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

With the government facing a serious backlash over its public sector wage freeze policy, that sound you hear could be the ghost of Rob Muldoon chuckling.

As finance minister in the Holyoake government (1960-72) and later as prime minister (1975-81), he knew how tempting – and difficult – pay freezes could be.

That didn’t stop him using them, but not even he would have contemplated what the current Labour government has announced.

Targeting only public servants earning over NZ$60,000, for three years and with no apparent provision for inflation or cost of living increases, would have been anathema to Muldoon.

He wouldn’t have fancied the odds on inflation and the consumer price index staying stable for that long — or the risk of political blow-back if he got it wrong. But that’s the bet today’s government has made.

Command and control

In fact, there’s no consensus on how inflation, interest rates and capital movements will evolve over the next three years. No one wants inflation to take off, but rocketing house prices, rent increases and rising construction costs are already eroding real incomes.

Of course, Muldoon was operating in a very different economic era. He had inherited post-war legislative machinery that allowed for strict command and control of the economy — although it wasn’t popular even then.

In the late 1960s, when the then powerful Arbitration Court issued a “nil general wage order” – that is, a pay freeze – there was resistance and upheaval. Muldoon crafted legislation to make the controls more palatable.

It was a tool he would resort to again, near the end of his time as prime minister, when he introduced price and wage freezes in 1982, 1983 and 1984. Given they were one of the reasons he lost his grip on power, perhaps we should ask what other lessons might be learned from the relatively recent past.

What about other options?

Like Jacinda Ardern, Muldoon mastered the media. When challenged politically, he would take his case to the country and argue for what he said were the necessary actions.

Something similar should be easy these days, given the world is in unprecedented economic times and public debt close to 100% of global GDP. By comparison, New Zealand’s situation is relatively good. But public debt is still running at $103.3 billion, or 32.6% of GDP — an annual increase of 73%. Also thanks to COVID-19, the economy shrank by 2.9%.

Most people understand why the debt increase has been necessary, they generally don’t begrudge it, and can see the point of reducing it over time. They might also know short term pay freezes have been introduced in Britain and parts of Australia.

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

But they will also know that, compared to others, New Zealand is well placed to bounce back — at 4.7%, unemployment is relatively low, and the economy is performing better than expected.

All of which raises some obvious questions about the public sector pay freeze. Why isn’t growing our way out of debt enough? Why is New Zealand seemingly the only country locking in such long term pay-freeze plans? And why wouldn’t a small tax increase, shared equitably among all citizens for a short period, be a better option?

No safety net

Great fanfare has been made out of the “team of five million”, but only one part of the team is being asked to endure a long term pay freeze.

When Muldoon applied his controls to the economy they applied, more or less, to everyone. The 1968 general wage order covered all workers linked to union awards — at that time the vast majority.

Similarly, the wage and price freeze in the early 1980s covered everyone. Being in the public or private sector did not matter. So why the discriminatory focus in 2021?

Read more: Why now would be a good time for the Reserve Bank of New Zealand to publish stress test results for individual banks

Muldoon also used safety nets with his wage freezes. First, the restrictions were short-term measures, more like six months than three years, and he revisited and adjusted them as required.

Second, to ensure frozen wages weren’t trumped by inflation, he controlled prices, either freezing them too, or ensuring wages could rise if inflation did.

For example, the General Wage Orders Act of the late 1960s allowed the Arbitration Court to consider “living standards, so far as it is within the capacity of the economy to sustain such an adjustment”.

Lessons of history

By the early 1980s, price controls had become so extensive they included interest rates and rents. Businesses could only raise prices in exceptional circumstances.

Trouble was, it couldn’t be contained. As pressure built in different parts of the economy, controls had to be expanded in all directions.

The government should know a wage freeze – even a limited one like this – is a high risk strategy. It can go badly for those who implement it, just as much as it hurts those on the receiving end.

Furthermore, it can fail politically as much as economically. In both the historical examples used here, there were too many forces at work beyond the government’s control for a freeze to work.

Despite the best of intentions, those blunt command and control policies were ultimately washed out with the governments that introduced them.

– ref. Why NZ’s public sector wage freeze ignores the lessons of history – https://theconversation.com/why-nzs-public-sector-wage-freeze-ignores-the-lessons-of-history-160607

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Paulo de Souza, Professor, Griffith University

China’s space program is making impressive progress. The country only launched its first crewed flight in 2003, more than 40 years after the Soviet Union’s Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space. China’s first Mars mission was in 2020, half a century after the US Mariner 9 probe flew past the red planet.

But the rising Asian superpower is catching up fast: flying missions to the Moon and Mars; launching heavy-lift rockets; building a new space telescope set to fly in 2024; and, most recently, putting the first piece of the Tiangong space station (the name means Heavenly Palace) into orbit.

What is the Tiangong space station?

Tiangong is the successor to China’s Tiangong-1 and Tiangong-2 space laboratories, launched in 2011 and 2016, respectively. It will be built on a modular design, similar to the International Space Station operated by the United States, Russia, Japan, Canada and the European Space Agency. When complete, Tiangong will consist of a core module attached to two laboratories with a combined weight of nearly 70 tonnes.

The core capsule, named Tianhe (Harmony of Heavens), is about the size of a bus. Containing life support and control systems, this core will be the station’s living quarters. At 22.5 tonnes, the Tianhe capsule is the biggest and heaviest spacecraft China has ever constructed.

The capsule will be central to the space station’s future operations. In 2022, two slightly smaller modules are expected to join Tianhe to extend the space station and make it possible to carry out various scientific and technological experiments. Ultimately, the station will include 14 internal experiment racks and 50 external ports for studies of the space environment.

Tianhe will be just one-fifth the size of the International Space Station, and will host up to three crew members at a time. The first three “taikonauts” (as Chinese astronauts are often known) are expected to take up residence in June.

Read more: How to live in space: what we’ve learned from 20 years of the International Space Station

A troubled launch

Tianhe was launched from China’s Hainan island on April 29 aboard a Long March 5B rocket.

These rockets have one core stage and four boosters, each of which is nearly 28 metres tall － the height of a nine-storey building － and more than 3 metres wide. The Long March 5B weighs about 850 tonnes when fully fuelled, and can lift a 25-tonne payload into low Earth orbit.

During the Tianhe launch, the gigantic core stage of the rocket – weighing around 20 tonnes – spun out of control, eventually splashing down more than a week later in the Indian Ocean. The absence of a control system for the return of the rocket to Earth has raised criticism from the international community.

Read more: A giant piece of space junk is hurtling towards Earth. Here’s how worried you should be

However, these rockets are a key element of China’s short-term ambitions in space. They are planned to be used to deliver modules and crew to Tiangong, as well as launching exploratory probes to the Moon and eventually Mars.

Despite leaving behind an enormous hunk of space junk, Tianhe made it safely to orbit. An hour and 13 minutes after launch, its solar panels started operating and the module powered up.

Completion and future

Tianhe is now sitting in low-Earth orbit (about 400km above the ground), waiting for the first of the ten scheduled supply flights over the next 18 months that it will take to complete the Tiangong station.

A pair of experiment modules named Wentian (Quest for Heavens) and Mengtian (Dreaming of Heavens) are planned for launch in 2022. Although the station is being built by China alone, nine other nations have already signed on to fly experiments aboard Tiangong.

How to see the Tiangong space station

Tianhe is already visible with the naked eye, if you know where and when to look.

To find out when the space station might be visible from where you are, you can check websites such as n2yo.com, which show you the station’s current location and its predicted path for the next 10 days. Note that these predictions are based on models that can change quite quickly, because the space station is slowly falling in its orbit and periodically boosts itself back up to higher altitudes.

The station orbits Earth every 91 minutes. Once you find the time of the station’s next pass over your location (at night – you won’t be able to see it in the daytime), check the direction it will be coming from, find yourself a dark spot away from bright lights, and look out for a tiny, fast-moving spark of light trailing across the heavens.

– ref. China’s Tiangong space station: what it is, what it’s for, and how to see it – https://theconversation.com/chinas-tiangong-space-station-what-it-is-what-its-for-and-how-to-see-it-160456

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Smith, Associate Professor in American Politics and Foreign Policy, US Studies Centre, University of Sydney

Australia’s vaccine rollout is moving far more slowly than the government had hoped, and there is evidence of vaccine hesitancy in a significant part of the population.

Some governments and media outlets are already considering whether mandates will be needed to reach sufficient vaccine coverage.

Last year, Prime Minister Scott Morrison briefly suggested a vaccine would be mandatory before walking it back hours later.

Supply and rollout problems must clearly be solved first. But if mandates do come back on the table in the face of vaccine hesitancy, our research sheds light on how widely supported they would be.

Last year, with our research partner Pureprofile, we surveyed 1,200 Australians about whether they would take a COVID-19 vaccine when it became available. We also asked if they thought the government should make the vaccine a requirement for work, travel and study.

Our sample included 898 respondents we had previously surveyed in 2017. Back then, we asked their opinions about the safety and necessity of vaccines and whether they supported the federal government’s “No Jab, No Pay” policy, which takes away financial entitlements from vaccine refusers.

Read more: Should a COVID-19 vaccine be compulsory — and what would this mean for anti-vaxxers?

Of those who participated in both the 2017 and 2020 surveys, 88% agreed in 2017 with the statement that “vaccines are safe, necessary and effective”. Yet 30% gave a hesitant response (“maybe” or “no”) when asked in 2020 if they would take the coronavirus vaccine.

We asked all hesitant respondents why they were hesitant. Just 8% of them were “against vaccines”. Another 16% indicated they weren’t personally concerned about the coronavirus. But an overwhelming 70% had safety concerns about the vaccine because of how quickly it was being developed.

This level of vaccine hesitancy is very high by Australian standards, but it is unfortunately normal for COVID-19. Other local and international studies have also found much higher than normal hesitancy about COVID-19 vaccines, driven by a variety of factors. Despite this higher-than-usual hesitancy, a comfortable majority of Australians still want the vaccine.

Moreover, large majorities of Australians are in favour of government mandates for COVID-19 vaccines. Surprisingly, more respondents in our survey said they favoured the government making the vaccine a requirement (73%) than said they would definitely take it themselves (66%).

This is the opposite of what vaccination mandate studies usually find in the US, where there is less support for government mandates than there is for personally taking vaccines. However, it is in line with what other researchers have found about Australians during the pandemic. We have generally been highly accepting of strict government measures to control it, even if we don’t agree with them. This may also be evidence of a broader culture of rule-following.

Another crucial difference between Australians and Americans is in the political makeup of support for COVID-19 vaccines. While vaccine hesitancy in the US previously didn’t map onto party-political affiliation, it has very much done so for COVID-19.

Donald Trump’s opposition to other measures to fight the pandemic, his scepticism about the pandemic itself, and perhaps even his earlier statements about childhood vaccines seem to have caused widespread rejection of the COVID-19 vaccine among Republicans. This is in spite of the Trump administration’s significant support of vaccine development, and Trump’s own claim that he is the “father of the vaccine”.

Making vaccinations mandatory is even less popular with Republicans, and threatens to become a significant culture war issue.

Read more: Can the government, or my employer, force me to get a COVID-19 vaccine under the law?

However, in Australia, the COVID-19 vaccine and the prospect of government requirements are popular. Supporters of both the Coalition parties and Labor, which between them form every state and federal government in the country, embrace both: 72% of these major party voters say they would definitely take the vaccine, while 79% of them support requirements for it. There is no statistically significant difference between supporters of the different parties.

On the other hand, voters whose first preference would go to another party or independent were more hesitant about the vaccine and requiring it. Only 56% of them said they would definitely take the vaccine, while 61% said they would support a mandate.

Politicians from the Coalition and Labor have led Australia’s response to COVID-19, appearing alongside each other in a sometimes fractious but generally co-operative national cabinet. So perhaps it isn’t surprising that supporters of these parties also support vaccination in large numbers.

The biggest pockets of opposition are found in supporters of parties that usually don’t form government, and which challenge the major party consensus from both the left and right. It is important to emphasise that even a majority of these minor party voters would definitely take the vaccine, and would also support government requirements to do so. But we must keep in mind that vaccine hesitancy may well have an “anti-establishment” character in Australia, found among those who are less satisfied with the major parties.

We conducted our survey before any vaccine had been developed, let alone rolled out. Now that Australians have seen both the spectacular successes and rare but worrying adverse events following some brands of vaccination, should we expect them to have different views?

The market research company Ipsos undertook the only other national study we know of on attitudes to making COVID-19 vaccinations mandatory. In January, Ipsos asked whether this should be the case for those over 18, and found 54% of Australians said yes, 35% said no and 10% were unsure.

The stronger language of “mandates” and less clarity about what mandatory means in practice may have prompted less support than in our study. Comparisons to 13 other countries put Australians somewhere in the middle in terms of acceptance of mandates. The Ipsos survey, like ours, was conducted prior to the recent pivot away from AstraZeneca vaccination for under 50s.

However, a recent survey of Western Australians found much higher support when respondents were asked about a specific requirement. Some 86% of respondents said they would favour making a vaccine mandatory for anyone who wanted to travel overseas.

The authors of this piece are neither anti- nor pro- vaccine mandates. We believe in certain circumstances it is appropriate for governments to require people to be vaccinated, and we prefer this to leaving vaccine mandates to the private sector. The development of any mandatory vaccination policies should involve robust and transparent engagement with the public.

However, we believe mandates should be a policy of last resort. Well-funded and targeted public communications, easy access and incentives should come first. We are still waiting for our own eligibility to be vaccinated, so there is a long way to go.

– ref. Would Australians support mandates for the COVID-19 vaccine? Our research suggests most would – https://theconversation.com/would-australians-support-mandates-for-the-covid-19-vaccine-our-research-suggests-most-would-159919

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nicholas Fancourt, Paediatrician & Research Fellow, Menzies School of Health Research

Last week the Northern Territory (NT) government proposed legislative changes to youth justice, including tightening access to bail and diversion, particularly for re-offenders.

We expect the legislation could go through as early as today. But this tough-on-crime approach runs contrary to what we know works to reduce youth offending and keep children healthy.

Nine national and local health organisations have written an open letter to NT government ministers warning the reforms “pose a significant threat to the health and wellbeing of an already vulnerable cohort of young people”.

Evidence-based solutions recognise youth crime is not solely a justice issue: it’s also health and disability issue. If we want to reduce youth offending, there are better alternatives to this punitive approach.

The proposed changes are regressive

If passed, the legislation would reverse changes implemented following the Royal Commission into the Detention and Protection of Children in the Northern Territory, particularly around bail.

The presumption of bail will be removed for an expanded list of offences, including unlawful entry and assault of a worker (such as a support worker). There will be automatic revocation of bail for breaches, such as breaking curfew and re-offending. Police will also be able to apply electronic monitoring to children alleged to have committed a crime.

This means, for example, a child running late for curfew, or who forgot to charge an electronic monitoring device, could automatically lose bail.

Diversion, which uses community programs instead of traditional criminal justice mechanisms, will be available to a young person only once (previously, this could be used twice).

Read more: Why are so many Indigenous kids in detention in the NT in the first place?

Importantly, these changes will increase the number of youth in detention in the NT. The average rate of young people aged 10-17 in detention in the NT is 7.9 per 10,000 — already more than three times the national average.

Well over 90% of young people in detention in the NT are Indigenous Australians.

Punishment and deterrence are not effective

Evidence tells us solely punitive responses in youth justice are largely ineffective in preventing repeat offending. Military-style boot camps and “scared straight” programs (where, for example, youth are taken to prisons to see the possible consequences of their behaviour) don’t work.

Even short periods of detention, with the associated separation from culture and community, can affect a child’s psychological and physical well-being and compromise cognitive development.

