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

The Senate inquiry into the Christine Holgate affair has declared Scott Morrison, shareholder ministers and the Australia Post board should apologise to the former CEO “for denying her the legal principles of procedural fairness and natural justice”.

The Labor-Greens dominated committee said in scathing findings that Morrison’s “improper threat” in parliament’s question time suggested “a lack of respect for due process”, as well as a “double standard” when contrasted with the procedural principles applied to cabinet members.

Holgate told the ABC on Wednesday night she was “absolutely delighted” by the report and would “graciously accept” a Morrison apology.

But none will be forthcoming.

A government spokesperson said it had “no intention of responding to a politicised report published by a committee controlled by the Labor and Green parties”. The inquiry was chaired by Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young.

Morrison reacted furiously on October 22 last year, after Holgate revealed to a Senate committee Australia Post had rewarded with Cartier watches four employees who had concluded a highly lucrative 2018 deal. The watches were worth in total nearly $20,000.

Morrison told parliament Holgate had been instructed to stand aside – if she did not want to do that “she can go”.

Holgate resisted standing aside but had little choice but to do so. Soon after, she left Australia Post. She has since been appointed CEO of Global Express, which competes with it.

The government minority on the committee, in a dissenting report, said the inquiry had been a highly politicised exercise. The Coalition senators said they did “not support aspects of the analysis of evidence and many of the recommendations of the majority report”.

They said the claim Holgate was denied procedural fairness and natural justice was contested, with evidence showing different recollections snd interpretations.

The majority report lambasted Australia Post’s chair, Lucio Di Bartolomeo, saying he should resign, and accept responsibility for the organisation’s failings over Holgate. It criticised “the veracity of his evidence provided to the committee, his capacity to defend the independence of Australia Post and the lack of effective robust policies and financial oversight processes in place throughout his tenure”.

But government senators said evidence had highlighted that the chair had sought to work constructively with Holgate when events were moving fast in the media spotlight.

The majority report said evidence suggested “there is a culture operating outside the legislated framework that results in so‐called ‘independent’ government agencies being controlled by ministers and their advisers through informal directions in a completely unaccountable manner.”

Holgate’s treatment also was “indicative of a wider pattern of behaviour towards women in workplaces, including Parliament. As both an employer and legislator of workplace laws, the Australian Government must set an example.”

The Australia Post board, notably for being heavy with political appointments, also came in for strong rebukes.

The board, “apparently acting on informal instructions from the Minister for Communications [Paul Fletcher], decided that Ms Holgate should be stood aside without being accorded procedural fairness and an opportunity to defend her actions,” the report said.

“The Prime Minister and Shareholder Ministers [Fletcher and then finance minister Mathias Cormann] created a very public expectation that Ms Holgate would be stood aside, to which the board dutifully acquiesced.

“This pressure appears to have led the Board to breach its duties under the Act, standing Ms Holgate aside without any evidence that she had acted improperly.”

The process by which board members are appointed has compromised the board’s independence from government, the report said.

The Holgate matter “has focused attention on the sheer magnitude of bonuses and incentives paid to executives, senior managers and other highly paid staff across the Commonwealth.

“If the purchase of $20,000 worth of watches for senior executives fails the ‘pub test’, what does the Australian public think of the tens of millions of dollars that are given in bonuses each year to highly paid staff at Australia Post, in government departments, and at other GBEs [government businesss enterprises]?” the report said.

It said “a comparison of other events during that period puts in stark perspective the inconsistent treatment of public officials by this government when faced with a scandal.

“On one hand, the high performing CEO of Australia Post was effectively forced to resign over the purchase of $20 000 worth of watches for securing a deal worth more than $200 million in revenue to the organisation.

“On the other hand, there appears to have been no action taken against the responsible public servants involved in the purchase of the ‘Leppington Triangle’ for $30 million of public funds, ten times more than the land’s market value.”

Among its 25 recommendations, the majority report said the Australia Post board should be restructured and include nominees of the parliament, employees and unions, and licensees. Appropriate board independence should be restored.

The Solicitor-General should investigate the legality of the October 22 instruction from shareholder ministers to the board that it should stand aside Holgate during an investigation into the watches’ purchase.

The government should rule out privatising Australia Post or divesting any of its services including parcel delivery. The Senate should oppose any extension of the current temporary regulations, which were put in place for the pandemic.

Pauline Hanson, who pressed for the inquiry and was a participating member (rather than a member of the committee) said in additional comments in the report that the chair should be removed and Morrison, Fletcher and Simon Birmingham (the current finance minister) should “each offer an unqualified apology” to Holgate.

– ref. Morrison should apologise to Christine Holgate and Australia Post chair should resign: Senate report – https://theconversation.com/morrison-should-apologise-to-christine-holgate-and-australia-post-chair-should-resign-senate-report-161605

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Ha, Associate, Grattan Institute

In the global effort to transition from fossil fuels to clean energy, achieving a “100% renewables” electricity system is considered ideal.

Some Australian states have committed to 100% renewable energy targets, or even 200% renewable energy targets. But this doesn’t mean their electricity is, or will be, emissions free.

Electricity is responsible for a third of Australia’s emissions, and making it cleaner is a key way to reduce emissions in other sectors that rely on it, such as transport.

So it’s important we have clarity about where our electricity comes from, and how emissions-intensive it is. Let’s look at what 100% renewables actually implies in detail.

Is 100% renewables realistic?

Achieving 100% renewables is one way of eliminating emissions from the electricity sector.

It’s commonly interpreted to mean all electricity must be generated from renewable sources. These sources usually include solar, wind, hydro, and geothermal, and exclude nuclear energy and fossil fuels with carbon capture and storage.

But this is a very difficult feat for individual states and territories to try to achieve.

The term “net 100% renewables” more accurately describes what some jurisdictions — such as South Australia and the ACT — are targeting, whether or not they’ve explicitly said so.

These targets don’t require that all electricity people use within the jurisdiction come from renewable sources. Some might come from coal or gas-fired generation, but the government offsets this amount by making or buying an equivalent amount of renewable electricity.

A net 100% renewables target allows a state to spruik its green credentials without needing to worry about the reliability implications of being totally self-reliant on renewable power.

So how does ‘net’ 100% renewables work?

All east coast states are connected to the National Electricity Market (NEM) — a system that allows electricity to be generated, used and shared across borders. This means individual states can achieve “net 100% renewables” without the renewable generation needing to occur when or where the electricity is required.

Take the ACT, for example, which has used net 100% renewable electricity since October 2019.

The ACT government buys renewable energy from generators outside the territory, which is then mostly used in other states, such as Victoria and South Australia. Meanwhile, people living in ACT rely on power from NSW that’s not emissions-free, because it largely comes from coal-fired power stations.

This way, the ACT government can claim net 100% renewables because it’s offsetting the non-renewable energy its residents use with the clean energy it’s paid for elsewhere.

SA’s target is to reach net 100% renewables by the 2030s. Unlike the ACT, it plans to generate renewable electricity locally, equal to 100% of its annual demand.

At times, such as especially sunny days, some of that electricity will be exported to other states. At other times, such as when the wind drops off, SA may need to rely on electricity imports from other states, which probably won’t come from all-renewable sources.

Read more: More coal-fired power or 100% renewables? For the next few decades, both paths are wrong

So what happens if all states commit to net 100% renewable energy targets? Then, the National Electricity Market will have a de-facto 100% renewable energy target — no “net”.

That’s because the market is one entire system, so its only options are “100% renewables” (implying zero emissions), or “less than 100% renewables”. The “net” factor doesn’t come into it, because there’s no other part of the grid for it to buy from or sell to.

How do you get to “200% renewables”, or more?

It’s mathematically impossible for more than 100% of the electricity used in the NEM to come from renewable sources: 100% is the limit.

Any target of more than 100% renewables is a different calculation. The target is no longer a measure of renewable generation versus all generation, but renewable generation versus today’s demand.

Tasmania, for example, has legislated a target of 200% renewable energy by 2040. This means it wants to produce twice as much renewable electricity as it consumes today.

But this doesn’t necessarily imply all electricity consumed in Tasmania will be renewable. For example, it may continue to import some non-renewable power from Victoria at times, such as during droughts when Tasmania’s hydro dams are constrained. It may even need to burn a small amount of gas as a backup.

This means the 200% renewable energy target is really a “net 200% renewables” target.

Meanwhile, the Greens are campaigning for 700% renewables. This, too, is based on today’s electricity demand.

In the future, demand could be much higher due to electrifying our transport, switching appliances from gas to electricity, and potentially exporting energy-intensive, renewable commodities such as green hydrogen or ammonia.

Targeting net-zero emissions

These “more than 100% renewables” targets set by individual jurisdictions don’t necessarily imply all electricity Australians use will be emissions free.

It’s possible — and potentially more economical — that we would meet almost all of this additional future demand with renewable energy, but keep some gas or diesel capacity as a low-cost backstop.

This would ensure continued electricity supply during rare, sustained periods of low wind, low sun, and high demand, such as during a cloudy, windless week in winter.

Read more: Carry-over credits and carbon offsets are hot topics this election – but what do they actually mean?

The energy transition is harder near the end — each percentage point between 90% and 100% renewables is more expensive to achieve than the previous.

That’s why, in a recent report from the Grattan Institute, we recommended governments pursue net-zero emissions in the electricity sector first, rather than setting 100% renewables targets today.

For example, buying carbon credits to offset the small amount of emissions produced in a 90% renewable NEM is likely to be cheaper in the medium term than building enough energy storage — such as batteries or pumped hydro dams — to backup wind and solar at all times.

The bottom line is governments and companies must say what they mean and mean what they say when announcing targets. It’s the responsibility of media and pundits to take care when interpreting them.

– ref. A ‘100% renewables’ target might not mean what you think it means. An energy expert explains – https://theconversation.com/a-100-renewables-target-might-not-mean-what-you-think-it-means-an-energy-expert-explains-160619

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Renae Barker, Senior Lecturer, The University of Western Australia

The New South Wales government has put a temporary ban on Sikh students carrying a kirpan in public schools. The kirpan is a ceremonial dagger baptised Sikhs carry to symbolise their duty to stand up against injustice.

The ban was put in place after a 14-year-old boy used a kirpan to stab a 16-year-old at a high school in Sydney.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian said “students shouldn’t be allowed to take knives to school under any circumstances”.

But framing the controversy as whether or not students should be allowed to take knives to school oversimplifies a complex issue.

This issue is not just about knives in schools. It is also about what it means to be a secular school in a multicultural and multi-faith Australia.

Denied the ability to practise their faith

There is a long history of controversy over wearing religious symbols in Australian schools, both religious and secular.

In 2017 the family of a Sikh boy launched legal action against his school after the Christian college banned the boy from wearing a patka (a turban worn by children). The Victorian Civil Administrative Tribunal later ruled the school breached the Equal Opportunity Act.

Read more: School uniform policies need to accommodate students’ cultural practices

In 2018 the Secular Party of Australia brought a case against the Victorian education department alleging the department had discriminated against a child by permitting her to wear “religious style clothing that covered her body, leaving only her face and hands exposed”. The case failed.

And in 2019 a Western Australian Catholic high school banned a Hindu girl from attending class after she had her nose pierced for cultural and religious reasons. After six weeks and many meetings, the school appeared to back down and allow the student back to class.

While some of these cases occurred in private and specifically religious schools, they all raise the same issue — to what extent do we accommodate the religious beliefs and practices of minority groups in our community?

In NSW, section 11C of the Summary Offences Act 1988 makes it an offence to carry a knife in a public place or school. The act provides a number of exceptions such as for the preparation of food, or for recreation or sport. Carrying a knife for “genuine religious purposes” is also an exception.

This exception is currently under review by the NSW government. In the meantime, a temporary ban has been put in place. As a result Sikh school children are being denied the ability to fully practise their faith.

What is a secular country?

Controversies like the kirpan ban often occur due to a fundamental disagreement about what a secular education looks like. Western secular democracies have taken two different approaches.

Australia’s government school system is secular. This does not mean it is, nor should be, religion free. Instead Australian secular education means a space where religion is one of many options. Countries that conform to this version of secularism are religiously plural.

Read more: Is Australia a secular country? It depends what you mean

In France, secular education means it is religion free. Since 2004 all religious symbols have been banned from state schools. The aim is to create a religiously neutral environment that supports state secularism.

Canada, South Africa and the United Kingdom have adopted a similar approach as Australia. In these countries, secularism means to permit, or even encourage, the expression of multiple faiths in schools to various degrees. The aim is to create a multicultural environment.

The kirpan is fundamentally a religious symbol. It is one of five markers of faith worn by baptised Sikhs, including kesh (unshorn hair symbolising respect for God’s will). Wearing the kirpan is not optional for baptised Sikhs.

The kirpan is similar to the hijab worn by some Muslim women, the kippah worn by Jewish men or the cross or crucifix worn by some Christians.

As the Supreme Court of Canada put it, describing the kirpan as a knife is “indicative of a simplistic view of freedom of religion”.

Banning the kirpan because it resembles a knife heads Australia down a path of religion-free schools. This would be inconsistent with Australia’s commitment to multiculturalism.

Read more: Should school uniforms be compulsory? We asked five experts

There are other options besides a ban

Instead of an outright ban, the NSW government and Australian schools more generally need to find ways to safely accommodate this important religious symbol. This does not mean there should be no restrictions.

In 2006 the Supreme Court of Canada found that a school had discriminated against a Sikh boy when it banned him from wearing his kirpan. A fundamental part of the court’s decision was there were alternatives available to the school.

The student was prepared to accept restrictions on how he wore his kirpan to ensure it could not be used as a weapon. The restrictions included wearing it enclosed in a wooden sheath sewn inside a cloth envelope, which must itself be attached to a shoulder strap worn under the student’s clothing.

Similar restrictions could be implemented in Australia.

The current debate about the kirpan in schools is an opportunity to educate both school children and the wider public about Australia’s secular multicultural society. As the Constitutional Court of South Africa noted in a case about wearing nose studs for religious and cultural reasons:

Granting exemptions will also have the added benefit of inducting the learners into a multi-cultural South Africa where vastly different cultures exist side-by-side.

Allowing kirpans, and other symbols of faith, to be worn in Australian schools is an important part of a multicultural secular education.

– ref. A religious symbol, not a knife: at the heart of the NSW kirpan ban is a battle to define secularism – https://theconversation.com/a-religious-symbol-not-a-knife-at-the-heart-of-the-nsw-kirpan-ban-is-a-battle-to-define-secularism-161413

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elizabeth Shi, Senior Lecturer, Graduate School of Business and Law, RMIT University

Australia’s COVID vaccine rollout has reached its next phase, now people aged 50 and over are officially eligible to receive their shot from a GP, respiratory clinic or mass vaccination hub. People under 50 are also getting vaccinated in some states.

These are the first age groups to be vaccinated in Australia likely to be in paid work. Until now, most people to have received their shot will have been over 70, and probably retired. So people eligible now might wonder how to fit in a vaccine appointment around work commitments.

If you need, or want, to be vaccinated during work hours, do you take a day’s leave or a sick day? And if you’re ill with side-effects, can you take a sick day to recover?

Read more: I’m over 50 and can now get my COVID vaccine. Can I talk to the GP first? Do I need a painkiller? What else do I need to know?

Let’s assume you’re not a doctor or nurse, or have some other occupation with a workplace, on-site vaccination clinic. This means the vast majority of Australians will need to factor in time travelling to the clinic, administration (such as filling in consent forms), the shot itself, 15-30 minutes waiting in case there are any immediate side-effects, and travelling back to work.

Let’s assume for now you’re an employee, entitled to paid annual leave and paid personal leave (which includes sick leave). If you’re a casual or independent contractor, the situation’s different and explained below.

