actually cared a lot about a lot of different factors. For men, the likelihood of having such stringent preferences was most common between ages 20 and 40. Among women it was more likely between the ages of 35 and 50.

Personal circumstance and preference is key

The bottom line is there is no single unified theory of mate choice. Attractiveness matters to everyone to some extent. Resources and intelligence matter to everyone to some extent.

Beyond human biology and evolution, it’s likely our individual personal constraints — such as employment, education, family and social circle — still have a huge impact on how we choose a mate, even if we are dating online.

While dating apps and websites may come with an element of “cognitive overload”, they are ultimately just conduits for human communication. They let people search far and wide for a mate who will help them achieve their own relationship goals.

And our relationship goals, just as is the case with the importance we place on our preferences, change over time.

Read more: The One: could DNA tests find our soulmate? We study sex and sexuality — and think the idea is ridiculous

– ref. Men are from Mars, women are from… Mars? How people choose partners is surprisingly similar (but depends on age) – https://theconversation.com/men-are-from-mars-women-are-from-mars-how-people-choose-partners-is-surprisingly-similar-but-depends-on-age-161081

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Annabelle Lukin, Associate Professor in Linguistics, Macquarie University

As lethal violence kills ordinary people in Gaza and Israel, news outlets across the globe are constructing versions of events that will keep eyeballs on their content.

After all, war is the most compelling news story of all. And given many people who care about this situation have no direct experience of it, they depend on media reports to form a view.

But when reporting on something as terrible as political violence, journalists face an impossible choice.

While professional ethics of journalism demand “objectivity”, language just won’t come to the party. This is because language has no neutral mode. Once you step into the process of saying anything about the violence in Gaza, language makes you take a side.

There are essentially two main modes for reporting on geopolitical violence. The first and dominant mode is typical of mainstream news reporting. It strives for objectivity by presenting selective factual events devoid of context. It briefly summarises complex events, while not allocating blame or responsibility.

While the effects of events on ordinary people can be reported on, these are typically presented as an unfortunate but unavoidable byproduct of something otherwise official, rational and purposeful.

Read more: Why is accountability for alleged war crimes so hard to achieve in the Israel-Palestinian conflict?

This style is susceptible to the favoured tropes of militaries and, therefore, to inadvertently reproducing official narratives. Destructive and lethal violence becomes obscured by terminology like “operations”, “campaigns”, “offensives”, “strategies”, “targets” and “phases”.

This language construes the violence as if it has a higher purpose. The particularly eager journalist will report the official name of an “operation”, as in this example, where the BBC’s diplomatic correspondent tells readers Israel has named its operation “Guardian of the Walls”.

And they will expound on the types of weapons technology being employed, as if the make and model of the plane and the bombs it unleashes have any real bearing on these events.

The problem with this mode of reporting is that violence is objectified and dehumanised. Objectifying violence means it is construed as if it happens by itself, without reference to either the political masters who order it, or those tasked with enacting it.

And dehumanised, because it fails to put front and centre the most important perspective of these events: those killed, injured, bereaved and traumatised by the actions of (usually male) leaders, who refuse alternative means of resolving differences.

Here’s an example of this “objective” style from a recent report on the BBC’s website. The violence, referred to as a “conflict”, as “rockets and air strikes” continuing, as a “concentration of militant rocket fire”, as “Israeli air strikes”, is all divorced from the human agents of this violence.

And the dead Israelis are killed “in rocket attacks”, while the scores of dead Palestinians are simply a “death toll”.

An obvious and often conscious effect of this style is to treat two sides as if they are equal participants in this violence. This is the effect of journalistic shorthand, such as the “Israel Gaza conflict”, or the “Israeli-Palestinian conflict”.

These formulations avoid allocating blame to one side or the other. The BBC report shows a scrupulous formulation so that “rockets and air strikes” appear side by side, even when the syntax of this formulation doesn’t make sense. In their phrase “rockets and air strikes have continued”, while “airstrikes” can continue, “rockets” themselves can’t.

And the “they said while the others said” structure keeps up the illusion that this violence is symmetrical.

I don’t want to minimise the horror for ordinary Israelis of suffering rockets fired by Hamas foot soldiers. I can’t begin to imagine the fear that I could lose a child to this kind of horrendous violence.

But the numbers of dead and scale of destruction belie this false equivalence. Just ask yourself: where would you rather be?

Herein lies the alternative mode of reporting this violence. When the violence you are reporting on is illegitimate, you naturally strive for language that fails the “objectivity” test.

You will focus on the brutal and inhumane consequences of the violence. You will make the perpetrators of the violence visible, and you will demonise them. You will emphasise the scale of the violence and its devastating effects on families and communities.

Read more: Many questions, few answers, as conflict deepens between Israelis and Palestinians

We can see these linguistic features in the reporting by The Electronic Intifada.

The style goes against everything in the standard journalism textbook. But its crowning, remarkable achievement is that, of everything that is going on, the killing of children is at the heart of this news report.

While we like to believe that what we politely call “war” is used as a last resort, this quantitative history of war shows that, as time goes on, human societies have been more addicted to war, that what we think of “civilisation” appears to correlate with more and more lethal wars.

For the journalists who report this violence on our behalf, there is nowhere to hide. There is no neutral, objective mode. Your choice is to stand so far back from the “conflict” that you obscure its brutal irrationality and, in so doing, unwittingly or otherwise, put your support behind the most powerful belligerents.

Or you can come in close and show mutilated and traumatised children, and suffer the journalistic ignominy of “biased” reporting.

– ref. When it comes to media reporting on Israel-Palestine, there is nowhere to hide – https://theconversation.com/when-it-comes-to-media-reporting-on-israel-palestine-there-is-nowhere-to-hide-160992

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Claire Breen, Professor of Law, University of Waikato

It has been a confusing couple of weeks for public sector employees. They started with the government announcing what looked like a three-year pay freeze for public servants but ended up with a “lift/adjust/hold” approach to public sector pay.

Employees earning under NZ$60,000 a year can now expect a pay increase, while those earning more will see an adjustment only in “exceptional circumstances”, or not at all.

The government took the chill off its pay restraint policy by agreeing to index pay against the cost of living and to review the system after one year rather than three.

The stated aim of the policy is to improve the relative lot of the least well paid. But the furore over pay restraint has obscured the deeper problem of gender and ethnicity pay gaps in the public sector.

Women are still paid less

In the background sits the government’s wider Public Sector Workforce Policy. This prioritises fair and equitable employment within a diverse workforce, while also calling for pay expectations and other increases to be balanced against the cost of the COVID response and recovery.

In an effort to tackle systemic inequalities, the policy aims to build on the gains so far to further reduce the gender and ethnic pay gaps.

It’s true progress on those fronts has been made, but public service employment statistics – as a subset of public sector employment – reveal some stubborn disparities.

Read more: NZ’s second ‘Well-being Budget’ must deliver for the families that sacrificed most during the pandemic

As of 2020, women made up 61.7% of public service employees, a record high. While the overall average annual salary was $84,500, the average for men was $89,900 but $81,200 for women.

At 9.6%, this gap between what men and women earn is at its smallest since 2000. But this is complicated by the fact that gender pay gaps within the public service vary greatly due in large part to occupational segregation — meaning women are more likely to be working in lower-paid jobs.

Pay rates still reflect ethnicity

Similar dynamics are at work in the ethnic pay gap. European public service employees are, on average, paid more than other ethnicities.

Only male Europeans exceed the average annual salary. European women, on average, earn just under that amount. The salaries of Māori, Asian and Pacific workers, on average, fall well short of the overall average annual salary.

The Māori pay gap (the difference between average pay for Māori and non-Māori employees) was 9.3% in 2020, a decrease from 9.9% in 2019. Similarly, the Pacific pay gap was 19.5%, a drop from 20.1% in 2020. Again, ethnic pay gaps are influenced by Māori, Pacific and Asian public servants being more likely to be working in lower-paid jobs.

Read more: Why NZ’s public sector wage freeze ignores the lessons of history

Compounding this, women within those ethnic groups earn less, on average, than their male counterparts. Wāhine Māori earn more than Pacific men but less than European men and women, and Māori and Asian men.

Pacific women have the lowest average salaries in the public service, despite having had the largest increase in average salaries over the past year (5.6% or around $3,600). What we see here are gender and ethnic disparities working in combination.

Can discrimination be justified?

Clearly, there is much to be done. But if we are going to talk about COVID response and recovery, pay restraints and inequality all in the same breath, we also need to include wage subsidy payments.

The bulk of those payments went to private sector male employees. Breaking the payments down by ethnic group, Asian workers were the highest recipients, European workers were second, with Pacific and Māori workers third and fourth respectively.

Ideally, then, public sector “pay restraint” needs to take the gender and ethnic make-up of the workforce into account. This is a tricky balancing act, underpinned by New Zealand employees’ right to be free from discrimination on grounds of sex, race and ethnicity, even where there is no discriminatory intention.

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

Unpalatable as it might be, the government could argue that any discriminatory fallout from pay restraint is justifiable or there is a good reason for any unintentional discrimination, such as on the grounds of helping the COVID recovery.

Similarly, New Zealand’s international legal obligations under the prohibition of employment discrimination require any justification for differential treatment to be reasonable and objective on the grounds it is:

• legitimate
• compatible with the obligation to ensure women in particular are guaranteed equal pay for equal work
• solely for the purpose of promoting the general welfare in a democratic society.

The aim of the measure must be proportionate, in a “clear and reasonable” way, to its effect. A country’s lack of available resources is not an objective and reasonable justification unless every effort has been made to address and eliminate the discrimination as a matter of priority.

The immediate controversy over pay restraint may have passed but the question of inequality remains. Any pay increase for the public sector’s lowest-paid workers is to be welcomed, but it’s only a partial solution to the over-representation of women and ethnic minorities in those roles.

– ref. Wage restraint aims to lift the lowest-earning public servants, but it won’t fix stubborn gender and ethnic pay gaps – https://theconversation.com/wage-restraint-aims-to-lift-the-lowest-earning-public-servants-but-it-wont-fix-stubborn-gender-and-ethnic-pay-gaps-160763

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jessica Kaufman, Research Fellow, Vaccine Uptake Group, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute

Yesterday, we heard from a nurse at one of Victoria’s mass vaccination clinics who said she’d administered just one vaccine in an eight-hour shift. She said vaccine hesitancy was a factor in people not turning up to be vaccinated.

So how do we handle people’s questions or concerns about the COVID-19 vaccines, to address vaccine hesitancy? How do we do this and boost the vaccine rollout, beyond the almost 3.2 million doses delivered in Australia to date?

GPs and practice nurses are ideally placed to answer specific questions about people’s personal health and vaccine eligibility. However, not everyone has a regular GP or wants to get vaccinated at a GP clinic. GPs are also being swamped with questions to address in limited time.

That’s why it’s essential to encourage other people in the community to be vaccine advocates.

Why is this a good idea?

People’s willingness to have a vaccine is influenced by social norms — what they think others are doing, and what they think trusted or influential people want them to do.

We have been regularly delivering vaccine communication training seminars, based on communication and behavioural science, to people in all kinds of roles. These include cultural, faith and First Nations community leaders; health-care support staff, such as medical receptionists; and office and industrial workers.

These people don’t need all the answers. But if they have a role where people know and trust them, and might come to them with vaccine-related questions, these people can provide reputable information to increase vaccine acceptance or even help people book in to get the vaccine.

Here are a few strategies for these vaccine champions to help build vaccine confidence in their organisations or communities.

1. Share your story

When everyone knows a few people who have been vaccinated, vaccination starts to become the norm. Countries that had high hesitancy at the start of the COVID-19 vaccine rollout have generally seen hesitancy go down as vaccination rates go up.

If you’ve decided to get vaccinated, or if you’ve already received your vaccine, talk about your experience. Share your reasons for deciding to get vaccinated. For instance, what are the good things you think will come with vaccination? Post photos on social media (but avoid scary needles) to normalise the experience.

We know from our current research many people are concerned about side-effects. Talk about how you manage side-effects, if you get them, or if you needed some time off work to give people a sense of what to expect.

Read more: Why telling stories could be a more powerful way of convincing some people to take a COVID vaccine than just the facts

2. Work together with other vaccine advocates

Find other people in your organisation who are willing to share their vaccination stories and work with them to brainstorm vaccine promotion strategies. For example, you can discuss what’s worked to promote flu vaccines in the past.

If you work in an office, make sure there are vaccine champions representing all levels of your organisation, not just managers. If you’re working in a diverse community, try to find and highlight vaccine champions of different genders, disability status and cultural background.

Read more: From Elvis to Dolly, celebrity endorsements might be the key to countering vaccine hesitancy

3. Help people find answers

It can be difficult for people to find answers to their questions about the vaccines and the vaccine rollout process.

We know people with lower levels of health literacy often have poorer health and say they are less likely to get vaccinated.

Amid the whirlwind of information the pandemic has unleashed, people with lower levels of education and those who speak languages other than English are often left behind. These groups are also less likely to plan to get vaccinated.

So if you feel confident finding reliable information, you can offer to help other people find answers. Understanding risk is hard; visual elements, such as pictograms, may help. Another option is to organise to bring in an expert to your work or place of worship for a live question and answer session.

You can also help people understand where to go to find out if they’re eligible for the vaccine, or how to book an appointment.

Read more: How can governments communicate with multicultural Australians about COVID vaccines? It’s not as simple as having a poster in their language

4. Address vaccine misinformation

Misinformation and conspiracy theories flourish in times of uncertainty, like the pandemic.

But before you jump in to correct every myth you hear someone share, it’s a good idea to consider if this myth is being shared widely, or if it is affecting behaviour. If it is, there are some strategies you can use to address misinformation without getting into a debate.

First, try and talk privately. Ask questions and acknowledge the emotions driving a person’s belief in misinformation. Offer to look for the truth together. And before you share information yourself, make sure it’s reliable: “verify before you amplify”.

Read more: Religious concerns over vaccine production methods needn’t be an obstacle to immunisation

5. Encourage vaccination

Not everyone will be comfortable or able to take a leadership role in building vaccine confidence. But even everyday conversations with friends and family can have an impact. So can recommending vaccination.

A recommendation to vaccinate from a health-care professional is particularly powerful. Encouraging people in your network to vaccinate is also likely to have an influence. But this needs to be handled with respect and not done in a coercive or domineering way.

A simple phrase like “I hope you will get vaccinated” can make a big difference.

– ref. From faith leaders to office workers: 5 ways we can all be COVID vaccine champions – https://theconversation.com/from-faith-leaders-to-office-workers-5-ways-we-can-all-be-covid-vaccine-champions-160454

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Minglu Chen, Senior Lecturer, Government and International Relations, University of Sydney

I was making small talk with a medical technician during a health check a few months ago. After hearing I was a senior lecturer teaching Chinese politics at the University of Sydney, she commented: “It must be very hard for you.” My first thought was that she meant it must have been hard to teach online during the pandemic lockdown. But then she asked: “How do you manage to overcome your bias?”