Compounding the problem, detention with other young people can exacerbate bad behaviour.

Figures provided to us by the NT government show 77% of young people released from detention return within 12 months, but 64% of those who complete a diversion program do not reoffend in the same timeframe.

Trauma and neurodevelopmental disability are common

Adolescence is a period of significant development, with changes in brain structure and function. A growing body of evidence shows many young people in the justice system have experienced significant interruptions to healthy brain development.

Childhood abuse or neglect, exposure to domestic violence, or parental mental illness, can induce “toxic stress”. This affects the development of skills such as emotional regulation, reward-seeking, executive function (including flexible thinking and self-control) and threat perception.

Children exposed to multiple stressors are 20 times more likely to be imprisoned in their lifetime. Mental illness and substance use are also common issues for young offenders in Australia.

Read more: Almost every young person in WA detention has a severe brain impairment

Foetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD) is brain damage caused by exposure to alcohol before birth. A study from the Banksia Hill Detention Centre in Western Australia found 36% of 99 young people evaluated had FASD.

Some 89% of all participants had severe impairment in at least one area, such as academic achievement, attention, or language. As care providers at Don Dale Youth Detention Centre, we see this frequently in the young people we meet.

As a result of such trauma and disability, young people often have a restricted range of responses to emotional and stressful situations. They’re more likely to resort to aggression, violence, and impulsive behaviour.

So what works?

We need effective interventions that recognise the developmental stage of adolescence and respond to individual needs.

First, the system needs to promote resolution outside a formal criminal justice process. One method is Family Group Conferences, which have been successful in New Zealand.

The conferences bring together the offender, their family, the victim, police and others to discuss and make recommendations for the young person. They’re more likely to be culturally appropriate and empower families and communities, and can also benefit the victim. The Australian Law Reform Commission has recommended expanding the use of this program in Australia.

Second, we need an evidence-based, therapeutic approach to rehabilitation that recognises an individual offender’s risk factors and disability. This may mean interventions at home and school, supporting peer relationships or reducing substance use. These approaches are targeted at the child’s developmental level and address how they respond to challenges.

One such program is the Yiriman Project, which operates in the Kimberley. It uses on-country trips focused on cultural pride, safety, and regeneration for Indigenous young people.

In Spain, the Diagrama Foundation model, which provides a range of rehabilitative programs in detention, has seen repeat offending fall as low as 14%.

Read more: Don Dale royal commission demands sweeping change – is there political will to make it happen?

Punitive approaches do not address the issues driving bad behaviour. We need to see prompt assessment of all young offenders for FASD and other disabilities, ideally as soon as they enter the youth justice system. We also need to expand best-practice diversion programs. These were key findings from a recent senate inquiry into FASD and will allow responses to improve skills many of us take for granted, such as emotional regulation, developing strong relationships, and an ability to organise daily tasks.

The NT government’s regressive policies will not reduce youth crime. And instead of addressing the poor health of most youth offenders, they will expose some of the most vulnerable and marginalised young people in our society to further trauma and disadvantage.

– ref. The NT’s tough-on-crime approach won’t reduce youth offending. This is what we know works – https://theconversation.com/the-nts-tough-on-crime-approach-wont-reduce-youth-offending-this-is-what-we-know-works-160361

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Bowman, Professor of Pyrogeography and Fire Science, University of Tasmania

The Black Summer bushfires shocked the world and generated enormous global media interest. Fire scientists like myself found themselves filling a role not unlike sport commentators, explaining the unfolding drama in real time.

Scientists who engaged with the media during the crisis straddled two competing imperatives. First was their duty to share their knowledge with the community while knowing their understanding is imperfect. Second was the ethical obligation to rigorously test hypotheses against data analysis and peer review – the results of which could only be known long after the fires were out.

One area where this tension emerged was around the influential idea that logging exacerbated the bushfire disaster. During the fire crisis and in the months afterwards, some scientists suggested logging profoundly affected the fires’ severity and frequency. There were associated calls to cease native forestry and shift wood production to plantations.

But there is no scientific consensus about the possible effects of logging on fire risk. In fact, research by myself and colleagues, published in Nature Ecology and Evolution today, shows logging had little if any effect on the Black Summer bushfires. Rather, the disaster’s huge extent and severity were more likely due to unprecedented drought and sustained hot, windy weather.

These findings are significant for several reasons. Getting to the bottom of the bushfires’ cause is essential for sustainable forest management. And, more importantly, our research confirms the devastating role climate change played in the Black Summer fires.

Looking for patterns

Our research focused on 7 million hectares of mostly eucalyptus forests, from the subtropics to temperate zones, which burned between August 2019 and March 2020.

There is some evidence to suggest logged areas are more flammable that unlogged forests. Proponents of this view say logging regimes make the remaining forests hotter and drier, and leave debris on the ground that increases the fuel load.

In our research, we wanted to determine:

• the relative roles logging and other factors such as climate played in fires that destroyed or completely scorched forest canopies

• whether plantations are more vulnerable to canopy scorch than native forests.

To do so, we used landscape ecology techniques that could compare very large areas with different patterns of land use and fire severity. We sampled 32% of the area burnt in three regions spanning the geographic range of the fires.

Read more: The government has pledged over $800m to fight natural disasters. It could be revolutionary — if done right

What we found

Fire intensity is classified according to the vertical layer of vegetation burnt. A scorched tree canopy suggests the most intense type of fire, where the heat extended from the ground to the treetops.

We found several predictors of canopy damage. First, completely scorched canopy, or canopy consumed by fire, typically occurred across connected swathes of bushland. This most likely reflected instances where the fire made a “run”, driven by localised winds.

Extreme weather fire conditions were the next most important predictor of canopy damage. The drought had created vast areas of tinder-dry forests. Temperatures during the fire season were hot and westerly winds were strong.

Southeast Australia’s climate has changed, making such extreme fire weather more frequent, prolonged and severe.

Logging activity in the last 25 years consistently ranked “low” as a driver of fire severity. This makes sense for several reasons.

As noted above, fire conditions were extraordinarily extreme. And there was mismatch between the massive area burnt and the comparatively small areas commercially logged in the last 25 years (4.5% in eastern Victoria, 5.3% in southern NSW and 7.8% in northern NSW).

Fire severity is also related to landscape features: fire on ridges is generally worse than in sheltered valleys.

Our research also found timber plantations were as prone to severe fire as native forestry areas. In NSW (the worst-affected state) one-quarter of plantations burned – than 70% severely. This counteracts the suggestion using plantations, rather than logging native forest, can avoid purported fire hazards.

Read more: Australia, you have unfinished business. It’s time to let our ‘fire people’ care for this land

A challenge awaits

Our findings are deeply concerning. They signal there is no quick fix to the ongoing fire crisis afflicting Australia and other flammable landscapes.

The crisis is being driven by relentless climate change. Terrifyingly, it has the potential to turn forests from critical stores of carbon into volatile sources of carbon emissions released when vegetation burns.

Under a rapidly warming and drying climate, fuel loads are likely to become less important in determining fire extent and severity. This will make it increasingly difficult, if not impossible, to lower fuel loads in a way that will limit bushfire severity.

A massive challenge awaits. We must find socially and environmentally acceptable ways to make forests more resilient to fire while the also produce sustainable timber products, store carbon, provide water and protect biodiversity.

The next step is a real-world evaluation of management options. One idea worth exploring is whether the fire resistance of native forests can be improved in specific areas by altering tree density, vegetation structure or fuel loads, while sustaining biodiversity and amenity.

Commercial forestry could potentially do this, with significant innovation and willingness to let go of current practices.

Through collective effort, I’m confident we can sustainably manage of forests and fire. Our study is but a small step in a much bigger, zig-zagging journey of discovery.

Read more: As bushfire and holiday seasons converge, it may be time to say goodbye to the typical Australian summer holiday

– ref. New research finds native forest logging did not worsen the Black Summer bushfires – https://theconversation.com/new-research-finds-native-forest-logging-did-not-worsen-the-black-summer-bushfires-160600

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Christopher Cornwall, Rutherford Discovery Fellow, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington

The twin stress factors of ocean warming and acidification increasingly threaten coral reefs worldwide, but relatively little is known about how various climate scenarios will affect coral reef growth rates.

Our research, published today, paints a grim picture. We estimate that even under the most optimistic emissions scenarios, we’ll see dramatic reductions in coral reef growth globally. The good news is that 63% of all reefs in this emissions scenario will still be able to grow by 2100.

But if emissions continue to rise unabated, we predict 94% of coral reefs globally will be eroding by 2050. Even under an intermediate emissions scenario, we project a worst-case outcome in which coral reefs on average will no longer be able to grow vertically by 2100.

The latter scenarios would have dramatic consequences for marine biodiversity and the millions of people who depend on healthy, actively growing coral reefs for livelihoods and shoreline protection. This highlights the urgency and importance of acting now to drastically reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

Coral reefs are home to more than 830,000 species and provide coastal communities with food and income through fisheries and tourism.

The Great Barrier Reef alone contributes A$6.4 billion to the Australian economy. Critically, coral reefs also protect coastlines from storm surges and create land for many low-lying Indo-Pacific island nations.

Marine heatwaves, caused by ongoing ocean warming, have already had a severe impact on coral reef ecosystems by triggering mass bleaching events. These events are becoming more frequent and intense, and cause mass die-offs across large areas.

Ocean acidification also reduces the growth of corals by limiting their ability to build their skeletons from calcium carbonate. Together, these stressors threaten the ability of coral reefs to grow and keep up with sea level rise.

Complex impacts from ocean warming and acidification

Our understanding of how ocean warming and acidification threaten reef-forming species has improved considerably over the past decade. However, understanding how coral reef growth will be altered by climate change is more complex than simply measuring rates of change from individual taxonomic groups of corals.

Our study of 183 reefs worldwide provides the first quantitative estimate of how most of the processes that control reef growth respond to climate change and affect carbonate accumulation and growth rates.

Reefs grow by layering calcium carbonate, produced either by corals and coralline algae. The amount of calcium carbonate built by these reefs depends on many factors.

Cyclones, waves and currents can flush parts of the reef away. Acidifying ocean water means more dissolves chemically. And there is a biological carbonate exchange, known as bio-erosion. Sponges, parrotfish, sea urchins and algae can all eat it, but then return some as defecated sand.

Depending on which of these processes dominates, coral reefs either grow and accrete vertically, or they start to erode. Most of these processes vary for each reef, and almost all are affected by climate change.

Read more: The Great Barrier Reef outlook is ‘very poor’. We have one last chance to save it

To complicate matters, the frequency and intensity of marine heatwaves will vary geographically, making it difficult to estimate to what degree coral mass bleaching events will reduce coral cover.

In our research, we applied these local and global processes to 233 locations on 183 distinct coral reefs that vary in their species compositions and physical complexity. We found significant variability in responses to ocean acidification and warming.

Geographical and species variability

We predict coral mass bleaching events will have the largest impact on carbonate production across all sites. The world’s coral reefs have already been transformed dramatically by these events over the past few decades.

Read more: We just spent two weeks surveying the Great Barrier Reef. What we saw was an utter tragedy

We used the documented impacts of the 2016 mass bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef, which affected a large range of reefs with different species compositions, depths and latitudes. During this event, each reef experienced varying heat stress, which manifested in different levels of coral cover loss.

This information helped us to calibrate models to predict heat-stress events globally between now and 2100 and to gauge the future magnitudes of heat stress and their impact on our study sites.

We found currently degraded reefs fared poorly in our model, even under lower emissions scenarios. Reefs whose carbonate production was more robust against the effects of climate change tended to be those with high present-day carbonate production rates, higher contributions from coralline algae (which are also vulnerbable, but comparatively more resistant to warming than corals) and low rates of bio-erosion.

Hope for coral reefs

In higher emissions scenarios, even reefs dominated by coralline algae began to suffer as ocean acidification and warming intensified. It is also important to note that such reefs will provide different, and perhaps reduced, services compared to coral-dominated reefs because they are structurally less complex.

We did not explore in depth whether remaining coral reef communities could gain tolerance to rising temperatures over time. This could manifest as an increase in the proportional abundance of heat-tolerant species as more heat-sensitive corals die during mass bleaching events.

Surviving corals could acclimatise or even adapt. But whether these mechanisms could provide hope for the continued growth of coral reefs in the future — and if so, to what extent — is largely unknown. Nor can we say if more heat-tolerant corals could sustain similar rates of reef growth and structural complexity.

The best hope to save coral reefs and their ecological, societal and economic benefits is to reduce our carbon emissions dramatically, and quickly. Even under our projected intermediate scenarios we expect mean global erosion of coral reefs.

Under the lowest emissions scenario we examined, we expect profound changes in coral reef growth rates and their ability to provide ecosystem services. In this scenario, only some reefs will be able to keep pace with rising sea levels.

We owe it to our children and grandchildren to reduce emissions now, if we have any hope of them witnessing the majestic nature of coral reef ecosystems.

– ref. The outlook for coral reefs remains grim unless we cut emissions fast — new research – https://theconversation.com/the-outlook-for-coral-reefs-remains-grim-unless-we-cut-emissions-fast-new-research-160251

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kingsley Dixon, John Curtin Distinguished Professor, Curtin University

We all love gardens with beautiful flowers and leafy plants, choosing colourful species to plant in and around our homes. Plant scientists, however, may have fallen for the same trick in what they choose to research.

Our research, published today in Nature Plants, found there’s a clear bias among scientists toward visually striking plants. This means they’re more likely chosen for scientific study and conservation efforts, regardless of their ecological or evolutionary significance.

To our surprise, colour played a major role skewing researcher bias. White, red and pink flowers were more likely to feature in research literature than those with dull, or green and brown flowers. Blue plants — the rarest colour in nature — received most research attention.

But does this bias matter? Plants worldwide are facing mass extinction due to environmental threats such as climate change. Now, more than ever, the human-induced tide of extinction means scientists need to be more fair-handed in ensuring all species have a fighting chance at survival.

Hidden plants in carpets of wildflowers

I was part of an international team that sifted through 280 research papers from 1975 to 2020, and analysed 113 plant species found in the southwestern Alps in Europe.

The Alps is a global biodiversity hotspot and the subject of almost 200 years of intensive plant science. But climate change is now creating hotter conditions, threatening many of its rarest species.

Carpeted in snow for much of the year, the brief yet explosive flowering of Europe’s alpine flora following the thaw is a joy to behold. Who was not bewitched when Julie Andrews danced in an alpine meadow in its full spring wildflower livery in The Sound of Music? Or when she sung “edelweiss”, one of the charismatic plants of the Alps that heralds spring?

Read more: People are ‘blind’ to plants, and that’s bad news for conservation

Hidden in these carpets of bright blue gentians and Delphiniums, vibrant daisies and orchids, are tiny or dull plants. This includes small sedges (Carex species), lady’s mantle (Alchemilla species) or the snake lily (Fritillaria) with its sanguine drooping flowers on thin stems.

Many of these “uncharismatic plants” are also rare or important ecological species, yet garner little attention from scientists and the public.

The plants scientists prefer

The study asked if scientists were impartial to good-looking plants. We tested whether there was a relationship between research focus on plant species and characteristics, such as the colour, shape and prominence of species.

Along with a bias towards colourful flowers, we found accessible and conspicuous flowers were among those most studied (outside of plants required for human food or medicine).

This includes tall, prominent Delphinium and larkspurs, both well-known garden delights with well-displayed, vibrant flowers that often verge on fluorescent. Stem height also contributed to how readily a plant was researched, as it determines a plant’s ability to stand out among others. This includes tall bellflowers (Campanula species) and orchids.