Can I get time off work to get my COVID vaccine?

Whether you’re a full- or part-time employee, taking time off to get the COVID vaccine is similar to taking time off for the flu vaccine. You will usually need to take paid annual leave.

Unless your employment contract says otherwise, you are not entitled to take paid sick leave to get vaccinated. Sick leave is only for when you’re ill or injured. Being vaccinated is not considered an illness or injury.

Despite this, employers can exercise their discretion to allow you to take paid sick leave to get vaccinated.

Can I take sick leave if I feel unwell afterwards?

As a full- or part-time employee, you are entitled to take paid sick leave if you feel unwell after being vaccinated and can’t work.

You may need to provide reasonable evidence you are unfit for work, such as a medical certificate.

What if I’m a casual employee or an independent contractor?

Casual employees and independent contractors are not entitled to paid annual leave or paid sick leave.

However, if you are a casual employee and are feeling unwell after receiving your vaccine, check if your organisation has a provision for “special paid sick leave”. Some do.

This type of special leave is not a mandatory legal entitlement. But if your organisation doesn’t provide it, you may be able to negotiate it. Independent contractors can also negotiate with the business that contracts them.

To address the hardships casuals and independent contractors face, Victoria has announced a two-year trial of its Secure Work Pilot Scheme, which is due to begin by 2022.

This will provide up to five days of paid sick leave and carer’s leave at the national minimum wage for casual or insecure workers in sectors with high rates of casual employment, such as aged care, cleaning and hospitality.

What if I work in retail or hospitality?

If you work in retail, hospitality or some other sector that puts you at higher risk of COVID due to increased customer contact, you might be wondering if there are special provisions for you.

Under workplace health and safety laws, your employer must, so far as is reasonably practicable, provide and maintain a work environment that is safe and without risks to health.

But that doesn’t mean your employer has to give you paid time off during working hours to get vaccinated. That’s different to, say, the employer of a construction worker who has to provide a hard hat or other personal protective equipment for safety reasons.

Vaccines and hard hats seem to be treated differently, even though you could argue they both protect workers from serious illness or injury.

Read more: Can my boss make me get a COVID vaccination? Yes, but it depends on the job

What other options are there?

If you’ve used up all your paid annual leave, you can request unpaid leave to get your vaccine.

Then there’s the alternative of booking an appointment for one of your days off, with some clinics offering extended hours, including evenings and weekends.

The Fair Work Ombudsman has more information about your workplace rights and obligations when it comes to COVID vaccines.

– ref. Do I get time off work for my COVID shot? Can I take a sick day? – https://theconversation.com/do-i-get-time-off-work-for-my-covid-shot-can-i-take-a-sick-day-161279

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Manying Ip, Emeritus Professor of Asian Studies, University of Auckland

News of a revised New Zealand history curriculum was welcomed by many, including me as an historian and someone who has worked closely with high schools and the education sector.

In particular, this seemed like an opportunity to extend the breadth of history taught, including the important stories of Aotearoa’s migrant and refugee communities.

In its present form, however, the Ministry of Education’s history curriculum consultation document falls well short.

Allowing for the fact the draft curriculum proposal is meant as “a framework” for “setting directions” and not a detailed prescription, aspects of it are nonetheless deeply worrying — not least the invisibility of the Chinese story.

With the public consultation process ending on May 31, it’s vital this gap is addressed.

The other New Zealand stories

The aim of history teaching should be to empower learners to think critically about the past. This equips them to understand the present and deal with the complexities of the future.

History is an interpretation of past events in as comprehensive and unbiased a way as possible. Sound history needs to have accuracy and integrity.

Quite rightly, Te Tiriti o Waitangi as a founding document legitimising the relationship between Māori and the Crown is central to the draft curriculum.

However, there is little mention of tauiwi, the many communities who have come to call Aotearoa home, but who do not identify as Māori or Pākehā.

The Chinese as ‘other’

I write from the experience of researching and writing New Zealand Chinese history. The Chinese have been in Aotearoa New Zealand for close to 180 years and have never been part of the binary frame of colonisers and colonised.

They were itinerant workers brought to the Otago goldfields and subjected to a series of anti-Chinese laws from 1881 onwards. Since the Chinese were prevented from applying for naturalisation from 1908 onwards, they could never be British subjects or be represented by the Crown.

Neither Pakeha nor Māori, the Chinese are still labelled “others”.

Relegated to the fringe of society, they had no say in the nation’s policies and could not even expect the most basic rights, from miners’ accident benefits and family reunion to health care.

Read more: Teaching Chinese politics in Australia: polarised views leave academics between a rock and a hard place

They were the only ethnic group to pay a £100 poll tax for entry and had to be thumb printed on arrival and departure. Many of the arbitrary policies targeting Chinese were applied to local-born Chinese, confirming they were about race, not nationality.

Governor George Grey favoured New Zealand’s development as a “better Britain of the South Pacific” and successive New Zealand governments continued to build a white nation.

Chinese immigration was strictly controlled by tonnage ratios, quota systems, poll taxes and an English test. From the 1860s to the 1950s, the Chinese endured forced family separation in the interests of that unofficial white New Zealand policy.

A history of suspicion

The reception and treatment of the Chinese as a community is an interesting social barometer of New Zealand as a whole.

In the post WWII era of comparative plenty, New Zealand accepted refugees and orphans from many parts of war-ravaged Europe. During this period, a few hundred Chinese women and children who escaped the Japanese occupation of China in 1939-40 were allowed to stay in New Zealand.

This modest group formed the nucleus of the Chinese New Zealand community, and the Chinese finally became families instead of cohorts of bachelors.

Read more: In an age of digital disinformation, dropping level 1 media studies in NZ high schools is a big mistake

The arrival of the “new Asians” after 1987 was a rude awakening for everyone concerned. They seemed a far cry from the low-key, docile and polite local-born Chinese New Zealanders.

Auckland suburban newspapers splashed a sensational two-page story about “The Inv-Asian” in 1993. In 2006, the magazine “for thinking New Zealanders”, North & South, featured a story titled “Asian Angst: Is it time to send some back?”

A curriculum for all New Zealanders

The proposed curriculum risks continuing this unfortunate legacy of treating Chinese New Zealanders as perpetual migrants, a label not applied to the British people who have settled in Aotearoa.

A sound history curriculum should ensure all New Zealand’s children see history as a truly relevant subject. It needs to be everybody’s story. The linkages of non-Pakeha, non-Māori history must be established within the national history framework.

Read more: The model minority myth hides the racist and sexist violence experienced by Asian women

The relationship between the Chinese (as the most distinctive, “undesirable” or “despised” immigrant group) and Māori (as tangata whenua) is arguably the most essential relationship to tease out.

The draft curriculum proposal does not specifically recognise the diversity of New Zealand society in the past or present. Without significant and explicit guidance on the histories of the many diverse communities that call Aotearoa home, the risk is they and their children will fail to see themselves in their country’s histories.

And that will make it all the harder to see themselves as an important part of their country’s future.

– ref. The New Zealand Chinese experience is unique and important — the new history curriculum can’t ignore it – https://theconversation.com/the-new-zealand-chinese-experience-is-unique-and-important-the-new-history-curriculum-cant-ignore-it-160782

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nicholas Godfrey, Lecturer, College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, Flinders University

Review: My Name is Gulpilil, directed by Molly Reynolds

Since the start of his cinematic career, David Gulpilil has occupied the living embodiment of Indigenous Australia on screen. This is a significant responsibility — as is the task of doing justice to Gulpilil’s considerable legacy.

Molly Reynolds’ new documentary portrait, My Name is Gulpilil, allows us to spend time with the man in quiet moments of reflection as he nears the end of his life. Reynolds’ unobtrusive direction provides a platform from which Gulpilil reflects on his work, and shares his philosophy in his own words.

Candid, dreamlike and introspective, this film invites us to join Gulpilil as he searches his memories and tells us his story.

The face of Australian cinema

Gulpilil displays no false modesty when discussing his credentials as a performer in this film. Indeed, to chart Gulpilil’s career is to map the contours of the last 50 years of Australian cinema.

He made his acting debut as a teenager in Walkabout (1971). His performance displayed the lithe physicality that would define Gulpilil’s magnetic cinematic persona, his demeanour by turns taciturn and inscrutable.

Gulpilil became a fixture of the Australian New Wave with roles in Storm Boy (1976), The Last Wave (1977), and alongside a crazed Dennis Hopper in Mad Dog Morgan (1976). He was present for Australian cinema’s brief commercial peak, in Crocodile Dundee (1986), and for Phillip Noyce’s emblematic homecoming, Rabbit Proof Fence (2002).

Gulpilil’s creative partnership with Rolf de Heer, a producer on this new documentary, began with 2002’s The Tracker, and extended through the ambitious Ten Canoes (2006) and Charlie’s Country (2013), for which he won the Un Certain Regard prize for Best Actor at Cannes.

More recently, Gulpilil appeared in Ivan Sen’s Goldstone (2016) aligning with a group of new filmmakers reinterpreting genre from an Indigenous perspective, and producing compelling work in the process.

Read more: Ivan Sen’s Goldstone: a taut, layered exploration of what echoes in the silences

Early prejudice

Reynolds previously followed Gulpilil for Another Country (2015), a companion documentary to Charlie’s Country which observed life in Gulpilil’s Ramingining community in Arnhem Land.

Another Country was a stark condemnation of culture clash and social disadvantage, a cry for self-determination in the face of destructive government intervention. That film was incendiary in its political outlook. My Name is Gulpilil is a more muted, introspective work.

Tania Nehme’s deft editing blends Gulpilil’s present day musings with historical interviews and memorable clips from his cinematic appearances. We hear of Gulpilil’s early life in a mission home, and his casting for Walkabout by director Nicolas Roeg on the basis of his dance prowess.

Excerpts from the Cinesound newsreel Walkabout: Star in London chronicle the teenage Gulpilil’s first trip to London and his encounters with prejudice and colonial condescension there: attitudes he countered with humour and grace.

Defying the odds

The film’s most affecting material is its depiction of Gulpilil’s current life, spending his days modestly in Murray Bridge, southeast of Adelaide, and travelling to the city to receive cancer treatment.

When the film was commissioned by the Adelaide Film Festival following his 2017 cancer diagnosis, it was expected the documentary production would chronicle his final months, and stand as his epitaph. But Gulpilil has surprised everyone by defying the odds.

In his home, Gulpilil prepares himself for hospital visits, and shares humorous interactions with his dedicated live-in carer, Mary.

Read more: Charlie’s Country: David Gulpilil confounds our romantic fantasies

The film trades in resonant contrasts: the quietude and miniscule scale of his current world; the effort it takes for him to walk from his front door to his letterbox. His suburban back yard is juxtaposed with the enormity of the landscape he inhabits in his onscreen roles, and the distant land he longs for.

The camera accompanies Gulpilil while he returns to locations from his life and his films. Family members visit him at his new home for what will likely be the last time.

Struggles

My Name is Gulpilil does not shy away from Gulpilil’s brushes with the law, his struggles with addiction, and the physical toll of the gruelling treatments he now receives. Gulpilil speaks openly about his impending death, his loneliness, and his plans for his funeral.

As it goes on, My Name is Gulpilil becomes a sensitive portrait of displacement, inviting us to consider both literal and metaphorical separation from ancestral lands, the possibility and impossibility of an eventual, final homecoming.

The film creates deft visual matches, woozily crossfading from aerial drone footage and starscapes to Gulpilil’s paintings and ultrasounds of his body. Reynolds draws an equivalence between the eternal, youthful vigour of Gulpilil in his early films, and the musings of his voiceover in the present day.

More than just a documentary meditation on mortality, the film is a collaborative cinematic self-portrait, including footage shot by Gulpilil on his camera phone.

A testament to cinema’s function as preservation, commemoration and memorial, My Name is Gulpilil celebrates its subject’s legacy — and the imprint he leaves as the star that brought Indigenous Australia to the world.

My Name is Gulpilil is in cinemas from May 27.

– ref. My Name is Gulpilil: a candid, gentle portrait of one of Australia’s best actors – https://theconversation.com/my-name-is-gulpilil-a-candid-gentle-portrait-of-one-of-australias-best-actors-160542

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Paul Haskell-Dowland, Associate Dean (Computing and Security), Edith Cowan University

If you’re an iPhone user, check your storage now by selecting Settings, then General and then iPhone Storage.

You’ll probably see a lot of recognisable categories eating up your storage — apps, photos, and so on. But there is one, often rather large category, that may raise concerns: “Other”.

It’s shaded light grey and often represents a significant proportion of the overall storage available.

What is ‘Other’?

For more detail, scroll down and tap the “Other” category (right at the end). It doesn’t say much — just that it includes caches, logs and other resources in use by the system. Not very illuminating.

Logs are records of actions undertaken on, or by, our phones. A phone may, for example, log that it connected to a WiFi network, established a Bluetooth connection with a device, backed up some data or opened a web page. In most cases, the log files are simple records that do not occupy much space — often only a few megabytes.

Caches, however, can be a much greater problem for clogging up your “Other” storage.

When we stream media such as movies and music on an iPhone, the phone will download as much of the content as possible. One of the main reasons for this is to minimise the dreaded spinning wheel you see when content is buffering.

All this content (referred to as a “cache”) needs to be stored somewhere and it rapidly fills up your device.

This cached content extends to a wide range of applications including your web browser (such as Safari, Chrome or Firefox) and apps like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and TikTok.

Why is it taking up so much space?

While cached data may not seem to need much space, it is surprising how large streamed media content can be – not to mention the image-rich social media apps we love so much.

Looking through the list of apps and their storage allocations will quickly show how storage is being consumed. In this screenshot above, for example, you can see Facebook is consuming 2.17 gigabytes.

However, if we look on the App store, it says the Facebook app only requires 255.4 megabytes. So somehow the app is occupying an additional 1.9GB. Where is this extra 1.9GB coming from? It’s likely caches of images, videos and other content your phone had to store in it’s own memory storage so you could scroll through Facebook without encountering the dreaded “buffering” spinning wheel.

How do I clear ‘Other’ or get rid of it?

The most effective solution is also the most radical. To truly minimise “Other” storage, you would need to backup your phone, reset it and, finally, restore your phone from the backup.

This process will remove most of the “Other” storage being used on your iPhone, but takes a bit of time and effort.

How can I stop it getting so large in the future?

Unfortunately, cached files will be recreated with most common iPhone usage. But there are some things you can do to reduce storage consumption.

If you’re not keen to reset, try exploring the apps using up cache space on your iPhone.

Social media apps are a good starting point as they often cache lots of images and videos. While most don’t provide an option to delete their cached data, removing and reinstalling the app will remove all cache files.

Another likely culprit is your web browser (typically Safari on most iPhones).

From the Settings menu, scroll down to Safari and select “Clear History and Website Data”. This will remove most cached data associated with your web browser.

If you’re using another browser, such as Chrome or Firefox, repeat the steps with that browser in Settings.

Great. Any other iPhone storage tips and tricks?

If you want to keep going, consider removing old SMS and iMessages.

Standard written text messages occupy minimal storage, but photos and videos shared between family and friends can consume significant storage over time.

Under Settings, scroll down to Messages, then to the Message History option. The default is to keep messages “forever”. Changing this to a shorter duration can reduce space requirements considerably.

A final option is to consider offloading apps. Modern iPhones let you remove infrequently used apps. While this will not necessarily reduce your use of cache storage, it can free up valuable space.

There is no simple solution to managing iPhone storage usage. Minimising photos and videos will help, but there is a lot of space allocated to apps and their cached data.