I am an academic of Chinese background in Australia. So am I necessarily biased in my approach to Chinese politics? Is it indeed possible that my upbringing in China has made me a blind supporter of the Chinese system? Or has my embrace of liberal values turned me into a militant “China basher”?

These questions had occurred to me before, of course. But against the background of the recent souring of China-Australia relations, they have become more acute than ever before.

Read more: Why the Australia-China relationship is unravelling faster than we could have imagined

In November 2020, for the first time in ten years of teaching, a student who described themselves as a “Chinese patriot” accused me of being a “Taiwan independence supporter”. The reason was my comment in class that, after the election of Joe Biden as US president, issues such as Tibet, Xinjiang and Taiwan were likely to cause tensions between China and the United States. On the same day in the same class, a non-Chinese student protested that, while wishing to avoid turning academic analysis into a moral judgment, I should have remembered that “authoritarianism is evil”.

Teaching the topic of Chinese politics is becoming more challenging in a world increasingly divided by ideas, beliefs and interests. Of course, our own values and experiences always influence and even drive inquiry and the extension of knowledge. But if students come to class with pre-existing rigid mindsets and refuse to engage with different opinions and viewpoints, then education simply fails in its purpose.

“We should support whatever the enemy opposes and oppose whatever the enemy supports,” Chinese leader Mao Zedong said in a 1939 interview. Taken out of context (Mao was describing the rivalry between the Chinese Communist Party and the Japanese puppet government in Nanjing) this sounds one-sided and superficial. But if we succumb to nationalistic emotions, moral values and political ideology, then this perspective is exactly how we see the world.

Read more: Students in China heed their government’s warnings against studying in Australia

Understanding China – and ourselves

In the study of politics in China, I have endeavoured to teach students that things are often not as clear-cut and absolute as many expect. In other words, nuance is the key to understanding China.

It is valid to question the legitimacy and stability of any system, particularly if the system may rely on censorship and coercion. But over the years, all the predictions of the system’s collapse have proved wrong. China’s one-party rule has been firm and strong to this day.

We need to consider the question of what explains the resilience and prosperity of the Chinese system. Before we criticise it for its lack of liberal democratic values, it is important to first understand what the system is and how it operates – that includes its economic drivers, its sources of legitimacy, its historical legacy and its developmental trajectory.

Why is it important? Such understanding will help us better cope with a world where China is a significant power and will likely remain so in the foreseeable future.

We have seen the rise of a new generation of patriotic Chinese “wolf warriors” who aggressively defend the state’s positions. But it is equally important for them to engage with different opinions and perspectives.

Read more: Pro-China nationalists are using intimidation to silence critics. Can they be countered without stifling free speech?

For one thing, when defending China against Western countries’ frequent “attacks” on “sensitive issues”, they need to understand that such issues might reflect the inherent problems of China’s system. These problems include economic inequality, ethnic tensions, vulnerable property rights, lack of individual freedom, and many more. Moreover, they could benefit from a self-recognition of the origins of their own strong feelings of pride and loyalty to the Chinese nation as a result of how it constructs their identity and sense of belonging.

Research versus parroting the official line

Returning to the question of how I manage my bias when teaching Chinese politics, I guess my identity as a Chinese immigrant will always have an impact on my understanding of the Chinese system. For all of us, our perceptions of the world reflect the values and beliefs associated with our identities and experiences.

Just like my students, some readers of this article might think I am too critical of China. In the eyes of others I might appear not critical enough. This is understandable: my opinions have been informed by my own experiences, as well as by my analysis of primary sources, engagement with many academic thinkers and communications with researchers, policymakers and business owners.

I try to expose students to the complexity of Chinese politics through such a research-driven approach. This approach is largely missing in public debate about China in Australia. Yet it is a difficult but important task.

If we fail in this task, in the quest for knowledge and understanding based on careful evaluation of opinions and facts, our discussions would be reduced to nothing more than an indiscriminate acceptance and simple repetition of official discourses or media coverage, whatever their source. My students in the class reflect the views of their home societies. In the current environment, that’s making it more difficult than ever to engage in productive analysis and discussion.

– ref. Teaching Chinese politics in Australia: polarised views leave academics between a rock and a hard place – https://theconversation.com/teaching-chinese-politics-in-australia-polarised-views-leave-academics-between-a-rock-and-a-hard-place-157886

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Matthew Mclaughlin, PhD Candidate, School of Medicine and Public Health, University of Newcastle

Five Australian states and territories are trialling or planning 30km/h speed limits and zones. However, some people question if 30km/h speed limits are actually urgent and necessary, or are instead a so-called “nanny state” policy or revenue-raising activity.

Low-speed streets are about much more than road safety and increasing fine revenue. By building safer streets, governments and cities around the world are creating more liveable cities. The benefits include low crime levels, more physically active citizens, greater social connectedness, increased spending in local businesses and less pollution.

Read more: Getting people more active is key to better health: here are 8 areas for investment

Research shows 30km/h speed limits on local residential streets could reduce the Australian road death toll by 13%. The economic benefit would be about A$3.5 billion every year.

Learning from other countries, it will be important to run public education campaigns to inform communities and opinion leaders. Another key to success is finding a strong political champion of lower speeds in residential streets.

Leadership is needed to counter myths about 30km/h speed limits that are misinforming public and political opinion. As part of the Streets for Life campaign for Global Road Safety Week, the United Nations has busted international myths surrounding 30km/h. In support of domestic demands for 30km/h speed limits, in this article we bust five common myths about 30km/h speed limits in Australia.

Myth #1: 30km/h limits don’t make a difference

Road trauma is the number one cause of death in school-aged children. More than 1,100 Australians die on our roads each year.

The evidence is very clear: the chance of a pedestrian surviving when hit by a car skyrockets when the car’s speed is reduced. The chance of survival jumps from just 10% at 50km/h to 90% at 30km/h.

Speed is the most common contributor to road trauma – more common than alcohol, drugs and fatigue.

To reduce serious injury risk, 40km/h speed limits aren’t low enough. The chance of survival when hit by a car improves from 60% at 40km/h to 90% at 30km/h. Reducing speed limits to 30km/h in urban areas such as high pedestrian zones, school zones and local traffic areas is urgently needed to reduce deaths and severe injuries.

Two-thirds of all crashes in New South Wales occur in metro areas. In these areas, 60% of fatal crashes are on local and collector streets (leading to arterial roads) with 50-60km/h speed limits. To achieve road safety targets and goals of zero road deaths, a 30km/h speed limit is crucial.

Read more: Delivery rider deaths highlight need to make streets safer for everyone

Myth #2: 30km/h limits aren’t popular

How supportive would you be of reducing speed limits in neighbourhood streets to help create safer and more liveable streets for people? Well, according to a recent nationally representative poll, about two-thirds of Australians say they want lower speed limits on local streets.

The introduction of 30km/h speed limits around the world shows the popularity of these limits grows rapidly after they take effect and local residents begin to appreciate the multitude of benefits from safer streets.

Read more: London is proposing 20mph speed limits – here’s the evidence on their effect on city life

Myth #3: 30km/h limits increase journey times

In urban areas, journey times are affected by more than the speed limit. Key factors include traffic congestion and time spent waiting at traffic signals. One study that considered a reasonably typical 26-minute journey to work calculated the difference between a 50km/h and 30km/h speed limit is less than a minute.

Safer and more liveable streets can decrease our reliance on the private car. By shifting private car trips to active and sustainable forms of transport, such as cycling and walking, we can reduce congestion and improve population and environmental health.

Research from Transport for London has indicated that 20mph (32km/h) zones have no net negative effect on emissions due to smoother driving and less braking.

Read more: Climate explained: does your driving speed make any difference to your car’s emissions?

Myth #4: 30km/h limits are anti-motorist

Reduced speed limits are not anti-motorist and are not about banning cars or the ability to drive. A 30km/h limit is a win-win-win for street users, businesses and motorists – and major motoring groups agree.

Lower speed limits can lead to fewer car crashes, in turn reducing insurance costs and time delayed in traffic by those crashes.

Main road speed limits will remain faster. However, residential streets, shopping streets and streets close to public transport will be slower, to create a more economically vibrant and safer city. That’s because children, older people and people living with disabilities feel safer when going to local schools, shops, services and parks.

Myth #5: 30km/h limits are about revenue-raising

Speed limits are a low-cost tool in the governments’ toolbox against road deaths. Of course, not everyone obeys speed limits – two-thirds of Australians admit to speeding. Speed enforcement and street design changes may be needed in some cases to reduce driver speed and improve conditions for all street users.

Read more: Cycling and walking can help drive Australia’s recovery – but not with less than 2% of transport budgets

Enforcement works and ensures credibility, because no single solution will work alone. For best results, state and territory governments will combine multiple tools to reduce speed, such as speed limits, public education, driver training, speed enforcement and street design.

Learn more

Not convinced? More myths to bust? Check out the Australian campaign 30please.org and the global United Nations Road Safety Week campaign #Love30 happening this week.

Introducing 30km/h limits is one of a suite of measures available to governments to bring about six compelling co-benefits to society: road safety, physical activity, air quality, liveability, equity and economic benefits.

All Australian states and territories should urgently introduce 30km/h speed limits to create streets that are safe, accessible and enjoyable for all.

– ref. Busted: 5 myths about 30km/h speed limits in Australia – https://theconversation.com/busted-5-myths-about-30km-h-speed-limits-in-australia-160547

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Malcolm Whyte, Emeritus Professor of Clinical Science, Australian National University

Success in the Olympic Games is usually focused on medals, especially gold ones, and countries are usually ranked in terms of the number of medals won, and sometimes as medals per million of population or gross domestic product.

Examining individual countries this way yields some clues as to what is associated with success, but other striking insights emerge when the countries that won medals are divided into groups.

I’ve divided the 88 countries that won medals in the 2016 Rio Games into four large groups ranked by population (one group contains the 22 most populous nations, the next group 22 which are the next largest bloc, and so on) and also into four large groups ranked by total wealth.

Read more: For now, the Tokyo Olympics will go ahead. But at what cost?

Looking at the results this way, as if there were four and not 88 medal-winning participants, reveals that the least populous bloc won far more medals per 100 million population, by a factor of about 12, both gold and total, than the most populous bloc.

On its face, this is surprising. The group of countries with the largest populations have the largest number of potential athletes to choose from and win the largest overall numbers of medals.

Just as strikingly, and just as surprisingly, the least-wealthy bloc of countries won far more medals per US$ trillion of wealth than the wealthiest bloc.

Similar patterns emerged in the results of the 2016 Paralympics, the 2018 Commonwealth Games at the Gold Coast and the 2012 London Olympics.

If these results are driven by wealth rather than population (the two move together) they might flow from the things that tend to be associated with wealth, among them less exercise, more labour-saving devices and a less-healthy diet.

People in smaller and less-affluent countries might be more physically active and perhaps in better shape to become elite athletes.

Per dollar, the richest nations do the worst

Whatever the reasons, it seems clear that on an aggregate basis (not an individual basis) the ability to spend more money winning medals doesn’t translate into more medals per capita or more medals per unit of wealth. It does the reverse.

Other things matter. In 2004 Imad Moosa and Lee Smith from La Trobe University analysed the Sydney 2000 medal count and found it positively related to both expenditure on health as a proportion of GDP and the number of athletes representing each country (which is only loosely related to its population).

Read more: How much are we prepared to pay for international sporting success?

On an individual basis, the medal count may well be related to the amount of resources actually invested in winning medals (as opposed to the country’s total resources) and we often talk as if it is.

Here’s a headline about the Rio Olympics from Australia, one of the countries that invests the most in elite sport along with Korea, Japan, France and Canada:

Is Australia’s disastrous Olympic campaign really $340 million well spent?

Another Australian newspaper report about Rio went as far as purporting to calculate the average cost to taxpayers per medal, which it said was A$20 million, “a price most of us seem prepared to pay”.

Read more: Better than gold: the real value of the Olympic Games

The medal count appears to matter for national pride, and arguably for broader participation in sport and wider health benefits (although an independent review for the Australian government failed to find such a link) but the path to getting medals appears to depend on more than what we are able to spend to get them.

Which makes the results of the games surprising, as they should be.

Now for the Tokyo Games, hopefully to be held later this year!

– ref. Dollar for dollar, the winning nations at the Olympic Games seem to be the poorest – https://theconversation.com/dollar-for-dollar-the-winning-nations-at-the-olympic-games-seem-to-be-the-poorest-158760

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

Since 2015, the share of younger people (aged 20 to 39) with private health insurance has dropped from 24% to 22%.

People in this age group contribute more in insurance premiums than they claim in pay-outs. So this decline ends up pushing prices up for the 44% of Australians with private insurance.

And new private health insurance coverage data shows this trend continuing.

Our latest Grattan report outlines a four-step plan to stop this trajectory and fix the private health insurance system. The first step is preventing insurers increasing premiums if they cannot demonstrate the policy offers value for money.

What’s the private health insurance ‘death spiral’?

An ageing population, increased use of health services, and rising health-care costs are driving up the benefits insurers have to pay out each year.

As pay-outs increase, insurers raise premiums, to recoup these costs.

Rising premiums make health insurance less affordable and less attractive — particularly to younger and healthier people.

Read more: How do you stop the youth exodus from private health insurance? Cut premiums for under-55s

As younger, healthier people drop their insurance, the insurance “risk pool” gets worse; people who hold insurance are older and more likely to use their benefits and use them to a greater value.

This increases the cost of premiums, younger people drop out, and the death spiral starts again.

What does the data say?

The chart shows the overall trends in private health insurance over the past six years.

Over this time period, the number of people with private health insurance over 65 — who are likely to draw on their health insurance, receiving more in benefit pay-outs than they pay in premiums — has increased dramatically.

At the same time, the numbers in all other age groups is declining, albeit with a slight uptick in the September quarter of 2020, possibly associated with people being allowed to defer premium payments during the COVID crisis.

The picture is particularly stark for 20 to 39-year-olds. People in this group make the pool of people insured less risky overall.

So far, policy tweaks have failed

In 2017 the federal government announced several rearrangements of private health insurance deckchairs to make the product more affordable or to encourage young people into insurance.

This included:

Read more: Premiums up, rebates down, and a new tiered system – what the private health insurance changes mean

But these initiatives have failed to entice young people into private health insurance.

What are the solutions?

Our report proposes four key changes to:

1. Address premium increases, which are currently too great and too frequent.

Over the past 20 years, private health insurance premiums have grown faster than inflation, faster than health-specific inflation, and faster than wages. If people want to keep their same level of insurance, they have to fork out more and more.