But interestingly, a plant’s rarity didn’t significantly influence research attention. Charismatic orchids, for example, figured prominently despite rarer, less obvious species growing nearby, such as tiny sedges (Cypreaceae) and grass species.

The consequences of plant favouritism

This bias may steer conservation efforts away from plants that, while less visually pleasing, are more important to the health of the overall ecosystem or in need of urgent conservation.

In this time of urgent conservation, controlling our bias in plant science is critical. While the world list of threatened species (the IUCN RED List) should be the basis for guiding global plant conservation, the practice is often far from science based.

We often don’t know how important a species is until it’s thoroughly researched, and losing an unnoticed species could mean the loss of a keystone plant.

In Australia, for example, milkweeds (Asclepiadaceae) are an important food source for butterflies and caterpillars, while grassy mat rushes (dull-flowered Lomandra species) are now known to be the home for rare native sun moths. From habitats to food, these plants provide foundational ecological services, yet many milkweed and mat rush species are rare, and largely neglected in conservation research.

Read more: ‘Majestic, stunning, intriguing and bizarre’: New Guinea has 13,634 species of plants, and these are some of our favourites

Likewise, we can count on one hand the number of scientists who work on creepy fungal-like organisms called “slime molds”, compared to the platoons of scientists who work on the most glamorous of plants: the orchids.

Yet, slime molds, with their extraordinary ability to live without cell walls and to float their nuclei in a pulsating jelly of cytoplasm, could hold keys to all sorts of remarkable scientific discoveries.

We need to love our boring plants

Our study shows the need to take aesthetic biases more explicitly into consideration in science and in the choice of species studied, for the best conservation and ecological outcomes.

While our study didn’t venture into Australia, the principle holds true: we should be more vigilant in all parts of the conservation process, from the science to listing species for protection under the law. (Attractiveness bias may affect public interest here, too.)

So next time you go for a bushwalk, think about the plants you may have trodden on because they weren’t worth a second glance. They may be important to native insects, improve soil health or critical for a healthy bushland.

Read more: These 3 tips will help you create a thriving pollinator-friendly garden this winter

– ref. Nobody cares about fugly flowers. Scientists pay more attention to pretty plants – https://theconversation.com/nobody-cares-about-fugly-flowers-scientists-pay-more-attention-to-pretty-plants-160601

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Scott Davie, Lecturer in Piano, School of Music, Australian National University

In this series we pay tribute to the art we wish could visit — and hope to see once travel restrictions are lifted.

The appreciation of art is enriched through experience, and there is perhaps no greater experience than travel. But while landmark destinations, such as Carnegie Hall or Glyndebourne, are wonderful to visit, it can be paradoxical to travel for music.

Music is less tangible than other art-forms — like architecture or painting — and is often hard to pin down. Where exactly “is” music? Can it be embodied within one place? If one searches for it, where exactly does one end up?

As a classical pianist, I’ve been searching for Polish composer and piano virtuoso Frédéric Chopin since my early teens.

Read more: Performing Beethoven – what it feels like to embody a master on today’s stage

Delacroix’s portrait of Chopin

The journey began after inheriting a dog-eared volume of piano pieces which featured Eugène Delacroix’s well-known portrait of the composer on the cover. I later learned that the painting hung on the walls of the Musée de Louvre, so when I first visited Paris I searched for it.

Chopin had arrived in Paris after leaving Poland in 1830. A fierce nationalist, the failure of the November Uprising against Russian occupation meant he was unable to return. Subsequently, he made Paris his home, dying there at the tragically young age of 39.

Today, it is a challenge to see Paris as he would have known it. Some of the half-dozen homes where he lived no longer exist. This is also true of the original Salle Pleyel, where Chopin gave rare public performances. While the grand boulevards seem quintessentially Parisian, the construction of Georges-Eugène Haussmann’s elegant urban design post-dates the composer’s death.

Yet, in Chopin’s day the Louvre was already established as a museum. When I visited, I fairly much ignored the great masterpieces by Titian, Caravaggio, Vermeer, and da Vinci. At last, I found the room in which the Delacroix portrait was hung. But I was, sadly, disappointed: it had been removed for repair. My search would continue.

Winter in Majorca

Delacroix’s portrait has another story to tell. It is cut from a larger, unfinished canvas, which depicted Chopin with George Sand (the pen name of Aurore Dupin), a novelist as famed for her literary works as for wearing men’s clothing and smoking cigars. For eight years Chopin and Sand were romantically linked, yet their relationship ended acrimoniously. (Perhaps fittingly, Sand’s portion of the painting now hangs in Copenhagen.)

From Sand’s autobiographical Winter in Majorca, we have a chronicle of their four-month stay on the island of Majorca in Spain, among many valuable glimpses of the composer at the beginning of their romance. The trip to warmer climes was for Chopin’s “delicate” health, yet an unseasonably cold and wet winter likely exacerbated the tuberculosis that later killed him.

At first, the setting was idyllic, with Chopin writing joyfully in letters home about the “palms, cedars, cacti, olives, and pomegranates”. Yet the unmarried couple grew frustrated with the religious conservatism of locals and, when the composer’s ill health was assumed to be contagious, they retreated to the Carthusian Monastery at Valldemosa.

The imposing stone building is today about 25 minutes’ drive from Palma, yet in Chopin’s time the journey north through mountainous terrain was taken perilously by carriage. He described his room there as being like a cell “in the shape of a tall coffin”. According to Sand, he also believed it was haunted.

Read more: The original Love Island: how George Sand and Fryderyk Chopin put Mallorca on the romance map

Yet some of his most inspired pieces appear to have been created there, like the so-called “raindrop” prelude. Sand recounted returning to the monastery late at night, finding Chopin “pale, at the piano, wild-eyed, his hair standing almost straight up”. He imagined that he had been drowned in a lake, with the repetitive notes of the piece representing “heavy and icy raindrops” falling on his chest.

My own journey resumed when I had the opportunity to visit Majorca in my late 20s. I enjoyed better weather, with winter sunshine bringing warmth and colour. Chopin’s room itself is now a museum, and in a corner stands the fine Pleyel piano which arrived, with cruel timing, only shortly before he left.

Off his room is a long terrace which overlooks a deep valley. While imagining Chopin enjoying the view, I watched as a bank of dense mist rolled incongruously up the slope. A minute later it had enclosed me, and the place was grey and silent.

Final resting place

The relationship between Chopin and Sand dissolved after an argument over her daughter, Solange. While the couple would never again speak, Solange remained loyal until his death in 1849. Years later she recounted his final moments:

We wanted to give him a drink, but death prevented us. He passed away with his gaze fixed on me […] I could see the tarnishing in his eyes in the darkness. Oh, the soul had died too!

Appropriately, my search for Chopin concludes with a visit to the cemetery of Père Lachaise, where artist Delacroix had been among the composer’s pallbearers. After looking at the graves of Rossini, Oscar Wilde, and Jim Morrison, my companions and I looked for the final resting place of Chopin.

We walked in silence, but on finding the place — marked by a statue of the muse Euterpe weeping over a broken lyre — I asked what they’d thought of the piano music that had played in the distance. I thought that it seemed like a composition by Chopin, but couldn’t place it.

Yet they hadn’t heard a thing, and to this day I can’t account for the strange occurrence. In such a place, perhaps the mind plays tricks.

Audiences expect performers to do more than play the notes; they expect insight and personal conviction. For me, tracing Chopin’s footsteps has contributed to that conviction and, certainly, these experiences have enriched his music to me.

But, as with all travel, the urge continues. And if I could go anywhere now, I’d keep on searching.

Read more: Four Indigenous composers and a piano from colonial times — making passionate, layered, honest music together

– ref. If I could go anywhere: searching for music in the places where Chopin lived and died – https://theconversation.com/if-i-could-go-anywhere-searching-for-music-in-the-places-where-chopin-lived-and-died-157862

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anne Twomey, Professor of Constitutional Law, University of Sydney

One part of a legal challenge to the Commonwealth’s India travel ban was comprehensively defeated in the Federal Court on Monday evening.

Justice Thawley rejected all the arguments made by the applicant, Gary Newman, a 73-year-old Australian citizen who has been in India since March 2020.

Newman’s challenge was divided into two stages.

The first stage was heard and dismissed by the Federal Court on Monday. This leaves open the possibility Newman will proceed with the second stage, which is a constitutional challenge. However, there may be no time to do so, assuming that the ban is lifted on Friday 15 May, as proposed.

What arguments did Newman make and on what grounds did the judge find that they failed?

Did the minister fail to satisfy the requirements of the Act?

Newman’s first argument was the health minister (in this case, Greg Hunt) had failed to satisfy the conditions imposed in section 477 of the Biosecurity Act on the exercise of his power. It was argued Hunt had failed to consider the impact of the potential spread of COVID throughout prisons if people breached the travel ban and returned from India with COVID and were immediately placed in prison, without bail or quarantine.

Read more: Is Australia’s India travel ban legal? A citizenship law expert explains

Justice Thawley was quite dismissive of this argument suggesting there was no serious possibility this would occur.

Newman also argued the minister had not considered other less intrusive and restrictive measures. However, Justice Thawley pointed out the minister had set out some exceptions to the ban in his determination, including for medical evacuation flights and for members of Australian medical assistance teams. The minister had therefore turned his mind to how he could reduce the intrusive effect of the ban.

Another technical argument was that the law was “extraterritorial” in its application because it operated outside Australia and this was not permitted under the Biosecurity Act. But Justice Thawley rejected this, noting no offence occurred under the minister’s determination until a person actually entered into Australian territory. So it was not extraterritorial in its application.

Was there a breach of a fundamental common law right?

The second main argument by Newman was that the right of an Australian citizen to enter Australia is a fundamental common law right. This was accepted by the Commonwealth government.

It was also accepted that fundamental common law rights cannot be limited by legislation unless the parliament does so with “irresistible clearness”. This is known as the “principle of legality”. It means parliament has to take full responsibility for any restriction on fundamental common law rights, and this can only be done if it acknowledges clearly in its legislation what it is doing.

While Justice Thawley agreed this was the relevant principle, he thought it was clear the Biosecurity Act was intended to permit the restriction of fundamental common law rights, including the movement of citizens in and out of Australia. He reached this conclusion by looking at various other provisions in the Act which showed an intention to limit the movement of people into and out of Australia.

Justice Thawley also noted section 477 of the Act is deliberately drafted broadly because it was intended to deal with emergencies which could not be anticipated in their scale and effect. He noted that even though it gave a very broad power to the health minister, it could only be exercised when certain conditions were satisfied.

First, there needed to be a “human biosecurity emergency” — which requires an assessment of a severe and immediate threat or harm to human health on a nationally significant scale.

Second, section 477 includes detailed matters of which the minister must be satisfied before making a determination. This includes that it is no more restrictive or intrusive than necessary. These limitations were included to ensure that the minister’s very broad power, which included the potential to limit fundamental common law rights, is not exercised in an abusive manner.

Newman’s argument therefore failed.

What happens now?

The failure of Newman’s arguments means there are really only two practical courses left. First, there could be a separate hearing of the constitutional points. They are that (a) there is an implied constitutional right of a citizen to enter Australia; and (b) there was no constitutional power to enact section 477.

Second, there could be an appeal from Justice Thawley’s judgment on the first part of the case to the Full Federal Court.

Read more: It’s not surprising Indian-Australians feel singled out. They have long been subjected to racism

The difficulty, however, is timing. If the minister’s determination ceases to operate on May 15, as planned, then there would be no “matter” to be determined by a court, leaving the issue moot.

So it is unlikely, at this stage, that the proceedings will continue, unless the travel ban affecting citizens is extended, or a new travel ban is implemented.

– ref. Part of the legal challenge to the India travel ban has been comprehensively defeated — here’s why – https://theconversation.com/part-of-the-legal-challenge-to-the-india-travel-ban-has-been-comprehensively-defeated-heres-why-160624

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By R. Ramakumar, Professor of Economics, Tata Institute of Social Sciences

Countries around the world are racing against time to vaccinate their populations against the coronavirus.

But India has thus far been a poor performer, with only 9.6% of its population receiving a vaccine so far (compared to 51.8% in the UK, 45% in the US, 32.1% in Germany and 14.9% in Brazil).

While there are a few issues plaguing the vaccine roll out, the most egregious is the fact most Indians, many of whom live in poverty, are being made to pay for their shots. And the government is allowing vaccine producers to charge whatever they like.

Read more: After early success, India’s daily COVID infections have surpassed the US and Brazil. Why?

Not enough jabs

To cover its entire adult (over 18 years) population, India needs 1.9 billion doses of vaccines. If these vaccines were to be administered over the next 12 months, India would need 161 million doses each month, or 5.4 million doses each day.

At present, India produces only about 2.5 million doses per day, which may rise at best to three million doses per day over the next few months. At the present rate, India would be able to cover only 30% of its population by early 2022.

Only by 2023 would it be able to administer the shot to everyone above 18, which would be late, given the pace and spread of the pandemic.

How did it come to this?

There are three major reasons for this issue.

First, while many countries permitted a diverse basket of vaccines for domestic use, India limited its emergency approvals to just two — Covishield and Covaxin.

Covishield is the Indian name for the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, produced by the Serum Institute of India. Covaxin, on the other hand, was developed jointly by India’s public sector and a private company named Bharat Biotech.

The reason appears to be a belief – based on zero evidence – that the two “Made in India” vaccines would be sufficient to meet India’s domestic needs and international commitments.

Read more: India’s staggering COVID crisis could have been avoided. But the government dropped its guard too soon

For example, India could have granted emergency approval to the Russian vaccine Sputnik V, and the US-based Pfizer vaccine, in February 2021. Sputnik V was refused approval in February on the grounds that it had not supplied data on immunogenicity (immune response).

However, the same standards did not appear to have been applied to the other two vaccines – Covishield was given approval in January, even though its immunogenicity data were not yet available. Trial data from the UK, South Africa and Brazil published in The Lancet was considered adequate at the time.

Similarly, Pfizer was compelled to withdraw its application for emergency approval because the drug regulator insisted conducting a local bridging study would be necessary. However, Covaxin was given approval in January even when its Phase 3 data on efficacy were not available.

Second, the vaccine business is risky, given the amount of money that has to go into research, development, and testing, and many won’t end up being effective. Early public investments reduce risk exposure for vaccine companies and help raise their production capacities. Countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany made large at-risk investments in vaccine companies for research and capacity expansion. India failed to do so.

Third, India failed to place advance purchase orders for adequate quantities of vaccines. The first purchase order wasn’t placed until January this year. By this time, capacities of vaccine producers were already locked into other supply commitments elsewhere.

As a result, vaccination centres are being closed, and people are being turned away. In most cities, the mobile application – CoWin – used to book appointments for vaccination, isn’t allowing people to register. And even if people manage to register, appointments are not available for many months.

There is enormous public anger against the government of India for this, as well as for the serious flaws in its public health system which have been exposed by the sharp rise of infections in the second wave. This includes a lack of oxygen in hospitals and even a lack of space for funerals in crematoriums.

Read more: Why variants are most likely to blame for India’s COVID surge

Vaccine price deregulation

In April the government of India undertook a curious policy shift in its vaccine policy. It deregulated vaccine prices. Vaccine producers could “self-set” the price for their vaccines. Consequently, the two vaccine producers steeply raised the prices of vaccines by two to six times in just a week.

For the same vaccine, the government of India, state governments and private hospitals have different price tags. And the only people in India who receive the vaccine for free are healthcare and frontline workers, and those aged over 45.