But with careful tending, we can try to keep on top of unexpected storage usage without having to wipe our devices

– ref. What is ‘Other’ in my iPhone storage, why is it taking up so much space and how do I clear it? – https://theconversation.com/what-is-other-in-my-iphone-storage-why-is-it-taking-up-so-much-space-and-how-do-i-clear-it-160994

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Vinh Bui, Lecturer, Southern Cross University

Tech giant Microsoft recently announced the retirement of its longstanding web browser, Internet Explorer, in favour of its newer product, Microsoft Edge. With support for Internet Explorer only set to last until June 15, 2022, its remaining users have just over a year to find an alternative. But of course, most web users already have.

While the eventual downfall of Internet Explorer was seen as a foregone conclusion by those who monitor web trends, the news might come as an unwelcome surprise for those who are somewhat less up-to-date.

For the most part, though, this news is a whimper rather than a bang — a footnote at the end of an iconic story spanning more than 25 years.

As a current professional in the IT industry, I’ll break down some possible reasons for this decision, and what we can learn from it.

Searching for the answer

Almost everyone is familiar with the idea of “googling” something, but there’s no such thing as “microsofting” something. How did Google manage to become synonymous with web searching, while Microsoft, despite its long and pioneering history, failed to become synonymous with anything?

The answer is market share. Google handles 92.24% of web searches — more than 3.5 billion requests a day. Microsoft’s own search engine, Bing, has a paltry 2.29%.

It’s easy to see why users prefer Google’s own web browser, Chrome, over Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, which uses Bing as its default search engine. Users who prefer searching via Google (which is almost everyone) can make Google the default search engine in Internet Explorer. But it’s probably easier just to install Chrome and use Google from there.

Success breeds complacency; complacency breeds failure

Microsoft wasn’t always a bit player. Back when the web was in its infancy, it was a market-leading pioneer. Before there were app stores, or 5G, or even widespread personal computers, there were large mainframe computers with “unfriendly” Unix-based operating systems developed in the 1970s.

These systems were about as bare-bones as you can get, with little consideration given to graphics or usability. Unix’s original web browser, Netscape, was similarly no-frills.

This is where Microsoft came in, by focusing on making “personal computers” more personal. With much nicer designs and more intuitive user interfaces, by the time Internet Explorer launched in 1995, Microsoft had cemented itself at the forefront of the digital world.

But as US Baptist minister and civil rights leader Benjamin E. Mays famously warned, “The tragedy of life is often not in our failure, but rather in our complacency.”

Having established its reputation, Microsoft stopped pushing Internet Explorer’s development, and started venturing elsewhere, continually improving Windows but not its web browser. From that point on, Internet Explorer was always late to the party in introducing innovations such as tabbed browsing and search bars. It fell further into irrelevance and obsolescence.

Compatibility issues

Having spent much of my life as a web developer, one of my biggest gripes is the incompatibility of some web browsers. It’s exhausting and demoralising spending hours polishing web pages, only for them not to run properly on some browsers.

This concern even spread to Microsoft’s own in-house developers. In a 2019 blog post titled “The perils of using Internet Explorer as your default browser”, Microsoft’s Chris Jackson warned:

[…] developers by and large just aren’t testing for Internet Explorer these days. They’re testing on modern browsers.

The message was clear: web developers don’t get on well with Internet Explorer, so sites that work well on other browsers might not work here — and that problem is only going to get worse.

With Microsoft having lost interest in making sure Internet Explorer keeps up, it has transferred its attention to its new browser, Microsoft Edge. But the horse may already have bolted. The marketplace is crowded with Google’s Chrome, Apple’s Safari, Mozilla’s Firefox, and numerous open source browsers.

Read more: Battle of the browsers: how the web was won

Phoning it in

Here’s another key stat that illustrates Internet Explorer’s decline: in 2020, more than two-thirds of all website visits were via a mobile device.

Now, a browser that can sync across multiple platforms is a necessity. In a world of Apple and Android devices, the term “Windows phone” sounds prehistoric — because it pretty much is. Operating system support for Windows phones ended in 2017, just seven years after Microsoft first launched the range.

So, having existed since the dawn of the internet age (or least since the internet went truly mainstream), Internet Explorer has failed in many ways to keep up.

Despite the success of its Surface tablets, Microsoft failed to maintain a foothold in the smartphone market, which may explain its unwillingness to keep developing Internet Explorer. Or maybe it’s the other way around, and Internet Explorer’s clunkiness is the reason no one uses a Windows phone.

But the bottom line is Internet Explorer just lacks the versatility needed by web-savvy users. And as of next year, even the non-savvy users will stop relying on it too.

Read more: We spent six years scouring billions of links, and found the web is both expanding and shrinking

– ref. We’re just not compatible any more: why Microsoft finally dumped Internet Explorer – https://theconversation.com/were-just-not-compatible-any-more-why-microsoft-finally-dumped-internet-explorer-161416

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Surinder S. Jodhka, Professor of Sociology, School of Social Sciences., Jawaharlal Nehru University

For six months now, images of Indian farmers protesting on Delhi’s roads have been beamed around the world.

Farmers have been protesting changes to India’s agricultural laws they say would undermine their autonomy as cultivators.

The new laws would create monopolies in the grain markets and trap farmers into contract farming arrangements with corporate buyers.

But after six months of protests, has anything changed?

Read more: Indian farmers’ strike continues in the shadow of COVID-19

What’s happening in Delhi?

Beginning with the north-western state of Punjab in July 2020, the protests gradually spread to other regions of the country. The most spectacular of these protests occurred when farmers arrived in large numbers at the borders of the national capital in late November, 2020.

Estimates of their numbers at this point vary, but they were certainly in excess of 50,000, and their numbers swelled to around 300,000 within a week or so. It peaked in January, when nearly a million more of them arrived from across the country and drove their tractors on the roads of the Indian capital.

They have been sitting on the roads since their arrival, surrounding Delhi from all four sides, and occupying the major highways connecting the national capital to different parts of the country. Their sit-ins covered so large an area they began to look like distinct townships, covering an area of 10-15 kilometres at each site.

Read more: Women take lead roles in India’s farmers’ protest

They have been sleeping in the trolleys they brought along tied to their tractors and have set-up huge pandals (temporary auditoriums made of canvas tents) for their protest speeches. They also play protest music, most of which is composed and sung by their own, the Punjabi singers from Punjab, Bombay and Canada.

Their resilience has been remarkable. They have sat through the harsh winter, when night temperatures in Delhi are as low as 1-2℃. They are now sitting in protest in the scorching heat, undeterred by a deadly second wave of COVID raging across India.

This has been no picnic, as has been reported by some news channels in India. More than 400 protesting farmers have died, mostly at the protest sites around Delhi, unable to bear the hardships of the weather and living conditions.

Some have also died at the local protest sites in different states, and a few in road accidents while travelling from their villages to the protest sites on Delhi’s borders.

Remind me, what are they protesting about?

The national government of India introduced a set of new laws that would change the way farmers sell their farm produce. Affairs relating to agriculture are legally a domain of the provincial or state governments. But the national government took the extraordinary step of pushing these three new laws through as trade and commerce bills.

The government not only ignored all objections raised by the opposition parties, they also held no meaningful discussions with the farm unions and other stakeholders to allay their concerns.

The professed motivation behind the introduction of these laws was the liberalisation of the agricultural market by incentivising large corporates to engage with farmers and farm produce directly.

Read more: India’s farmers are right to protest against agricultural reforms

The first of the new laws proposes to deregulate the purchase of agricultural goods, bypassing the existing marketing arrangements where grains such as wheat and rice could not be sold below a certain price.

The second provides a framework for “contract farming” where the farmer enters an advanced contract with a buyer and the buyer gets to decide what seeds to use and how to grow the crop.

The third is an amendment to a pre-existing law, which abolishes the previous restrictions on the storage of food grains and other agricultural goods to discourage large-scale hoarding.

Together they open up the agricultural sector of India to active commercial engagement by the big corporates, enabling them to purchase and hoard produce and sell it later at a much higher price than what they pay to the farmers for their crops. It also means these large corporates could be in charge of deciding what crops a farmer must produce.

More than 85% of Indian farmers have small holdings, less than two hectares. This means it would be hard to engage, and compete, with the large corporates.

The farm unions see these laws as the Indian government pandering to the corporates, and fear the end of independent farmers.

Indian agriculture has been in a state of crisis for the past two decades or more. The most painful manifestation of this has been the rising rate of suicides among farmers across the country (28 per day in 2019), many of whom are indebted to informal sources such as relatives or usurious money lenders.

Various governments over the years have promised to help agriculture by raising farm incomes. The current government, led by Narendra Modi, promised to double farm incomes by implementing the recommendations of a 2006 pro-farmer report prepared by a government-appointed committee.

Read more: India farmers’ protests: internet shutdown highlights Modi’s record of stifling digital dissent

Have the protesters achieved anything so far?

The farm unions have had 11 rounds of talks with representatives of the central government, but the stalemate continues.

Farmers hope if they keep the pressure on, the government will be forced to concede to their demands. But perhaps their biggest achievement so far has been putting farming back on the national agenda.

Read more: India protests: farmers could switch to more climate-resilient crops – but they have been given no incentive

Where to now?

The second wave of COVID-19 has dampened the farmers mobilisations. But they continue to sit on the borders of the national capital, just in lesser numbers.

Farmer leaders campaigned against the BJP (the current ruling party) during the recent state elections in West Bengal. They see the BJP’s defeat as their victory.

Their protests continue locally, across the states of Haryana, Punjab, western Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and elsewhere.

They have said they will protest until the next national election in 2024 if they have to, where they would be hoping their campaigning would defeat the Modi government. If West Bengal is anything to go by, perhaps Prime Minister Modi would do well to heed their demands.

Read more: Why Indian farmers’ protests are being called a ‘satyagraha’ – which means ’embracing the truth’

– ref. Farmers in India have been protesting for 6 months, have they made any progress? – https://theconversation.com/farmers-in-india-have-been-protesting-for-6-months-have-they-made-any-progress-161101

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sharynne Hamilton, Post-Doctoral Research Fellow Aboriginal Health, Telethon Kids Institute

On February 13, 2008, then-Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said “we are sorry” to members of the Stolen Generations. This was a significant moment in the shameful history of Australia’s treatment of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

The Apology represented a formal acknowledgement that the forced removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children was based on racist policies that caused unspeakable harm to our communities.

Children were forced off their lands. They were disconnected from their kin, Country, traditional languages and culture.

Today on Sorry Day, 13 years since the Apology, our Elders, families and communities still grieve these losses. And many families are being repeatedly traumatised by contemporary child removal practices. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children are nearly 10 times more likely than non-Indigenous children to be in out-of-home care.

To find new ways to confront this problem and promote community-identified solutions, the Ngulluk Koolunga Ngulluk Koort (Our Children, Our Heart) project conducted consultations with over 100 Elders and senior Aboriginal community members in Perth.

The Elders and community members repeatedly expressed concerns they were not being consulted or included in decisions being made about child protection interventions.

Families still being separated

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children have a right to be kept safe and free from harm. Removing them from their families has been proven to have devastating consequences. They are vulnerable to a lifetime of grief and loss, shattered identities, poor health outcomes and intergenerational trauma.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families involved with the child protection system represent some of the most marginalised and stigmatised members of our community. We are witnessing child removals across multiple generations, yet policymakers are not making connections between the past harms of the Stolen Generations and the current problems families are experiencing.

This leaves little room to redress the harm that past policies have inflicted.

We need a new strategy for creating a more responsive and just child protection system.

This requires a public debate about the thresholds for child removal and for clearly defining what it means to be a “good enough” parent to maintain guardianship of a child. And we need to reassess what actually constitutes risky parenting.

There is a lack of national leadership and coordinated, inclusive and culturally secure practice in the child protection system. Decisions are no longer made explicitly based on race, but there are enduring problems with how the actions taken by authorities affect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families.

Read more: First Nations families need support to stay together, before we create another Stolen Generation

The role of Elders bringing families together

In the Ngulluk Koolunga Ngulluk Koort project, most of the Elders were either part of the Stolen Generations themselves, or have directly experienced the effects of that era.

They called for a recognition of the harm these past policies caused, and for this to be used as a foundation for formulating future policies and practices. They highlighted the deep distrust of “the welfare” (child protection services) that continues to flow through communities.

The Elders also discussed the ongoing disregard of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander child placement principle. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children are disproportionately being placed with non-Indigenous carers, despite the placement principle’s recommendation against this.

As part of the project, the Elder co-researchers developed principles and practice recommendations of their own.

These call for child protection services to harness resources from the vast social networks that exist in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community and communicate respectfully with these community members. By doing this, trust can begin to be restored to families and damaged relationships can begin to heal. Hope can be cultivated, and the need for removing children in the future can be reduced.

What the Elders call for resonates with the concept of responsive regulation. This means that regulators — in this case the child protection authority — need to take into account the cultures, behaviours and environments of the people they are regulating.

Read more: Friday essay: ‘I am anxious to have my children home’: recovering letters of love written for Noongar children

Responsive regulation promotes restorative practices that are relationship-centred and geared toward solving problems. These practices involve future-focused conversations that draw on the skills and insights that exist in communities.

Principles of responsive regulation and those developed by the Elders offer a counter-balance to the current formalistic approaches of child protection services, such as mandatory reporting, forensic investigations, court hearings, timelines for termination of parental rights, and the adoption of children in care.

Nationally, we need a greater commitment to using family group conferencing forums that prioritise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander decision-making.

Elders have deep knowledge from lived experience and their voices must be heard. Their principles and practice recommendations, as well as their values and beliefs about raising strong children, give us a pathway to positive change.

The Elders advocate community-led, place-based solutions to child protection concerns. They stress this is the only way we can move forward and repair the harms from past policies that have wreaked havoc in our communities. We must do better for our children.

– ref. Thirteen years after ‘Sorry’, too many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children are still being removed from their homes – https://theconversation.com/thirteen-years-after-sorry-too-many-aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander-children-are-still-being-removed-from-their-homes-159360

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Blackwell, Research Fellow (Indigenous Policy), UNSW

Foreign policy is an expression of a state’s fundamental values. It’s the outward face of every government, representing its aspirations in the international system. A state’s foreign policy can often convey strength, but also reveal weakness.

While Australia has enjoyed a strong international standing in recent decades, there has been no real recognition within our foreign policy of the diverse First Nations that have long inhabited this land.

First Nations people are excluded from this external dialogue, and it is well past time this changed.

A history of exclusion

As a proud Wiradjuri man, I know all too well this feeling of exclusion for First Nations people, both here and overseas. Our views on foreign policy are routinely considered irrelevant, our contributions not valued, and our issues ignored.

Yet, First Nations people have so much to offer. We have 80,000 years of diplomatic practice on this continent, conducting effective foreign policies long before there were states or even the concept of foreign policies. We have a strong value system centred in country, community, and culture.

This is why Australia should consider a foreign policy approach centred on Indigenous people and perspectives. It would reset the tired approach we currently take on the world stage and give weight to First Nations desires and aspirations.

These desires are the same ones that guided the Uluru Statement From the Heart four years ago today, and the call for a constitutionally enshrined Voice to Parliament — the desire to be heard and for our ideas and views to help shape the overall direction of this nation.

Read more: The Voice to Parliament isn’t a new idea – Indigenous activists called for it nearly a century ago

Moving towards an Indigenous foreign policy

In a step forward, the Department of Foreign Affairs has launched a new Indigenous Diplomacy Agenda, which represents one of the first examples of Australia attempting to increase the First Nations presence within our foreign policy.

The agenda, unveiled by DFAT Secretary Frances Adamson, soon to be governor of South Australia, has the broad goal of “elevating Indigenous issues in our foreign policy” and taking a more systematic approach to doing better globally by “doing better at home”.