Insurers that won’t or can’t offer their customers value for money should not be allowed to raise their premiums.

A new private health industry plan could reinforce the incentives for insurers to improve their claims ratios. This is the proportion of premium revenue returned to members in the form of benefits.

The health minister could also require funds to provide additional justification for a proposed increase if the proportion of their premiums returned to members is worse than the average claims ratio.

2. Reduce private hospital costs.

Unnecessarily long stays and examples of low- or no-value care are more common in private hospitals than in public ones. This drives up the cost of private hospital care.

Read more: Hospitals have stopped unnecessary elective surgeries – and shouldn’t restart them after the pandemic

A new private health industry plan should create incentives for private hospitals to become more efficient. One way to do this would be for insurers to pay private hospitals in a similar way to how government funds public hospitals. This would mean insurers pay private hospitals for the patients they treat, not for how long patients stay in hospital or the other services hospitals provide.

Improving private hospital efficiency and reducing low- or no-value care could reduce premiums by 5%.

3. Reduce out-of-pocket costs.

Out-of-pocket costs on medical bills are often in the hundreds of dollars, and sometimes in the thousands. In 2019-20, the average medical out-of-pocket cost was $544, and the average hospital out-of-pocket cost was $411.

Out-of-pocket costs are a major source of people’s dissatisfaction with private health insurance, and astonishingly high billing by a minority of doctors is a major cause of these costs.

Read more: Greedy doctors make private health insurance more painful – here’s a way to end bill shock

Comprehensive, public information on fees and costs would help. But even that is unlikely to significantly reduce the size and prevalence of out-of-pocket costs, because patients face an inherent power imbalance when dealing with doctors.

A new private health industry plan should include the structural reform required to reduce surprise out-of-pocket payments. This may come about through downward pressure on medical bills, or with more deals between doctors and insurers to bridge the gap.

4. Reduce the price private insurers pay for medical devices.

Surgically implanted medical devices include hip and knee replacement devices, cardiac stents and pacemakers. Currently, medical device manufacturers and importers, and private hospitals charge more than twice as much for these as public hospitals, a nice gravy train which they lobbied health minister Greg Hunt to retain.

This year’s budget revealed the minister backed down on a plan to reduce the cost of health insurance premiums by stopping medical device rorts. The budget announced yet another process of investigation and analysis, rather than making the tough decisions to end the excess charging, which would allow cuts in private health insurance premiums.

Read more: We can cut private health insurance costs by fixing how we pay for hip replacements and other implants

– ref. 4 ways to fix private health insurance so it can sustain a growing, ageing population – https://theconversation.com/4-ways-to-fix-private-health-insurance-so-it-can-sustain-a-growing-ageing-population-161171

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Arjuna Dibley, Visiting Researcher, Climate and Energy College, The University of Melbourne

The Morrison government today announced it’s building a new gas power plant in the Hunter Valley, committing up to A$600 million for the government-owned corporation Snowy Hydro to construct the project.

Critics argue the plant is inconsistent with the latest climate science. And a new report by the International Energy Agency has warned no new fossil fuel projects should be funded if we’re to avoid catastrophic climate change.

The move is also inconsistent with research showing government-owned companies can help drive clean energy innovation. Such companies are often branded as uncompetitive, stuck in the past and unable to innovate. But in fact, they’re sometimes better suited than private firms to take investment risks and test speculative technologies.

And if the investments are successful, taxpayers, the private sector and consumers share the benefits.

Lead, not limit

Federal energy minister Angus Taylor announced the funding on Wednesday. He said the 660-megawatt open-cycle gas turbine at Kurri Kurri will “create jobs, keep energy prices low, keep the lights on and help reduce emissions”.

Experts insist the plan doesn’t stack up economically and may operate at less than 2% capacity.

But missing from the public debate is the question of how government-owned companies such as Snowy Hydro might be used to accelerate the clean energy transition.

Australian governments (of all persuasions) have not often used the companies they own to lead in clean energy innovation. Many, such as Hydro Tasmania, still rely on decades-old hydroelectric technologies. And others, such as Queensland’s Stanwell Corporation and Western Australia’s Synergy, rely heavily on older coal and gas assets.

Asking Snowy Hydro to build a gas-fired power plant is yet another example – but it needn’t be this way.

Read more: A single mega-project exposes the Morrison government’s gas plan as staggering folly

The burning question

Globally, more than 60% of electricity comes from wholly or partially state-owned companies. In Australia, despite the 20-year trend towards electricity privatisation, government-owned companies remain important power generators.

At the Commonwealth level, Snowy Hydro provides around 20% of capacity to New South Wales and Victoria. And most electricity in Queensland, Tasmania and Western Australia is generated by state government-owned businesses.

But political considerations mean government-owned electricity companies can struggle to navigate the clean energy path.

For example in April this year, the chief executive of Stanwell Corporation, Richard Van Breda, suggested the firm would mothball its coal-powered generators before the end of their technical life, because cheap renewables were driving down power prices.

Queensland’s Labor government was reportedly unhappy with the announcement, fearing voter backlash in coal regions. Breda has since stepped down and Stanwell is reportedly backtracking on its transition plans.

Such examples beg the question: can government-owned companies ever innovate on clean energy? A growing literature in economics, as well as several real-world examples, suggest that under the right conditions, the answer is yes.

Read more: The 1.5℃ global warming limit is not impossible – but without political action it soon will be

Privatised is not always best

Economists have traditionally argued state-owned companies are not good innovators. As the argument goes, the absence of competitive market forces makes them less efficient than their private sector peers.

But recent research by academics and international policy institutions such as the OECD has shown government ownership in the electricity sector can be an asset, not a curse, for achieving technological change.

The reason runs contrary to orthodox economic thinking. While competition can lead to firm efficiency, some economists argue government-owned firms can take greater risks. Without the pressure for market-rate returns to shareholders, government enterprises may be freer to invest in more speculative technologies.

My ongoing research has shown the reality is even more complex. Whether state-owned electric companies can drive clean energy innovation depends a great deal on government interests and corporate governance rules.

For example, consider the New York Power Authority (NYPA) which, like Snowy Hydro, is wholly government owned.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has deliberately sought to use NYPA to decarbonise the state’s electricity grid. The government has managed the company in a way that enables it to take risks on new transmission and generation technologies that investor-owned peers cannot.

For instance, NYPA is investing in advanced sensors and computing systems so it can better manage distributed energy sources such as solar and wind. The technology will also simulate major catastrophic events, including those likely to ensue from climate change.

These investments are likely to contribute to greater grid stability and greater renewables use, benefiting not just NYPA but other electricity generators and ultimately, consumers.

Such innovation is nothing new. Also in the US, the state-owned Sacramento Municipal Utility District built one of the first utility-scale solar projects in the world in 1984.

The way forward

More could be done to ensure Australian government-owned corporations are clean energy catalysts.

Clean energy technologies can struggle to bridge the gap from invention to widespread adoption. Public investment can bring down the price of such technologies or demonstrate their efficacy.

In this regard, government-owned companies could work with private technology firms to invest in technologies in the early stages of development, and which could have significant public benefits. For instance, in 2020, the Western Australian government-owned company Synergy sought to build a 100 megawatt battery with private sector partners.

But many problems facing state-owned companies are the result of ever-changing government policy priorities. The firms should be reformed so they are owned by government, but operated at arm’s length and with other partners. This might better enable clean energy investment without the politics.

Read more: Australia’s states are forging ahead with ambitious emissions reductions. Imagine if they worked together

– ref. Government-owned firms like Snowy Hydro can do better than building $600 million gas plants – https://theconversation.com/government-owned-firms-like-snowy-hydro-can-do-better-than-building-600-million-gas-plants-161180

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Samantha Hepburn, Director of the Centre for Energy and Natural Resources Law, Deakin Law School, Deakin University

Even if every country meets its current climate targets, Earth’s temperature will still rise by a dangerous 2.1℃ this century, according to sobering findings from a new International Energy Agency report.

The IEA found the route to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 was “narrow and extremely challenging”, and electricity grids in developed economies such as Australia must be zero emissions by 2053. The IEA was abundantly clear: no new fossil fuel projects should be approved.

The report couldn’t come at a worse time for the Morrison government. This week, it announced A$600 million for a major new gas-fired power plant at Kurri Kurri in New South Wales, claiming it was needed to shore up electricity supplies.

The IEA’s findings cast serious doubt on this decision, and put even more pressure on Australia ahead of crucial international climate talks in Glasgow in November. So let’s take a look at the report in more detail, and see how Australia measures up.

What the report said

The IEA report sets out a comprehensive roadmap to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. The good news is this is still achievable. But it’ll take a lot money and enormous effort.

There must be what the report describes as a “total transformation of the energy systems that underpin our economies”. Put simply, the world’s energy economy must be grounded in solar and wind — not coal, gas and oil.

The report works from a basic principle: even if the climate pledges countries have made under the Paris agreement are fully achieved, there will still be 22 billion tonnes of global carbon dioxide emissions in 2050.

This is well short of net zero.

So the IEA set out more than 400 milestones to achieve the global energy transformation. And these absolutely must be complied with if we’re to stop catastrophic global warming and limit temperature rise to 1.5℃.

The milestones include:

Massive investment in electricity networks

Enormous amounts of money are needed to shift away from fossil fuels and meet the global electricity demand doubling over the next 30 years. Existing networks took 130 years to build — we need to build the same again in about one-sixth the time. This includes investing in hydrogen and bio-energy (energy made from organic material), which the report calls a “pillar of decarbonisation”.

Read more: The 1.5℃ global warming limit is not impossible – but without political action it soon will be

Transport

Electric vehicles need to rapidly expand to 65% of the global fleet by 2030, and 100% by 2050. This will require an enormous increase in public electric vehicle charging units and hydrogen refuelling units. To facilitate this shift, petrol and diesel will be phased out. Many countries around the world, including the United Kingdom and Japan, have already introduced a ban on new fossil fuel cars by 2030.

Building and industry

We need to urgently retrofit homes and buildings to make them more energy efficient. Steel, cement and chemical industries, primary emitters, must shift to carbon capture and sequestration and hydrogen.

But the biggest take-home message for Australia is there must be no new development in fossil fuel beyond 2021.

No new fossil fuel development

The report states:

Beyond projects already committed as of 2021, there are no new oil and gas fields approved for development in our pathway, and no new coal mines or mine extensions are required.

Global demand for oil peaked in 2019, and has declined since then, largely due to COVID-19 lockdowns. Under the roadmap, this decline will continue and reach 75% by 2050. Any growth in demand during this period will be met by growing emergent markets in renewables, green hydrogen and bio-energy.

And of course, the report states no new coal plants should be financially supported unless equipped with carbon capture and sequestration. Inefficient coal plants must be phased out by 2030.

If the roadmap is followed, renewable energy will overtake coal by 2026, and oil and gas by 2030.

For this to happen, annual additions of 630 gigawatts of solar and 390 gigawatts of wind power will be required by 2030. This means the world needs to install the equivalent of “the world’s largest solar park roughly every day”, according to the report.

Australia, are you listening?

Australia’s gas-fired recovery plans are directly inconsistent with the IEA roadmap. The government has argued expanding fossil fuel supply is critical for energy security.

Not only did the federal government just announce over a half a billion dollars for a new gas-fired power plant in NSW, it’s also spending a further $173 million to develop the Beetaloo basin in the Northern Territory, another gas reserve.

Read more: Paying Australia’s coal-fired power stations to stay open longer is bad for consumers and the planet

Experts, advisers and Energy Security Board chair Kerry Schott have all disagreed with these moves. They argue, in line with the IEA report, that cheaper, cleaner alternatives to gas generation, such as wind and solar, can easily provide the dispatchable power required.

The government’s stubborn fossil fuel funding will make it more difficult than it already is to stop global warming beyond 1.5℃.

Australia must immediately stop investing in new fossil fuel projects. While this may be a difficult transition to accept given the enormous scope of gas reserves in Australia, there’s no point spending vast amounts of money on new infrastructure to extract a resource that will be commercially unviable in a decade.

Australia is ignoring the economic and environmental imperatives of transitioning to a low carbon framework. This is reckless, and unfair to other countries. We have the resource capacity and economic strength to transition our energy sector, unlike many developing countries. But we choose not to.

A national embarrassment

John Kerry, the US special presidential envoy for climate, says the next round of international climate talks in Scotland is the “last best chance the world has” to avoid a climate crisis.

But Australia’s investment in new gas development stands in stark contrast to the increasingly ambitious energy commitments of other developed countries. We shouldn’t come empty-handed, with no new targets, to yet another international climate summit.

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

US President Joe Biden has vowed to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 50-52% compared with 2005 levels. He has banned new oil and gas leases on federal land, removed fossil fuel subsidies and plans to double wind capacity by 2030.

Likewise, the European Commission seeks to stop funding oil and gas projects. Denmark recently implemented a ban on future gas extraction in the North Sea. And Spain has done the same.

Australia is ignoring its global responsibilities. As a result, we’ll be hit hard by the so-called “Carbon Border Adjustment” policies from the US and European Union, which tax imported goods according to their carbon footprint.

Ultimately, our actions will leave us economically and environmentally isolated in a rapidly emerging new energy world order.

Read more: The EU is considering carbon tariffs on Australian exports. Is that legal?

– ref. New International Energy Agency report reprimands any new fossil fuel development. Guess what Australia did next? – https://theconversation.com/new-international-energy-agency-report-reprimands-any-new-fossil-fuel-development-guess-what-australia-did-next-161178

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

In last week’s budget, $17.7 billion was allocated to the aged care sector, in response to the damning findings of the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality & Safety.

The commission’s final report painted a grim picture of a sector in need of sweeping overhaul – with people in residential care requiring a more supportive – and in some cases safer – environment, and people at home desperately short of enough care packages.

The government’s response includes an additional 80,000 homecare packages, funding for better staffing (including a mandate of 200 minutes of care for each resident, each day), and a commitment to a new aged care act.

Richard Colbeck, Minister for Senior Australians and Aged Care Services, as well as Minister for Sport, joins the podcast to discuss aged care policy, and the coming Olympics.

One big question in aged care, which hasn’t been tackled, is whether wealthier people should contribute more to funding their costs. Colbeck says “we’ve had a really close look at that” and “there’s probably more work to do in that space”.

“But I think there’s broad acceptance that where people can afford to make a contribution to support them as they age, they should do so. We’ll continue to consider that.”

The Tokyo Summer Olympics, originally slated for 2020 but now due to commence in July, have attracted considerable criticism given the state of coronavirus in Japan. Only recently the nation’s lockdown was extended, with new cases in the thousands being reported daily, and there are strong calls for the games to be abandoned.

Colbeck concedes “there will be COVID” at the Olympics. But the International Olympic Committee has “made arrangements” for any athlete or official who contracts the virus. He also described the work of the medical team at the Australian Institute of Sport as “world-leading”.