The vaccine prices are now so unaffordable that informal workers are forced to spend about half of the household’s monthly salary on vaccinating all the adult members of their households. While it may only be about 800 Rupees for both doses (A$14), when a person at the poverty line may only earn around 50 Rupees (A$0.87) a day on average, this is a large portion of their monthly income. Depending on the definition, one-quarter to one-third of the Indian population is below the poverty line.

The vaccine producers lobbied hard to “free” vaccine prices. One producer said in a television interview he was hoping for “super profits”, and another said he wished the “maximum price” for his vaccine.

The government’s decision to deregulate the vaccine prices allowed “super profits” for private companies, even as an economic and humanitarian crisis was building and unemployment was rising.

Read more: As pressure builds on India’s Narendra Modi, is his government trying to silence its critics?

Predatory capitalism during human tragedy

Many commentators welcomed the new vaccine policy in the hopes increased prices would incentivise producers to increase supply. But they fail to see that vaccines are global public goods. They impart not just private benefits, but also social benefits, and so every barrier to vaccination must be minimised.

This is why most other nations, including Australia, the US, UK, Germany, France and China, are providing vaccines free of cost to all. India is an unfortunate exception to this global trend, and vaccines are now unaffordable to many.

Poor and faulty planning by the government of India has led to an acute shortage of vaccines. In the midst of the vaccine shortage, the government has effectively withdrawn from the social responsibilities of a welfare state. It has also opened the flood gates for a vulgar form of predatory capitalism to take the stage amid a raging human tragedy.

– ref. Charging Indians for COVID vaccines is bad, letting vaccine producers charge what they like is unconscionable – https://theconversation.com/charging-indians-for-covid-vaccines-is-bad-letting-vaccine-producers-charge-what-they-like-is-unconscionable-160529

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Natasha Kassam, Director, Lowy Institute’s Public Opinion and Foreign Policy Program, and Fellow, National Security College’s Futures Council, Australian National University

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on the weekend Australia’s borders will remain closed for the foreseeable future, only reopening “when it is safe to do so”. He told the Daily Telegraph:

We sit here as an island that’s living like few countries in the world are at the moment. We have to be careful not to exchange that way of life for what everyone else has.

It is true life in Australia has been unlike most places in the world for the past few months, even the past year. But what are the costs of becoming “Fortress Australia”?

As border closures have remained in effect for 15 months and counting, there are mounting concerns this is having implications for Australia’s national character. And serious questions need to be asked about the message Australia is sending to the rest of the world by shutting everyone out.

Only half of Australians say the country is more united now

There has been broad acceptance in the Australian community of stringent public health measures — including restrictions on outbound travel — as the price to pay for beating COVID-19. And almost all Australians (95%) say Australia has done a good job handling the pandemic. This stands in contrast to Australians’ view of how most other countries have handled the pandemic, especially the United States and United Kingdom.

And Australians have generally been patient about closed borders. Four in ten say they support the government’s current policies, though the same number say vaccinated Australians should be able to leave the country. Only 18% say all Australians should be able to leave the country now.

Australians have been similarly pragmatic about their fellow citizens being stranded overseas. The majority of Australians (59%) say the government has done the right amount in getting Australians home. Only a third say Australia has not done enough.

But we are split as to whether the pandemic has been a boon for national unity and social cohesion. Half of Australians say the country is more united than before the outbreak, while four in ten say the country is more divided.

For much of the world, COVID-19 may have marked the end of peak globalisation. Domestic politics around the world have centred on a growing hostility to global institutions and trade competition, which were beginning to be evident long before the pandemic.

Yet, even a pandemic borne in part by international connections hasn’t shaken Australia’s belief in globalisation. During the national lockdown in 2020, seven in ten Australians said they believed globalisation is mostly good for the country.

In addition, Australians have historically been supportive of free trade and immigration. Even during the pandemic, the vast majority of people agreed that accepting immigrants from many countries makes Australia stronger, and that multiculturalism has been good for the country.

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

Duelling images of Australia

At the same time, tough borders have always been good politics. In part, this plays off the anti-migration sentiment that exists within a minority of the country, and a bipartisan need to demonstrate national security credentials.

When WA Premier Mark McGowan said early in the pandemic, “we will be turning Western Australia into its own island, within an island – our own country”, he was rewarded mightily with some of the highest approval ratings in Australia.

So, what does it tell the world as Australia proudly projects its image as quite literally that of an island? Or is this outweighed by the soft power advantage of telling the world that we have, for all intents and purposes, defeated COVID-19?

Perhaps the answer is somewhere in between: it is a sign something has gone awry that these two propositions have become mutually exclusive.

Australians have been told by their leaders they can have safety and security from the virus while being closed off from the world, or they can open up to the world and face the same risks everyone else does.

But this stands in contrast to the open trading nation we have always portrayed ourselves to be.

Read more: Border closures, identity and political tensions: how Australia’s past pandemics shape our COVID-19 response

There are concerns Australia is also at risk of being left behind as the rest of the world gets vaccinated and back to normal.

A recent McKell Institute report says Australia’s current vaccination rate will see international border restrictions remain in place for an additional 81 days, at a cost of A$16.44 billion to the economy.

Countries that have struggled through the pandemic, meanwhile, are on track to reopen their borders thanks to their vaccination rollouts. The United Kingdom, for instance, has introduced a traffic light system for international travel and the European Union expects to resume leisure travel by June.

Isolation not the only path to success

Australians’ views on “Fortress Australia” may well have shifted in the past month. The decision to lock out Australian citizens from India as the nation was engulfed in a tragic second wave drew criticism from all sides of the political landscape. It was a rare moment of unity for both the left and the right.

These concerns have only grown as the country has learned that 9,000 Australians are stuck in India, 173 of them unaccompanied children. An Australian permanent resident has already died in India during the crisis.

Read more: It’s not surprising Indian-Australians feel singled out. They have long been subjected to racism

Isolationism is not the only pathway to pandemic success. Take Taiwan for example. It is very similar to Australia: it has a population of 24 million on an island and it has had similar success combating COVID-19, in part through strict border controls and a hotel quarantine system.

While Australia announced criminal penalties could be enforced on Australians attempting to return home from India, however, Taiwan sent a plane to New Delhi to retrieve its citizens.

And at no point have the Taiwanese been prevented from leaving their own country, or returning to it.

Australians have been vigilant for over a year and have complained little about being trapped inside the country. For their efforts, they have been able to live close to a pre-pandemic life. But with no end in sight for border closures and restrictions, that patience may be wearing thin.

– ref. ‘Fortress Australia’: what are the costs of closing ourselves off to the world? – https://theconversation.com/fortress-australia-what-are-the-costs-of-closing-ourselves-off-to-the-world-160612

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Paul Alexander, Adjunct Reseach Fellow (Supply Chains), Curtin University

“This is the one thing we didn’t want to happen.”

That line – from the satirical British current affairs television program BrassEye – could easily be reverberating through federal government offices this week.

Yesterday the news dropped that Christine Holgate, the Australia Post chief executive pushed so roughly from her job by the Morrison government, has a new job with a rival delivery company.

Holgate resigned last November, after Prime Mnister Scott Morrison told parliament she been told to stand aside over the “optics” of rewarding four senior managers with luxury watches, worth about $20,000 – and “if she doesn’t wish to do that, she can go”.

Now Holgate has gone to a new role as chief executive of parcel-delivery competitor Global Express.

Her appointment, just a week after the expiry of her non-compete clause with Australia Post, is a gift for the new owners of Global Express, a former division of well-known Australian transport company Toll Holdings that has been struggling to find profitability.

If anyone can help turn around Global Express’s fortunes in Australia’s parcel-delivery market, Holgate can. Doing so will cost Australia Post, and Australian taxpayers.

A direct competitor

Until last month Global Express was one of three divisions of Toll Group, the Australian transport company that began in Newcastle in 1888. Its business has involved express parcel, freight delivery and domestic forwarding services in Australia, and transport and contract logistics services in New Zealand.

Toll Group was taken over in 2015 by Japan Post Holdings, the publicly traded company that runs Japan’s postal service. The acquisition was part of Japan Post’s strategy to diversify into global parcel deliveries. It proved less successful than the owner hoped, however, and in April the sale of Global Express to Australian private equity company Allegro Funds was announced.

Private equity firms have a reputation for quickly improving company bottom lines by ruthlessly cutting costs and focusing on the most profitable parts of the market.

In the case of Global Express – which has trucks, planes, depots and other infrastructure worth an estimated A$1 billion – this will almost certainly mean identifying the most lucrative parts of the parcel delivery market.

This is a market in which it competes head-on with Australia Post, relying on similar logistics and delivery infrastructures. It is a market Holgate knows very well. Arguably no one in Australia knows it better.

Cherry-picking parcels

Parcel delivery was a key area of concern for Holgate after she became Australia Post’s first female chief executive in 2017. It became even more crucial in 2020, as the COVID pandemic and lockdowns led to massive surges in online shopping and thus parcel deliveries.

Holgate saw the opportunity to pivot more of Australia Post’s massive logistics processes – tied up with delivering dwindling numbers of letters – to the surging parcel delivery game.

Read more: COVID hands Australia Post opportunity to end daily delivery

All seemed on track for Australia Post to grow and prosper with Holgate at its head. Then it came unstuck due to the federal government’s political reaction to the news Holgate in 2018 authorised the luxury watches gifts as a reward to four senior executives who secured a deal worth a reported A$220 million.

The view widely held in the industry is that the bonuses were within the normal operation practices of a commercial enterprise. Indeed, if the executives rewarded the watches had been given a cash bonus instead, it probably would never have become an issue and Holgate would still be Australia Post’s chief executive.

Now Holgate takes everything she knows about parcel delivery market, and her demonstrable ability in growing businesses, to Global Express.

Read more: Vital Signs: Christine Holgate’s ‘principal’ error was applying corporate logic to Australia Post

Bad news for taxpayers

At Global Express, Holgate won’t have have to worry about a public service obligation to deliver mail to every postal address in Australia. She can say “no” to any unprofitable market segment. She can cherry-pick the most desirable business from Australia Post.

Nor will she have to worry about her board chairman taking her to task over luxury watches, or being excoriated in parliament.

It’s “game on” in the parcels business. Which is bad news for Australia Post, and ultimately Australian taxpayers.

– ref. Australia Post’s worst nightmare: Christine Holgate to head delivery rival Global Express – https://theconversation.com/australia-posts-worst-nightmare-christine-holgate-to-head-delivery-rival-global-express-160606

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Cassandra Steer, Senior Lecturer, ANU College of Law; Mission Specialist, ANU Institute for Space, Australian National University

Billionaire Jeff Bezos’s space launch company Blue Origin has announced it will sell its first flights into microgravity to the highest bidder.

Blue Origin and its two greatest competitors in the “space tourism” field, SpaceX and Virgin Galactic, claim to be advancing humanity through the “democratisation” of space. But these joyrides aren’t opening up access to space for all.

A changing landscape

At face value, the prospect of a space tourism industry is exciting.

It promises an easier path to space than the one followed by astronauts, who must go through higher education, intense training and extremely competitive selection processes. Astronauts must also have the right nationality, because few countries have access to human spaceflight programs.

In theory, the opening up of a commercial spaceflight industry should make space more accessible and democratic. But this is only partly the case; what was once the domain of only the richest countries is now an industry headed predominantly by commercial entities.

Adding to this, these companies are prepared to take more risks than government programs because they don’t have to justify their spending — or failures — to the public. Blue Origin and SpaceX have seen many explosions in past tests, yet fans watch with excitement rather than dismay.

This has pushed the rapid development of space technologies. Reusable rockets — particularly SpaceX’s Falcon 9, which just made its tenth successful launch — have reduced the cost of launching tenfold.

Besides driving down costs, reusable technology is also working to solve the problem of sustainability.

Considering sustainability

There have been thousands of launches since 1957, when the first human-made object (Sputnik I) was launched by the Soviets. Apart from Falcon 9, however, every single launch vehicle has been used once and disposed of immediately — akin to throwing away an aeroplane after one flight.

Launch numbers are increasing each year, with 114 carried out in 2020 alone. Over the weekend, the uncontrolled reentry of debris from China’s Long March 5B rocket made world news because of its sheer size and the risk of damage. It is just one example of the problems of space debris and traffic management.

Safety is a key issue for human spaceflight. Currently, there are about 3,400 operational satellites in orbit and about 128 million pieces of debris. There are are hundreds of collision risks each day, avoided by expensive and difficult manoeuvres or, if the risk is low enough, operators wait and hope for the best.

If we add more human spaceflight to this traffic, countries will need to adopt stricter requirements to de-orbit satellites at the end of their lives, so they burn up on reentry. Currently, it’s acceptable to de-orbit after 25 years, or to put a satellite into an unused orbit. But this only delays the problem for the future.

Nations will also need to implement the 2019 United Nations guidelines on the Long-term Sustainability of Activities in Outer Space.

Read more: Space can solve our looming resource crisis – but the space industry itself must be sustainable

The environmental impact of launches are another important factor. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 burns as much fuel as an average car would over 200 years, for a single launch.

On the ground there are impacts on terrain and waterways, which we have to keep in mind when building future launch sites in Australia. Launch permits currently require environmental impact statements, but these should include long-term effects and carbon footprints as well.

Keeping billionaires in check

In the coming years, it will be crucial for independent spaceflight companies to be tightly regulated.

Virgin Galactic has long advocated a “shirtsleeve” environment wherein customers can experience the luxury of spaceflight unhindered by awkward spacesuits. But the death of one of its test pilots in 2014 is evidence spaceflight remains dangerous. High altitudes and pressure require more precaution and less concern for comfort.

Although regulators such as the US Federal Aviation Administration have strict safety requirements for space tourism, pressurised spacesuits are not among them — but they should be. Also, space tourism operators can require passengers to sign legal waivers of liability, in case of accident.

And while it’s laudable SpaceX and Blue Origin are making technological leaps, there is little in their business plans that speaks to diversity, inclusivity and global accessibility. The first space tourists were all wealthy entrepreneurs.

In 2001 Dennis Tito paid his way to a seat on a Russian Soyuz rocket to visit the International Space Station (ISS). Since then, there have been eight more space tourists, each paying between US$20 million and US$30 million to fly through the Russian program.

In 2022, the Axiom crew is scheduled to fly on a SpaceX Dragon flight to the ISS. Each of the three wealthy, white, male passengers will have paid US$55 million for the privilege. Meanwhile, Blue Origin’s upcoming auction will last five weeks, the highest bidder winning a seat for a few minutes of microgravity.

Virgin Galactic’s 90-minute joyrides, also scheduled to fly as early as 2022, have already sold for US$250,000. Future tickets are expected to cost more.

A matter of time?

Of course, conventional recreational air travel was also originally for the wealthy. Early cross-continental flights in the United States costed about half the price of a new car. But technological advances and commercial competition meant by 2019 (pre-COVID) there were nearly five million people flying daily.

Perhaps it’s only a matter of time before space tourism becomes similarly accessible. Ideally, this would mean being able to fly from Sydney to London in a matter of hours.

Then again, spaceflight carries much greater risks and much greater costs than airflight, even with reusable rockets. It’s going to be a long time before these costs are driven down enough to allow the “democratisation” of space.

This is a compelling narrative which commercial spaceflight companies are eager to adopt. But there will always be a portion of society that won’t have access to this future. Indeed, as many science-fiction stories predict, human spaceflight or habitation in space may only ever be accessible to the very wealthy.

We know there are benefits to space-based technologies — from tracking climate change, to enabling global communications and health services, to learning from scientific experiments on the ISS. But when it comes to space tourism, the payback for the average person is less clear.