To achieve this, the agenda focuses its practical steps and recommendations around four main pillars:

• shaping international norms and standards to benefit Indigenous peoples

• maximising opportunities for Indigenous Australians and Indigenous peoples in a globalised world

• promoting sustainable development for all Indigenous peoples

• deploying Indigenous Australian diplomats to advance our national interests.

These broad themes are consistent with what we hope to see within an Indigenous foreign policy approach. The agenda is highly pragmatic, and there is much to be touted here as steps in the right direction.

The dual focus on specific goals for First Nations people, as well as broader aims across the portfolio, is particularly commendable. The focus on the diplomatic strengths of First Nations people is also worthwhile and long overdue.

In many regards, this document represents a strong move in the right direction for Australian foreign policy.

Examples from our neighbours

Looking at the approach our neighbour New Zealand has taken, however, shows how we could be viewing things differently.

Earlier this year, New Zealand launched a new foreign policy centred around Indigenous values. By strongly embedding Maori worldviews, tirohanga Maori, in its outlook, the government articulated a much larger and more encompassing proposal of an Indigenous foreign policy than Australia has put forth with this agenda.

As I said at the time, New Zealand’s approach was an

expression of the interconnectedness and purposefulness to which all Indigenous foreign policy aspires.

New Zealand’s new foreign minister, Nanaia Mahuta, has talked both about her own “base of lived experience” as a proud Maori woman, as well as how her goal was to

not only contribute to building a better society [within New Zealand], but a global community.

It is this kind of overall vision which Australia should aspire to, but which is somewhat lacking from its Indigenous Diplomatic Agenda.

The way forward

There is indeed a failure of ambition with Australia’s plan. The focus is mostly around increasing the involvement of Indigenous people and strengthening specific Indigenous areas within the portfolio.

But this is mostly a continuation of good practices in existing policy. The claim to be a “systematic approach” for change is somewhat unfulfilled. There’s a lack of vision that misses the bigger picture.

First Nations people and perspectives appear mostly confined to areas related to our Indigeneity. Unlike in New Zealand, there is no recognition of Indigenous worldviews having something to offer our broader foreign policy outside of Indigenous-specific work. We are only useful when leveraging our identity.

The real potential of an Indigenous foreign policy approach is to create new dynamics in how Australia sees the world and new perspectives on how we act within the international system. We need to transform our overall thinking, rather than just seeking to place First Nations people within existing structures.

Of course, the research on this is still very much out. Without tangible goals, it remains to be seen whether New Zealand is seriously committed to substantial change, or whether its new approach is merely an idealistic aspiration.

It also remains to be seen if Australia can use its new departmental reforms to work from the ground up and create a truly ambitious foreign policy.

New Zealand may have kick-started an “Indigenous moment” in foreign policy, but Australia has a chance to truly embrace it and transform our place in the world. We have concrete plans from our government, now we need vision.

Read more: Can New Zealand’s most diverse ever cabinet improve representation of women and minorities in general?

– ref. Australia is pursuing a more Indigenous-focused foreign policy. But does it miss the bigger picture? – https://theconversation.com/australia-is-pursuing-a-more-indigenous-focused-foreign-policy-but-does-it-miss-the-bigger-picture-161189

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Felicity Roux, Researcher, Curtin University

Health education frequently fails to teach the menstrual cycle in its full entirety, focusing mostly on the bleeding part of the story and glossing over the ovulation chapter. In other words, many girls* often only get half the story about how their bodies work.

That’s a shame because knowledge of your own reproductive function is useful for monitoring and making decisions about personal health. Focusing on the period part of the cycle is like skipping to the last chapter of a book. In reality, ovulation is the protagonist of the menstrual story rather than a minor character to skim over.

For those who want to get pregnant, understanding ovulation is clearly crucial but research shows few can accurately identify their fertile window.

Beyond that, however, understanding ovulation can help you understand more about your health in general.

Read more: Explainer: what is polycystic ovary syndrome?

What exactly is ovulation?

Ovulation occurs when an ovary releases an egg (sometimes more than one). A typical teaching describes a 28-day cycle with Day 1 as the start of period bleeding and ovulation around Day 14 or 15.

But this textbook 28-day cycle is not meant to be a one-size-fits-all and is not everyone’s experience. There are healthy ranges across the different stages of life (such as adolescence, adulthood and in the later years).

The simple skills for recognising ovulation have been around for over 40 years. Once taught what to look out for, most women find it easy to tell if they are likely ovulating. One tell-tale sign is changes in cervical mucus which a woman can recognise from different sensations at her vulva.

Understanding the cycle is a useful way to get the most out of exercising and supporting good mental health.

If cycle difficulties such as painful periods or pre-menstrual tension emerge, knowing the fixed days between ovulation and the next period gives a fair heads-up to put self-care strategies in place.

A practical example is the preventative use of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs such as ibuprofen for primary period pain; in other words, taking painkillers before the pain arrives, because you know when it is coming.

Read more: 3 out of 10 girls skip class because of painful periods. And most won’t talk to their teacher about it

If cycle difficulties become more complex, understanding the cycle helps a woman work with doctors to get the care she needs.

A role for educators and teachers

When it comes to teaching cycles in schools, the period dominates the story; probably because it is bleeding obvious and you have to manage it.

Educating boys about the cycle needs more research. At this stage, it is task enough to give girls the knowledge and confidence they need.

A recent review found school programs tended to focus on menstrual problems.

While these are important topics, it would also help to frame the cycle in a positive light, explain it fully and talk about the connection between biology, psychology, and socio-environmental factors (what researchers call the “biopsychosocial” aspects).

It is a wise teacher who is vigilant about both misinformation and pedagogically appropriate information. But professional development support is often limited for teachers and the curriculum is overcrowded.

This may explain the tendency for schools to parachute in external facilitators for sexuality education teaching.

The problems with this approach are a lack of available specialist expertise, potential loss of capacity-building within the school and the infrequent learning opportunities for students. External facilitators are there to reinforce what is already taught rather than be a substitute for it.

A role for parents

One role for parents is to encourage their adolescent children to start taking responsibility for their own health. This includes adopting healthy lifestyle choices (such as nutritious eating, keeping fit and getting enough sleep).

Read more: Back to school: how to help your teen get enough sleep

These choices can impact the menstrual cycle. Parents can support their daughters’ discipline in tracking their cycles and understanding their unique patterns.

Knowing this information can also help young women advocate for themselves and make informed health-care choices if cycle difficulties arise.

A research team at Curtin University has worked on developing a program called My Vital Cycles, which is currently being trialled in Western Australia. This school-based ovulatory-menstrual health literacy program aims to give teachers, parents and teenagers the tools they need to understand the whole cycle, including ovulation’s place in it.

Given the span of years from menarche (a girl’s first bleed) to menopause, ovulatory-menstrual cycle knowledge and skills are useful over a lifetime. They are what women ought always to have had, and it is time for the whole story to be told.

The information in this article is for general information purposes only and is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. The terms *girls, women, and daughters are used in relation to a person’s sex, namely their biological characteristics or reproductive organs. This may differ from gender identity. The author believes anyone who menstruates should have the knowledge and skills necessary to understand and manage their cycle.

– ref. It’s time to teach the whole story about ovulation and its place in the menstrual cycle – https://theconversation.com/its-time-to-teach-the-whole-story-about-ovulation-and-its-place-in-the-menstrual-cycle-158952

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sameer Deshpande, Associate Professor, Social Marketing, Griffith University

As Australia deals with growing levels of vaccine hesitancy, Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly has called for incentives to ensure as many people as possible get vaccinated against COVID-19.

Many countries around the world are offering benefits to encourage people to get vaccinated.

These incentives are built on the likelihood people who are hesitant, unmotivated or face barriers to getting vaccinated will embrace vaccination if they receive personal benefits which outweigh any perceived downsides to getting the vaccine, or upsides to not getting it.

Australia would do well to consider introducing some incentives. But they shouldn’t be blanket incentives — they should be part of a larger set of strategies and need to be tailored and targeted to particular groups.

From cash to cows and everything in between

Employers, service providers, and governments in the United States have offered a range of incentives.

Some are centred around entertainment. For example, New York is set to offer free tickets and cheap deals to city attractions, while Alabama residents could take two laps around the Talladega Superspeedway racetrack in their car. Meanwhile, Chicago’s Protect Chicago Music Series is open exclusively to vaccinated residents.

Some incentives have a raised a few eyebrows, like New Jersey’s “shot and a beer” campaign, which offers people a free beer if they’ve had the vaccine.

Some organisations are offering monetary incentives — supermarket chain Publix gives employees a US$125 Publix gift card (approximately A$160) after they receive both doses.

Read more: Beer, doughnuts and a $1 million lottery – how vaccine incentives and other behavioral tools can help the US reach herd immunity

Some incentives deliver smaller benefits with certainty, such as free Uber and Lyft rides to and from vaccination sites around the US.

Others offer a small chance at a big prize, like entry into a weekly US$1 million lottery (roughly A$1.29 million) in Ohio.

We also find incentives aligned with local culture, such as 100 free targets for trap, skeet or sporting clay shooting in Randolph County, Illinois.

And it’s not just the US offering incentives. For example, in India, vaccinated residents can enter a competition to win 5,000 rupees (A$89), while those in a district of northern Thailand could win a live cow.

Do incentives work?

Although it is too early to tell us how well these incentives are working, research on other vaccines has shown financial incentives increase adherence seven-fold.

The Thai region running the cow lottery reportedly saw vaccine registration numbers jump from hundreds to thousands after they announced the incentive.

Importantly, incentives work in tandem with other strategies such as good, clear communication about vaccine efficacy and safety.

Read more: Here are 9 ways we can make it easier for Australians to get the COVID-19 vaccine

Incentives shouldn’t be ‘one size fits all’

Our research shows understanding what motivates people to participate in health-promoting activities and then tailoring measures to encourage them accordingly improves the effectiveness of the interventions.

This means it’s vital to listen to the public. Australians love fun, sport, spending time with family and friends, and travelling. Any incentive or strategy should consider these values.

Here are five broad groups based on individuals’ willingness and ability to get vaccinated, and strategies which might appeal to each one.

1. The highly motivated

Those who are highly motivated and have good access to vaccination tend to be first to front up when they’re eligible. This group trusts science and the system and seeks information on where and when to get the vaccine.

These people don’t necessarily need additional incentives as they’re motivated by the desire to protect their family and get back to doing the things they enjoy.

That said, the government should specify a threshold of the population that needs to be vaccinated in order to open international borders.

2. A little hesitant

This group may be somewhat hesitant about vaccine efficacy, and want to take a wait-and-see approach. But they also want to be seen as looking after themselves and others in their community, including the vulnerable. They seek statistics on numbers vaccinated and social approval.

In Singapore, people receive a free #igotmyshot mask to show they’ve been vaccinated. As more people don these masks, people in this group would likely feel encouraged to get a vaccine.

In time, creating barriers to attending public events for those who haven’t been vaccinated, such as a cricket or football match, could also nudge this group.

3. The young and healthy

Young people and those without pre-existing conditions are often less concerned about the health benefits of vaccinations. So while they may not be hesitant, they might be less motivated.

Creative incentives that portray vaccination as fun, easy, and popular within their peer groups are likely to be beneficial. Offerings of free food and drinks, as we’ve seen overseas, could be a good example.

This group is also increasingly socially aware, as we see on the issue of climate change. Tapping into what’s important to them, such as being socially responsible, would be a key way to appeal to this demographic.

While people in this group are broadly not yet eligible to be vaccinated in Australia, the government should think ahead about appropriate initiatives. High vaccination levels in this group will be essential to reaching herd immunity.

4. Where access is challenging

A range of barriers can prevent certain people from being vaccinated. While we’re lucky in Australia the vaccine is free, some people may live in areas with fewer vaccination facilities or where they need to travel greater distances.

Setting up on-site vaccination clinics in workplaces or mobile vans at public transport hubs can assist this group. Offering money to compensate for travel time, fuel and childcare needs would make vaccination more attractive too.

5. Vaccine resisters

Some people resist vaccination due to questions on efficacy and distrust of the system. Incentives may not work for this group — they may even strengthen the determination not to vaccinate.

Communicating data on the effectiveness and safety of vaccines (as compared to the risks) and endorsement from trustworthy ambassadors could be helpful for this group.

Read more: I’m over 50 and hesitant about the AstraZeneca COVID vaccine. Should I wait for Pfizer?

There’s no “one size fits all” solution to motivate the entire population to get vaccinated. Instead, governments, non-profits and corporations need to consult with communities and create and target incentives accordingly, alongside other public health activities.

– ref. Incentives could boost vaccine uptake in Australia. But we need different approaches for different groups – https://theconversation.com/incentives-could-boost-vaccine-uptake-in-australia-but-we-need-different-approaches-for-different-groups-161363

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Julia Ryeland, PhD Candidate, Western Sydney University

This article is part of the “Who would win?” series, where wildlife experts dream up hypothetical battles between animals (all in the name of science).

Of the giant prehistoric birds still wandering the planet, two of the top three largest live right here in Australia: the emu and cassowary.

The cassowary and emu are sister species, having diverged into separate species around 31 million years ago. These dinosaurs stand as tall as most humans and can weigh more than 40 kilograms, enough to dissuade most people from getting too close.

But how would they fare against each other, in a fight?

When two giants collide

For the most part, the emu and cassowary will never see each other.

The Southern cassowary is the only Australian cassowary species, and it lives in the rainforests of far north Queensland. It’s well suited to this dense, tropical habitat, and mostly survives on forest fruits. It’s known to fiercely guard its home range from neighbouring cassowary competitors, protecting its patch of resources.

The emu, on the other hand, is happy almost anywhere. Emus are “generalist” species — they’ll live in most habitats, eat almost any foods and travel between landscapes with ease.

But the only places where emus prefer not to travel is the far north of Australia, in harsh arid or tropical lands. This means emus and cassowaries overlap little in their natural distribution today, so a heated encounter is unlikely.

However, this may not have always been the case.

My recent research predicted that around 6,000 years ago, different rainfall patterns meant emus probably occurred further north along Australia’s eastern coast than they do today — right into cassowary territory.

So let’s step back in time, and see how a collision between the the two might have played out.

Meet the opponents

The heavyweight kickboxer

The cassowary is a stocky powerhouse. Its height is similar to the emu, but it is much heavier. While the emu might seem intimidating at 38-40kg, a cassowary’s kick has twice that weight behind it.

Weighing up to 80kg, a kick with the cassowary’s sharp claws would end any fight.

Cassowaries can be particularly territorial during mating seasons, where females fight for mates, and during chick rearing, when a solo dad protects his young. One short jump and down comes three sharp claws, with the innermost claw a 12 centimetre spike-like dagger.

If you’re a human, you’d be quickly tapping out. But what about an emu?

The power of speed

The emu might be a featherweight fighter compared to the cassowary, but what it lacks in weight, it gains in speed and agility. Granted, this speed and agility comes in handy, mostly, for fleeing. Why fight when you can outrun any opponent?

Their generalist, nomadic lifestyle means there isn’t much to be gained by staying and fighting. Instead, the emu will leave you in the dust, off at 50km per hour.

This might not paint emus as the bravest of megafauna, but they’re also armed with a decent set of claws. And they aren’t afraid to use them when it’s really necessary.

During breeding season, for example, females will battle each other to win the love of the best-looking males. Once those chicks arrive, dad emu won’t give you a chance to look twice at his stripy chicks.

The unlikely turf war

Now we know both emu and cassowary will use sharp claws when needed — especially new dads. Both species breed in winter, with new fluffy babies at their heel in early spring.

If an emu wanders into cassowary territory at any other time of year, it would be be off before the cassowary has time to swallow its fruit, not taking any chances by fighting the cassowary.