Additional audio

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

– ref. Politics with Michelle Grattan: Richard Colbeck on aged care and the Olympics – https://theconversation.com/politics-with-michelle-grattan-richard-colbeck-on-aged-care-and-the-olympics-161192

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By C Raina MacIntyre, Professor of Global Biosecurity, NHMRC Principal Research Fellow, Head, Biosecurity Program, Kirby Institute, UNSW

The small archipelago nation of Seychelles, northeast of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean, has emerged as the world’s most vaccinated country for COVID-19.

Around 71% of people have had at least one dose of a COVID vaccine, and 62% have been fully vaccinated. Of these, 57% have received the Sinopharm vaccine, and 43% AstraZeneca.

Despite this, there has been a recent surge in cases, with 37% of new active cases and 20% of hospital cases being fully vaccinated. The country has had to reimpose some restrictions.

How can this be happening? There are several possible explanations:

1. the herd immunity threshold has not been reached — 62% vaccination is likely not adequate with the vaccines being used

2. herd immunity is unreachable due to inadequate efficacy of the two vaccines being used

3. variants that escape vaccine protection are dominant in Seychelles

4. the B1617 Indian variant is spreading, which appears to be more infectious than other variants

5. mass failures of the cold-chain logistics needed for transport and storage, which rendered the vaccines ineffective.

What does the country’s experience teach us about variants, vaccine efficacy and herd immunity?

Let’s break this down.

Variants can escape vaccine protection

There are reports of the South African B.1.351 variant circulating in Seychelles. This variant shows the greatest ability to escape vaccine protection of all COVID variants so far.

In South Africa, one study showed AstraZeneca has 0-10% efficacy against this variant, prompting the South African government to stop using that vaccine in February.

The efficacy of the Sinopharm vaccine against this variant is unknown, but lab studies show some reduction in protection, based on blood tests, but probably some protection.

However, no comprehensive surveillance exists in the country to know what proportion of cases are due to the South African variant.

The UK variant B117, which is more contagious than the original strain, became the dominant variant in the United States. But the US still achieved a dramatic reduction in COVID-19 cases through vaccination, with most people receiving the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.

Israel, where the UK variant was dominant, also has a very high vaccination rate, having vaccinated nearly 60% of its population with Pfizer. It found 92% effectiveness against any infection including asymptomatic infection, and Israel has seen a large drop in new cases.

The United Kingdom has used a combination of Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines. More than 50% of the population have had a single dose and almost 30% are fully vaccinated. The country has also seen a significant decline in case numbers.

But there’s a current surge of cases in northwest England, with most new cases in the city of Bolton being the Indian variant. This variant is also causing outbreaks in Singapore, which had previously controlled the virus well.

Seychelles needs to conduct urgent genome sequencing and surveillance to see what contribution variants of concern are making, and whether the Indian variant is present.

If the South African variant is dominant, the country needs to use a vaccine that works well against it. Many companies are making boosters targeted to this variant, but for now, Pfizer would be an option. In Qatar, local researchers found Pfizer had 75% effectiveness against the South African variant.

Read more: New COVID variants have changed the game, and vaccines will not be enough. We need global ‘maximum suppression’

We need to use high-efficacy vaccines to achieve herd immunity

The reported efficacy of Sinopharm is 79% and AstraZeneca is 62-70% from phase 3 clinical trials.

Our research at the Kirby Institute showed that, in New South Wales, Australia, using a vaccine with 90% efficacy against all infection means herd immunity could be achieved if 66% of the population was vaccinated.

However, using lower efficacy vaccines means more people need to be vaccinated. If the vaccine is 60% effective, the proportion needing to be vaccinated rises to 100%.

When you get an efficacy of less than 60%, herd immunity is not achievable.

However, these calculations were done for the regular COVID-19 caused by the D614G variant which dominated in 2020. This has a reproductive number (R0) of 2.5, meaning people infected with the virus on average infect 2.5 others.

But the B117 variant is 43-90% more contagious than D614G, so the R0 may be up to 4.75. This will require higher vaccination rates to control spread.

What’s more, the Indian variant B1617 has been estimated to be at least 50% more contagious than B117, which could take the R0 to over 7, and takes us into uncharted territory.

This could explain the catastrophic situation in India, but also raises the stakes for vaccination, as lower efficacy vaccines will not be able to contain such highly transmissible variants effectively.

Herd immunity is still possible, but depends on the efficacy of the vaccine used and the proportion of people vaccinated.

A UK modelling study found using very low efficacy vaccines would result in the economy barely breaking even over ten years because it would fail to control transmission. On the other hand, using very high efficacy vaccines would result in much better economic outcomes.

Vaccinating the world is the only way to end the pandemic

As the pandemic continues to worsen in some parts of the world, the risk increases of more dangerous mutations that are vaccine-resistant or too contagious to control with current vaccines.

Keeping up with mutations is like whack-a-mole while the pandemic is raging.

The take-home message for our pandemic exit strategy is that the sooner we get the whole world vaccinated, the sooner we will control emergence of new variants.

Read more: 3 ways to vaccinate the world and make sure everyone benefits, rich and poor

– ref. COVID is surging in the world’s most vaccinated country. Why? – https://theconversation.com/covid-is-surging-in-the-worlds-most-vaccinated-country-why-160869

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jess Carniel, Senior Lecturer in Humanities, University of Southern Queensland

Last year, the Eurovision Song Contest was cancelled for the first time in its then 64-year history. This year’s Eurovision is a socially distanced affair, with frequent COVID testing of participants.

The Ahoy Arena in Rotterdam, where the contest is being held, has a capacity of 15,000 but the audience has been capped at 3,500 for each show. Interestingly, it does not look as socially distanced as expected. Shots of the crowd in the first semi-final on Tuesday (Wednesday in Australia), showed people seated side by side, with a few gaps between groups.

As a precaution, each participating country shot a “live-on-tape” performance to be used as a backup if their delegation could not travel to Rotterdam. Australia’s act Montaigne (Jess Cerro) filmed a performance of her song Technicolour in Sydney in March. SBS decided not to send a team to the contest due to travel concerns in the pandemic.

It was a slick production with an excellent vocal performance, but unfortunately, Montaigne did not make it through to the grand final. Some suggest the live-on-tape performance hindered Australia’s chances. Montaigne herself seemed to acknowledge this in a tweet where she said, “we were at a severe disadvantage”.

The performance was actually cut seamlessly into the live production; you could hear the crowd cheering while viewing Montaigne on a large screen in the arena. But while her song Techicolour had its fans, its hyperpop styling also divided casual viewers.

Read more: Eurovision shock: is ironic appreciation now unnecessary as slick singing styles reign?

All voting is split 50/50 between the jury and public. The jury voters had watched the first semi-finalists and voted the day before on a private stream. The public voted on the broadcast show. As juries watch the whole production on screen there is little difference in how they experience an in-arena performance and a live-on-tape performance anyway.

But it was always going to be a tough semi-final. Croatia had been tipped to make the qualifying ten but was also voted out.

In essence, a TV show

Thirty-nine countries are participating this year. No one has yet dropped out because of COVID-19, but some – notably Armenia and Belarus – are absent for other reasons, including political ones.

Montaigne and all other delegations filmed their live-on-tape performances in March under the watchful eye of representatives from the host broadcasters, the European Broadcasting Union, and independent voting observers. They were given one hour to film three attempts, with the best of the three to be used if necessary.

So far, Australia is the only participant to have used a taped performance. This is the first time Australia hasn’t qualified since entering the contest in 2015 (when it went straight into the grand final as a special guest). Still, Montaigne’s non-qualification should not be interpreted as an indictment of the live-on-tape model.

Although we are accustomed to seeing a large audience cheering and waving flags, this is actually a recent development at Eurovision. Before 1998, it was staged in smaller venues. An audience was present, but seated rather sedately. In the early 2000s especially, Eurovision became synonymous with larger crowds in arena stadiums, giving more of a live concert feel.

Attending the contest is a pilgrimage for fans. Still, it is in essence a television show — albeit one filmed in front of a live studio audience. The staging of several performances this year – most notably Ireland and Greece – reminded us of this through their heavy use of screen overlays of animated graphics (Ireland) and green screen (Greece).

Lesley Roy’s performance for Ireland involved intricate camera perspectives through small shadow boxes on stage as well as a screen overlay edited into the broadcast.

Greece’s Stefania performed in front of a green screen backdrop alongside backup dancers partially clad in green clothing. For the in-arena audience, the effect was no doubt strange and almost comical. For those at home, Stefania appeared on a purple stage, dancing alongside disembodied pants and shirts.

Such performances are designed with the television audience in mind. Even without these staging choices, each act is carefully choreographed to maximise the broadcast effect. This is most frequently seen in direct-to-camera singing.

The final 2021 production choices also illustrate new ways to understand a live broadcast show in a time of pandemic. The artists’ green room, where they gather during the event, was more prominent this year. While the crowd’s cheers were heard (amplified by a “cheer” function on the Eurovision app for those watching at home), they were at a distance from the performers.

Indeed to the at-home viewer watching the first semi-final, there was very little beyond the physical stage itself to distinguish between the in-arena performances and Montaigne’s live-on-tape submission.

An expensive endeavour

Filming live-on-tape suggests how Eurovision might be held in the future, making it more inclusive and environmentally friendly. Upon logging into the virtual press room, for instance, journalists this year were informed of the carbon emissions they saved by not travelling to the contest.

And the virtual Eurovision Village – usually a physical public space in the host city, offering extra performances and exhibitions – means Eurofans from around the world can be part of the on-site activities online.

Most importantly, participation is an expensive endeavour. It involves the cost not just of the production, but travel and accommodation for delegations, usually stationed in the host city for two to three weeks. Some smaller nations, such as Bulgaria and Montenegro, participate only intermittently for economic reasons.

Maintaining some sort of flexibility between staged and taped performances might enable more countries to participate more regularly in Eurovision. This might even allow the contest to become a more global event.

– ref. Australia is out of Eurovision but don’t write off filmed performances: they could make for a greener, more global contest – https://theconversation.com/australia-is-out-of-eurovision-but-dont-write-off-filmed-performances-they-could-make-for-a-greener-more-global-contest-161005

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bianka Vidonja Balanzategui, Adjunct Lecturer, James Cook University

In this series, we look at under-acknowledged women through the ages.

The women of the tropical north Queensland frontier were a varied lot and included Melanesian indentured labourers brought to work on sugar cane plantations. Annie Etinside was one of them.

She was brought to Halifax, a small, sleepy town bordering the banks of the Herbert River that was once a thriving port and tramway terminus for the Colonial Sugar Refining Company’s Victoria sugar plantation and mill.

Evidence today of the indentured labourers who once toiled on the plantation is found in small signposts such as one at “The Gardens”, formerly a small Melanesian village on the outskirts of Halifax. Here lived a few families who were not later repatriated to their islands.

Far fewer women than men were recruited as indentured labourers. In 1906, when forced repatriation of these labourers began, only 14 Melanesian women and 500 men remained on the Herbert. Annie, one of those 14, did not live in The Gardens community. Her life took a very different course.

Available records reveal a woman of colour who defied all odds to participate in a predominantly white community. Yet Annie remains an enigma.

Read more: Hidden women of history: Wauba Debar, an Indigenous swimmer from Tasmania who saved her captors

Recruitment

The “frontier” is generally thought of as a masculine space. In part this is because most frontier history has been written by European men, who tended not to notice women beyond their domestic arrangements, if at all. Fleshing out the lives of pioneering frontier women is difficult enough if they are white, let alone for women of colour.

The first Melanesian men were brought to the Herbert River district around 1872; women came about ten years later. Annie appears to have been among them. While some islanders volunteered, others were secured against their own will by deceit and even kidnapping.

They were paid, and at the end of the three-year indenture period could either return to their islands, re-indenture, or work freely in the sugar industry on a set wage. Following the existing record trail leaves many questions unanswered about when Annie arrived and where from.

In the Halifax cemetery, her simple headstone tells us she came from Ureparapara (the third largest island in the Banks group of northern Vanuatu). Yet her death certificate records her as born on “Lambue South Sea Island”. Her marriage certificate records her birth as “Burra Burra South Sea Island”. Neither of these locations can be identified, but the latter may be a corruption of Buka Buka.

A register was kept listing the names of recruited labourers and other details. The only Etinside on this register is a man brought over on November 5, 1888 from Ureparapara. We don’t know if this was Annie, mistakenly recorded as a male.

Details of Annie’s arrival are further muddied by the information provided on her gravestone, marriage and death certificates. According to these, she was born around 1870, so would have arrived in Australia in 1881 as an 11-year-old.

Read more: Hidden women of history: Isabel Flick, the tenacious campaigner who fought segregation in Australia

Marriage

Indentured women were employed both in fields and houses by small farmers, and on plantations. Annie’s obituary, published in the Herbert River Express, says she was first engaged as housemaid to Norwegian sugar cane farmer Johan (John) Ingebright Alm and his wife Antonia, then to an English farmer, Francis Herron and his wife Lucinda.

By 1884, she was housemaid to George Gosling who had migrated from Britain in 1881. George was an overseer of indentured labour gangs, then farmed on leased land and in his own right, turning a piece of land called “Poverty Flat” by locals into a successful farm, Rosedale.

Annie married Gosling in 1898 in a civil ceremony. By this time, she had borne him two children. The children’s birth records are the first bearing the name Etenside (misspelt). At this point, Annie may have begun to feel unsafe. The Aboriginal Protection and Restrictions of the Sale of Opium Act of 1897 had just been passed.

Without an official record to prove she had arrived as an indentured labourer, officials could have identified Annie as Aboriginal. This would have meant restriction of her movements and associations; her children, as mixed race and born out of wedlock, could have been taken from her.

The indentured labour scheme was never meant to permit Melanesian people to settle permanently in Australia. In 1901 the White Australia policy legislated to stop the scheme. From the end of 1906, all Melanesian indentured labourers were to be forcibly deported back to their islands, except for those with exemption tickets.

Marriage offered Annie protection. Rather than social disapproval, it seems to have met with tolerance, even if expressed in a patronising way. One Cairns newspaper described her with tongue in cheek as Gosling’s “little black duck”.

Annie and Gosling had three more children although tragedy struck on January 17, 1905, when Gosling died of malaria at the age of 45. Annie was left with five young children, the youngest only eight days old. On Gosling’s death, Annie was recognised as his lawful widow, inheriting all his estate. The success of his farm can be partly attributed to her. On the Herbert, small farmers depended on wives and children for all field labour, apart from cane harvesting.

Annie had another child in 1907, who she named Robert Gosling. She went on to marry William John Davey on February 17, 1909. But one month after their marriage, she registered the death of little Robert. Davey died on August 30, in the same year. After his death she reverted to using the name Gosling.