Read more: Yuri Gagarin’s boomerang: the tale of the first person to return from space, and his brief encounter with Aussie culture

– ref. Want to become a space tourist? You finally can — if you have $250,000 and a will to sign your life away – https://theconversation.com/want-to-become-a-space-tourist-you-finally-can-if-you-have-250-000-and-a-will-to-sign-your-life-away-160543

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexandra Baxter, PhD Candidate in Criminology/Law, researching human trafficking and modern slavery in Australia, Flinders University

Millions of kidnapped children are imprisoned in underground tunnels, being sexually abused and tortured by a shadowy global cabal of paedophiles.

That, at least, is some of the misinformation about child sex trafficking being spread on social media. You’ll also see such ideas being promoted at protests from Los Angeles to London, with hashtags such as #saveourchildren and #endchildtrafficking emblazoned on shirts and placards.

The thought of a child being abused, exploited or trafficked for sex elicits a powerful emotional response. These lurid tales have proven to be a potent gateway for mothers (and others) to “go down the rabbithole”.

The tragedy is that misinformation is turning well-intentioned people into “digital soldiers” unwittingly working against genuine efforts to eliminate child sexual abuse and human trafficking.

Let’s try to untangle the misconceptions.

The truth about child sexual abuse

Statistics on child sexual abuse are never exact. Less than 40% of victims report being abused when children. The average time before disclosure, according to Australia’s Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, is about 20 years for women and 25 years for men. Some never disclose.

There are enough robust studies, however, to suggest about one in ten children are sexually abused before age 18 – one in seven girls (14%) and one in 25 boys (4%).

Most typically the abuser is an adult known and trusted by the child and their parents. Then by a non-biological relative or in-law. In fewer than 15% of cases is the perpetrator a stranger.

A 2000 study for the US Bureau of Justice Statistics found 7.5% of all known female victims under the age of 17, and 5% of male victims, were abused by a stranger. More recent data published in 2016 by the Australian Bureau of Statistics found strangers accounted for 11.5% of sexual abuse of girls under the age of 16, and 15% of boys.

The differences between these findings are most likely due to greater awareness reducing opportunities for abuse by “acquaintances” such as clergy, teachers and coaches. In the 2000 data, to illustrate, 69% of molested boys were abused by an acquaintance; in the 2016 data it was about 47%.

Exaggerating stranger dangers

Media coverage tends to distort understanding of child sexual abuse. It focuses on “stranger danger” and amplifies the threat of children being molested at the park or shopping centre.

Even more intense coverage goes to the rarer cases where children are abducted or murdered. Think of the fascination with cases such as the 2007 disappearance of three-year-old Madeleine McCann. But such cases are memorable because they are so rare.

The so-called “Pastel-Q” conspiracy theory, however, asserts millions of children a year are being kidnapped and trafficked for sex.

Read more: How QAnon uses satanic rhetoric to set up a narrative of ‘good vs. evil’

This claim rests on misrepresented numbers from missing persons reports. In the case of the US, for example, the claim is that 800,000 children disappear each year. (A similar rate applied globally would mean about 19 million children disappear every year.)

In fact, the FBI’s data shows the number of people under the age of 17 reported missing in the US in 2020 was about 365,000. In most cases (based on the several decades’ of data) these missing reports involve a child running away from home or being taken by a custodial parent. Almost half are found within three hours, and more than 99% are found alive. Since 2010, in the US fewer than 350 people a year under the age of 21 have been abducted by strangers.

Sex trafficking in reality

So no, there’s no evidence millions of children in wealthy nations are being kidnapped by paedophiles.

This is not to say child sex trafficking isn’t a serious concern. But it is a different problem to the Pastel-Q portrayal.

The United Nations’ Trafficking in Persons Protocol defines human trafficking as:

“the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation”

This means human trafficking doesn’t necessarily require moving a person from one place to another, in the way we think of weapons and drugs being trafficked. It’s not the same as people smuggling. Nor is it exactly the same of modern slavery, although there is broad crossover in definitions.

Read more: How trafficked children are being hidden behind a focus on modern slavery

The crucial point of trafficking is the abuse of power to exploit another human being. It thrives in conditions of poverty, economic and gender inequality, corruption and instability. It requires systemic solutions, which the cartoonish constructions of Pastel-Q distract attention from.

Trafficking and modern slavery

Accurately estimating the true scale of child sex trafficking is, like child sexual abuse, complicated. There is the hidden nature of these crimes, differences in policing and reporting between nations, and little uniformity in how statistics are compiled.

The United Nations’ Global Report on Trafficking in Persons only reports on “detected” cases. There are no more than 25,000 cases each year.

But researchers have good reasons to believe this is just the tip of the iceberg. The most commonly accepted estimates of the true number of trafficking victims in the world is about 21 million. About 16 million have been trafficked for labour; about 3 million of these are aged under 18.

About 5 million are trafficked for sex – most typically by being coerced into sex work. More than 99% of sex-trafficking victims are women. More than 70% are in Asia, followed by Europe and Central Asia (14%), Africa (8%), the Americas (4%), and the Arab States (1%). About a million are aged under 18.

We must be cautious about these total estimates. Nonetheless there is sufficient research to be confident only a very small percentage of cases involve scenarios like that in the movie Taken, where Liam Neeson’s character uses his “very particular set of skills” to rescue his kidnapped 17-year-old American daughter from sex slavery.

More often, traffickers approach families living in poverty or socially and economically vulnerable girls – such as runaways – offering false promises of affection, work and a better life. Instead the girls find themselves being pressured or coerced into sex work.

This was the case with the victims of Jeffrey Epstein, whose intermediaries lured girls aged 14 to 18 with cash to perform massages, then nude massages, then sex.

Read more: Jeffrey Epstein’s arrest is the tip of the iceberg: human trafficking is the world’s fastest growing crime

How do we address this?

Child sexual abuse and child sex trafficking are both serious global problems. We should all be concerned about them.

But they can’t be divorced from the broader conditions that allow many more millions of children and adults to be trafficked and exploited as modern slaves.

They require sophisticated, holistic and broad-based legal and policy responses. They will not be tackled by misunderstanding their reality and complexity, and indulging in false narratives that divert attention from the real issues.

Which is why more than 130 anti-trafficking organisations have said anybody who lends credibility to these false claims “actively harms the fight against human trafficking”.

– ref. Want to save the children? How child sexual abuse and human trafficking really work – https://theconversation.com/want-to-save-the-children-how-child-sexual-abuse-and-human-trafficking-really-work-153288

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jennifer Juno, Senior research fellow, The Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity

Since COVID-19 vaccines began rolling out across the world, many scientists have been hesitant to say they can reduce transmission of the virus.

Their primary purpose is to prevent you from getting really sick with the virus, and it quickly became clear the vaccines are highly efficient at doing this. Efficacy against symptoms of the disease in clinical trials has ranged from 50% (Sinovac) to 95% (Pfizer/BioNTech), and similar effectiveness has been reported in the real world.

However, even the best vaccines we have are not perfect, which means some vaccinated people still end up catching the virus. We call these cases “breakthrough” infections. Indeed, between April 10 and May 1, six people in hotel quarantine in New South Wales tested positive for COVID-19, despite being fully vaccinated.

But how likely are vaccinated people to actually pass the virus on, if they do get infected? Evidence is increasing that, not only do COVID-19 vaccines either stop you getting sick or substantially reduce the severity of your symptoms, they’re also likely to substantially reduce the chance of transmitting the virus to others.

But how does this work, and what does it mean for the pandemic?

Vaccinated people are much less likely to pass on the virus

Early evidence from testing in animals, where researchers can directly study transmission, suggested immunisation with COVID-19 vaccines could prevent animals passing on the virus.

But animals are not people, and the scientific community has been waiting for more conclusive studies in humans.

In April, Public Health England reported the results of a large study of COVID-19 transmission involving more than 365,000 households with a mix of vaccinated and unvaccinated members.

It found immunisation with either the Pfizer or AstraZeneca vaccine reduced the chance of onward virus transmission by 40-60%. This means that if someone became infected after being vaccinated, they were only around half as likely to pass their infection on to others compared to infected people who weren’t vaccinated.

One study from Israel, which leads the world in coronavirus vaccinations, gives some clues about what’s behind this reduced transmission. Researchers identified nearly 5,000 cases of breakthrough infection in previously vaccinated people, and determined how much virus was present in their nose swabs. Compared to unvaccinated people, the amount of virus detected was significantly lower in those who got vaccinated.

More virus in the nose has been linked to greater infectiousness and increased risks of onward transmission.

These studies show vaccination is likely to substantially reduce virus transmission by reducing the pool of people who become infected, and reducing virus levels in the nose in people with breakthrough infections.

Why does this matter?

If COVID-19 vaccines reduce the chances of transmitting the virus, then each person who is vaccinated protects not only themselves, but also people around them. Breaking chains of transmission within the community and limiting onward spread is critical to help protect people who may respond poorly to immunisation or may not be able to get vaccinated themselves, such as children, some older people, and some people who are immunocompromised.

This also greatly increases the opportunity to achieve some degree of population (or “herd”) immunity, and a faster easing of social restrictions.

Read more: We may never achieve long-term global herd immunity for COVID. But if we’re all vaccinated, we’ll be safe from the worst

But what about the limits of vaccines?

Reducing the risk of transmitting the coronavirus relies on developing strong immunity against the virus. But immunity, even from the vaccines, fades over time. Scientists are actively monitoring people who’ve had COVID-19 vaccines to understand how long vaccine immunity is likely to last, and if and when booster shots will be required.

Read more: Why do we need booster shots, and could we mix and match different COVID vaccines?

Variants of the coronavirus are also concerning. These are strains of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that carry changes which make them harder to control by immunisation. Such variants present two major challenges: they can evade vaccine immunity and, in some cases, are also more transmissible.

Although variants have spread widely throughout the world, there are several pieces of good news on this front. Countries with advanced vaccine rollouts are maintaining good control over the virus. For example, Israel began its mass vaccination campaign during their third wave, and quickly saw a decline in new cases.

What’s more, companies like Moderna are developing updated vaccines to specifically target these variants, with positive early results.

Vaccines don’t mean we should stop preventative behaviours

Right now, the global pandemic is complex. Many countries are quickly rolling out available vaccines, and there are a wide variety of lockdowns and social measures in place.

Yet, the number of new infections each day across the world is at an all-time high and concerning variants are circulating.

As people are vaccinated, there’s a temptation to stop or reduce some important social behaviours such as mask wearing or physical distancing. But, importantly, less transmission is not no transmission.

While vaccinated individuals most likely have a smaller chance of passing on the virus, it’s still important to keep up responsible behaviours into the immediate future to protect those who have not, will not, or cannot be immunised.

– ref. Mounting evidence suggests COVID vaccines do reduce transmission. How does this work? – https://theconversation.com/mounting-evidence-suggests-covid-vaccines-do-reduce-transmission-how-does-this-work-160437

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Wesley Enoch, Inaugural Indigenous Chair – Creative Industries, Queensland University of Technology

Big thinking has been unfashionable for too long. Over the past decade, successive leaders have overseen cuts to universities, the arts and public broadcasting. There has also been a rejection of First Nations attempts to wrestle back dignity and create lasting change for the whole country.

When former arts minister George Brandis cut the Australia Council budget by $100 million in 2015 no one could predict the whopping 65 arts companies and 70% of grants to individual artists that would be lost.

In one fell swoop, the funded arts sector — and the creative imagination of the nation — shrunk.

This money was redirected away from peer assessment into funds for distribution at the discretion of the minister. After a long and consistent outcry, much was returned to the Australia Council’s peer assessment process — but grants and funding to artists from the Australia Council decreased by 19% in real terms between 2013-14 and 2019-20, and increased by $1 million in last year’s budget.

Just as the arts were recovering, COVID hit. The industry was dealt another blow with pandemic restrictions and shutdowns and lack of access to JobKeeper for our mostly freelance workforce.

Read more: The year everything got cancelled: how the arts in Australia suffered (but survived) in 2020

Career paths have been snuffed out. Although government funding belatedly arrived for some, the lack of predictability has hindered long term planning, audience development and risk taking.

Larger arts companies and their boards have become scared of upsetting policy makers, shrinking into compliance out of an instinct just to survive.

I have spent decades in the arts working as a playwright and theatre director. I have been artistic director at Kooemba Jdarra Indigenous Performing Arts, Ilbijerri, the Queensland Theatre Company and the Sydney Festival.

I think the arts are smaller, less effective and more timid because of the 2015 cuts. Australia’s arts funding suddenly felt more fragile, in the face of one individual wielding extraordinary power.

Australia as a culture is the biggest loser from all this.

Ideas in crisis

The arts aren’t the only sector of ideas struggling. The ongoing funding cuts and freezes for public broadcasting have severely hindered the ABC, especially during the dual tragedies of bushfires and COVID-19.

Our country needs the ABC. Information free from hyperbole and ideological selectivity has been a godsend.

Universities have a crucial role in honing the public role of big thinking and innovation. But they have come through the past year battered and bruised. Universities need to be supported as a place for investing in industries, ideas and cultural changes we are yet to imagine.

The successful 2020 renegotiation of the Closing The Gap strategies to give more emphasis on community controlled delivery was a milestone in self-determination and a return to logic. But we still have no recognised Voice to Parliament. And 30 years on from the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody we continue to see systemic issues unresolved or neglected.

Read more: We have 16 new Closing the Gap targets. Will governments now do what’s needed to meet them?

The issues facing the arts, public broadcasting, universities and First Nations Australians are not just a matter for funding. But in considering how they could be funded, we can have a greater discussion about who we are as a country.

Imagined futures

It is time to reinvest in the social capital of ideas.

There are jobs in new big ideas. There are economic benefits to leadership and risk taking. There is moral authority in doing the right thing.

I hope we use the cash splash of the COVID-19 recovery budget to place arts and creativity at the centre of education and community building, creating robust centres of debate, imagination, innovation and expression.

If we increased funding to the Australia Council, and to artists, storytelling could give greater voice to neglected corners of our national identity, and more citizens would see themselves reflected in the national narrative.

We should fully fund the Closing the Gap initiatives and plan for a new Constitutional Convention. We should fund domestic students in education — properly subsidising course fees and improving financial support — to build new full-time jobs, rather than piecemeal gig work and underemployment.

We should restore funding to the ABC, to ensure it can better fulfil its charter, fund greater local content and expand its digital offerings.

Deloitte Access Economics forecasts a deficit of about $87 billion for 2021-22. Culture and ideas should be as much a part of any deficit and recovery as health and infrastructure.

Read more: View from The Hill: a budget for a pandemic, with next year’s election in mind

What kind of country could we become if we encouraged — and supported — reasonable and considered thought?

Funding discomfort

Too often we think the thing that makes us uncomfortable is “wrong”.

I fear discomfort is no longer a spur to our curiosity to discover and explore new ideas. Instead, discomfort becomes a justification for the rejection of the new, the different and the other.

The arts, universities, public broadcasting and the relationship with First Nations peoples are at the frontier of the new and the important big ideas we need to embrace — and fund — to build an Australia we can be proud of.

Too often, these issues — alongside questions of equality and sustainability — seem to be on the chopping block.

I want our funding priorities to change. Australians need to play our role, too, by being informed, thoughtful and prepared to listen to evidence. We need a smarter, better informed public debate about important issues — and leaders who talk to us and answer our questions.

We will all see the benefit in a more vibrant cultural conversation.

– ref. Wesley Enoch: the 2021 budget must think big and reinvest in the social capital of ideas – https://theconversation.com/wesley-enoch-the-2021-budget-must-think-big-and-reinvest-in-the-social-capital-of-ideas-160341

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Natasha Yates, Assistant Professor, General Practice, Bond University

Australia is currently in Phase 1a and Phase 1b of the COVID vaccine rollout but as a GP, I have had many questions from patients unsure if they’re in those categories or not.