But today, dad emu has six chicks with him. So today is fight day.

While the chicks hide in nearby bushes, the emu picks up speed towards the cassowary. The cassowary stands its ground, stomping its feet and grunting to warn the emu.

The emu circles looking like it will take the cassowary by surprise. It lands a quick kick to the chest. But the cassowary kicks back. It’s a brutal blow, ending in a cloud of feathers and a terrified looking emu.

A taste of the power behind those short powerful legs makes it clear this is not the emu’s day. So he sprints away, with his chicks stumbling along behind.

The emu’s quick kicks are no match for the weight behind the cassowary’s kick and its enormous, daggered claw.

For the emu, no food, shelter or any other resource is worth risking a fatal blow from a cassowary. For the cassowary, resources are clustered and well worth protecting.

Read more: Who would win in a fight between an octopus and a seabird? Two marine biologists place their bets

The emu’s revenge: endgame

That might seem like a quick, unexciting knock out. But the emu is nothing if not resilient. The Great Emu War of 1932 will attest to that.

Emus were undeterred by the employment of the Australian military armed with machine guns to reduce their numbers. They outran and outmanoeuvred all military attempts to control them in pastoral land.

Since the loss of most Australian megafauna 46,000 years ago and changes in climate over the past 6,000 years, the emus’ range has expanded across most of the continent, assisted by its generalist nature.

The cassowary, on the other hand, has suffered a significant loss of suitable habitat. That loss, coupled with other threats such as collisions with cars, disease and feral predators, has tragically led to the species becoming endangered.

The cassowary might make short work of the emu one on one. But the resilient emu has the cassowary outnumbered by far. And a solo cassowary is no match for a mob of emus.

Read more: 10 million animals are hit on our roads each year. Here’s how you can help them (and steer clear of them) these holidays

– ref. Emu vs cassowary: one has a dagger-like claw, the other explosive agility — but who would win in a fight? – https://theconversation.com/emu-vs-cassowary-one-has-a-dagger-like-claw-the-other-explosive-agility-but-who-would-win-in-a-fight-160540

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anna Malos, Australia – Country Lead, ClimateWorks Australia

A landmark report released last week put coal and gas on notice. For the first time, the International Energy Agency (IEA) declared reaching net-zero emissions by 2050 means no new investments in fossil fuel supply projects.

For Australia – a continent blessed with a bounty of wind and sun – the phasing out of coal and gas investment should be considered a boon. Australia is already deploying wind and solar energy ten times faster than the global average, and still has plenty of unmet renewables potential.

But of course, Australia’s path to a clean energy economy has not been perfectly smooth. A lack of federal leadership on climate policy and a historical dependence on fossil fuels means the IEA’s roadmap presents a big challenge for Australia.

Our latest report released today underscores how big a challenge this is. We assessed Australia’s highest-emitting energy firms and found none were fully or even closely aligned with global climate goals. Just one went even partway, and five appeared to be taking no action at all.

A poor showing

Our energy sector report forms part of the Net Zero Momentum Tracker, a project by research organisation ClimateWorks, which works within the Monash Sustainable Development Institute.

We assessed the commitments of Australia’s 20 highest-emitting energy companies against the Paris Agreement goals, which include limiting global temperature rise to well below 2℃, aiming for 1.5℃. The IEA’s latest work shows to reach those goals, the global energy sector must reach net-zero emissions by 2050.

The companies we analysed comprise electricity generators and electricity and gas retailers. Together, they account for almost one-third of Australia’s total annual emissions.

Each company’s commitments were assessed against scenarios we modelled, which map the least-cost trajectories for reducing Australia’s emissions in line with the Paris goals.

We found no large energy company was fully aligned with these trajectories, and most fell well short. Six had set emissions reduction targets and nine others had taken some action to cut emissions.

However, not a single company had commitments that are in line with Australia achieving net-zero emissions by 2050.

Read more: We could be a superpower: 3 ways Australia can take advantage of the changing geopolitics of energy

How your energy company fares

The 20 companies we assessed account for almost 90% of Australia’s electricity emissions. Together, they generate more than 70% of Australia’s electricity supplies.

French-owned energy generator and retailer ENGIE was the only company partially aligned with a modelled decarbonisation trajectory. ENGIE has an aligned target that aims to reduce some of its emissions by 2030. But the target does not cover the majority of ENGIE’s emissions, so the company has much more work to do.

Fourteen companies had a mix of targets or actions we assessed as not aligned with the Paris goals. They are:

• AGL
• APT Pipelines
• ATCO
• CS Energy
• CK William
• Delta
• EnergyAustralia
• Origin
• Pioneer Sail
• Snowy Hydro
• Stanwell
• Synergy
• Territory Generation
• TransAlta.

And these five companies had no disclosed emissions reduction activities:

• Arrow Energy
• Bluewaters Power 1&2
• NewGen Kwinana
• NRG Gladstone Operating Services
• OzGen.

Read more: Government-owned firms like Snowy Hydro can do better than building $600 million gas plants

The big four emitters

AGL, EnergyAustralia, Stanwell and Origin are the biggest emitters in Australia’s electricity sector. Collectively, they’re responsible for more than half the sector’s emissions, and so have a particular responsibility to act.

When energy companies talk about reducing their greenhouse gas emissions, they do so in terms of scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions.

Scope 1 covers emissions released to the atmosphere as a direct result of company activity, such as burning coal or gas to produce electricity. Scope 2 covers the emissions created to produce the electricity a company purchases.

Scope 3 emissions are those outside the companies’ direct control. They include upstream processes such as the extraction, production and transport of fuel used to power their operations, and downstream activities such as the distribution and use of gas sold to consumers.

Origin aspires to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 and has set interim targets to reduce its scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions.

AGL and EnergyAustralia have committed to achieve net-zero operational (scope 1 and 2) emissions by 2050, but have no interim emissions reduction targets.

Stanwell, which operates two of Queensland’s largest coal-fired generators, has no emissions reduction targets.

A rapid renewables shift

Our earlier research shows that under scenarios compatible with the Paris Agreement, renewables make up 70% of electricity generation by 2030. Coal and gas is phased out of Australia’s electricity mix as soon as 2035.

The energy sector is crucial if Australia is to meet the Paris climate goals. Thanks to renewable energy, the sector enjoys some of the easiest and cheapest emissions reduction opportunities. And a zero-emissions energy sector would also help other sectors such as transport, buildings and industry to decarbonise.

Australia’s energy sector has made progress on emissions in recent years. Three-quarters of the energy companies we assessed have implemented wind and solar energy projects. And overall, renewable energy was responsible for almost 28% of Australia’s total electricity generation in 2020.

However our report shows change is not happening fast enough to put Australia on a timely path to net-zero emissions.

At a federal level, the Renewable Energy Target, which ended last year, drove the clean energy shift. New federal policies are now needed to bolster ambitious state and territory policies. This would enable energy market operators and investors to plan a transition aligned with the Paris goals.

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

– ref. Wondering if your energy company takes climate change seriously? A new report reveals the answer – https://theconversation.com/wondering-if-your-energy-company-takes-climate-change-seriously-a-new-report-reveals-the-answer-161360

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Smith, Senior Lecturer in Literary Studies, Monash University

Disney’s new live-action Cruella transforms the infamous Dalmatian killer into an aspiring fashion designer who is driven to embrace the darkness and a life of crime.

It is the latest adaptation reclaiming female villains of fairy tales and children’s literature, providing them with an origin story — and extending them a degree of sympathy.

The female villain is common, in part, because of the Brothers Grimm.

As the Brothers collected and published fairy tales in the early 19th century, they progressively changed these stories to conform to appropriate morality for children. These alterations included silencing strong female characters and demonising powerful women — ensuring evil behaviour was clearly contrasted with good.

Read more: Reader beware: the nasty new edition of the Brothers Grimm

Children’s literature followed suit, with easily understandable divides between the good (and beautiful) and the evil (and ugly). L. Frank Baum’s one-eyed Wicked Witch of the West in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was designated the “bad witch” in sharp contrast to the good witch, and to Dorothy.

But recent adaptations of these stories discard the usual focus on the “good” princess or heroine.

Instead of consigning the female villain to a simplistic caricature of evil, films such as Maleficent (the evil fairy from Sleeping Beauty) and the musical Wicked (the Wicked Witch of the West) offer nuanced (and newly beautiful) depictions of iconic foes.

An inhuman beast?

In Disney’s 1961 animated 101 Dalmatians, Cruella is angular and unattractive, with spindly limbs and a shock of half-black and half-white hair. She is a spinster; not maternal in any respect. She not only lacks her own children but seeks to harm puppies. She feels no concern for the young and vulnerable.

Vanity is Cruella’s final flaw, evident in her excessive interest in her appearance and the pleasure she takes in luxury objects, clothing and make-up.

The jazzy song that punctuates the film is thick with condemnation. Cruella is “like a spider waiting for the kill”, “a devil”, “vampire bat” and “inhuman beast” who “ought to be locked up and never released”.

Wanting to wear puppy fur is certainly alarming enough, but Disney’s animated film provides no other details about Cruella’s dark side, nor her motivations.

In Dodie Smith’s children’s novel on which the film was based, Cruella marries a furrier. The large stock of furs and coats she has not yet paid for are destroyed by the Dalmatians and her own Persian cat (who avenges the deaths of many litters of kittens that were drowned by Cruella) leaving the de Vils to flee England for their unpaid debts.

This new Cruella film encourages compassion by depicting the events that lead to a conscious embrace of wrongdoing. This incarnation was once Estella de Vil (Emma Stone), orphaned at 12 and growing into a teenager with a record of petty crime and a dream to work in the fashion industry.

Her fashion boss and mentor Baroness von Helman (Emma Thompson) advises Cruella not to care “about anyone or thing”, providing a model of self-absorption and vanity for emulation.

Cruella says she “was born brilliant, born bad, and a little bit mad” — but this film makes clear she was “made” from the damage and loss orphaned Estella experiences.

Embracing the monster

The current recuperation of the female villain follows the makeover of Gothic monsters such as the vampire in popular fiction and film. In Bram Stoker’s Dracula, vampires are repulsive and threatening. From True Blood to Twilight, today’s vampires are more commonly depicted as attractive love interests.

The stories we tell have begun to both embrace the monster, and explain how they were created. Many cultures have lost faith in the grand narratives provided by former certainties in life such as religion. A sharp divide between good and evil is no longer as easy to maintain.

Well-known stories intended for children, such as those reshaped by the Brothers Grimm, were typically based on unambiguous morals that rewarded the good and punished the bad.

These new live-action adaptations introduce a more complicated sense of morality. While the actions of female villains may still be disturbing, the focus on their ill-treatment in early life humanises them and dismantles the idea of people being inherently “evil”.

The short form of traditional fairy tales and children’s novels can offer minimal scope for characterisation, leaving us none the wiser as to what motivates the villain.

Why does Hans Christian Andersen’s disgusting Sea Witch (immortalised as Ursula in Disney’s The Little Mermaid) feed a toad from her mouth and make a doomed bargain with the poor mermaid? Andersen’s story (and the Disney film) give us no clues — but perhaps the upcoming live-action adaptation will.

Read more: Friday essay: why grown-ups still need fairy tales

Expansion of the stories of villains such as Maleficent, the Wicked Witch of the West, and Cruella not only complicate naïve ideas about good and evil, but also allow us to take pleasure in aligning ourselves with the antihero.

Just so long as no puppies are harmed in the process.

– ref. Who’s afraid of Cruella de Vil? New stories are humanising female villains of old – https://theconversation.com/whos-afraid-of-cruella-de-vil-new-stories-are-humanising-female-villains-of-old-161188

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

More than six in ten Australians – 63% – support a ban on new coal mines opening in Australia, according to the Lowy Institute’s Climate Poll 2021.

A similar proportion would favour reducing Australian coal exports to other countries.

“Australian views of coal exports and coal mines … appear to have shifted significantly in recent years,” the report says.

Only three in ten people would back the federal government providing subsidies for building new coal-fired power plants.

There are notable age differences in attitudes to coal. More than seven in ten (72%) of those aged 18–44 support banning new coal mines, but only 55% of people over 45.

The government’s “gas-fired recovery” has majority support – 58% back increasing the use of gas for generating energy.

The poll found most people want Australia to have more ambitious climate policies ahead of the United Nations climate summit in Glasgow late this year.

Seven in ten people say Australia should join other countries, such as the United Kingdom and the United States, to increase its commitments to address climate change.

Some 60% say Australia is doing too little to combat climate change. But Australians are critical of other countries for not doing enough – 82% say China is doing too little. The figures for the US and India doing too little are 71% and 81% respectively.

Nearly eight in ten Australians (78%) support setting a net zero emissions target for 2050.

Scott Morrison has been edging towards embracing this as a target and is likely to do so before Glasgow, although he faces some resistance within the Coalition. All the states and territories have this target.

The federal government is coming under considerable pressure from the Biden administration and the Johnson government over the climate issue.

Climate questions will be a feature of the G7 summit in June to which Morrison has been invited.

The Lowy poll found 74% believe the benefits of taking further action on climate change would outweigh the costs.

More than nine in ten people (91%) support the federal government providing subsidies for the development of renewable energy technology, while 77% favour the government subsidising electric vehicle purchases.

More than half (55%) say the government’s main priority for energy policy should be “reducing carbon emissions”. This was 8 point increase since 2019.

Six in ten people agree with the proposition “global warming is a serious and pressing problem. We should begin taking steps now, even if this involves costs”. This was a 4 point increase from last year

Six in ten Australians (64%) support “introducing an emissions trading scheme or carbon tax”.

The report, authored by Natasha Kassam and Hannah Leser, says: “While the COVID-19 pandemic appeared to temper concerns about climate change in 2020, the issue has risen to prominence again in 2021. The majority of Australians (60%) say ‘global warming is a serious and pressing problem…we should begin taking steps now, even if this involves significant costs’. This represents a reversal of the dip in 2020 during the early days of the pandemic, but remains eight points below the high watermark of concern in 2006.”

The climate poll was taken in mid and late April with a sample of 3,286.

– ref. Majority of Australians in favour of banning new coal mines: Lowy poll – https://theconversation.com/majority-of-australians-in-favour-of-banning-new-coal-mines-lowy-poll-161513

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

The report from John Kunkel, Scott Morrison’s chief of staff, on whether the Prime Minister’s office briefed against Brittany Higgins’ partner David Shiraz has been drafted with Jesuitical subtlety.

Kunkel’s four-page report to the Prime Minister says, in essence, that he couldn’t make any finding against Morrison’s staff, but they needed to watch their Ps and Qs in future. And while Higgins’ claim about negative backgrounding wasn’t upheld, Kunkel was sure she was sincere about it.

Higgins claimed the PMO backgrounded against Shiraz after she went public early this year with her allegation she was raped in 2019 by a colleague in a minister’s office. She had been told about the backgrounding by the media, she said.

After interviewing Morrison’s senior communications staff, Kunkel concluded that on the first-hand evidence before him and given the seriousness of the allegation, “I do not make a finding that negative briefing against Mr Shiraz of the sort alleged has taken place”.

Such a finding “would be based upon hearsay (in some instances, second- or third-hand)”.

“The evidence before me falls well short of the standard that would be needed to arrive at such a finding in conformity with due process.”

But, he stressed, he wasn’t denying that Higgins’ beliefs about the adverse briefing were sincerely held. “Plainly, they are”.

“My conclusion, based upon the evidence presented to me, should in no way be taken as a reflection upon the honesty or sincerity of Ms Higgins.”

Moreover, he had a sharp warning for the Morrison staff. “While I am not in a position to make a finding that the alleged activity took place, the fact that those allegations have been made serves as an important reminder of the need for your staff to hold themselves to the highest standards.