Remarkable feats

Despite her “alien” status, Annie integrated herself successfully into the largely white social fabric of Halifax, becoming a respected member of the community at a time of institutionalised racism. She participated in civic life, was registered on the electoral roll and ran a farm.

Her children attended the Halifax State School, her sons farmed and held jobs at the sugar mills (unusual for children of indentured labourers) and her children married Anglo-Australians, Europeans and Asians.

Annie’s were remarkable feats, given the prevailing racial attitudes and prohibitions regarding land ownership, education and constitutional rights. They indicate her determination to be recognised as an accountable, independent and hard-working member of society, regardless of her skin colour.

When Annie died on November 23, 1948 at the recorded age of 78, she was described in the Herbert River Express as a “grand old pioneer”.

– ref. Hidden women of history: Melanesian indentured labourer Annie Etinside, hailed as a Queensland ‘pioneer’ on her death – https://theconversation.com/hidden-women-of-history-melanesian-indentured-labourer-annie-etinside-hailed-as-a-queensland-pioneer-on-her-death-155645

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ben White, Professor of End-of-Life Law and Regulation, Australian Centre for Health Law Research, Queensland University of Technology

Queensland has become the latest Australian state to move forward on the issue of voluntary assisted dying. Draft legislation, developed by the Queensland Law Reform Commission, is expected to be tabled in parliament next week.

This reflects moves across the country over the past few years to permit voluntary assisted dying (also sometimes called voluntary euthanasia).

The Queensland laws, if passed, would be similar to those in other states, but not identical.

A quick recap

Victoria’s law was passed in November 2017 and came into force in June 2019 after an 18-month implementation period.

Next was Western Australia, whose 2019 law will come into effect on July 1, 2021.

Tasmania passed a voluntary assisted dying law in March this year, set to begin in 2022.

And South Australia’s lower house is now considering its own bill, after the upper house approved the proposed law earlier this month.

In New South Wales, independent MP Alex Greenwich is drafting a voluntary assisted dying law. It’s due to be released in July for consultation.

The Australian Capital Territory and the Northern Territory don’t have legislative power to pass laws about voluntary assisted dying. But there are active efforts to repeal the Commonwealth law that prohibits the territories considering it.

Read more: WA’s take on assisted dying has many similarities with the Victorian law – and some important differences

Reflecting on Victoria’s experience

In preparing the draft legislation, the Queensland Law Reform Commission had the opportunity to reflect on the emerging body of evidence about how the Victorian law is operating in practice.

While the safeguards in Victoria’s voluntary assisted dying system are working to ensure only eligible patients can access it, questions have been raised about challenges in accessing the law. For example, some people don’t necessarily know the option exists, while navigating the eligibility assessment process can be demanding.

Background like this from Victoria’s experience led the commission to recommend some departures from laws enacted elsewhere in Australia.

The commission’s approach aimed to design “the best legal framework for a voluntary assisted dying scheme in Queensland” and not to be “constrained by similar laws in other Australian states”.

In other words, the focus was on designing optimal law, rather than simply adopting another state’s law because it happened to be passed first.

How is Queensland’s proposed law different?

Some features are common to all Australian voluntary assisted dying laws. For example, eligibility criteria broadly include requirements that a person has an advanced and progressive condition that will cause death, and they are suffering intolerably from it. The person must also be an adult, have decision-making capacity, be acting voluntarily and satisfy various residency requirements.

The Queensland proposal’s eligibility criteria are different in relation to the person’s life expectancy. A person is eligible for voluntary assisted dying under the Queensland bill if they are expected to die within 12 months. Under other Australian models, the period is six months, except for progressive neurological conditions, in which case it’s 12 months.

Although some commentators (including us) question the need for a designated time period, a 12-month limit is a more coherent approach than the existing six or 12-month approach elsewhere.

First, it’s very hard to justify having different time limits to access voluntary assisted dying depending on the nature of your illness.

Second, a longer eligibility period allows a person who is diagnosed with a medical condition more time to apply for voluntary assisted dying. This may allow patients to start the application process a little earlier, and reduce the likelihood they may die before accessing voluntary assisted dying (given the process can take some time).

Read more: Voluntary assisted dying is not a black-and-white issue for Christians – they can, in good faith, support it

Another novel feature is the Queensland bill limits the ability of institutions to object to voluntary assisted dying. This is an Australian-first as Victorian, Western Australian and Tasmanian laws only deal with permitting individual health professionals to conscientiously object.

This is important because there’s evidence in Victoria that institutions are blocking access to voluntary assisted dying. One media report described a Catholic hospice barring access to pharmacists delivering the voluntary assisted dying medication to a patient.

The commission recommends creating legislative processes so eligible patients’ access to voluntary assisted dying is not unreasonably hindered by institutional objections.

Will the Queensland bill become law?

After the bill is tabled in Queensland parliament next week, it will be referred to the Parliamentary Health Committee (which originally recommended reform). That committee will have a consultation period of 12 weeks.

Parliament is expected to vote on the bill in September, and if the law is passed, it will likely come into effect in January 2023. As in other states, a period of implementation ensures the voluntary assisted dying system is ready before the law takes effect.

As is usually the case in such debates, both major parties have offered their MPs a conscience vote. Although Queensland is the only Australian state never to have considered a voluntary assisted dying bill, its single house of parliament may mean the law is more likely to pass.

Further, given the growing national trend to permit voluntary assisted dying and the careful and measured law reform process, we anticipate Queensland is likely to pass voluntary assisted dying laws this year.

Read more: From Oregon to Belgium to Victoria – the different ways suffering patients are allowed to die

– ref. Voluntary assisted dying could soon be legal in Queensland. Here’s how its bill differs from other states – https://theconversation.com/voluntary-assisted-dying-could-soon-be-legal-in-queensland-heres-how-its-bill-differs-from-other-states-161092

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alex Veen, Lecturer and DECRA Fellow, University of Sydney

The ruling by Australia’s Fair Work Commission that online food delivery platform Deliveroo unfairly dismissed driver Diego Franco marks a major shift in the Australian “gig” economy.

What’s most significant is the commission has ruled Franco was, in fact, an employee of Deliveroo, not an independent contractor – the legal strategy platform companies use to avoid employer obligations and shirk paying employee entitlements such as a minimum wage and leave entitlements.

With Deliveroo’s rival Menulog having committed in April to trial an employment model for its riders working in Sydney’s CBD, the ruling further swings the pendulum towards employment rights for “gig workers”.

Read more: Did somebody say workers’ rights? Three big questions about Menulog’s employment plan

How did we get to this important decision?

Franco took his case to the Fair Work Commission (Australia’s industrial relations tribunal) after Deliveroo terminated his account in April 2020. He had delivered food in Sydney for the platform since April 2017. Deliveroo’s reason for termination was he had delivered food orders too slowly.

With support from the Transport Workers Union, Franco lodged an unfair dismissal claim. Deliveroo’s lawyers sought to thwart the claim on the basis that he was a contractor. Only if he was an employee could the commission rule on whether he had been unfairly dismissed.

So Franco’s case required him first to demonstrate he was not a contractor but an employee. Then he had to show Deliveroo had unfairly dismissed him.

Commissioner Ian Cambridge’s ruling in Franco’s favour on both these points was based on a full analysis of the workplace controls that platforms can exercise over workers. That analysis was more extensive than previous Fair Work Commission decisions – including in December 2017, May 2018, July 2019 and April 2020 – that had ruled delivery drivers and riders need not be treated as employees.

Exercising control

The Fair Work Commission decides whether a worker should be classified as an employee or contractor by looking at multiple factors to form an overall picture (or “smell test”) of the work relationship. A key indicator is “control”.

In this case, Commissioner Cambridge considered both the level of control Deliveroo exercised over Franco and also its “capacity” to exercise control. This went further than previous decisions.

Deliveroo, like other platforms, uses algorithms in managing its workforce. While its lawyers argued its algorithms did not use performance data to allocate work, it did use performance data in deciding to terminate Franco’s account.

Read more: Algorithms workers can’t see are increasingly pulling the management strings

This highlighted how such apps collect data that could be used to control workers.

Previous commission rulings against gig workers being classified as employees have found couriers have considerable control over their work because they can, for instance, decide where and when to make themselves available for deliveries. Francos’ case, however, showed the “economic reality” of the circumstances significantly constrained his autonomy.

On that basis, Commissioner Cambridge ruled Deliveroo had significant actual, or potential, control over how work was performed, when work was done and who received work. This suggested the platform acted like an employer.

Multi-apping not a barrier

Another key aspect of the ruling was rejecting Deliveroo’s argument Franco could not be an employee because he was working for other platforms at the same time. This practice, known as “multi-apping”, is common in the gig economy due to the struggle of earning enough money just working for one platform.

Commissioner Cambridge ruled multi-apping was merely “an example of the phenomenon of change that new technology is bringing to the traditional arrangements for employment”.

The overall picture, he said, was that Franco “was not carrying on a trade or business of his own, or on his own behalf. Instead, he was working in Deliveroo’s business as part of that business.” In short, he was an employee.

Callous conduct

Commissioner Cambridge was also highly critical of Deliveroo terminating Franco’s contract via email, describing this conduct as “callous”.

Whether Franco was a contractor or not, he said, “basic human dignity requires that a matter of such gravity should be conveyed personally”.

He also criticised the company for not informing Franco of the expected performance standards, for not giving Franco adequate warning about the consequence of slow deliveries, and not affording Franco procedural justice such as giving him an opportunity to respond before being terminated.

This meant Franco, an employee, had been unfairly dismissed and was to be reinstated.

What are the wider consequences

This case highlights the need for properly designed and implemented human and algorithmic management processes to ensure a level of job quality even in the context of digitally intermediated “gig” work.

It goes further than that, however.

Ruling that Franco was an employee and not a contractor reflects a broader global trend. More and more gig workers are pushing back against the contractual arrangements of gig-economy platforms – and courts are agreeing.

In recent months there have been several major decisions. In March, the UK Supreme Court ruled two Uber drivers were workers (a different classification to being an employee, but with more rights than an independent contractor).

Read more: A new deal for Uber drivers in UK, but Australia’s ‘gig workers’ must wait

In February, Deliveroo lost an appeal against a Netherlands ruling its couriers are employees.

Although Deliveroo is likely to appeal the Fair Work Commission ruling, this case is another sign the thin ice on which “gig” platforms have been skating for years is cracking.

– ref. An employee, not a contractor: unfair dismissal ruling against Deliveroo is a big deal for Australia’s gig workers – https://theconversation.com/an-employee-not-a-contractor-unfair-dismissal-ruling-against-deliveroo-is-a-big-deal-for-australias-gig-workers-161173

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sam Crawley, Researcher, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington

Straight denial of climate change is now relatively rare. Most people believe it is happening and is a serious problem. But many rank other issues — healthcare and the economy — as more important.

This means people can’t be easily classified as either deniers or believers when it comes to climate change. In my research, I focused on understanding the complexity of climate opinion in light of the slow political response to climate change around the world.

I conducted an online survey in the UK and found 78% of respondents were extremely or fairly certain climate change is happening.

But when asked to rank eight issues (climate change, healthcare, education, crime, immigration, economy, terrorism and poverty) from most to least important to the country, 38% ranked climate change as least important, with a further 15% placing it seventh out of eight.

Recent pledges from a number of large countries to reach net zero in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 have led Climate Action Tracker to project that limiting warming to 2℃ by 2100 may be possible.

Although this progress is heartening, it has taken many years to reach this point and the challenges in actually meeting these emission targets cannot be overstated.

Climate ranking in other countries

I found similar results in other countries. Based on a Eurobarometer survey of 27,901 European Union citizens, a majority of the populations in all EU member countries are concerned about climate change, but only 43% across the EU rank it in the top four most important issues for the world. There are some differences between countries — climate change tends to be ranked higher in Nordic countries and lower in Eastern Europe.

Fewer than 5% of 3,445 respondents in the 2017 New Zealand Election Study said the environment was the most important election issue and an even smaller number specifically mentioned climate change.

Read more: NZ election 2020: survey shows voters are divided on climate policy and urgency of action

Why are some people more engaged with climate change than others? People’s worldview or ideology seem to be particularly important.

In many countries — including, as illustrated in my research, the UK and New Zealand — there are partisan and political divides in climate change with supporters of right-wing parties less likely to support climate change policies or to see it as an important issue.

People who support free-market economics, hold authoritarian attitudes or have exclusionary attitudes towards minorities are also less likely to engage with climate change.

Consequences for climate policy

In democracies, politicians often respond to public opinion; ignoring it risks being voted out at the next election. But the degree to which they do so depends on how important the issue is to the public relative to other issues.

If people are not thinking about an issue when they go to vote, politicians are less likely to give that issue much attention. As my research shows, people in most countries don’t give climate change a high importance ranking, and politicians are therefore not under enough public pressure to take the difficult steps required to combat climate change.

There are other reasons for the slow political response to climate change, besides the low importance of climate change among the public. Vested interests, such as fossil fuel companies, are undoubtedly involved in slowing the adoption of strong climate policies in many countries.

Read more: Climate explained: Why are climate change skeptics often right-wing conservatives?

Although only a minority of the population, climate change deniers may also make some politicians hesitate to act. But, regardless of the influence of vested interests and deniers, it is difficult for politicians to act on climate change when the public believes other issues are more important.

Understanding the relationship between public opinion and climate policy can help focus the efforts of climate campaigners. Perhaps less attention could be paid to the influence of vested interests.

Given the deep ideological reasons climate change deniers have for their disbelief, it’s unlikely they will be convinced otherwise. Fortunately, this may not be required to move climate policy forward.

As my research reveals, the majority of the public want action on climate change but tend to be more concerned about other issues. Campaigners might find it useful to focus their attention on persuading this section of the population about the urgency of climate action.

– ref. Most people consider climate change a serious issue, but rank other problems as more important. That affects climate policy – https://theconversation.com/most-people-consider-climate-change-a-serious-issue-but-rank-other-problems-as-more-important-that-affects-climate-policy-161080

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sara Webb, PhD candidate in Astrophysics, Swinburne University of Technology

China’s Zhurong rover landed safely on Mars on May 15, making China only the third country to successfully land a rover on the red planet.

More impressively still, China is the first Mars-going nation to carry out an orbiting, landing and rovering operation as its first mission.

Planetary scientist Roberto Orosei told Nature China is “doing in a single go what NASA took decades to do”, while astrophysicist Jonathon McDowell described China’s decision to include a rover in its maiden Mars outing as a “very gutsy move”.

Where did it land?

Zhurong, named after the god of fire in Chinese mythology, separated from the Tianwen-1 orbiter and touched down close to the site of previous NASA missions, on a vast plain called Utopia Planitia.

This area of Mars was formed billions of years ago, when a martian meteorite smashed into the planet’s surface. The surrounding area is largely featureless, covered mostly in volcanic material.

