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

What do business and union leaders believe should be in a budget that is designed in part to pitch to women?

Jennifer Westacott, CEO of the Business Council of Australia, says as well as spending on childcare – which we already know about – the budget should improve women’s access to superannuation.

“Women have been very, very disadvantaged in that superannuation system – they are retiring with very small savings.”

“The superannuation and the childcare go hand in hand because we know that the reason many women don’t have adequate super is because they’ve taken big stints out of work and they haven’t built that savings nest egg. So those two things should be seen in tandem.”

Michele O’Neil, president of the ACTU, says for women the budget “needs to include commitments to addressing insecure work and low wages [and] to make sure that the support for early childhood education and care delivers free and universal childcare. Because this is what will matter in terms of women’s participation at work. We have a relatively low rate of women’s participation.”

“If we just increased women to the same level of participation for those key years of 25-45 as men, we’d see a $70 billion increase in GDP and a $30 billion increase in household incomes.”

Additional audio

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

– ref. Politics with Michelle Grattan: what should the budget do for women? Jennifer Westacott (BCA) and Michele O’Neil (ACTU) – https://theconversation.com/politics-with-michelle-grattan-what-should-the-budget-do-for-women-jennifer-westacott-bca-and-michele-oneil-actu-160368

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Shreya Mcleod, PhD candidate in sport-related concussion, School of Medicine and Public Health, University of Newcastle

News emerged last week that AFLW player Jacinda Barclay, who died last year at age 29 following a short period of mental illness, had abnormalities in her brain tissue.

Barclay was the first Australian contact sportswoman to have her brain donated to the Australian Sports Brain Bank, a medical laboratory that investigates changes in complex nerve structures after death, in order to understand brain conditions sustained by sportspeople.

Similar to findings seen in some male athletes internationally, the researchers found changes in Barclay’s white matter.

White matter has to do with neural connectivity in the brain. As white matter degrades, as is often seen in ageing and in diseases such as Alzheimer’s, neural connectivity diminishes, contributing to cognitive decline.

However, we don’t understand enough about this process in the brain — particularly in sportswomen.

Women’s sport is becoming more popular

Over the past decade, Australia’s elite women’s sports have experienced unprecedented growth. More than 550,000 Australian women (aged 14 and over) now play a form of football, be it soccer, Australian rules, rugby league or rugby union.

This increase in participation in contact and collision sports has seen a concurrent rise in injuries such as concussions. Concussion is a transient injury to the brain, caused by a jolt to the head or body.

Although specialised brain imaging can detect microscopic changes in the connections between brain regions, concussion is hard to detect on routine brain scans. Diagnosis typically relies on people reporting symptoms such as dizziness, confusion, unsteadiness, nausea and headaches after a collision.

Recognising when someone has suffered a concussion, removing them from the field and carefully assessing recovery are all crucial steps before they return to play.

Read more: Is the National Rugby League legally liable for the long-term impacts of concussions?

Risk factors for female athletes

Female athletes are more likely to sustain a concussion than their male counterparts.

Like males, women report a range of symptoms after a concussion, such as headaches, mental fatigue, concentration difficulties and mood swings.

Although symptoms can last longer in some people, recovery from a concussion normally takes seven to ten days for adults. Research on length of recovery is mixed but overall supports that women take longer to recover than men.

Women also perform worse on neurocognitive testing post-injury, which measures things like decision-making ability and processing.

These gender-based differences may be due to a combination of factors.

Women tend to be more aware of their symptoms and are more likely to report them, so this may account for some degree of the gap. However, under-reporting still exists.

Female athletes also generally have shorter and narrower necks, and lower head mass (their heads are smaller and less dense). These factors are associated with lower neck strength. Neck strength is a protective factor against concussion, so women may be more susceptible for this reason.

Further, female brains metabolise glucose (sugar) and oxygen faster than male brains. If a head injury temporarily disrupts blood supply to the brain, it could have a greater effect on the faster nutrient-burning female brain.

Meanwhile, sex hormones such as progesterone that vary across a women’s menstrual cycle could also affect outcomes after a concussion. Concussions sustained during the follicular phase (after menstruation, before ovulation) are less likely to lead to symptoms a month later, whereas injuries in the luteal phase (after ovulation, before menstruation) result in poorer outcomes.

Although we don’t fully understand why, concussion outcomes appear to be worse when progesterone levels are high. However, these effects may be negated when women take the contraceptive pill.

Despite these differences, women are an understudied population when it comes to concussion, resulting in a lack of gender-specific treatment guidelines.

Read more: What does concussion do to the brain?

Repeated concussions and long-term risk: a complex area

In the context of long-term brain injury and sport, we’ve perhaps most often heard about a condition called chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).

Male former AFL players Danny Frawley and Shane Tuck were both diagnosed with CTE when their brains were examined after their deaths.