“I have accordingly reinforced with the office the paramount importance of maintaining high professional and ethical standards. I further underlined the importance of privacy issues when dealing with highly sensitive, personal matters.”

During a day when the Higgins matter returned on several fronts to harass the government, Morrison tabled the Kunkel report in question time, as he came under pressure from the opposition.

But while it got his staff off the hook (more or less) over the alleged briefing, the report’s release simply stoked the political fire around the Higgins issue, which was pursued simultaneously in two senate estimates hearings on Tuesday.

Labor, which had been asking about the Kunkel report, angrily demanded to know why Morrison had tabled it without giving Higgins any warning. Earlier, Labor’s Katy Gallagher had asked Senate Leader Simon Birmingham to find out whether three of Morrison’s staff, whom she named, had been interviewed.

In his report, Kunkel said all senior members of Morrison’s media team – whom he did not name – rejected the allegation of backgrounding against Shiraz to undermine his reputation.

Members of the media team had told him “certain journalists” had raised Shiraz’s work history – he had been employed in the Prime Minister’s department and at Sky News. The staff had referred questions of his departmental employment to the department.

But Higgins, when Kunkel interviewed her, told him journalists had informed her that Shiraz had been portrayed as disgruntled after his time in the department and at Sky News and his alleged “grudge” was behind her decision to go public with her rape allegation.

Kunkel said no member of the press gallery recounted, or substantiated, firsthand experience of the alleged activity. A journalist who had contacted Kunkel earlier about the alleged backgrounding did not want to participate in the inquiry.

Journalists interviewed had referred to “corridor conversations” in the press gallery after Higgins made her allegation of sexual assault. These conversations were about the incident itself, Higgins, her partner, and what the PMO staff knew or didn’t know about the alleged rape incident, and when they knew.

“Members of the PMO media team participated in those discussions in the context of responding to inquiries and in the ordinary course of their interactions with the press gallery,” the report said.

Labor’s senate leader Penny Wong said the Kunkel report “doesn’t exonerate anybody – he didn’t make a finding it didn’t occur”.

While Kunkel’s report is now public, the secretary of the Prime Minister’s Department, Phil Gaetjens, played a dead bat under questioning at senate estimates about his investigation. Gaetjens is inquiring into who in the PMO knew what and when about Higgins’ rape allegation, which she first made within government in 2019.

Gaetjens refused to disclose how many people he had interviewed, citing personal privacy.

He also refused to be drawn on whether PMO staff had lawyers in his inquiry and if so, whether they were paid for by the taxpayer.

Gaetjens is yet to meet with Higgins.

He indicated his report was still some time away. “I would certainly expect it to be in probably weeks, not days and certainly not months.”

An official of the Prime Minister’s department told senate estimates that when Morrison met Higgins recently, Higgins had four people with her, including one or two lawyers. A government lawyer was also present.

The Federal Police Commissioner Reece Kershaw, said in relation to Higgins’ rape allegation, “a brief of evidence is likely to be provided to the ACT director of public prosecutions in coming weeks”.

Kershaw revealed that in the wake of the Higgins public allegation, 40 reports had been received by the AFP since February 24 relating to 19 different allegations of misconduct involving parliamentarians, their staff or official establishments. Some related to sexual misconduct. Some were historical.

Twelve reports were identified as sensitive investigations, 10 were referred to state and territory police for assessment, one was with the AFP for ongoing inquiries and one had been finalised.

Seven matters did not relate to electorate officers, ministerial staff or official establishments. Of those five had been referred to state and territory police and two concluded with no criminal offence identified.

– ref. View from The Hill: Morrison’s top staffer doesn’t find colleagues briefed against Higgins’ partner but reminds them of ‘standards’ – https://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-morrisons-top-staffer-doesnt-find-colleagues-briefed-against-higgins-partner-but-reminds-them-of-standards-161512

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Fiona Kelly, Professor, Law School, La Trobe University

The Victorian government’s budget announcement to fund a public egg and sperm bank will be welcomed by couples and single women who need donors to conceive.

The bank will proactively recruit local donors, store donated eggs, sperm and embryos, and develop and deliver education and awareness programs about the need for donations. It will be the first of its kind in Australia, though it is not yet known when it will launch.

At a time when access to sperm and eggs are limited by low supply and high cost, a public donor bank will reduce the number of Victorians turning to potentially risky practices such as informal online donating or reproductive tourism overseas.

If it’s successful, other states and territories experiencing shortages may well follow.

Read more: Meet the men who donate sperm on Facebook

Shortages and high costs

Victorians who need donated sperm and eggs are often faced with limited choice, lengthy wait lists created by donor shortages, and high costs.

When an egg donor is needed, recipients are largely left to their own devices, with most recruiting donors via online platforms.

IVF clinics typically have a greater supply of sperm donors, but wait lists are still common and choices limited. Victorian clinics report COVID-19 has exacerbated the problem, with one reporting a 90% drop in sperm donor inquiries during the pandemic.

The number of men donating sperm to Victorian clinics has actually increased over the past decade. But demand has also increased, particularly since 2008 when it became legal for single and lesbian women to access fertility treatment in Victoria.

By 2019/2020, single women had become the largest group of women treated with donor sperm in Victoria (54%), followed by women in same-sex relationships (32%).

Despite the demand for donated sperm and eggs, private fertility clinics have not been successful in recruiting enough donors.

The other significant barrier to accessing donated eggs is cost. The cost of IVF can reach as much as A$10,000 for the first cycle. While clinics can’t charge for eggs, harvesting the eggs is a major cost of the process. If you eliminate that cost, the price of IVF drops dramatically. While a number of bulk-billing IVF clinics have opened in recent years, none provide donated eggs as part of their services.

Read more: Standard IVF is fine for most people. So why are so many offered an expensive sperm injection they don’t need?

What are the risks of alternative methods?

In recent years, and perhaps accelerated by the closure of Australia’s borders due to COVID-19, there has been an increase in unregulated sperm donation through online platforms where men offer their sperm to prospective parents.

This carries health risks because donor aren’t screened for sexually transmitted diseases. Sperm donated to clinics is quarantined for six months and then donors are re-screened for HIV, Hepatitis B and C,and syphilis prior to release for treatment.

There have also been reports of women being pressured by donors to engage in “natural insemination” and even allegations of sexual assault.

While fertility clinics are required by law to limit the number of children born from a single donor, offspring limits cannot be controlled for in the informal market. Offspring limits reduce the risk of accidental incest.

Another issue is donor-conceived children may not have access to their donor’s identity. Clinic donors must agree to have their information on Victoria’s Central Register so their donor offspring have access to their identity.

But it’s impossible to ensure informal donors are registered, or to register the anonymous donors of children conceived overseas where eggs and sperm are more readily available.

Read more: Secrets and lies: why donor-conceived children need to know their origins

How might a public donor egg and sperm bank help?

A public donor egg and sperm bank would focus on recruiting new sperm and egg donors, providing a greater number and range of donor eggs and sperm, at a lower cost.

Importantly, it would reduce reliance on risky informal sperm and egg donation arrangements and reproductive tourism to jurisdictions that provide fewer protections for children.

According to a Deloitte Access Economics feasibility study, for a public donor egg and sperm bank to deliver on its potential benefits, it would need to “orchestrate a social marketing campaign that speaks to the value of donation and seeks to influence social views on donation”.

Successful campaigns in other areas, such as blood, plasma and breastmilk donation, have demonstrated that while changing community attitudes can take time, such campaigns can yield positive results.

Read more: Breast milk banking continues an ancient human tradition and can save lives

Creating a positive donor experience, emphasising the importance of altruistic donation, the introduction of structural changes such as out-of-hours services, and the provision of adequate resources to support a sophisticated recruitment campaign, will be essential to the bank’s success.

– ref. Victoria’s egg and sperm bank will reduce the risks of seeking donors online. Here’s why it’s needed – https://theconversation.com/victorias-egg-and-sperm-bank-will-reduce-the-risks-of-seeking-donors-online-heres-why-its-needed-161414

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rachael Burgin, Lecturer in Law, Swinburne University of Technology

New South Wales Attorney-General Mark Speakman has announced a suite of reforms to consent law, following a two-and-a-half year review by the Law Reform Commission.

The review was prompted by survivor-advocate Saxon Mullins, who endured two trials and two appeals, only to end up with no legal resolution to her rape case. Since then, Mullins has advocated for affirmative consent.

However, the final report from the commission, released in November last year, failed to recommend this standard. Despite this, Speakman has stood alongside Mullins with the promise of a bill that goes beyond the recommendations of the commission — and will make affirmative consent the law in NSW.

Read more: NSW law reform report misses chance to institute ‘yes means yes’ in sexual consent cases

What is affirmative consent?

Affirmative consent means that consent is actively sought and actively communicated. This approach shifts from a “no means no” standard to “yes means yes”, in that an individual seeking to have sex with another person must obtain clear, expressed consent from them before (and while) engaging in a sexual act.

In other words, submission without active, participatory agreement is not sufficient to claim that consent was given. In practice, this could be something as simple as asking someone if they want to have sex.

This type of consent standard shifts the emphasis from the actions of the victim-survivor to those of the accused. This is important, since we know that the same rape myths and gendered stereotypes that permeate society can be brought sharply to bear in sexual assault trials.

Despite this, and international shifts towards affirmative consent, governments across Australia have been hesitant to legislate it, and Law Reform Commissions are apparently loathe to recommend it.

In addition to the NSW Commission, the Queensland Law Reform Commission earlier this year also failed to recommend affirmative consent, opting instead to recommend no substantive change to consent law. That report was heavily criticised as relying largely on research that had not been peer-reviewed, and ignoring recent Australian academic research.

Read more: Queensland rape law ‘loophole’ could remain after review ignores concerns about rape myths and consent

The changes in New South Wales

The bill announced today changes that course. Speakman has presented reforms that go beyond the Law Reform Commission’s recommendations and, if enacted, would legislate affirmative consent in NSW.

This is because the bill requires that a person who is seeking to raise the defence of “reasonable belief in consent” must demonstrate what actions they took or what words they spoke to ensure they had consent. A failure to do or say something (that is, to “take steps”) to ascertain consent means that any belief in consent will not be reasonable.

This is affirmative consent in action – and it takes its lead from the law in Tasmania, which has operated without controversy for nearly two decades.

It is also where other jurisdictions fall down. Victoria, for example, is often heralded as a leader in affirmative consent. However, my research analysing rape trial transcripts from the County Court of Victoria shows that defence counsel continue to rely on narratives of victim resistance or “implied consent”, that construct women’s ordinary, everyday behaviour as indicating consent.

This is, as I have argued, because Victoria does not require an accused person to show they did anything to ensure their potential sexual partner was consenting. If a person did take steps to ascertain consent, they are able to raise this in their defence.

However, the reasonableness of a belief in consent, in Victoria, can be built exclusively on the accused person’s perception of the victim-survivor’s conduct – whether she was drinking alcohol, wearing certain types of clothing, dancing near him or not offering enough “resistance” to his sexual advances.

The NSW government has sought to respond to these problems that continue to plague Victorian courts by making these consent steps mandatory. This means the NSW provision will act as a protection to victim-survivors in their pursuit of justice, and will protect from prosecution accused people who, even in their mistake, acted reasonably.

What does this mean?

The ethos that a person who wants to have sex should make sure their potential partner also wants to should underpin both our responses to and prevention of sexual violence.

This approach can set the framework for how we teach young people – or “re-teach” older generations – about consent, relationships and sexuality. In the context of a rape trial, the hope is that affirmative consent will go some way to ensuring that attitudes which blame women for their victimisation, and excuse sexual violence, do not play a role in the outcome.

This does not, as some may claim over the next few months as we see this bill progressing through parliament, reverse the onus of proof. People accused of sexual assault will continue to be afforded their right to the presumption of innocence.

However, this bill does place an evidential burden on an accused person who seeks to raise a defence of reasonable belief in consent to show they took steps. The onus remains on the prosecution to disprove this once the defence has discharged its evidential burden.

A win for survivors

The NSW reforms are a huge win for survivors, particularly Saxon Mullins, who catapulted consent onto the public and political agenda.

But it is not the end of the story. The law, while holding potential to set community expectations, is – and should be – the avenue of last resort. Attention must also be paid to preventing sexual violence before it occurs.

– ref. NSW adopts affirmative consent in sexual assault laws. What does this mean? – https://theconversation.com/nsw-adopts-affirmative-consent-in-sexual-assault-laws-what-does-this-mean-161497

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Angel Zhong, Senior Lecturer in Finance, RMIT University

Queenie Tan is full of financial advice. Whether it is cheap date ideas, buying furniture, saving your first $100,000, doing your tax return or investing in Dogecoin, there is seemingly no topic the 24-year-old Sydney woman can’t confidently tackle.

Her posts and videos have gained her 15,000 followers on Instagram and 42,000 followers on TikTok. Her explainer on Australian tax rules for cryptocurrency capital gains has been viewed more than 360,000 times. Her tips for first home buyers more than 400,000 times. Both videos last less than a minute.

Queenie’s qualifications as a financial expert are slim. She has worked as a marketing manager. She says she accumulated close to A$350,000 in assets in five years. That, along with being photogenic and vivacious, is more than enough to join the swelling ranks of “finfluencers” – social media content creators building an audience through dispensing financial advice.

Becoming a finfluencer can be highly lucrative. On TikTok the hashtag #FinTok has been viewed more than 340 million times. Among the top FinTok elite is Californian Stephen Chen, a former maths teacher turned “financial freedom coach” with close to 780,000 followers. Another is Sara Rosalia, a Canadian teenager who as “Sara Finance” has attracted more than 670,000 followers.

Aspiring influencers are also finding financial content a successful formula on Youtube, Twitter and Reddit.

But as lucrative as this trend may be for those who make it to the top of the finfluencer money tree, the gains for followers are far less certain. It is the wild west for financial information, with few of the checks and balances that regulate other areas of financial advice.

Driving trading frenzies

Cryptocurrency trading platform Plaxful analysed 1,212 videos from a sample of 50 popular finance-focused TikTok accounts in 2020. It rated 14% of them as misleading. This included, without disclosures or disclaimers, encouraging users to buy specific assets and implying an investment would guarantee a profit.

In recent months we’ve seen just how influential social media can be in encouraging people to buy or sell particular stocks.

There was the Gamestop trading frenzy, in which stocks of a video game retailer surged from US$19 to US$347 in less than two weeks, driven by Redditors and helped along by tweets from Elon Musk.

Musk’s twittering has also been instrumental in boosting the price of Dogecoin and sending Bitcoin’s price both up and down.

A social media influencer at their best will build an audience through solid financial advice. But they can also build an audience by making sensational claims about their advice, promising huge returns and even pushing dud products.

Read more: GameStop: how Redditors played hedge funds for billions (and what might come next)

Other financial advice is regulated

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission says complaints about unlicensed financial advice, including through social media, have been escalating since March 2020 – the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemc. The corporate regulator has expressed its concern about such advice because consumers lack any legal protection.

In Australia (as elsewhere), there are laws regulating the conduct of those running financial advice businesses. Advisers must be licensed. Touting yourself as a financial adviser without a licence can lead to a fine up to A$133,200 and a prison sentence of up to five years.

Qualifying for a licence requires completing courses and passing exams, including on ethics.

To become a finfluencer, on the other hand, requires no specific expertise whatsoever. At most content creators are bound by general rules against false and misleading claims, platform guidelines and marketing codes of practice requiring paid partnerships to be disclosed.

Like the bloke at the pub?