Zhurong is not the first rover to explore this region. In 1976, NASA’s Viking 2 lander touched down further north within the Utopia Planitia basin, returning high-resolution images of the martian surface and analysing soil samples.

The Viking 2 lander lacked the ability to investigate any further than its initial landing site. But the Zhurong rover should be well equipped to roam farther afield during its mission.

What will it do?

The mission’s three-month scientific program will begin once the Zhurong rover disembarks from the landing craft and begins its journey across the martian surface. The 240-kilogram, six-wheeled rover is equipped with six individual scientific instruments, and has four large solar panels, giving it the appearance of a “blue butterfly”.

Zhurong’s design, instruments and technology on board Zhurong are comparable to those on board NASA’s twin rovers Spirit and Opportunity, which touched down in January 2004. Although Zhurong is not at the cutting edge of current space exploration technology, the sheer speed of this program’s development since its initiation in 2006 is awe-inspiring.

Like the many Mars rovers before it, Zhurong will probe this alien planet’s environment, and search for signs of water ice on the surface.

The mission is expected to survey four aspects of its local environmnet:

• topography and geological structure

• soil structure and possible presence of water ice

• chemical composition, minerals and rock types

• physical characteristics of the atmosphere and the rocky surface.

Zhurong will thus help build a more complete geological picture of the red planet’s history. And, in a genuine first for Martian exploration, it is equipped with a magnetometer to measure the planet’s magnetic field. This is an important study that will help address why Mars has lost much of its atmosphere, leaving its landscape so barren.

Read more: As new probes reach Mars, here’s what we know so far from trips to the red planet

China’s growing space presence

The Tianwen-1 mission is just one of an impressive list of accomplishments by the China National Space Administration in the past year. Its other feats include launching dozens of Long March rockets, each with multiple payloads, including that of the Chang’e 5 lunar probe, which brought Moon rocks back to Earth for the first time since the end of NASA’s Apollo program in the 1970s.

Last month, China launched the first stage of its Tiangong space station, which next year is set to become the world’s second long-term home for humans in space. The momentous launch didn’t go off without a hitch, however, as debris from the launch vehicle made an uncontrolled re-entry back to Earth, eventually splashing down in the Indian Ocean.

Read more: China’s Tiangong space station: what it is, what it’s for, and how to see it

Thankfully no one was hurt in that incident, but it is a timely reminder that China’s accelerating pace of space missions and rocket launches need to be carefully managed.

This year of activity has solidified China’s powerful presence in space, and we are only seeing the beginning of its ambitious future. By 2045, China hopes to become a leading space power, as outlined in the 2018 Aerospace Science and Technology Corporations route map.

In the coming years we can look forward to seeing China launch crewed missions to the Tiangong space station, and in the coming decades can expect to see China join other space-faring nations in missions back to the Moon and Mars.

– ref. On its first try, China’s Zhurong rover hit a Mars milestone that took NASA decades – https://theconversation.com/on-its-first-try-chinas-zhurong-rover-hit-a-mars-milestone-that-took-nasa-decades-161078

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amrita Malhi, Visiting Fellow, Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs; Senior Adviser Geoeconomics, Save the Children, Australian National University

The latest IMF and World Bank reports show a global economic boom gathering steam. This is thanks to US$16 trillion in fiscal stimulus packages spent mostly across the world’s rich nations since the pandemic began.

After the reversal of 2020, the global economy is now projected to grow by 6% in 2021, powered by strong growth in the US and China, which are forecast to grow by 6% and 8%, respectively.

Australians are not missing out, thanks to A$311 billion in public spending. The federal budget’s GDP growth forecast is 4.25% in 2021. Unemployment is forecast to fall to below 5% by mid-2023.

Before we get ahead of ourselves, however, we should consider the risks the pandemic continues to pose, not only to our recovery but the global boom the world’s rich nations have generated.

New variants could lead to COVID surge

As a rich nation surrounded by developing countries, Australia can see these risks around its region, not only in India, but also Southeast Asia and the Pacific.

The first of these risks is that all our forecasts and projections assume the progress of successful vaccination programs, not only in Australia but around the world. Yet, the virus is potentially adapting more quickly than developing countries are able to vaccinate their populations.

Read more: 3 ways to vaccinate the world and make sure everyone benefits, rich and poor

The B.1.617 virus variant has become the dominant strain in India and spread to some 40 countries, including many in Southeast Asia.

Indonesia is particularly vulnerable. The vaccine rollout here has been sluggish, with just under 14 million people having received their first dose so far. The government has set an ambitious target of vaccinating 181 million people by next March, but it will struggle to reach this target.

Although the government prohibited travel during the recent Eid holiday, data suggests at least 1.5 million left homes before the ban, causing one epidemiologist to warn of a COVID “timebomb” in the country.

The government is already warning the appearance of the B.1.617 variant (and others) could cause the country to miss its growth target of between 4.5% and 5.3% this year, if the poor are unable to work due to new mobility restrictions.

Millions more have fallen into extreme poverty

The second risk to a post-pandemic global recovery is many developing nations are simply not benefiting from the start of the economic rebound.

COVID-19 has reduced per capita GDP by as much as one-fifth in these countries.

Last year, 100 million people — mostly in South Asia — were on the brink of extreme poverty. This could rise to as many as 150 million people this year. As a result, millions of children could drop out of school this year around the world.

The Pacific Island countries have been badly affected, not only by the economic effects of border closures, but in the case of PNG, by the virus itself. With many reliant on tourism, commodities, and remittances, the Pacific Island countries’ economies shrank by 11% in 2020 collectively.

Fiji’s GDP contracted by a massive 19%, while in typhoon-affected Vanuatu, the economy shrank by 10%.

The effects on human development outcomes are immediately obvious. In PNG, 52% of families surveyed by the World Bank in 2020 indicated they were sending fewer children to school because of reduced incomes.

More broadly, across East Asia and the Pacific, students are expected to lose 0.8 Learning-Adjusted Years of Schooling (LAYS) — a measure that combines quantity and quality of schooling — between January 2020 and December 2021. This is almost half their school time over two years.

Australia’s aid spending still not enough

Unlike Australia, many developing countries cannot free up large amounts of public money to invest in stimulating their economies. For them to join in the global recovery, they will need assistance.

Australia’s response is helping to some extent. Australia invested an extra A$479.7 million in international development spending in 2020–21 above its notional baseline allocation of $4 billion per annum.

In 2021–22, it is projecting a total investment of $4.34 billion. This is still extra, but it represents a cut in real terms of 5% on the previous year.

Compared to other wealthy nations, however, Australia is still not giving much. Australia’s investment in Official Development Assistance (ODA) as a proportion of gross national income is 0.21% in 2021–22, much lower than the OECD average of 0.32%.

Given the scale of need and the pace of development in our region, Australia will very likely offer more as the financial year progresses.

Read more: South Asia: how to ensure progress on reducing poverty isn’t reversed by coronavirus

Greater stimulus spending and social protection schemes

But Australia also needs to do much more to mobilise other forms of funding to assist its neighbours’ economic recoveries.

One thing Canberra is doing right is investing some of its ODA in social protection schemes around the region, including an A$18 million Partnerships for Social Protection package for the Pacific that will scale up assistance to vulnerable households.

Australia has also issued a concessional loan to Indonesia, which it stipulates includes money for strengthening Indonesia’s health and social protection systems.

On top of this investment, Australia should use its access to global forums to advocate for more assistance to developing countries, especially in Asia and the Pacific.

Read more: India is facing a terrible crisis. How can Australia respond ethically?

One such forum is the G7+, where Australia says it wants to promote prosperity and security in the Indo-Pacific.

Another is the coming G20 summit in Italy in October, where Australia will have an opportunity to advocate for debt relief and restructuring for developing countries. This will allow them to free up cash for stimulus schemes like JobKeeper and JobSeeker, which protected many of us in Australia over the past year.

Australia is already meeting with the United States’ new aid administrator, Samantha Power, to discuss more cooperation on this front, including through the informal Quad alliance (which also includes Japan and India).

Australia should also continue to advocate to multilateral banks and funding agencies to invest real cash in new and additional stimulus packages and social protection systems around the region.

These systems could fund universal child benefits to keep children schooled and properly fed, protecting the advances our neighbours have made over the past 40 years of economic development.

Key to our own security and prosperity is our neighbours’ resilience to shocks like the COVID-19 pandemic and economic downturn.

Australia will need to allocate more money from its own coffers — and encourage more giving from the rest of the developed world — to stimulate our neighbours’ economies. Only then will we see a global economic recovery where everyone benefits — not just the wealthy.

– ref. While rich countries experience a post-COVID boom, the poor are getting poorer. Here’s how Australia can help – https://theconversation.com/while-rich-countries-experience-a-post-covid-boom-the-poor-are-getting-poorer-heres-how-australia-can-help-160604

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Jacobs, President and Vice-Chancellor, UNSW

My colleages’ and my efforts to develop a screening test for the early detection of ovarian cancer capable of saving lives arrived at a sad moment last week. The final trial results of the research I’ve focused on for 36 years, published in The Lancet, found early ovarian cancer detection doesn’t save lives.

The advances we have seen in science and technology over the past three decades have been nothing short of phenomenal. Each smartphone has more computational power than NASA had at its disposal during the moon landings. In medicine, researchers have sequenced the human genome, created life-saving treatment for HIV and rapidly developed vaccines for COVID-19.

There have been significant improvements in ovarian cancer treatment involving surgery and chemotherapy, but the sad and frustrating truth is of the four women diagnosed with ovarian cancer in Australia each day, three will eventually die from the disease.

Read more: INTERACTIVE: We mapped cancer rates across Australia – search for your postcode here

The diagnosis of ovarian cancer is dependent on women reporting symptoms to their doctor. However, few develop symptoms until they have advanced stage cancer, by which time the outlook is poor. Of all women’s cancers, ovarian cancer has the lowest survival rate, with just 46% of patients in Australia surviving five years. For breast cancer, it’s now 91%.

Back in the 80s

I was motivated to improve the outcome for women with ovarian cancer by my experience as a junior doctor in London in 1985. I was training with a brilliant surgeon who undertook operations for many women with ovarian cancer. In spite of the exhaustive surgery and the chemotherapy that followed, we saw far too many women suffer and die from ovarian cancer.

That experience inspired me to initiate a program of research designed to find a screening test to detect this cancer early. Women with the earliest stage of ovarian cancer had survival rates of 70%, but less than 20% of women with ovarian cancer were diagnosed that early.

My hypothesis was that if we could detect more cancers at an early stage it would save lives.

Based on evidence from other cancers, there was reason to be hopeful and two potential tests were available – a blood test called CA 125 and the use of ultrasound scanning which was then widely used in obstetrics.

Over the next 15 years, working with colleagues in the United Kingdom and United States, I developed and refined the screening tests and had great hope for what we called “multimodal screening”. This involved a “risk of ovarian cancer algorithm” for interpreting the change in blood levels of CA 125 over time to identify women who had a rising pattern, indicating an elevated risk of ovarian cancer. Women with an elevated risk could then have a secondary test involving ultrasound scanning.

During those 15 years, we published convincing evidence in studies involving over 50,000 women that this approach to screening was safe, acceptable to women, could detect over 85% of the cancers early and would probably be cost effective if sufficient lives were saved.

Promising early results

Before advocating screening of the general population, a massive trial would be needed to determine whether the screening would actually save lives.

The trial needed to involve screening and follow up of approximately 200,000 women for around 20 years. This would eventually include 2,000 women with ovarian cancer – enough to determine whether or not screening saved lives.

Work got underway in the United Kingdom in 2000 and optimism grew as initial results confirmed the ability of multimodal screening to detect cancer early in over 85% of cases.

By 2015, the preliminary mortality data were available and were tantalising. The curves hinted at a 20% or more reduction in deaths from ovarian cancer, but the findings did not quite reach statistical significance. So another five years of painstaking follow up was needed.

Disappointing final results

The final results of the UK Collaborative Trial of Ovarian Cancer Screening showed the multimodal screening approach could detect cancers early and increase the number of early-stage ovarian cancers by almost 50%.

But to our surprise and despair, that did not reduce the number of deaths from ovarian cancer. All it seemed to do was to bring forward the time of diagnosis of the cancers in these women, without improving their survival.

This is deeply disappointing. Disappointing of course for those who like myself have dedicated much of their professional lives to this effort, but much more importantly for the women across the world who we had hoped would have access to an effective screening test able to save lives.

The hope had been to deploy ovarian cancer screening for women in the general population alongside breast and cervical cancer screening, but that will not happen – for a while at least.

Why didn’t early detection save lives?

To answer that, we need to further analyse samples and data from the trial. Our suspicion is that the women whose cancers were detected early by screening had more aggressive cancers than those (the 10%) whose cancers were detected early without screening, on the basis of symptoms.

So even with early detection, their cancers progressed relentlessly despite them receiving the best available surgery and chemotherapy.

If that is the case, we are likely to require screening tests which can detect ovarian cancer even earlier than our algorithm, which we estimate picks up ovarian cancer 18 to 24 months early. Saving lives may require a test capable of picking up the cancers five or more years early.

Read more: Why we need to pay more attention to negative clinical trials

Fortunately, there are exciting avenues of research involving advances in protein and DNA technologies which researchers in Australia and around the world are exploring. So there is hope.

But realistically, given the five-plus years needed to develop better screening tests and the ten to 15-plus years needed to have enough cases to conduct another large randomised trial, the solution is likely to be more than 20 years away.

Still, we’ve learnt a lot

This massive commitment of expertise, time, energy and funding has most definitely not been wasted. Much has been achieved along the way in this 36-year journey in developing ways to assess risk, diagnose cancer and prevent ovarian cancer which are now used in clinical practice.

New generations of researchers have been trained. The data and the blood bank collected is available to all researchers seeking new and better screening tests and is a unique resource. And the ability to detect ovarian cancer early may be invaluable in assessing new treatments.

I feel privileged to have led this effort and will always be grateful to the collaborators, researchers, health professionals, funding agencies and above all the 200,000 women who took part in the trial.

I feel a deep sadness that lives will not yet be saved by ovarian cancer screening, but I’m confident the next generation of researchers will build on our work and find approaches to screening and treatment of ovarian cancer which dramatically reduce the loss and suffering caused by this insidious disease.

Read more: COVID has left Australia’s biomedical research sector gasping for air

– ref. ‘Devastated and sad’ after 36 years of research — early detection of ovarian cancer doesn’t save lives – https://theconversation.com/devastated-and-sad-after-36-years-of-research-early-detection-of-ovarian-cancer-doesnt-save-lives-160999

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nedeljka Rosic, Senior Lecturer, Southern Cross University

There’s a weedkiller used in Australia that’s so toxic, one sip could kill you. It’s called paraquat and debate is brewing over whether it should be banned.