One way to find out is to use the Australian government’s eligibility checker here, or ask your GP.

Phase 1a includes quarantine and border workers, frontline health care workers, aged care and disability care staff/residents.

Read more: Vaccinating the highest-risk groups first was the plan. But people with disability are being left behind

Phase 1b includes many more categories of people, including

• healthcare workers currently employed and not included in Phase 1a
• household contacts of quarantine and border workers
• critical and high risk workers (including defence, police, fire, emergency services and meat processing)
• people aged 70 years and over
• Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people aged 50 years and over
• adults with an underlying medical condition or significant disability.

Many people are unsure if their condition qualifies as an underlying medical condition or significant disability. There is a useful factsheet on Phase 1b on the federal health department website here.

Here’s what you need to know.

What if I have asthma?

If you have mild or moderate asthma, you do not qualify under Phase 1b. The rate of severe asthma in Australia is under 4%, so most people who have asthma do not have “severe asthma” and so the vast majority don’t qualify under 1b.

If you take a high dose preventer (inhaled corticosteroid) every day and still need to use your reliever puffer (ventolin/salbutamol) more than twice a week, then that is counted as severe.

It may also be counted as severe if you cannot reduce your preventer dose without having an asthma attack — even if you currently have the right mix of medications to keep your asthma under control.

If you have other chronic lung diseases like chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, cystic fibrosis or interstitial lung disease, then you are eligible for a vaccine under Phase 1b.

What about diabetes?

Yes, diabetes is counted as a severe underlying medical condition under Phase 1b. It doesn’t matter if it is Type 1 or Type 2 diabetes — you are eligible for a jab.

Does obesity count?

Yes. Anyone with a BMI over 40 is eligible. Obesity predisposes you to a range of chronic health problems so it is considered serious enough to qualify.

What about heart disease?

It depends. If you’ve had ischaemic heart disease, valvular heart disease, cardiomyopathies and pulmonary hypertension, then you qualify under Phase 1b. It would need to be, for example, a documented heart attack or enlarged heart or clear damage to the valves. If in doubt, ask your GP.

Does high blood pressure count?

Yes, it does if it is difficult to control; so if you are on two or more medications then you are eligible under Phase 1b.

I have cancer or have had it in the past, can I get the jab yet?

It depends, but the answer may well be yes. For example, if you had breast cancer in the last five years you would be eligible. Check the list here.

What about chronic inflammatory conditions?

Some people with chronic inflammatory conditions requiring medical treatments are eligible, including systemic lupus erythematosus, rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn’s disease, and ulcerative colitis.

Usually these diseases need treatment with disease modifying anti-rheumatic drugs (DMARDs), immune-suppressive or immunomodulatory therapies.

Osetoarthritis doesn’t count.

This category is generally not inclusive of people living with osteoarthritis, fibromyalgia, myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome or similar non-immunocompromising inflammatory conditions.

Is kidney disease included?

Yes, but only if you have kidney impairment with an eGFR of <44ml/min. Ask your GP if you are not sure. Mild to moderate chronic kidney disease doesn’t count.

What about migraines?

Probably not. The chronic neurological conditions category includes stroke, dementia, multiple sclerosis, motor neurone disease, Parkinson’s disease, cerebral palsy. It’s generally not inclusive of migraine or cluster headaches.

What if I am a carer?

You might well qualify. Check the details here but many carers of people with serious medical conditions or disability will qualify. I have had many people bringing in someone they care for to be vaccinated, not realising they are also able to get the a shot under this phase of the rollout.

However, family members of people with disability who are not carers aren’t yet eligible. Carers of adults not eligible under Phases 1a or 1b are also not yet able to get the jab.

What’s next?

Phase 2a of the rollout is coming soon. That includes:

• people aged 50 years and over
• Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people aged 16-49 years
• other critical and high risk workers

After that comes Phase 2b, which is where people aged 16-49 years can be vaccinated.

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

– ref. I have asthma, diabetes or another illness — can I get my COVID vaccine yet? – https://theconversation.com/i-have-asthma-diabetes-or-another-illness-can-i-get-my-covid-vaccine-yet-160602

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Plank, Professor in Applied Mathematics, University of Canterbury

New Zealand has resumed quarantine-free travel with New South Wales today, even though the Australian state’s government has extended restrictions in greater Sydney for another week.

From New Zealand’s perspective, the fact no further community cases have been discovered gives us confidence we’re not overlooking a large hidden outbreak after all.

While a few cases might trickle in over the days ahead, provided these are linked to the cluster, they shouldn’t lead to another pause in travel.

The ban on quarantine-free travel was put in place last week in response to two new cases of COVID-19 in Sydney. It was the third time travel has been paused from a specific state, which highlights the challenges in tracking the risk of an outbreak across jurisdictions with different systems in place.

The decision to pause travel with NSW was in line with the plan New Zealand’s government set out when it announced the trans-Tasman bubble.

When a case has no clear link to the border, travel may be paused until we are confident the outbreak has been contained.

Red flags

The first Sydney case had some red flags. Although a genomic link was established with a case in a Sydney quarantine facility, there was no known contact between that person and the community case. This means there is almost certainly a missing link in the chain of transmission.

Additional risk factors include the person’s high viral load, the large number of locations they visited while infectious, and the positive result in sewage testing. Together these opened up the possibility the detected case could have been the tip of a much larger iceberg.

Read more: More than a dozen COVID leaks in 6 months: to protect Australians, it’s time to move quarantine out of city hotels

As New Zealand’s COVID-19 response minister Chris Hipkins said, the decision to hit pause was a line call. But, given the unknowns, it was a good decision to buy time for the results of contact-tracing and testing in Sydney to come in.

The Sydney case had higher risk factors than recent cases in Perth, which had also prompted a pause to quarantine-free travel.

Different states, different approaches

This highlights differences between Australian states’ responses. Western Australia has tended to be more risk-averse, and promptly announced a snap lockdown in response to a recent case with a clear link to the border.

NSW seems to have higher tolerance for risk, possibly because of higher confidence that its contact-tracing system can control outbreaks.

The principle of the trans-Tasman bubble is that New Zealand and each Australian state has to make their own decisions about when to close their borders. Once most of New Zealand’s population is vaccinated, the risk from this type of situation will be much smaller, but until then we need to maintain our strategy to keep COVID-19 out of the community.

One of the challenges of the trans-Tasman bubble is that people will move relatively quickly, which means COVID-19 can spread quickly. This makes contact-tracing all the more important, but doing this across borders is not as easy as it might seem.

Differences in contact tracing

Health authorities on each side have to share information about active cases, their movements and their contacts, all while respecting privacy regulations on both sides. A “data exchange” was trialled in three Australian states last year, but doesn’t appear to have been rolled out more broadly yet.

For Australia and New Zealand, this sharing is a manual exercise because our contact-tracing apps are not compatible with each other due to fundamental design differences. The Bluetooth protocols are different: Australia uses Herald; New Zealand uses the Apple/Google exposure notifications system. And they store data in different places.

Australia’s apps are centralised, with data going to servers controlled by health officials, protected by legislation. New Zealand’s app is decentralised, with data staying on the device until the user tests positive for COVID-19 and voluntarily provides it to contact tracers.

These differences mean we can’t easily automate the sharing of data between Australia and New Zealand, and people can’t get automatic alerts across multiple jurisdictions. But this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, because it means human contact-tracers can verify information and decide what is important enough to share. And they can provide context with the data so appropriate actions can be taken.

Read more: Closed borders, travel bans and halted immigration: 5 ways COVID-19 changed how – and where – people move around the world

This manual approach wouldn’t work as well in countries with high rates of COVID-19 because the sheer number of cases would be impossible to keep up with. But it is effective in countries like New Zealand and Australia, which are committed to stamping out COVID-19.

As we gradually open the borders and more people start to travel internationally, we will need good contact-tracing processes to give us confidence that health officials can quickly contain any outbreaks. While the vaccines are coming, we will all need to remain vigilant for a while longer.

– ref. Flights have resumed between New Zealand and NSW, but the temporary travel pause may not be the last – https://theconversation.com/flights-have-resumed-between-new-zealand-and-nsw-but-the-temporary-travel-pause-may-not-be-the-last-160539

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Georgia Atkin-Smith, Research scientist, La Trobe University

We have all heard of COVID-19, the flu and bacterial infections. But what is actually happening to our cells when we contract these diseases? Many of our body’s cells don’t live to tell the tale. But cell death isn’t necessarily a bad thing — in fact, the death of infected cells can provide a sacrificial mechanism to stop pathogens in their tracks before they can spread through our body.

Over the years, researchers have realised there are many ways for our cells to die. Our genetics contain a comprehensive “licence to die”, with the route to cell death dictated by both the type of the cell and the pathogen. Let’s check some out:

The dancing death

In the time it takes you to read this sentence, ten million cells in your body will have died, through a type of death called apoptosis. This term, coined in 1972 by Australian pathologist John Kerr, comes from the Greek phrase for “leaves falling from a tree”.

Apoptosis is the most common form of cell death, and has also been nicknamed the “dance of death”, because of the extraordinary shape changes exhibited by the cells under a microscope as they sacrifice themselves.

For example, apoptotic cells dying from radiation or infection with influenza A virus (aka, the flu) generate large, bubble-like structures on their surface called blebs, before shooting out long beaded necklace-like protrusions and finally shattering into pieces.

The death of flu-infected cells is suggested to both aid and limit viral spread. Nevertheless, it’s a spectacular event to witness (and an excellent reminder to get your flu shot this winter).

Out with a bang

Vaccinia virus is used worldwide to vaccinate against smallpox. In fact, it was the very first vaccine, developed in 1796 by Edward Jenner.

We now also know that vaccinia virus can make our cells more sensitive to a particular type of cell death, caused by a molecule called TNF. This can help prevent the disease spreading by killing off infected cells before the virus has a chance to replicate.

Many of our cells have a roughly spherical or balloon-like shape, encapsulated by a protective layer called the cell membrane. Just like bursting a balloon with a pin, puncture to the cell membrane marks the point of no return.

This process occurs during necroptosis — an explosive type of cell death in which proteins inside the cell punch holes in the membrane. The cell pops and dies, shutting down the machinery needed for viral replication.

The spider web of death

When they aren’t busy haunting our nightmares, spiders can be found weaving silken masterpieces of extraordinary detail and strength. The web of a golden orb weaving spider, for example, is strong enough to entangle small birds.

On a smaller but equally impressive scale, our immune system contains specialised cells called neutrophils that can weave a deadly web of their own and entrap bacteria. Neutrophils gallantly sacrifice themselves in the process of casting their web, in a type of cell death perhaps fittingly called NETosis.

When infected with bacteria such as Streptococcus pneumoniae, which causes pneumonia and meningitis, neutrophils eject a specialised web made from their own DNA. These webs can entangle nearby bacteria to prevent their escape until other immune cell reinforcements arrive to clear the infection. Sometimes, proteins found in these webs can also kill the bacteria – quite an impressive defence mechanism!

The last meal

Just as our bodies are compartmentalised into organs such as the stomach, liver or heart, our individual cells also have specialised compartments. One of the cell’s “stomachs” (a structure called the “autophagosome”) engulfs and digests cellular contents such as damaged molecules through the process of autophagy.

However, in some circumstances, the machinery that drives this Pac-Man-style action can also facilitate the cell’s demise. Coincidentally, the bacteria Helicobacter pylori can infect cells of the human stomach lining, called epithelial cells, which can cause ulcers and gastritis. The cells can respond with a process called autophagic cell death, in which the induction of autophagy causes the cell to die.

A fiery death

Pyromania, derived from the Greek word pyr, meaning fire, is an obsessive desire to set things ablaze. Some of our immune cells also have the ability to self-immolate and cause inflammation as part of our response to infection.

Since its relatively recent discovery in 2001, this type of cell death, called pyroptosis, has become a hot topic (sorry) among cell biologists, and is often facilitated by a molecular complex called the inflammasome.

Read more: What is autoinflammatory disease, the rare immune condition with waves of fever?

In 2021, understanding pyroptosis is more important than ever, as it has been linked to infection with SARS-CoV-2 infection, the virus that causes COVID-19.

Activation of the factors that cause pyroptosis may help explain the excessive inflammation seen in patients with severe COVID-19. And this could potentially offer a new way to combat the disease.

Overdosing on iron and fat

There’s no doubt the key to a long and healthy life is a balanced diet and exercise. However, sometimes we can’t resist the urge to devour a burger and fries with ice cream for dessert. With enough hard work, we can burn it off again. But for individual cells, overindulging can be fatal.

Too much iron and/or harmful types of fat molecules can cause cells to die by ferroptosis. Cells infected with Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the bacterium that causes TB, can increase their iron content and cause ferrototic cell death! Pass the salad, thanks.

Read more: Tick, tock… how stress speeds up your chromosomes’ ageing clock

The survival of the human body is a fine balancing act between cell growth and cell death. Understanding our cells’ complex “licence to die” could give us new ways to combat disease.

– ref. Taking one for the team: 6 ways our cells can die and help fight infectious disease – https://theconversation.com/taking-one-for-the-team-6-ways-our-cells-can-die-and-help-fight-infectious-disease-160098

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Burridge, Professor of Linguistics, Monash University

There has been much debate recently about the way women who work in our federal parliament are treated. This discussion has highlighted that society continues to place very different values on the way women and men behave.

Language – as a behaviour – holds a mirror up to these values. And changing the way we think about language is an important step toward changing the way we think about gender.

Read more: From ‘arse-ropes’ to ‘flying venom’, a history of how we have come to talk about viruses and medicine

Smoke-and-mirror fixes for folksy sneer winces

Folk wisdom provides a dizzying array of misleading accounts of how women communicate, many of them riddled with sexism. Proverbs tell us “women’s tongues are like lambs’ tails; they are never still”. But research tells us men talk and interrupt more – especially when they’re speaking to women.

It’s hard to stop the proverb and folk juggernaut once it gets started. It’s much easier to tell tales. And these are tales of linguistic problems, particularly for women in the workplace. Descriptions like “shrill”, “hysterical”, “scold”, “emotional” – the list goes on – speak to the wider truth that women’s language is policed more aggressively and condemned more readily than men’s.

British TV producer Gordon Reece reputedly mused “the selling of [former UK prime minister] Margaret Thatcher had been put back two years” with the broadcasting of Question Time, as “she had to be at her shrillest to be heard over the din”.

More recently, Donald Trump said Hillary Clinton’s raised voice made her sound “shrill” and “too much”. And, of course, closer to home, Tony Abbott called Prime Minister Julia Gillard “shrill and aggressive”. Gillard suffered an onslaught of criticism for her accent and non-standard English, whereas Bob Hawke was celebrated for his.

Australian linguist Lauren Gawne also pointed to other features condemned in Gillard’s language, including sentence-final prepositions, passive voice and over-abundant adverbs. These are all features widely used by other politicians, and indeed by English speakers generally.

Sadly, the response to linguistic judgments seems to be a desire to “fix” women’s language. All kinds of advice literature instruct on how to replace these undesirable ways of speaking and writing with better ones.

Thatcher is probably the best-known example of someone who underwent a complete linguistic makeover. She famously altered her accent and her delivery and deepened her voice by nearly half the average difference in pitch between male and female voices.

In 2015, a Gmail plug-in (Just Not Sorry) was developed largely with women in mind. Like a grammar or spell checker, it highlighted for correction such features as hedging expressions like just, I think and sorry. The development of the Just Not Sorry plug-in was well-intentioned — it emerged from a networking event at which women worried words like these made them look like pushovers.