Despite this, the Austalian government has signalled it sees no need to do more to regulate finfluencers. The federal minister for financial services and the digital economy, Jane Hume, last week described them as “an inevitable part of a financial ecosystem”. She explained:

The TikTok influencer spruiking Nokia is not that different to the bloke down at the pub who wants to tell you all about the really great company he just invested in — but with a much louder voice.

“Some of the information on online forums would be bad, she said, “but some of it will be good, and a lot of it will better engage younger generations in investment and financial markets.”

These are rather simplistic things for a minister in charge of the digital economy to say.

The bloke at the pub, for one thing, does not make money from his talk.

Social media influencers do. Take Youtube as an example. If they can attract a big enough audience, content creators can earn money through advertisements, affiliated links, sponsored content and selling branded merchandise. They can potentially profit by touting stocks they own, or be paid to promote some product.

Three tips to assess finfluencers

This is not to say all finfluencers are suspect. Their advice, such as Queenie Tan’s tips on saving money, may be very sensible. They wouldn’t be popular if there wasn’t a demand for accessible financial information that itself doesn’t cost a fortune.

So here are my free three tips, if you love #fintok, to assess the credibility of an influencer and their advice.

Read more: From tulips and scrips to bitcoin and meme stocks – how the act of speculating became a financial mania

First, don’t assume a large number of followers makes someone worth following. Popularity doesn’t equal credibility. Look at their background and educational qualifications. You don’t need a degree to get rich, but there should be some sort of evidence for their claims to be someone worth listening to.

Second, why are they sharing their secrets with you for free? The Chinese philosopher Lao-tzu is credited with saying: “Those who know do not tell”. This is as true now as in the 6th century. If an influencer really has some strategy to beat the market, why are they on social media telling everyone about it? Anyone touting a particular stock or product or strategy should be treated with suspicion.

Third, be wary of anyone promoting a get-rich-quick scheme. Yes, it is possible to make huge returns on an initial investment. But such windfall gains are the exception rather than the rule.

Any influencer telling you to emulate their secrets of success probably isn’t telling you the full truth unless they are also advising you to try your luck as a finfluencer.

– ref. FinTok and ‘finfluencers’ are on the rise: 3 tips to assess if their advice has value – https://theconversation.com/fintok-and-finfluencers-are-on-the-rise-3-tips-to-assess-if-their-advice-has-value-161406

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Chelsea Watego, Principal Research Fellow, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Unit, The University of Queensland

The SBS documentary series See What You Made Me Do aimed to spark a national conversation about criminalising coercive control. Instead it highlighted the stark power imbalances in conversations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous women.

She wasn’t being a good victim, she wasn’t standing there in the sheet dripping in blood and trying to control all this emotion that was going on with her […] she said I want my Dad, I want my Dad and they decided she couldn’t have her Dad. The two policeman, one woman and one man, they said that Tamica spat and they said, ‘That’s assault and you’re getting arrested.’

These were the words of Kathleen Pinkerton, a Widi woman from the Yamatji nation. Kathleen was describing the police treatment of her niece, Tamica Mullaley, who was a victim of domestic violence. Rather than being treated as a victim, the police treated her as an offender, which resulted in the most tragic of consequences for her baby Charlie.

The good victim

Tamica’s story was at the centre of episode two of the documentary series See What You Made Me Do, which is based on journalist Jess Hill’s book of the same name. SBS claims the documentary “is not just about making TV content, it’s about making change”.

Indeed, Hill’s aim to criminalise coercive control is part of a larger national agenda. It was the first priority set for the Queensland government’s recently established Women’s Safety and Justice Taskforce.

The taskforce and documentary both call for a carceral solution to coercive control – coercive control refers to systemic domestic violence that operates through a matrix of subtle practices including surveillance, gaslighting, financial control, and fear of potential violence.

This plan for criminalising coercive control has been met with sustained critique from a range of Indigenous women academics, activists and frontline workers. They argue such a solution would result in more Indigenous women being imprisoned than protected.

These concerns are evidenced statistically, by the staggering increases in Indigenous female incarceration. They are also shown clearly in the story of Tamica herself, who was “misidentified” as an offender by the police (which included a female officer).

In the documentary, Tamica’s tragedy is used to make a case for extending police powers and consideration of female-only police stations. Yet, her story negates the case being made by demonstrating how police-based solutions will harm Indigenous women.

This has many rightfully questioning the function of Indigenous women’s trauma in narratives constructed by carceral feminists – those who see state institutions such as police and prisons as appropriate solutions to gender based violence.

A key point we raise is the failure of this approach to understand how the state itself perpetrates abuse and coercive control over Indigenous women.

The terms of reference of the Queensland government taskforce expressly state Indigenous women should be considered as “victims and offenders.” While Indigenous women and children may be positioned in public debate as victims to lever emotional support for carceral solutions, it is clear Indigenous women are already considered potential perpetrators by the taskforce meant to protect them.

Sadly, concerns raised by Indigenous women have fallen on the deaf ears of those who claim to care. Here, we see how Indigenous women make for neither good victims nor good witnesses.

Read more: No public outrage, no vigils: Australia’s silence at violence against Indigenous women

The good witness

This was on display in Hill’s expert panel discussion that followed the airing of the final episode of See What You Made Me Do. Dr Hannah McGlade, a Noongar academic expert, lawyer and head of the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services, cogently challenged Hill’s call to criminalise coercive control.

McGlade spoke of the reality of Aboriginal people being over-policed. Hill responded by replying directly to McGlade about “what gives her heart and keeps her advocating for these laws” despite just having heard why they are deeply problematic. Later, she again responded to McGlade, telling her that actually Indigenous women advocate for the laws rejecting her claim that Aboriginal women are fearful of contacting police.

In bringing her expertise to the conversation, McGlade interrupts what was meant to be Hill’s conclusion from the three part documentary – that a “revolution” is required to save women, which includes criminalising coercive control. But the dynamics of the panel reflected the dynamics of the debate: where Indigenous women and female academics are not only not believed, but ignored and told they’re wrong.

Indigenous women, much like in Tamica’s case, are not deemed worthy of protection. In Queensland, nearly 50% of Indigenous women murdered in domestic violence contexts have previously been named by the state as perpetrators. We argue that Indigenous women are framed as a threat to be contained, whether they seek protection for themselves in domestic violence situations or for other Indigenous women in public debate.

The current dialogue around coercive control troubles white Australia’s limited understanding of who can commit violence against whom, and who can be a victim and who is a perpetrator.

Theorists such as Darumbal and South Sea Islander journalist Amy McQuire and Judith Butler, have examined who is grievable (the good victim) and who is believable (the good witness).

White Australia tends to see both white women and state agents like police as fundamentally good, and both are almost always deemed grieveable and believable.

Amy McQuire reminds us of the importance of recentering “the voice of the Black Witness”:

“Like the White Witness, the Black Witness also uses the language of war. While the White Witness uses it to stage an attack, the Black Witness will mount a defence, because it is not the White Witness’s war they want to talk about, it is the real war — the continuing resistance against an occupying force […]

While the White Witness thrives on accounts of the brutalisation of black bodies, most commonly of black women and children, the Black Witness pushes these same black women to the forefront — they are the ones with the megaphones in the centre of the Melbourne CBD — in the very heart of white, respectable space.”

When we listen to Indigenous women, it is clear they don’t necessarily want inclusion in the agendas of white women. They are insisting upon a broadening of policy development that ensures safety and justice for all women.

Indigenous women shine a light on a form of violence that carceral feminism continues to overlook. This violence is not only between the police officer (male or female) and Aboriginal women, but between the state and its citizens. It often manifests as exactly the kind of subtle entrapment Hill describes as coercive control – using isolation, surveillance, financial scrutiny, gaslighting, refusal of care and threats to children.

The problem with criminalising coercive control isn’t only a matter of poor design or of perception of deserving victims. The problem is it results in an extension of power by the state.

In Queensland, this extension of state authority justified using the same kind of framing of female trauma Hill uses in See What You Made Me Do. It follows other concerning expansions of police powers and resources in recent months.

Read more: Politics with Michelle Grattan: Linda Burney on the treatment of Indigenous Women

The Good Women

In this moment, it is Indigenous women who are refusing to aid an already authoritative state accrue more power. There is little that is revolutionary about carceral feminism. Hill herself acknowledges her calls to criminalise coercive control aim “to reform the current domestic violence law”. Yet, such a reform serves to further entrench abusive power relationships against Indigenous women.

Gomeroi Kooma woman Ruby Wharton offers the revolutionary imagining required when she speaks of decarceration and Black deaths in custody:

it’s not about doing performative things within their system, but abolishing it […] we can’t demand incarceration of police when we are dying of the same system […] as long as we walk in love we will be able to seek justice.

From Wharton, we see the kind of care so desperately needed in this conversation – in which all people are afforded care. The refusal of carceral feminists to think about care in its most inclusive sense is a refusal to “walk in love” alongside Indigenous women. This is because they exercise their virtue on the basis of an authority afforded by a racial order that exists within Australia, which privileges them above Indigenous women.

Distinguished professor Aileen Moreton-Robinson in her seminal text Talkin’ Up To The White Woman some 20 years ago concluded:

the real challenge for white feminists is to theorise the relinquishment of power so that feminist practice can contribute to changing the racial order. Until this challenge is addressed, the subject position middle-class white woman will remain centred as a site of dominance. Indigenous women will continue to resist this dominance by talkin’ up, because the invisibility of unspeakable things requires them to be spoken.

– ref. Carceral feminism and coercive control: when Indigenous women aren’t seen as ideal victims, witnesses or women – https://theconversation.com/carceral-feminism-and-coercive-control-when-indigenous-women-arent-seen-as-ideal-victims-witnesses-or-women-161091

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

In 2007 Malcolm Turnbull turned off an industry’s life support without blinking.

The industry made light bulbs, of the traditional kind — so energy-inefficient they lost most of it as heat.

“A normal light bulb is too hot to hold — that heat is wasted, and globally represents millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide that needn’t have been emitted,” he explained.

From February 2009 it became illegal to import the traditional pear-shaped globes, while from November that year it became illegal to sell them.

It was a world-first, announced by Turnbull as environment minister and sanctioned by his prime minister John Howard.

The European Union followed, and then, some years later, China.

Globally, electric lighting generated emissions equal to 70% of those from cars. Australia’s switch cut emissions by an estimated 4 million tonnes per year.

Turnbull was able to do it because Australia no longer made light globes.

There was no domestic industry — and no jobs — to protect.

Australia stopped making cars in 2017. The thousands of workers who used to assemble cars in Australia no longer have those jobs.

Which means there’s no car industry to protect.

We have the opportunity to do to traditionally-powered cars what we did to incandescent light bulbs.

And the need. We’ve all but committed ourselves to net-zero emissions by 2050.

In a landmark report released last Tuesday, the International Energy Agency said the path to net-zero by 2050 was narrow and extremely challenging, requiring governments to “take action this year and every year after so that the goal does not slip out of reach”.

Many of the 400 or so milestones it set out are challenging for Australia, among them no new coal mines or mine expansions from this year, and the closure of almost all of Australia’s coal-fired power stations by the end of this decade.

But one of the milestones ought to be easy.

It’s no new sales of internal combustion cars by 2035.

The rest of the world is racing ahead

As a step along the way, the agency wants two-thirds of all new cars sold to be petrol-free by 2030. Australia, with no vehicle production industry to care about, ought to get there sooner.

Norway has promised no new petrol car sales by 2025; Denmark, the Netherlands, Ireland and Israel by 2030; and California and the United Kingdom by 2035, a target the UK has brought forward from 2040.

In addition, the European Union is imposing manufacturer-specific emissions targets, which will force each one to either sell a greater proportion of non-petrol vehicles or make the ones they do sell much more efficient.

Read more: Costly, toxic and slow to charge? Busting electric car myths

Manufacturers are getting in early. Honda says it will sell only electric and hybrid vehicles in Europe starting in 2022, three years earlier than previously planned. Volvo says 50% of its worldwide sales will be fully electric by 2025 and the rest hybrids.

Like the transitions to colour TV, automatic car windows, automatic transmissions and transistor radios, the shift will be one way. When production lines are retooled, there will be no turning back.

Moving quickly would do more than help Prime Minister Scott Morrison produce a credible roadmap to take to Glasgow climate talks in November.

It would enable us to avoid becoming a dumping ground for the dirtier, more polluting vehicles that can’t be sold elsewhere while the changeover is underway.

Switching soon would save us money

And it would save the government money. It has just committed to pay up to A$2 billion to keep Australia’s two remaining oil refineries open until 2027.

Without the payments, Ampol might have closed Lytton in Queensland (it was weighing up doing so) and Viva Energy refinery might have closed its loss-making refinery at Geelong.

While both have accepted the money, Ampol has unveiled plans to test the production of solar-powered hydrogen on its site at Lytton and Viva Energy is planning a solar farm on its site at Geelong.

Most of Australia’s petrol is imported, much of it from Singapore, meaning little would be lost if Australia’s refineries closed.

The Australian-produced fuel is dirtier than the imported fuel, something the Australian government promised to fix this month by paying Australia’s plants to make the ultra-low sulphur petrol the rest of the world switched to years ago.

If a ban on imports of petrol-powered cars wouldn’t much hurt Australia’s reluctant refiners, it might hurt petrol stations, but not much.

Australia’s service stations are in large measure retail convenience stores. They try to maximise “basket size”. Ampol plans to turn the petrol side of the business into a recharge and refuelling network for electric and hydrogen vehicles.

Mechanics would lose jobs

The much-larger industry at risk from a switch to electric vehicles is car maintenance. The Bureau of Statistics counts 352,200 automotive and engineering trades workers, almost all of them male and full time.

That a switch to low-maintenance electric vehicles would shrink their industry is unfortunate for them, but inevitable. Propping up their industry by delaying the transition would only encourage more young people into jobs with limited futures.

When Australia switched from valve to transistor-operated TV sets in the 1970s, an army of “television repair men” was thrown out of business, along with their vans and two-way radios.

Most of them stayed in the workforce doing things we needed.

To have kept using sets requiring maintenance just to have kept them in work would have been an insult to them and us.

And while Australia’s switch away from incandescent globes was problematic (many of us liked the yellowish glow we’d become used to) the switch to electric cars is looking positively joyous.

This week Crikey pointed to a video in which the Queensland MP Bob Katter gets his first taste of a Tesla as it accelerates from zero to 100 kilometres per hour in just over three seconds.

“Yeehaw!” he yells. “This is so exciting.”

Australians usually embrace the future. At times we’ve been ahead of it.

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

– ref. Going electric and banning new petrol-powered cars could be Australia’s next big light bulb moment – https://theconversation.com/going-electric-and-banning-new-petrol-powered-cars-could-be-australias-next-big-light-bulb-moment-161431

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Lesh, Research Fellow, Melbourne School of Design, The University of Melbourne

The New South Wales government has released a discussion paper expressing its ambition to review and “modernise” the Heritage Act (1977). Announcing the review, Arts Minister Don Harwin said:

“Too often we see once cherished heritage properties experience dilapidation by neglect.”

Harwin was alluding to the troubling practice known as demolition by neglect. This is when property owners fail to maintain historic buildings in order to hasten their demise and leave no option but demolition.

So, is the review designed to crack down on this cynical exploitation of an apparent loophole in the system, paralleling recent reforms in Victoria? Probably not.

Read more: Stuck in the past: why Australian heritage practice falls short of what the public expects

One way to understand what has really prompted the review is to turn to the purpose of heritage legislation generally. Its primary stated objectives are to protect and promote heritage.

If we can all agree about what heritage is, that seems straightforward. But do we?

Another way of discovering what heritage legislation does is to ask what problems it sought to fix in the first place. This requires some historical context. We should also consider what the future role of heritage could be.