Paraquat is already outlawed in many places around the world. The Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority has been reviewing paraquat’s use here for more than two decades, and its final decision is due later this year.

We are medical and environmental scientists, and have researched the harmful effects of paraquat, even when it’s used within the recommended safety range. We strongly believe the highly toxic chemical should be banned in Australia.

The potentially lethal effects on humans are well known. In Australia in 2012, for example, a farmer died after a herbicide containing paraquat accidentally sprayed into his mouth. And our research has found paraquat also causes serious environmental damage.

Paraquat: the story so far

Paraquat, branded as Gramoxone, has been used since the 1950s. It’s mostly deployed to control grass and weeds around crops such as rice, cotton and soybeans.

Paraquat is registered as a schedule 7 poison on the national registration scheme, meaning its use is strictly regulated.

Australia’s biggest supplier of paraquat says it should not be banned, insisting herbicides containing it are “safe for people and the environment when used for their intended purpose and according to the registered label instructions”.

Farmers have also argued against a ban, saying it would force them to use more expensive, less effective alternatives and reduce crop yield.

Paraquat has been banned in more than 50 countries, including the United Kingdom, China, Thailand and European Union nations. However, it’s still widely used by farmers in the developing world, and in Australia and the United States.

Read more: Ban on toxic mercury looms in sugar cane farming, but Australia still has a way to go

A chemical peril

Paraquat is a non-selective herbicide, which means it kills plants indiscriminately. It does so by inhibiting photosynthesis, the process by which plants convert sunlight into chemical energy.

Paraquat stays in the environment for a long time. It’s well known for causing collateral damage to plants and animals. For example, even at very low concentrations, paraquat has been found to harm the growth of honey bee eggs.

Exposure to living organisms can occur by spray drift or when paraquat is sprayed on crops then reaches surface and underground sources of drinking water.

Paraquat can have unintended consequences for biological organisms and the environment, particular in waterways. Our recent paper summarised the evidence of the harmful effects of paraquat at realistic field concentrations.

We found evidence that paraquat can severely inhibit healthy bacterial growth in aquatic environments, which in turn affects nutrient cycling and the decomposition of organic matter.

The research also shows paraquat can distort tropical freshwater plankton communities by negatively impacting metabolic diversity and reducing phytoplankton growth.

In fish, paraquat has been found to lead to a death rate of common carp three times higher than the weed it is used to control.

‘One sip can kill’

In addition to the environmental effects, of course, paraquat is highly toxic to humans. A small accidental sip can be fatal and there is no antidote.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says paraquat is a leading cause of fatal poisoning in parts of Asia, the Pacific Islands, and South and Central Americas.

Paraquat enters the body through the skin, digestive system or lungs. If ingested in sufficient amounts, it causes lung damage, leading to pulmonary fibrosis and death through respiratory failure. The liver and kidney can also fail.

Several recent incidents in Australia demonstrate the risks of paraquat poisoning due to human error, even within the current strict regulations.

According to news reports, the Queensland farmer poisoned by paraquat in 2012 was filling a pressure pump to control weeds on his property. The unit cracked and paraquat sprayed over his body and face, entering his mouth.

In 2017, an adult with autism took a sip from a Coke bottle used to store paraquat. The bottle had been left in a disabled toilet at a sports ground in New South Wales. The man was initially given 12 hours to live, but fortunately recovered after two weeks in hospital.

Read more: Pesticides and suicide prevention – why research needs to be put into practice

Paraquat: not worth the risk

There’s a growing awareness of the threats posed by global chemical use. In fact, a paper released this week suggests the potential risk to humanity is on a scale equivalent to climate change.

Paraquat is no doubt an effective herbicide. However, in our view, the risks it poses to humans and the environment do not outweigh the agricultural benefits.

Current regulation in Australia has not prevented harm from paraquat. It’s time for Australia to join the movement towards a global ban on this toxic chemical.

Read more: The real cost of pesticides in Australia’s food boom

– ref. ‘One sip can kill’: why a highly toxic herbicide should be banned in Australia – https://theconversation.com/one-sip-can-kill-why-a-highly-toxic-herbicide-should-be-banned-in-australia-159333

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lucas Walsh, Professor, Education Policy and Practice, Monash University

By June 2020, the COVID-19 crisis had forced schools to close in 188 countries, disrupting the learning of more than 1.7 billion children. The OECD estimated the impact of these school closures would be at least two months of lost teaching for half of primary and secondary school students.

In Australia, modelling by the Grattan Institute estimated disadvantaged students — including those from low socioeconomic families, Indigenous backgrounds and remote communities — had lost around two months learning during the remote learning period in Victoria.

Some states have invested in tutoring schemes to help students catch up. This includes the Victorian government’s A$250 million Tutor Learning Initiative, South Australia’s Learning+ program and New South Wales’ plan to employ up to 5,500 staff to support students who may have fallen behind.

Evidence suggests some groups of students, such as students in the most disadvantaged schools, have felt the effects of lockdowns more than others. Evidence also suggests small-group tuition can make a difference. But this is only the case if the tutoring itself is evidence-based.

Between March and September 2020, we surveyed 492 teachers and school leaders from 414 schools across New South Wales, South Australia, Victoria and Queensland about their use of evidence — particularly research-based evidence. Our sample included primary, secondary, combined (K-12) and special schools. They included a spread of government, Catholic and independent schools.

While the study was not specifically prompted by the pandemic, our emphasis on the use of research evidence became particularly relevant as schools — like the rest of the world — grappled with the virus.

While most educators said they regularly consulted evidence, only 43% did so for university-based research. Participants cited a lack of time and a lack of access to the evidence they needed.

Less than half regularly consult university research

School leaders and teachers involved in tutoring initiatives — and teaching more broadly — have to make nuanced decisions about how best to address learning.

They must draw on various sources of evidence to understand how different factors have influenced their students’ learning and then decide on the most effective way forward.

A key question, therefore, is how confident and able are our leaders and teachers to use evidence to inform their responses to the effects of COVID-19?

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

Our survey aimed to find out:

• what types of research and evidence teachers and school leaders value

• how and why they source different kinds of evidence

• whether and how they use research in their practice

• what they believe “using research well” in practice means.

Over two-thirds of survey participants (70%) said they had recently used evidence in their practice. Most consulted with familiar and readily available evidence types such as “student data” (77%) and “policy and curriculum documents” (72%).

But respondents used research-based sources much less frequently. Only 43% said they regularly consulted “research disseminated from universities” and 36% engaged with “university-based advice or guidance”.

Nearly half (43%) of respondents indicated “teacher observations and experience should be prioritised over research”. These educators were less likely to source research-related evidence types.

Read more: First, do no harm: education research should answer to the same standards as medicine

We also asked educators to reflect on the evidence types they have used in relation to “a specific initiative related to improving student outcomes that [they or their] colleagues have started to use in [their] schools or classrooms in the past 12 months”.

Some answers related to COVID-specific initiatives such as the transition to online learning and the best learning platforms to use. Others spoke about interventions to address poor student behaviour or phonic programs to improve literacy.

Schools need to help

Educators reported three particular challenges in relation to using research: access, organisational culture and confidence.

First, many said they didn’t have sufficient access to research (68%), or adequate time to access and review it (76%). More than three-quarters (76%) also indicated they can’t keep up with new and emerging research, such as studies of the educational impacts of the pandemic.

Second, organisational cultures are important supports for enabling the use of research. Respondents reported they use research-related sources more often when their schools had processes designed to support their research use.

Finally, many respondents reported lacking confidence in their own skills and capacities to use research.

Read more: ‘Exhausted beyond measure’: what teachers are saying about COVID-19 and the disruption to education

Addressing the first two challenges is an important first step to building educators’ skills and capacities to use research.

Laureate education professor Jenny Gore recently wrote:

The success of the tutoring programs being used by schools to help students recover post-COVID-19 will depend heavily on the quality of the tutoring they provide.

Our findings suggest evidence use can play a key role in improving the quality of teaching, both in COVID-19 tutoring programs and classrooms generally. But this can only happen when educators feel they have the appropriate access, support and confidence to make evidence-informed judgments and practices.

– ref. We have the evidence for what works in schools, but that doesn’t mean everyone uses it – https://theconversation.com/we-have-the-evidence-for-what-works-in-schools-but-that-doesnt-mean-everyone-uses-it-160712

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Laura Fruhen, Lecturer, School of Psychological Science, The University of Western Australia

To protect cyclists on the roads, state governments in Australia have introduced laws that set a minimum space drivers must give cyclists when overtaking them. These laws are now in place nationwide, with Victoria the final state to join the ranks last month. But do these passing distance laws actually change drivers’ behaviour towards cyclists?

Our research set out to answer this question by evaluating Western Australia’s passing distance law introduced in 2017. We found that since the law took effect drivers do indeed report giving cyclists more space when overtaking. However, there were possible unintended consequences. Drivers also self-reported more aggressive behaviour directed at cyclists, such as beeping horns or swearing.

Read more: Delivery rider deaths highlight need to make streets safer for everyone

What is in a passing distance law?

Passing distance laws are based on the understanding that close overtaking by cars greatly increases the risk of accidents involving cyclists and motor vehicles. Previously, drivers had to use their own judgement in providing “sufficient” space when overtaking cyclists. Now the laws instead specify a minimum distance.

In Australia, the distance is usually 1 metre on roads with speed limits less than 60km/h and 1.5 metres on roads with higher speed limits.

Some European countries and several states in the US have adopted similar laws.

Lawmakers understand that legislation can also send important social signals: cyclists are legitimate road users, and the road is a safe place to cycle.

Why do we need these laws to protect cyclists?

Cycling is a healthy and environmentally friendly mode of transport. It can play a key role in reducing pollution and congestion in ever more densely populated cities. Yet cycling rates in Australia are low.

Clearly, it would be desirable for more people to take up cycling. Why is this not happening?

Partly, low cycling rates might be due to the risks involved in cycling. Cyclist fatalities and injuries have been on the rise in Australia in recent years. We know this is not related to the roads becoming more dangerous for everybody, because car driver deaths have been decreasing over the same time.

Read more: Rising cyclist death toll is mainly due to drivers, so change the road laws and culture

As well as objective safety, cycling participation is also related to whether people perceive cycling to be safe. Part of this perception comes from how other road users treat cyclists. Unfortunately, cyclists report motorists direct a fair amount of aggressive behaviour at them.

So what difference do these laws make?

Our study in WA confirms what others have found: passing distance laws make overtaking by cars safer for cyclists.

However, we found the law may have the unintended side effect of increased aggressive behaviour towards cyclists.

There are several possible explanations for these unintended changes. We think it is an issue of culture: Australia is a car-centric society. Many car drivers in Australia believe cyclists do not belong on the roads.

Read more: Drivers v cyclists: it’s like an ethnic conflict, which offers clues to managing ‘road wars’

Passing distance laws signal that cyclists are deserving of space and may “force” drivers to give cyclists more space, against their beliefs. Some drivers may give cyclists more space to comply with the law, but counter any discomfort they experience by being more aggressive towards cyclists.

Drivers often experience frustration with having to overtake cyclists and other slow road users. The law may have actually drawn attention to this frustration, which in turn may have contributed to more aggressive behaviour among drivers.

We also found cycling rates have remained stable since the passing distance law was introduced. Unfortunately, this suggests the law did not translate into greater enthusiasm for cycling.

What can be done to improve the situation?

If these laws have these side effects, what else can we do?

It seems passing distance laws are effective in regulating the specific behaviour of overtaking cyclists. This is great news for cyclists’ safety. However, to make cycling safer overall, and to increase cycling rates, further measures to complement these laws are needed.

Changing drivers’ deeply ingrained beliefs and attitudes towards cyclists may be a longer process, but one worth embarking on. Infrastructure and road layouts also matter and can play a role in shifting priorities away from cars.

Read more: We can design better intersections that are safer for all users

Infrastructure that plans space for cyclists would reduce the number of interactions between cyclists and drivers. It also signals that cyclists have a right to this space.

As an added benefit, this type of infrastructure can play a key part in preparing the road network for emerging technology such as e-scooters and other transport modes.

Public policy is an inexact science. Most new laws will have some unintended consequences. Our study confirms the importance of careful evaluation of such laws. It shows the passing distance law is a great first step, but more can be done to protect cyclists on the roads.

– ref. Minimum space for passing cyclists is now law Australia-wide. It increases safety – but possibly road rage too – https://theconversation.com/minimum-space-for-passing-cyclists-is-now-law-australia-wide-it-increases-safety-but-possibly-road-rage-too-159926

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Martin, Visiting Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University

We got an awful lot right during the COVID crisis — an awful lot that we couldn’t have got right just a few years earlier.

Which is another way of saying we were incredibly lucky.

Had COVID attacked during the 1980s there would have been no way to make a messenger RNA vaccine, not even for animals.

The national broadband network wouldn’t have been thought of. It wasn’t complete until 2020.

Even three years earlier, in 2017, the NBN reached only half of Australia’s 10 million households.

Had COVID struck then, before the broadband network was complete, working from home, telehealth and home schooling might have been impossible for many Australians, with devastating educational and other consequences.

And had it struck just a few years earlier still, we wouldn’t have learnt from the global financial crisis.

War Games

Australia’s handling of the GFC was exemplary, as evidenced by the fact that in much of the rest of the world it isn’t called the GFC, but The Great Recession.

Getting that crisis right owed something to a happy accident, as Ken Henry, head of the treasury at the time, explained on Monday at a seminar organised by the Institute of Public Administration.

A few years before the crisis in 2004 he was sitting in a room with senior officials discussing “some macroeconomic topic” when his deputy Martin Parkinson, sitting on his right, poked him with his left elbow.

“Martin said: you know it’s just occurred to me that you and I are probably the only people in this room who have ever experienced a recession — maybe we should have a workshop on that, what we would do if there was another crisis”.

The early 1990s recession was handled badly

Parkinson and treasury secretary Henry had worked for the Hawke and Keating governments during the early 1990s recession which scarred the Australians who it threw out of work for a decade.

In a series of “war games” held away from the treasury building, they and other officials determined that next time they should advise the government to quickly abandon budget discipline and fight what was coming with overwhelming force.

As Henry put it: “no matter how great the importance of fiscal discipline in establishing policy credibility, it is nothing compared to the loss of credibility associated with a recession”.

If the treasury didn’t tell the government this, the government would catch on anyway and sideline it for advisers who would.

“I came out of those discussions determined that if Australia were to confront a large negative shock during my tenure as secretary, the treasury would seek to put itself front and centre in advising the government,” Henry said.

“We would not be taking seats in the back row by counselling a government to rely on monetary policy, the exchange rate, or automatic stabilisers.”

As for the idea of “proportionate response”, which was still being counselled by some in the early stages of COVID last year, Henry said the word “proportionate” could be applied to a response, but never to preemption.