But quick fixes like the Just Not Sorry plug-in don’t engage with the broader issue that society shouldn’t be policing women’s language. Moreover, it doesn’t stop to consider that so-called women’s conversational styles — found in many studies to be more co-operative, polite and collaborative — might lead to better outcomes in the workplace.

Baronet, King Kong and the dame in the creek: what words tell us about society

“Shrill” hints at an English lexicon that does not reflect kindly on women. A lexicon is not an inanimate beast, but rather a social one. The social beast shines through in this Australian schoolyard chant:

Boys are strong,

like King Kong,

Girls are weak,

chuck ’em in the creek.

And the Oxford English Dictionary entry for “sex” highlights the corresponding linguistic imbalance. Here women are referred to as the “weaker”, “fairer”, “gentler” and “softer” sex, while men are the “stronger”, “sterner”, “rougher” and “better sex”. However, we might mention on an optimistic note that the adjectives associated with men are now listed as “rare”.

Synonym dictionaries like thesauruses are also revealing. The entry under “woman” shows an abundance of expressions for a sexually active or available woman. Many are appallingly derogatory.

The comparable set under “man” is considerably smaller and noticeably less negative. Labels like “rake” or “womaniser” have nothing of the same pejorative sense of sexual promiscuity — there’s nothing equivalent to “whore” or “slut”.

What has given rise to this imbalance is the fact that words referring to women are unstable and typically deteriorate with time. Words like “lady” or “dame” show the mildest form of deterioration. These referred to persons in high places but then became generalised — compare the stability of the once comparable “lord” and “baronet”, and others such as “governor”, “master”, “sir” versus “governess”, “mistress”, “madam”.

Even more striking is the way words meaning simply “young woman” take on negative connotations. Some expressions even start off referring to males, but once they narrow to female application they are quick to take on overtones of sexual immorality. This is true not just of old expressions like “whore”, “slut” and “slag” — in the case of Modern English’s “bimbo” and “skank”, the changes were extremely rapid.

Sissy pricks and twatty prats: insults and gender

While we’re on the subject of asymmetries, we might also point out the vast difference in wounding capacity between insults invoking male and female sex organs. The most striking is “cunt”, meaning “nasty, malicious, despicable”, versus “prick” meaning “stupid, contemptible, annoying”.

Moreover, while “cunt” (and its gentler counterparts “twat” and “prat”) freely apply to both males and females, females are rarely, if ever, abused by “prick” and “dick”. Should women be concerned by this, you’re probably wondering? Only in that it’s indicative of a more general story. Terms for women are insulting when used of men (for example, “throws like a girl”, “old woman”, “sissy”), but there’s no real abuse if male-associated words are used of women. In fact, “she’s ballsy” was said of Thatcher in praise of her strength of character.

Language is a mirror and a lens

Our language behaviour — perhaps best illustrated by the lexicon — provides particularly clear windows into speech communities. If you’re not convinced already, consider the staggering 2,000 expressions for “wanton woman” that English has amassed over the years. This says it all really: a linguistic tell-tale of sexual double standards. Even the adjective “wanton” no longer refers to men.

These asymmetries in our language are significant, and we haven’t even started on the maledictions invoking animal terms! Language both reflects and reinforces the thoughts, attitudes and culture of the people who use it, and that’s why language matters when it comes to talking about gender.

– ref. Shrill, bossy, emotional: why language matters in the gender debate – https://theconversation.com/shrill-bossy-emotional-why-language-matters-in-the-gender-debate-158310

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anita Foerster, Senior Lecturer, Monash University

In a great start towards net zero emissions by 2050, the Victorian Government recently released their Climate Change Strategy, committing to halving greenhouse emissions by 2030.

Victoria’s leadership, alongside commitments from other Australian states and territories, stands in stark contrast to the poor climate performance of our federal government.

But is it enough? Climate scientists are urging Australia to do more to reduce emissions and to do it quicker if we’re going to avert dangerous global warming. In fact, a recent Climate Council report claims achieving net zero emissions by 2050 is at least a decade too late.

We think the Victorian government has the legal mandate to do more. But we also recognise that ambitious climate action at the state level is hindered by a lack of commitment at the federal level.

Using law to drive emissions reductions

Victoria’s new strategy was developed under the Climate Change Act 2017, state legislation requiring the government to set interim emissions reduction targets on the way to net zero by 2050.

It spreads the job of achieving these targets across the economy, with different ministers responsible for pledging emissions reductions actions and reporting on progress over time.

Laws like this are emerging around the world to set targets and hold governments accountable for delivering on them. They’re a key tool to deliver on international commitments under the Paris Agreement to limit global warming to well below 2℃.

Although Australia has set a national target for emissions reduction under the Paris Agreement, it’s widely considered to be inadequate, and there’s currently no framework climate law at the national level. Independent Zali Steggall introduced such a bill in 2020, but the Morrison government hasn’t supported it.

Victoria’s new strategy lacks detail

Victoria’s Climate Change Strategy contains many exciting climate policy announcements, including:

• renewable energy zones and big batteries in the regions

• all government operations including schools and hospitals powered by 100% renewables by 2025

• targets and subsidies for electric vehicle uptake

• commitments to support innovation in hard-to-abate sectors such as agriculture.

It also recognises the need to phase out natural gas and accelerate Victoria’s renewable hydrogen industry.

These policies are designed to reduce emissions while supporting economic growth and job creation. Yet they are scant on detail.

There’s heavy reliance on achieving emissions reductions in the energy sector — arguably, this is the low-hanging fruit. Policies in transport and agriculture are far less developed, with no quantification of targeted emissions reductions to 2030.

This makes it difficult to assess whether the sector pledges will drive enough change to achieve the government’s interim targets (ambitious or otherwise) and support a trajectory to net zero.

It has taken several years to develop the Climate Change Strategy. This makes the lack of detail and the undeveloped nature of some pledges a big concern.

There are also few safeguards in the Climate Change Act to ensure pledges add up to achieving targets, or that ministers across sectors deliver on them. Much depends on the political will of the government of the day.

Why Victoria’s targets aren’t enough

The Victorian Government proposes targets to reduce emissions by 28–33% on 2005 levels by 2025, and by 45–50% on 2005 levels by 2030.

The government claims these targets are ambitious. Compared to current federal government targets, this is true.

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

However, the target ranges are lower than those recommended in 2019 by the Independent Expert Panel, established under the Climate Change Act to advise the government on target setting.

The panel recommended targets of 32–39% by 2025 and 45–60% by 2030 as Victoria’s “fair share” contribution to limiting warming to well below 2℃ in accordance with Paris Agreement goals. And it acknowledged these recommended ranges still wouldn’t be enough to keep warming to 1.5℃, in the context of global efforts.

Ultimately, Victoria’s targets don’t match what scientists are now telling us about the importance of cutting emissions early to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

A pragmatic approach or a missed opportunity?

In setting the targets, the state government has clearly taken a politically pragmatic approach.

The government claims the targets are achievable and suggests they would’ve set more ambitious targets if the federal government made a stronger commitment to climate action.

Yes, the current lack of climate ambition at the federal level in Australia is a very real constraint on progress in some areas such as energy, where a coordinated approach is crucial. But this shouldn’t outweigh aligning to best available science.

State governments have many regulatory, policy and economic levers at their disposal, with opportunities to drive significant change and innovation. And Victoria has already demonstrated strong progress in emissions reduction and renewables in the energy sector, easily meeting and exceeding previous targets.

Under the Climate Change Act, the Victorian Government will need to set new, more ambitious targets in five years.

But waiting five years goes against Victoria’s aim to lead the nation on climate action and contribute fairly to global efforts to mitigate global warming. More ambitious, science-aligned targets now would’ve been a valuable signal for industry and a sign of real climate leadership.

We need stronger laws

Without doubt, the new Climate Change Strategy is a significant step forward on an issue that’s plagued Australian politics for years. Victoria has showed framework climate laws can drive government action on climate change.

Read more: Conservative but green independent MP Zali Steggall could break the government’s climate policy deadlock

But there are also opportunities to bolster the Climate Change Act by aligning targets to science, strengthening legal obligations to drive timely progress, and including an ongoing role for independent experts to advise on target setting and oversee progress.

Finally, it’s important to get on with the job at a federal level.

Zali Steggall’s Climate Change Bill 2020 picks up on best practice climate laws from around the world. It’s also supported by industry groups and investors.

Victoria’s experience suggests it’s surely time for Australia to take this important step.

– ref. A great start, but still not enough: why Victoria’s new climate target isn’t as ambitious as it sounds – https://theconversation.com/a-great-start-but-still-not-enough-why-victorias-new-climate-target-isnt-as-ambitious-as-it-sounds-160364

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Niranjan Casinader, Adjunct Senior Lecturer in Education, Faculty of Education, Monash University

For people who experience racism, the pain sometimes comes as much from words as it does from actions. Indigenous people like Adam Goodes and Latrell Mitchell have spoken of the hurt they feel when they’re subject to racist slurs.

Words and actions used to demean people on the basis of race or colour can be found throughout everyday society and may even be seen as innocuous. Recent government bans on Australian citizens returning from India highlight one way non-white people can be excluded from society.

Read more: It’s not surprising Indian-Australians feel singled out. They have long been subjected to racism

People of Indian or African heritage who were born in Australia or, as in my case, the United Kingdom, often face questions like, “Where are you from?” The answer is regularly met with some disbelief.

To be subject to the continual presumption that skin colour other than white is country-specific and non-Australian is humiliating, no matter how subtle it may be.

Changing how people act in terms of race and colour means changing their attitudes towards difference. Learning about the context in which racial words originated and why they are hurtful is crucial to achieving this.

Why the history of words matters

Education is an important strategy in the campaign against racist behaviour and language. Intercultural understanding is part of the Australian Curriculum and mandated by its “general capabilities” — which must be taught throughout all learning areas where appropriate.

The current curriculum review recommends a reinforcement of this intercultural understanding. The draft changes offer greater emphasis on First Nations perspectives of Australian history and more acknowledgement of Australia’s multicultural society.

Read more: Proposed new curriculum acknowledges First Nations’ view of British ‘invasion’ and a multicultural Australia

But it’s not enough to just passively incorporate such education. Changing children’s attitudes towards race and, in particular, the idea (or irrelevance) of skin colour, can be best done if they learn by experiencing the negative feelings people of different races, and with different skin, colours can feel.

This kind of education is known as “pedagogies of discomfort”. It involves teachers deliberately placing students in situations where they feel uneasy. In this way students can critically engage with difficult topics that are often unacknowledged or silenced in the classroom.

The use of challenging scenarios in education is not new. One example that has been in place for many years is the blue-eyed/brown-eyed experiment. In this scenario, students are told brown-eyed people are superior to blue-eyed people. The brown-eyed children, for a time, experience exclusion.

The roles are then switched so both groups can understand how the “minority” groups feel and how quickly prejudice can form.

More widely, Holocaust education is based on presenting current generations of children with the reality of the Holocaust in images, language and human actions, no matter how graphic.

Read more: It’s not just about the rise in anti-Semitism: why we need real stories for better Holocaust education in Australia

Similarly, understanding the history of words like “nigger” is important to empathise with the way they impact on people of colour.

Children need to learn that the word, which was used by slave owners, is derived from the African region of Niger from where many Africans were transported to the United States as slaves. Rather than calling African people by their names, slave owners used the word to dehumanise them. The word “nigger” is a derogatory term; in effect, it is historically interchangeable with “slave”.

The dilemma for teachers

Teachers find it difficult and troubling to use words like “nigger”, “Abo”, “negro” and “coon” in teaching about racism. Some teachers find it equally difficult to deal with words that might be less confrontational, such as “ape”. Research shows teachers of literature find discussing books with themes of racial or colour prejudice particularly difficult.

Australian research also indicates teachers are likely to only respond to student questions to such sensitive topics, rather than raising the issues themselves. This is partly because of the perceived difficulties about using troubling language.

In my experiences with student teachers, I’ve noticed many are reluctant to even have a discussion about how to employ examples of racist language in teaching about cultural understanding.

If teachers don’t accept the challenge of proactively educating children about racist language, young people may not understand its hurtful impact. And they may take this ignorance through into adulthood.

Teaching sensitively

Confronting topics when teaching about racism must be approached in a controlled environment. There are four main considerations to bear in mind:

1. Timing matters

The learning experience should be planned for a time in the school year when the teacher and students have built up a relationship of mutual trust. A debriefing discussion is essential.

Teaching about sensitive language is nuanced. It is more appropriate for the upper levels of primary school or in secondary school. The teacher knows their students and should be able to judge how these themes should be taught. This includes knowing if there are students in the class who may have been personally affected by the use of racist language or confronting educational scenarios.

2. Prior discussions are necessary

Teachers should discuss their plans with the appropriate school leadership so their learning intentions can be supported publicly, if necessary.

Read more: 9 tips teachers can use when talking about racism

Teachers should also have prior discussions with students who have been affected by racism and their parents. They can inform the students about the nature of the forthcoming lessons and come to an agreement with them as to their participation.

3. Teachers need personal and professional expertise

Research suggests teachers who have learned from personal and professional experiences involving “cultural displacement” are more likely to have developed the kind of expertise required to manage “pedagogies of discomfort” in cultural education. Including cultural pedagogies of discomfort in teacher education can significantly help prepare teachers to engage proactively with racist behaviours as part of their work.

Teaching kids about racism is rarely comfortable, but neither is being exposed to racial abuse. Kids need to face discomfort to truly empathise with how it feels.

– ref. To understand racism, kids must empathise with its impact — and teachers must embrace discomfort – https://theconversation.com/to-understand-racism-kids-must-empathise-with-its-impact-and-teachers-must-embrace-discomfort-144516

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

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg calls this a “pandemic budget” – one to sustain the economy in times that are still uncertain – but it also has a substantial element of an election budget.

That’s not to suggest Prime Minister Scott Morrison will rush to the polls this year. But given the election has to be held by May 21, 2022, this is likely to be the last budget of the cycle. Another could be squeezed in, as in 2019, but it would have to be brought forward from the normal time.

Last year the treasurer said budget repair and debt repayment – otherwise known as the hard and unpleasant decisions – wouldn’t be undertaken before unemployment was “comfortably” below 6%.

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

Now unemployment is 5.6% (the March figure) but Frydenberg has shifted the goal posts, so the emphasis remains on recovery, with more difficult reckonings a way off – beyond the election.

Given a grim COVID picture internationally and a long way to go with the vaccine program locally, that is sound – and also politically convenient.

In this budget, the government’s policy approach is firmly aligned with that of the Reserve Bank, with Frydenberg embracing the bank’s objective of pushing unemployment well below pre-pandemic levels, which means to a rate with a 4 in front of it.

Two central spending areas in the budget have been, in effect, imposed on the government.

It had to respond to the damning findings of the aged care royal commission. The fact most Australian COVID deaths occurred in aged care underlined how unfit for purpose the system is. Frydenberg told the ABC there will be more than $10 billion spending on aged care over the forward estimates.

The budget’s “women’s” focus — a sharp contrast to last year — has drivers that go beyond the urgent need to do more to combat violence against women, and other imperatives.

Morrison’s “women problem”, which exploded with the demonstrations following the high-profile allegations of rape, most obviously increased the attention on women in this budget, which will include a women’s statement with initiatives on health, safety, and economic security.

Also, Labor’s decision to make childcare one of its main policy pitches, promising a big spend, reinforced economic considerations pushing the government to produce its own childcare policy (which doesn’t start until July 2022).

Even in the middle of the pandemic last year, few would have thought that by now we’d still have no firm idea when our international borders will re-open.

Morrison is cautious about it, and judges that’s in line with the thinking of the Australians public at the moment. He can read those state electoral results as well as anyone — he knows people put health safety above all else.