War on the demolishers

In 1825, French writer and politician Victor Hugo launched his public career with a powerful essay, War on The Demolishers. It was arguably the first major political broadside launched on behalf of architectural and urban conservation.

While Hugo’s war raged in France and Britain, it lacked a prominent Australian battleground until the mid-20th century. In Sydney, between 1971 and 1974, the Builders’ Labourers Federation famously launched a militant campaign of work bans: the Green Bans. This direct-action advocacy tool, on behalf of community groups, was then applied to places across Australia, frustrating developers.

Read more: Our cities owe much of their surviving heritage to Jack Mundey

State and Commonwealth governments mediated. The NSW Heritage Act (1977) was the new Wran Labor government’s attempt to achieve peace in this local war on the demolishers. It built on the legislative precedent set by the Victorian Liberal government in 1974.

Competing outlooks

Almost half a century later, we need to reflect on the system while charting new directions for it. The NSW discussion paper explores no less than 19 “focus questions”. Many appear to be well founded, but will be challenging to resolve all at once.

Existing legislation is not the underlying cause of all the identified concerns. Rather, authorities responsible for heritage are under-resourced and rely on dated policy and practice instruments. As well as acting on these issues, the inquiry will need to articulate a clear vision for heritage governance and management.

Embedded in the discussion paper are two overarching – but competing – outlooks for heritage. First, adopting a traditional view, the government promises to renegotiate the peace with “the demolishers”. Second, acknowledging shifting public and development attitudes, the discussion paper recognises heritage has an unrealised capacity to better respond to social, environmental, economic and cultural opportunities.

Read more: Why heritage protection is about how people use places, not just their architecture and history

In the traditional view, heritage values are always implicitly of the past. Any change to a designated place can only diminish its established aesthetic, historic and social qualities. Basically, this means legislation must act as the strongest possible barrier to materially changing places, to accrue wins for heritage against the demolishers: a zero-sum game.

In the emerging view, the value of heritage lies in its capacity to enhance places. Although historic sites and areas remain our past inheritance, the objective becomes to promote the sustainability and continuity of places and their evolving values. In this view, the law can direct change and development, as guided by public participation, design interventions and cultural values. In this way heritage policy and process can amplify the significance of places.

Confidence in conservation

Heritage is grappling with the inherent tensions between traditional and emerging views. Even if new legislation is developed, its translation into meaningful policies will prove challenging, particularly if these are still tied to traditional assumptions within governance and management.

Public confidence is paramount. Understandably, some suspect the hidden agenda of the NSW review is to fast-track development. Recent public comments by the state treasurer about the White Bay Power Station and government actions in connection with the Sirius Building, Willow Grove in Parramatta and WestConnex in Haberfield erode confidence in the protection of heritage and urban governance more broadly.

Read more: Saving Sirius: why heritage protection should include social housing

The timing of the inquiry is also curious. For more than a decade, the NSW government has been examining the antiquated structure in which Aboriginal cultural heritage is largely administered under the National Parks and Wildlife Act (1974). Instead of completing that important work, attention has prematurely shifted to the less troubling Heritage Act.

This century, Queensland and Victoria have modernised their Aboriginal heritage legislation to bring Aboriginal decision-making to the fore. The passage of standalone Aboriginal heritage legislation in NSW should be the first priority. Not only could that correct a fundamental historical failing, but it would also provide a set of policy precedents and pathways for linking up heritage policy in the state.

Read more: What kind of state values a freeway’s heritage above the heritage of our oldest living culture?

New models

Adapting heritage governance for the 21st century calls for a long-term view and substantial consultation.

Scotland, for instance, has spent much of the past decade engaging with the heritage and development sectors and the wider public about its legislation. Its Infrastructure Commission has recommended a “re-use first” principle for its assets. Moving away from the instrument of heritage listings, property owners might instead have to justify demolition against sustainability principles.

Authorities should be developing models of heritage governance that enhance public participation and the inherited environment. Heritage conservation needs to be reimagined to renew its mission as a centrepiece of aspirations towards social, environmental, economic and cultural sustainability. If our leaders and policymakers can achieve this, they might be able to declare, at least temporarily, a halt to hostilities between communities and the demolishers.

The National Trust of Australia (NSW) is holding a public forum to discuss the review on June 9 2021.

The NSW Parliament’s Standing Committee on Social Issues is accepting submissions on the review of the Heritage Act 1977 until June 27 2021.

– ref. War on the demolishers? Probably not, and timing of NSW heritage review is curious – https://theconversation.com/war-on-the-demolishers-probably-not-and-timing-of-nsw-heritage-review-is-curious-159525

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robert White, Winthrop Professor of English, The University of Western Australia

Review: John Bell, Some Achieve Greatness: Lessons on leadership from Shakespeare and one of his greatest admirers. With illustrations by Cathy Wilcox. Pantera Press, 2021.

John Bell’s new book Some Achieve Greatness is but the latest to use Shakespeare’s works to inspire and teach would-be leaders in the modern world.

In 2000 alone, two books appeared aimed at business management students: Power Plays and Shakespeare on Management. In perhaps the best of the genre, Shakespeare the Coach (2004), Australian Olympian, medical graduate, politician and hockey coach Ric Charlesworth applies the dramatist’s words to the sporting arena and people management. Naturally he devotes a chapter to motivational leadership, headed “Purpose and Persuasion”.

The new book from Bell, the actor and renowned theatre director, is both more, and less, than these. More, because it is as much a pithy “business autobiography” as instructional manual, from a man who has devoted his career to bringing Shakespeare to Australian audiences.

Read more: Guide to the classics: Shakespeare’s sonnets — an honest account of love and a surprising portal to the man himself

Bell has not only performed most of the major characters, learning their words by heart and internalising the subtleties and plural meanings, he has also directed the plays. He has shown business acumen in administering two successful theatre companies, co-founding Nimrod in 1970 (dedicated to producing Australian plays as well as Shakespeare’s), and of course, the Bell Shakespeare Company.

His name has become almost synonymous with the bard’s in our cultural life through this company and a series of scholarly editions of plays named after him. He also authored a substantial book titled On Shakespeare (2011), full of insights: the fruit of a practised actor-director’s rich and detailed experience.

And, as one of Australia’s Living Treasures, Bell has cemented his reputation by “dying” hundreds of times onstage in Shakespearean roles — like Cleopatra, he “hath such a celerity in dying”.

Reflecting on his multifaceted career, Bell applies his accumulated knowledge to recount his own leadership style as it evolved through experience. Sage advice is offered, enlivened and illustrated with pertinent quotations from speeches, which no doubt Bell can enviably recite from memory.

The book offers lessons gleaned from a Shakespeare who is seen as a natural “collaborator never a one-man band”. We find chapters on “Courage, or how to be a leader in times of crisis”, “Decisiveness, timing and tough decisions”, “Charisma, confidence and humility”, and other virtues such as integrity and humanity. These are set against dangerous managerial vices like ambition, arrogance and entitlement.

Along the way are sprinkled inspirational quotations about leadership from the likes of Abraham Lincoln, Nelson Mandela, John F. Kennedy and Michelle Obama, alongside cautionary reminders of a less savoury, more recent American president .

Read more: Friday essay: How Shakespeare helped shape Germaine Greer’s feminist masterpiece

No ideal leaders

However, Bell offers less than Charlesworth (my benchmark), in that the latter dwells more on applicable quotations than characters and dramatic context. This allows him to skirt the problem Bell faces: there are, in fact, no unflawed or ideal leaders in Shakespeare.

Although Bell ranges across the complete works, his major examples of good or bad leadership are surprisingly few in number. All are, to some extent flawed. Bell readily concedes this, since their failures are instructive. The figure who recurs in most detail is Henry V. For all his faults as a ruthless, likely war criminal, he seems to come closest to Bell’s ideal leader, at least in his rousing speeches.

Julius Caesar and Brutus emerge as ambiguous and lacking in strategical competence. Antony for all his brilliant oratory is too much the playboy who believes in his own “celebrity”, while King Lear is easy prey for sycophants and flatterers.

Naturally enough, Richard III and Macbeth as leaders are definitely not to be emulated, though there is somehow a touch of unintended humour in the homily-like way Bell warns us against using murder as a career move:

Watching the downfall of the Macbeths we have to ask ourselves: What am I prepared to pay to make it to the top of the pile? Is the reward worth my sanity, my self-respect, my relationship, my reputation, my friendships?

Who would answer yes to such a piously phrased question?

What about the women?

We have to wait for the final chapter before some women make an appearance, exemplifying such admirable qualities as adaptability and negotiating skills (Portia), integrity and plain-speaking honesty (Cordelia), and playfulness (Rosalind), although Bell sees their agency as qualified in a man’s world:

In the Comedies, women find a voice and authority by adopting a false male persona and using their wit, charm and female tenderness to lead the menfolk to an awareness of their follies and a better understanding of successful male/female coexistence and interdependence.

This book is very readable and can probably be devoured in a single sitting, though Bell might prefer us to take our time and savour at leisure the lessons taught. It also features witty and pertinent cartoons by Cathy Wilcox.

– ref. Shakespeare’s rulers and generals are all flawed, but the books on his leadership lessons keep coming – https://theconversation.com/shakespeares-rulers-and-generals-are-all-flawed-but-the-books-on-his-leadership-lessons-keep-coming-160270

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

Australia will shut its residential embassy in Afghanistan before its troops leave the country, amid concerns of an expected worsening security situation.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Foreign Minister Marise Payne said in a Tuesday statement the embassy building in the capital Kabul will be closed on Friday.

Diplomats will visit Afghanistan “regularly from a residential post elsewhere in the region.” The new arrangement “does not alter our commitment to Afghanistan or its people,” they said.

Morrison and Payne said it was “Australia’s expectation that this measure will be temporary and that we will resume a permanent presence in Kabul once circumstances permit”.

But it appears unlikely a Kabul embassy will resume.

No firm commitment has been given, nor any indication of a timetable for returning to an on-the-ground diplomatic presence in the country. There is also no expectation of the security situation in Afghanistan improving.

The government statement said,

The departure of the international forces and hence Australian forces from Afghanistan over the next few months brings with it an increasingly uncertain security environment where the government has been advised that security arrangements could not be provided to support our ongoing diplomatic presence.

The visiting diplomatic model was used between the opening of Australia’s relations with Afghanistan in 1969 until 2006 when Brett Hackett was named ambassador.

The statement said: “We will continue our 52-year bilateral diplomatic relationship with Afghanistan, building on our close friendship with the Afghan people which stretches back to the historic arrival of Afghans in South Australia in the 1830s.”

Payne visited Afghanistan earlier this month and had talks with President Ashraf Ghani. She said publicly at the time that “with the departure of the Australian Defence Force, the Australia-Afghanistan relationship is beginning a new chapter of our diplomatic relationship”.

But she made no mention in her statement at that time of closing the embassy.

The appointment of Paul Wojciechowski, Australia’s current ambassador to Afghanistan, was only announced in March.

The Australian troops will leave by September. The decision to pull the remaining 80 troops followed the US announcement that it was withdrawing its forces.

– ref. Australian embassy in Afghanistan to close its doors as security situation worsens – https://theconversation.com/australian-embassy-in-afghanistan-to-close-its-doors-as-security-situation-worsens-161499

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Patricia A. O’Brien, Visiting Fellow, School of History, Australian National University, and Adjunct Professor, Asian Studies Program, Georgetown University

New battlelines in Samoa’s ongoing political crisis were drawn this week. After an evening swearing-in ceremony on the lawn of parliament house, Samoa now has two governments claiming a mandate to rule.

What comes next will have vast ramifications for the Pacific nation, its region and for democracy globally.

On Monday May 24, Fa’atuatua I Le Atua Samoa Ua Tasi (FAST) Party members, led by Fiame Naomi Mata’afa, arrived at parliament house to be sworn into office following their one-seat election win on April 9.

They found the doors locked by order of Tuilaepa Sa’ilele Malielegaoi, who has been prime minister for the last 23 years. By late afternoon, with the building still locked, the marquee swearing-in ceremony took place outside.

This was the 45th day since the election, the last date on which the newly elected parliament could sit according to Samoa’s constitution.

A constitutional arm wrestle

The unprecedented delay was due to a series of extraordinary maneuvers aimed at keeping Tuilaepa’s Human Rights Protection Party (HRPP) in power after losing its first election in 40 years.

By forcing the clock run to out on the 45-day limit for a new parliament to convene, the HRPP would propel Samoa into uncharted constitutional waters, providing justification for another election.

The head of state, Tuimaleali’ifano Va’aleto’a Sualauvi, had declared the April 9 election results void and that a second election be held May 21. On May 17, the Supreme Court deemed that declaration illegal, upholding FAST as the victors of the vote and ordering parliament to convene on May 24.

Read more: Despite a veneer of democracy, Samoa is sliding into autocracy

Then, on May 22, the head of state abruptly announced parliament was suspended until further notice. Fiame described this latest development as a “coup”.

In response, the Supreme Court held an urgent hearing on May 23. It again overruled the head of state and ordered parliament to sit on May 24.

Court and church lend legitimacy

The makeshift swearing-in ceremony gave Fiame’s government legitimacy. The presence of the revered former head of state, Tui Atua Tupua Tamasese Ta’isi Efi, aided the optics. The current head of state, who has shocked many with his actions, was said to have left the capital, Apia, for a distant village.

Also legitimising the Fiame government’s swearing-in was the chairman of the Congregational Christian Church, Reverend Elder Iosefa Atapana Uilelea, who led the opening prayers. Until that point, the immense moral force of church leadership had not been activated to support either side.

Tuilaepa’s response at Monday night’s press conference was in character: FAST had been overtaken by “the devil”, had “mental issues needing professional help” and were akin to “the Mafia”.

More ominous was his accusing FAST of “stealing” his authority and “treason”.

Read more: Samoa’s stunning election result: on the verge of a new ruling party for the first time in 40 years

Tuilaepa’s strategy to retain power has relied on an interpretation of powers of the head of state that have no basis in law or precedent. When these moves have been blocked by the Supreme Court, he has denounced it as illegitimate and ignored its decisions.

By contrast, Fiame (who was Tuilaepa’s deputy until late 2020) and her FAST members have exhibited professionalism, restraint, and faith in Samoa’s constitution, courts and the people who put them in power.

Now, new battlelines will be drawn over which government is the legitimate one and who adjudicates that critical point. This will entail more direct confrontation between the head of state and Supreme Court, which will extend the deadlock.

How will the crisis be resolved?

Without a military, Samoa cannot resolve its crisis like neighbouring Fiji, where the army has staged multiple coups since 1987. In Samoa, the police occupy a pivotal role, but to date have acted peacefully and in accordance with the courts.

But since May 17, another factor has come into play. Samoa has attracted regional and world attention because Fiame is the first female leader of the country, and one of few in the region.

Since May 22, the world has watched Tuilaepa’s attempts to deny her power with great interest.

Samoa is a microcosm of US President Joe Biden’s recent description of the struggles between democracy and the autocratic political regimes favoured by Chinese President Xi Jinping. Samoa moved closer to China under Tuilaepa but that may now be reversed under Fiame.

So far, New Zealand’s prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, and Australia’s foreign minister, Marise Payne, have made cautious statements about their faith in Samoa’s democratic institutions.

In the coming days, New Zealand and Australia, the US, Japan, Britain, the European Union and the main regional body, the Pacific Islands Forum, must actively support Samoa’s democratically elected government in any way requested by Fiame.

Supportive words may soon be inadequate as Tuilaepa makes his next moves in what looks now like a naked power grab.

– ref. Samoan democracy hangs in the balance as a constitutional arm wrestle plays out — with the world watching – https://theconversation.com/samoan-democracy-hangs-in-the-balance-as-a-constitutional-arm-wrestle-plays-out-with-the-world-watching-161490