Preemption is not proportionate

“If you want to preempt something, you don’t talk about being proportionate,” he said. “I remember some commentators saying you should wait until you see the ‘whites of the eyes’ before taking action. “I wouldn’t know what action to take at that stage, presumably it would be to run as fast as you could, I just don’t know.”

The key thing was to get money into Australian’s hands immediately. Spending on infrastructure (spending on almost anything other than households) would take too long.

During the financial crisis Labor got money into households’ hands by handing out cheques. During COVID the Coalition did it by doubling benefits and routing payments through employers and calling them JobKeeper.

Bandwidth matters

Henry, and David Tune who was head of the finance department at the time, told the conference that attempting to do other things as part of getting money out the door got in the way, among them insulating homes and building school halls.

Governments have limited “bandwidth” or “thinking space”, and during the GFC the Rudd government was also considering taking over hospitals, taxing carbon, reforming the tax system and building the NBN.

The Morrison government seems to have learnt that lesson, but it doesn’t seem to have learnt another, which is that the Commonwealth isn’t good at managing projects.

The Commonwealth can’t run projects…

Whether it’s vaccinations or quarantine or insulating homes, projects are best managed by state governments who have actual experience of running things.

Another important lesson, reinforced during COVID is that in practical terms the ability of the Reserve Bank to support the government in keeping a recession at bay might be unlimited.

The Reserve Bank deputy governor at the time Malcolm Edey told the conference that the next step after low interest rates and buying government bonds is direct “money-financed fiscal expansion”, where the bank creates money for the government to spend.

…but its financial power is unlimited

With all of the government’s borrowing now in Australian dollars, and most private overseas borrowing effectively in Australian dollars because it has been hedged against exchange rate movements, and with the debt ceiling gone, there’s no limit to the force and speed with which the government can stave off a recession.

The current treasury secretary Steven Kennedy conceded that in one way fighting the COVID recession had been easier than fighting the GFC.

COVID had a clear start date. The GFC had a rolling series of starts that made it hard to be sure the worst hadn’t passed.

Read more: Frydenberg spends the budget bounty to drive unemployment down to new lows

And perhaps because of that, we discovered what Australians can do.

Treasury Deputy Secretary Meghan Quinn praised the banks for deferring payments on $250 million of loans, Coles and Woolworths for working together to stock each other’s stores and the private and public health systems for working together in a way that wouldn’t have been thought possible before the pandemic.

We read the GFC playbook, then went further.

– ref. The GFC provided the secret sauce we used to ward off the COVID recession – https://theconversation.com/the-gfc-provided-the-secret-sauce-we-used-to-ward-off-the-covid-recession-160989

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rachel M Campbell, Academic, University of Canberra

Dame Nellie Melba, who appears on our $100 note, was born Helen Porter Mitchell in the Melbourne suburb of Richmond on May 19, 1861.

An operatic soprano with a voice described as sparklingly clear, her career would take her across the world, from Russia to America, but she always returned home.

This extraordinary Australian was arguably our first celebrity. While her singing is famed, she was a complex woman who shaped her own career, far more interesting than her culinary namesakes — Melba Toast and Peach Melba — might suggest.

On her 160th birthday, here are five things you may not know about her.

1. She avidly pursued the perfect portrait

Melba was aware of the relationship between image and celebrity, and pursued the “perfect” portrait for years.

The most well known painting of Melba today is by Rupert Bunny, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1902.

But biographer Ann Blainey reports Melba told her friends no one — save Bunny himself — liked the portrait when it was completed.

One of the most striking photographs of Melba was taken by Harold Cazneaux in 1922.

Looking at this image very closely, there appears to be the 19th century equivalent of photoshopping. Melba’s jawline has been subtly reshaped: a little visual nip and tuck.

In what could be characterised as a form of “pre-mythologising”, Melba commissioned a bust by Bertram Mackennal. When the bust was completed in 1899, she promptly gifted it to the National Gallery of Victoria, saying:

may I express the hope that I am not wholly forgotten in our beloved country.

2. She was shrewd with money

A clever business woman, who always controlled her own interests, Melba only engaged managers for short periods of time in foreign markets.

According to one of her biographers, Joseph Wechsberg, Melba had no time for dinner invitations that carried the implication of a little performance. Once at the party, she would announce she would sing, but only if they would “sign a little cheque”.

She once quoted a fee of £500 to an American socialite who asked her to dinner and to sing afterwards — A$71,000 today.

3. Her OBE was not for her singing

Melba lost five relatives at Gallipoli, and in 1915 she single-handedly spearheaded a charitable endeavour in the form of Melba’s Gift Book of Australian Art in support of Belgian war relief efforts.

Filled with colour plate illustrations from significant Australian artists and writers such as Arthur Streeton, Norman Lindsay and Henry Lawson, the front cover is inscribed with the words “the entire profits from the sale of this book will be devoted by Madam Melba to the Belgian Relief Fund”.

Melba spoke passionately about her love for Belgium in the opening pages of the book:

[…] I made my debut there; my first appearance in opera was in Brussels, and I can still hear the cheers of my first audience, the kindly, warm-hearted Belgians whose generous recognition of the unknown artist from distant Australia gave me hope and courage to persevere.

While Melba is known for her astonishing musical talent, she became a Dame in 1918 in recognition of this charitable work.

4. She was a gossip magazine staple

Celebrity needs both fame and commodity, and Melba ensured her renown reached far beyond the concert hall. Even Australians who could have never heard her sing because they lived in regional areas were avid consumers of her as a product.

You could buy cartes-de-visite of her in costume, or eagerly read newspaper and magazine gossip about her poorly concealed affair with the Duc d’Orleans. From 1904, recordings of her singing could be purchased; and in 1926 she published her own vocal method: a hit with singing students, and still used today.

As early as her 1902 tour of Australia, Melba was being described as “Australia’s Gifted Daughter”. In her farewell tour of the late 1920s she was elevated to “Australia’s Greatest Daughter”

The latter term was also used by the press after her death in 1931. This description of Melba speaks to the collective pride and ownership Australians felt about her.

This pride endures today: where there are highways, tunnels, concert halls, suburbs and streets named after her — as well as her face on our $100 note.

5. But she didn’t always love being a celebrity

Melba was fatigued at times by the pressure of singing roles as she aged, and had two extended periods of rest in Switzerland in 1890 and 1897 to recover from vocal nodules.

While she did seek fame, carefully moulding the image she provided to the public, Melba would come to know its darker side. She remarked in her biography, “everybody who has known fame has also known the agonies which fame brought”.

– ref. Happy 160th birthday Dame Nellie Melba: 5 surprising facts about the canny songstress – https://theconversation.com/happy-160th-birthday-dame-nellie-melba-5-surprising-facts-about-the-canny-songstress-160993

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jagadish Thaker, Senior Lecturer, School of Communication, Journalism and Marketing, Massey University

More than two in five New Zealanders (41%) say incidents of racism have increased during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a national survey carried out in February and March this year.

The experience of racism is skewed towards Māori, Pasifika and people of Asian descent, about half of whom say racism has been on the rise, compared with about a third of European New Zealanders.

Of the 1,083 survey participants, more than half (52%) say racism has remained the same and 7% say it has decreased.

Discrimination and racism

The pandemic has led to a global increase in anti-Asian hate. At the same time, ethnic minorities are also disproportionately affected by severe disease and deaths due to COVID-19. Death rates among minority ethnic groups were two or more times greater than for the white population in the United Kingdom. In New Zealand, Māori and Pasifika were about two times more likely to die of COVID-19.

About two in five respondents said they have witnessed other people discriminate against individuals because of how they looked or spoke English. About a quarter reported experiencing discrimination due to their ethnic origin in a variety of contexts, including at government departments, workplaces, when dealing with the commercial sector and when accessing health care.

Māori and Pasifika reported experiencing discrimination most often when dealing with government departments.

Read more: Māori and Pasifika leaders report racism in government health advisory groups

People of Asian descent reported experiencing discrimination most often when applying for work, in their workplace, and when shopping or visiting restaurants.

The survey results align with the New Zealand Human Rights Commission’s recent survey. Four in ten (39%) of the 1,904 respondents have experienced discrimination since the start of the COVID-19 outbreak. Māori and ethnic Chinese reported most instances of discrimination.

Negative online comments or abuse targeting people like them was the most prevalent, followed by instances of staring and increased physical distancing in public places.

Attitudes towards immigration

In our survey, many New Zealanders showed favourable attitudes towards immigrants. More than 80% of survey respondents said the contribution of immigrants from the UK to New Zealand’s economy and culture has been very or somewhat good.

A majority also said immigrants from other countries have contributed positively to New Zealand, including those from South Africa (74%), Fiji (71%), China (66%) and India (64%).

However, there was strong support to reduce or stop immigration following COVID-19. More than three in four somewhat or strongly supported reducing immigration from countries that have managed their response to the coronavirus poorly, such as the United States.

A majority also supported reducing or stopping immigrants and tourists from China, and more than three in five (64%) also supported (somewhat or strongly) reducing or stopping international students from countries such as China.

More than six in ten (61%) supported reducing or stopping immigration from all countries — a result slightly lower than a similar national survey conducted in June and July 2020 (69%).

In the past, New Zealand has consistently ranked among countries most accepting of migrants. It is possible the opposition to immigration may subside as the world recovers from the pandemic.

Racism is no joke

The Human Rights Commission received more than 100 complaints about racism following the first COVID-19 lockdown. In response, it launched the Racism is No Joke campaign to address racism towards Chinese and other Asian communities.

It also launched the Voice of Racism website to provide real examples of racist statements New Zealanders have experienced or witnessed.

Read more: Everyday racism fuels prejudice and hate. But we can challenge it

Discrimination and racism triggered by COVID-19 are likely to compound disproportionate economic and mental health impacts among minorities. They may also affect the uptake of COVID-19 vaccination among at-risk groups due to experiences of racism in healthcare settings.

Racism is an everyday experience for many ethnic minorities. But we can challenge it through dialogue and cooperation, and by establishing relationships with people who are different from ourselves to reduce prejudice.

– ref. A year after New Zealand’s first COVID-19 lockdown, discrimination and racism are on the rise – https://theconversation.com/a-year-after-new-zealands-first-covid-19-lockdown-discrimination-and-racism-are-on-the-rise-160858

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate C. Prickett, Director of the Roy McKenzie Centre for the Study of Families and Children, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington

Finance Minister Grant Robertson’s promise of a “recovery and well-being budget” is an apt recognition of the current social and economic reality.

Although life feels relatively normal in New Zealand compared with the havoc COVID-19 continues to wreak internationally, the cost of our policy response and the impact of the pandemic recession haven’t been shared equally.

While detail is still scarce, Robertson has made it clear child well-being will be a key focus of this year’s budget. Indeed, it will be a priority for the new Implementation Unit being established to oversee government-wide delivery of key initiatives.

The emphasis on children and their families is well placed: child poverty levels barely budged in the year prior to the pandemic. Moreover, the first Child and Youth Well-being Strategy Annual Report, released last week, highlighted the lack of well-being experienced by a large group of children.

And we know the pandemic hasn’t been kind to families. Research we conducted last year showed families with children – particularly low-income families – were more likely to have lost jobs or income during the nationwide lockdown in March-April 2020 compared with homes without children.

Majority of low-income working families yet to recover

Following our lockdown data collection, we went back to our survey respondents in March this year to see how people were doing a year on from lockdown.

What we found was predictable, but no less striking. Only 45% of those low-income families with children (pre-pandemic household incomes of NZ$50,000 or less per year) with at least one parent working prior to lockdown had those same parents still employed and bringing home the same or greater weekly pay one year later.

Read more: Why NZ’s public sector wage freeze ignores the lessons of history

More than 20% of those families had a parent who was employed pre-pandemic but looking for a job in March 2021, while 8% percent had a working parent drop out of the labour market altogether.

A further 26% were still working but bringing home less pay — either from a wage cut, taking on a lower-paid job, or working fewer hours.

While income loss was still prevalent across the income spectrum, higher-income families were far more likely to report all the working parents in the home had either maintained or increased their income. They were also far less likely to have previously employed parents still looking for work.

Mothers hit hardest

Although New Zealand’s pandemic policy response likely saved working mothers from the more severe impacts on women’s employment seen internationally, the recovery has been slower for Kiwi mothers.

Of those in our sample who were employed prior to the lockdown, only 65% of all mothers, and 60% of single mothers, reported stable or increased weekly take-home pay a year later. This compares to 71% of fathers.

Read more: NZ Budget 2021: we need the arts to live, but artists need to earn a living

Close to 20% of single mothers who were working pre-pandemic reported being unemployed and searching for a job one year on (compared to 7.5% of mothers and 4.3% of fathers generally). And 10% of pre-pandemic employed mothers with partners said they were no longer working or looking for work at all.

The fact no single mothers who were employed pre-pandemic were classified as “not in the labour force” by March 2021 is probably related to our survey’s smaller sample size. But the finding is indicative of the precarious position single mothers hold: not working is not an option.

Economic recovery and well-being

Economic recovery and the population’s well-being go hand in hand: economic and financial precariousness and stress affect our health and well-being.

Parents in our sample who were unemployed a year on from lockdown were two to four times more likely to report feeling depressed throughout the day and much less likely to report positive feelings of enjoyment and happiness.

Unsurprisingly, those parents who were employed in March 2021, and had similar or better incomes, were the least likely to report feeling depressed or worried.

Recovery should recognise those who sacrificed most

Budget 2021 is a chance to recognise and rectify the unequal burden the COVID-19 pandemic has placed on families with children, and low-income families specifically.

Policies and programs that redistribute money to low-income families and increase their bottom line will be essential. This should include indexing Working For Families payments to wage growth and disentangling tax credits from work and benefits. That way, all low-income families will receive the financial support they need.

Also essential will be combating those expenses – notably housing and childcare – that eat away at family incomes and make New Zealand one of the least affordable places to live.

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

Policies that support working mothers, such as diversifying “shovel ready” state-supported jobs and further shoring up the early childcare sector, are essential for helping women back to work.

And while low-income working families have experienced a slower economic recovery, it’s worse still for those unable to work and relying on welfare. They are unlikely to have a fair shot at joining in the recovery.

Indeed, the delay in enacting the expert recommendations for welfare reform prolongs devastating hardship for many of our children.

When New Zealand went into lockdown the same rules applied to everyone. But we knew the economic shock wouldn’t be distributed equally. Here’s hoping Budget 2021 delivers a recovery that recognises families and whānau who’ve sacrificed the most.

– ref. NZ’s second ‘Well-being Budget’ must deliver for the families that sacrificed most during the pandemic – https://theconversation.com/nzs-second-well-being-budget-must-deliver-for-the-families-that-sacrificed-most-during-the-pandemic-160528