“International borders will only open when it is safe to do so”, he said on Facebook at the weekend. “Australians are living like in few countries around the world today.”

On the other hand, the pressure for students to come, migration to resume and people to be allowed to travel must build sooner or later.

The budget’s assumptions will put the reopening in 2022, Frydenberg told the ABC at the weekend.

Read more: Frydenberg promises housing breaks in ‘pandemic budget’

Economist Saul Eslake says while keeping the country closed to the outside world is obviously not sustainable in the long run, it has, in a perverse way, some short run plusses for the government’s economic objectives.

“It’s very easy to get unemployment down when the border is closed. You only need to create 5000 new jobs a month to prevent unemployment rising.

“Previously [with migrants coming] you needed 16,000 new jobs a month. Currently we’re creating 60,000 a month,” Eslake says.

Migrants stimulate growth. But so does having Australians unable to travel overseas, Eslake says. They can only spend domestically – or save – the $55 billion they would normally be spending abroad. They appear to be spending quite a deal of it on things like home equipment, furnishings, renovations, cars, and even clothing.

While fiscal repair is formally delayed, the budget will show it is gradually, to a degree, repairing itself.

The quicker-than-expected bounce back of the labour market, which reduces welfare costs and boosts tax revenue, and the similar rebound in corporate profits, help the bottom line. Frydenberg says that, despite JobKeeper coming to an end, 105,000 people came off income support in April. High iron ore prices are also a godsend to revenue.

Chris Richardson, from Deloitte Access Economics, has forecast a deficit for this financial year of about $167 billion, compared with the December budget update figure of $198 billion. For 2021-22 , the Deloitte forecast is a deficit of about $87 billion compared with the update’s forecast of $108 billion.

Still, a balanced budget will be some years off, Richardson says.

He gives four reasons: substantial structural spending on aged care, mental health, childcare, disability and the like; low wage and price inflation (inflation helps budgets); missing migrants; and interest payments on debt (helped by low interest rates but still significant).

On what we know, the budget will be safe rather than adventurous. And while budgets can always unexpectedly trip over their own feet, and inevitably have plenty of critics, this will be the sort of benign one that doesn’t go out of its way to hurt or offend voters.

– ref. View from The Hill: a budget for a pandemic, with next year’s election in mind – https://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-a-budget-for-a-pandemic-with-next-years-election-in-mind-160594

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

Josh Frydenberg says he will bring down a “pandemic budget” on Tuesday, warning that despite Australia’s strong recovery, there is “still a great deal of uncertainty out there”.

The Treasurer points to new strains of the coronavirus, the COVID crisis raging in India, and local lockdowns. “We can’t take for granted the strong economic recovery we’ve seen. We’ve got to lock in those gains,” he said on Friday, speaking to The Conversation.

Touted as big spending, the budget will contain, besides a large reform package for aged care, significant outlays on mental health.

In measures on housing, it will increase from $30,000 to $50,000 the maximum amount of voluntary contributions aspiring home buyers can take from the First Home Super Saver Scheme.

This scheme allows people to make voluntary contributions to superannuation to save for their first home.

At present these contributions are capped at $15,000 a year and $30,000 in total.

With the rise in house prices, the current cap on the amount that can be released is a diminishing proportion of the deposit needed.

There will also be another 10,000 places added to the First Home Loan Deposit Scheme, which can only be used for new housing. This means-tested measure allows first home buyers to build a new home or buy a newly-built one with a deposit of as little as 5%.

The budget will have an “improved bottom line, particularly in 2021”, compared with the earlier forecasts, Frydenberg confirmed.

This will be thanks in large part to a stronger-than-expected labour market as well as high iron ore prices.

The aim of pushing unemployment down below 5% will be a central feature of the budget.

“There’s a historic opportunity to drive the unemployment rate back to where it was pre pandemic and even lower,” Frydenberg said.

“And that’s why in this budget, you’ll see significant investments in energy, infrastructure, skills, the digital economy and lower taxes. Strengthening our economy will lead to a stronger budget position.”

Frydenberg said the dire predictions about what would happen with the end of JobKeeper in late March had not been fulfilled. In fact fewer people had been on income support after JobKeeper ended.

“And what you’ll see is that the budget improves as a result of the labour market strength, even more so than it does as a result of the higher iron ore price, because you get lower welfare payments and you get more tax revenue coming in from people at work.”

The budget will push out the assumptions about when Australia will reopen its international border. Last October’s budget assumed the border closure easing by the latter part of this year.

– ref. Frydenberg promises housing breaks in ‘pandemic budget’ – https://theconversation.com/frydenberg-promises-housing-breaks-in-pandemic-budget-160561

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

Josh Frydenberg says he will bring down a “pandemic budget” on Tuesday, warning that despite Australia’s strong recovery, there is “still a great deal of uncertainty out there”.

The Treasurer points to new strains of the coronavirus, the COVID crisis raging in India, and local lockdowns. “We can’t take for granted the strong economic recovery we’ve seen. We’ve got to lock in those gains,” he said on Friday, speaking to The Conversation.

Touted as big spending, the budget will contain, besides a large reform package for aged care, significant outlays on mental health.

In measures on housing, it will increase from $30,000 to $50,000 the maximum amount of voluntary contributions aspiring home buyers can take from the First Home Super Saver Scheme.

This scheme allows people to make voluntary contributions to superannuation to save for their first home.

At present these contributions are capped at $15,000 a year and $30,000 in total.

With the rise in house prices, the current cap on the amount that can be released is a diminishing proportion of the deposit needed.

There will also be another 10,000 places added to the First Home Loan Deposit Scheme, which can only be used for new housing. This means-tested measure allows first home buyers to build a new home or buy a newly-built one with a deposit of as little as 5%.

The budget will have an “improved bottom line, particularly in 2021”, compared with the earlier forecasts, Frydenberg confirmed.

This will be thanks in large part to a stronger-than-expected labour market as well as high iron ore prices.

The aim of pushing unemployment down below 5% will be a central feature of the budget.

“There’s a historic opportunity to drive the unemployment rate back to where it was pre pandemic and even lower,” Frydenberg said.

“And that’s why in this budget, you’ll see significant investments in energy, infrastructure, skills, the digital economy and lower taxes. Strengthening our economy will lead to a stronger budget position.”

Frydenberg said the dire predictions about what would happen with the end of JobKeeper in late March had not been fulfilled. In fact fewer people had been on income support after JobKeeper ended.

“And what you’ll see is that the budget improves as a result of the labour market strength, even more so than it does as a result of the higher iron ore price, because you get lower welfare payments and you get more tax revenue coming in from people at work.”

The budget will push out the assumptions about when Australia will reopen its international border. Last October’s budget assumed the border closure easing by the latter part of this year.

– ref. Frydenberg says this will be a ‘pandemic budget’ to secure the recovery’ – https://theconversation.com/frydenberg-says-this-will-be-a-pandemic-budget-to-secure-the-recovery-160561

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

Ahead of the definitive official read of the economy from the treasury in the budget on Tuesday, the Reserve Bank has given us two special insights into its own thinking in the space of 14 hours.

They suggest that (first) the economy is improving, and (second) the bank is not going to let up on driving that improvement, not for anything — including concern about climbing home prices — until it has pushed unemployment down and wage growth back up to where it believes it should be.

The first insight was in Deputy Governor Guy Debelle’s Shann Memorial Lecture on Thursday night. The second was in Friday’s Statement on Monetary Policy

Growth without inflation

The statement emphasised that the although the bank expects economic growth to bounce back fairly strongly, getting inflation back within the bank’s 2-3% target band and getting wages growth up will take much longer

As the statement put it:

despite the stronger outlook for output and the labour market, inflation and wages growth are expected to remain low, picking up only gradually.

On one measure just 1.1%, the lowest on record, underlying inflation is to climb to 1.5% over the course of 2021 before gradually climbing to close to 2% by mid 2023.

It’s well short of the bank’s target of 2-3% which is only likely to be achieved with much higher wages growth driven by much deeper inroads into unemployment.

Read more: Josh Frydenberg has the opportunity to transform Australia, permanently lowering unemployment

Those inroads will be easier to achieve if COVID is firmly under control.

The bank explicitly linked its forecasts of an improving economy to an assumption that Australia’s vaccine rollout accelerates in the second half of the year. It could have added to that (but didn’t) the importance of getting purpose-built quarantine facilities up and running.

Its baseline forecast has economic growth of 4% in the year to June 2022 and 3% in the year to June 2023.

But there is a fairly wide range around its downside and upside scenarios.

Economic growth might be as low as 2.5% or as high as 5% in 2022 and as low as 2% and as high as 3% in 2023.

Similarly, the unemployment forecast is somewhere between 4.25% and 5.25% by June 2022 and in a very wide range of 3.75% and 5.5% by June 2023.

These forecasts produce below-target inflation forecasts of between 1.5% and 2% in June 2022 and 1.5% to 2.25% in June 2023.

What the bank will do to help drive the upside scenario, and what else will need to happen, was laid out by Debelle in Thursday night’s Shann Memorial Lecture.

The Debelle Doctrine

Adjectives like “seminal” are bandied about liberally these days, but for me, Debelle’s speech on Monetary Policy During COVID was a masterpiece.

He began by outlining the suite of measures the bank introduced from the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020. They involved

• cutting the cash rate to a record low of 0.25% and then cutting it again to 0.1%

• undertaking to not increase the cash rate target until the bank is confident that inflation will be sustainably within the 2–3% target band

• cutting the rate paid on private banks’ exchange settlement balances with the bank to 0.1% and then to 0.0%

• buying enough three-year government bonds to target a yield of 0.25%, later 0.1%

• guaranteeing to buy $5 billion of five-year and ten-year state and Commonwealth week-in week-out whatever the economic circumstances

• buying bonds as needed to address the “dysfunction” in the bond market

• offering banks cheap lending finance through a new term funding facility

• ensuring that the financial system has sufficient liquidity

Debelle methodically described how each of these measures are likely to flow through into economic activity.

Read more: Exclusive. Top economists back budget push for an unemployment rate beginning with ‘4’

That is, he articulated what economists call the “transmission mechanism” — how the measures work.

As an example, the following chart he provided summarises the transmission mechanism for bond purchases.

And then he delivered the setup for the punchline.

The tools the bank is using might affect all sorts of things, including house prices. But the bank plans to focus on just one thing — getting unemployment down until it gets inflation back up to its target band.

Then the punchline itself: the bank will do this even if it leads to higher house prices

there are a number of tools that can be used to address the issue. But I do not think that monetary policy is one of the tools. Monetary policy is focussed on supporting the economic recovery and achieving its goals in terms of employment and inflation

It was important to remember that while housing prices may not rise as fast without low interest rates, unemployment would definitely be materially higher without low interest rates.

Unemployment has serious consequences.

What it all means

The Debelle Doctrine is that the bank will focus on a narrow range of objectives, and will not be timid about using the tools in its arsenal to achieve them.

This may not be a seismic shift, but it is significant.

It gives the bank a much clearer focus; it gives others a much better way to judge how it is performing; and it makes clear that if the government is concerned about rising house prices, it’ll have to do something itself (perhaps by tightening the tax rules governing capital gains and negative gearing).

Debelle produced a clear, precise, and authoritative statement of what the Reserve Bank can, should, and will do.

In a word, it was gubernatorial.

– ref. Vital Signs. The RBA wants to cut unemployment, and nothing — not even soaring home prices — will stand in its way – https://theconversation.com/vital-signs-the-rba-wants-to-cut-unemployment-and-nothing-not-even-soaring-home-prices-will-stand-in-its-way-160171

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Liza-Mare Syron, Indigenous Scientia Senior Lecturer, UNSW

Review: Dogged, directed by Declan Greene. Griffin Theatre Company in association with Force Majeure.

Dingo (Sandy Greenwood, a Gumbaynggirr, Dunghutti and Bundjalung actor) stands facing the audience, dressed in a muddied tracksuit with a dingo-like mask. Her opening speech signals concern; a longing for her lost pups.

We then meet Woman (Blazey Best). Woman is of good Scottish heritage, the daughter of homesteaders and sheep graziers. She is out hunting for wild dogs. Woman is preparing a kill, ripping out a souvenir from a bloodied carcass. Her companion is Dog (Anthony Yangoyan), eager for his own reward, a taste of the kill.

In the search for her lost pups, Dingo’s path eventually intersects with Woman and Dog. Why doesn’t Woman kill Dingo? Because she is overcome by the beauty of this ancient creature and invites the Dingo to share in their spoils. Together the three characters form an unusual trio. But around them lurks a malevolent presence: a pack of men on the hunt with their own dogs.

Dogged is unruly, both in its form and content. A feminist Wake in Fright, the play is a tale of two women: one dingo and one human.

Both share a love of country.

But beware: this is not a love story.

Histories in plain sight

Dogged is co-written by Catherine Ryan and Yorta Yorta/Gunaikurnai playwright Andrea James. James describes it as “a collaboration between First Nations and Settler artists”.

The play seeks to tell both sides of the Australian story, with ideas of territory, guilt and culpability.

Set designers Renée Mulder and mural artist Peter Waples-Crowe have created an imagined isolated bush environment from an assemblage of black synthetic materials highlighted with orange brushed flames.

The ceiling is coated in low hanging plastic bags, setting a gloomy tone. The grotto-like stage establishes the opening scene of a dingo’s lair.

The trio settle in and Woman falls asleep. But Dingo can’t stay. Not while her pups are out there somewhere alone. She runs off in search of them, Dog follows. Woman wakes to their absence, and chases screaming after them. Out there in the wild, they eventually all fall foul of the evil snares set by the surrounding male hunting expedition.

It does not end well.

Now just two, hiding in the bush, Woman and Dingo look for comfort. One searches for home: to her family, the farm, and her childhood memories. Dingo, on the other hand, only sees the Brabralung people who once lived where the Woman’s farm now sits.

Dingo tells Woman the tale of the violent history of the area and the injustices perpetrated by the her ancestors against the Brabralung people. Woman can hear her. She doesn’t know why, or how, but she listens. It is a story Woman doesn’t want to believe, or can’t.

In presenting two views of the one world, Dogged asks: will settler Australians ever see the world in the same way as the original inhabitants of the country do? Will our histories remain in the dark, hidden in a cave of ignorance, existing in the shadows? Like Dingo, we see only glimpses of her truth as she sneaks by, and we ask, was that real?

The Australian wilds

The Griffin production was developed in association with Force Majeure, one of Australia’s foremost dance theatre companies, which offers the animal performances a compelling physical presence. Kirk Page’s movement direction added depth to the corporal vocabularies of these dogs. In particular, some of the stronger canine postures reminded me of the Minimba Dingo dance.

Greenwood’s performance as Dingo is consistent and engaging throughout the performance, never wavering from of her hunger or wildness. Yangoyan gives us a polished embodied depiction of Woman’s faithful and loving companion Dog, and also plays a very frightening wild hunting dog in service of the male hunting pack.

As Woman, Best seemed a bit erratic on opening night compared to the anchored performances of her canine counterparts who are given a voice in the play. Perhaps the equal weight given to the canine and human characters creates an uneasy role for Best to play.

Dogged reminds us when you venture outside of the comforts of the home, there you will encounter the beauty and truth of this land, its people and nature. Outside the confines of modernity lurk the terrors of the past.

From a distance you may see farms and swimming holes, but we see these sites differently.

Step into the wild if you dare.

Dogged is at Griffin Theatre Company until June 5.

– ref. Australia’s settler and First Nations histories meet in the wild of the bush in Dogged – https://theconversation.com/australias-settler-and-first-nations-histories-meet-in-the-wild-of-the-bush-in-dogged-160522