CTE is described as a delayed-onset and progressive neurodegenerative disease, with symptoms appearing in midlife or decades after exposure to head traumas. It’s believed these changes lead to an abnormal buildup of a protein called “tau”, which can damage brain cells.

But CTE is not the only way in which changes to the brain might present over time. To date, no sportswoman has been diagnosed with CTE (including Barclay).

An article in The Guardian reported Barclay “did not have a substantial clinical history of concussion and her brain did not show evidence of her having sustained a concussion in the weeks before she died”.

Brain bank research can detect white or grey matter changes but may not be able to ascertain which of several possible factors (for example, concussions, substance use, undiagnosed mental illness, ageing) led to the development of brain pathology in a given case.

Brain changes seen in some deceased athletes have also been found in people with a variety of neurological and psychiatric disorders, but with no known history of head trauma or participation in risky activities such as contact sports or military combat.

So there’s a lot we don’t know, and more research we need to do, including involving people outside professional sport.

Increased focus on women is important

Women have higher rates of Alzheimer’s disease than men. Although a history of head trauma is a potential risk factor for developing dementia and other neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson’s, studies have not yet examined the interaction between sport-related concussions and neurodegenerative diseases in women.

We need studies in women to assess the interaction between exposure to single or repeated head impacts and the potential changes in brain and behaviour across the lifespan.

These studies need to use precise tests of attention, response speed and other cognitive abilities, and include indices of genetic risk factors, mental health, and menstrual cycle function pre- and post-injury.

Barclay’s groundbreaking donation to the Australian Sports Brain Bank is an important step towards gender equity in concussion research.

But to further advance our understanding, brain donors should participate in long-term studies during their lives that consider multiple causal or protective factors.

Read more: Here’s what we know about CTE, the brain condition that affected Danny Frawley

– ref. Sports concussions affect men and women differently. Female athletes need more attention in brain research – https://theconversation.com/sports-concussions-affect-men-and-women-differently-female-athletes-need-more-attention-in-brain-research-160097

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Shreya Mcleod, PhD candidate in sport-related concussion, School of Medicine and Public Health, University of Newcastle

News emerged last week that AFLW player Jacinda Barclay, who died last year at age 29 following a short period of mental illness, had abnormalities in her brain tissue.

Barclay was the first Australian contact sportswoman to have her brain donated to the Australian Sports Brain Bank, a medical laboratory that investigates changes in complex nerve structures after death, in order to understand brain conditions sustained by sportspeople.

Similar to findings seen in some male athletes internationally, the researchers found changes in Barclay’s white matter.

White matter has to do with neural connectivity in the brain. As white matter degrades, as is often seen in ageing and in diseases such as Alzheimer’s, neural connectivity diminishes, contributing to cognitive decline.

However, we don’t understand enough about this process in the brain — particularly in sportswomen.

Women’s sport is becoming more popular

Over the past decade, Australia’s elite women’s sports have experienced unprecedented growth. More than 550,000 Australian women (aged 14 and over) now play a form of football, be it soccer, Australian rules, rugby league or rugby union.

This increase in participation in contact and collision sports has seen a concurrent rise in injuries such as concussions. Concussion is a transient injury to the brain, caused by a jolt to the head or body.

Although specialised brain imaging can detect microscopic changes in the connections between brain regions, concussion is hard to detect on routine brain scans. Diagnosis typically relies on people reporting symptoms such as dizziness, confusion, unsteadiness, nausea and headaches after a collision.

Recognising when someone has suffered a concussion, removing them from the field and carefully assessing recovery are all crucial steps before they return to play.

Read more: Is the National Rugby League legally liable for the long-term impacts of concussions?

Risk factors for female athletes

Female athletes are more likely to sustain a concussion than their male counterparts.

Like males, women report a range of symptoms after a concussion, such as headaches, mental fatigue, concentration difficulties and mood swings.

Although symptoms can last longer in some people, recovery from a concussion normally takes seven to ten days for adults. Research on length of recovery is mixed but overall supports that women take longer to recover than men.

Women also perform worse on neurocognitive testing post-injury, which measures things like decision-making ability and processing.

These gender-based differences may be due to a combination of factors.

Women tend to be more aware of their symptoms and are more likely to report them, so this may account for some degree of the gap. However, under-reporting still exists.

Female athletes also generally have shorter and narrower necks, and lower head mass (their heads are smaller and less dense). These factors are associated with lower neck strength. Neck strength is a protective factor against concussion, so women may be more susceptible for this reason.

Further, female brains metabolise glucose (sugar) and oxygen faster than male brains. If a head injury temporarily disrupts blood supply to the brain, it could have a greater effect on the faster nutrient-burning female brain.

Meanwhile, sex hormones such as progesterone that vary across a women’s menstrual cycle could also affect outcomes after a concussion. Concussions sustained during the follicular phase (after menstruation, before ovulation) are less likely to lead to symptoms a month later, whereas injuries in the luteal phase (after ovulation, before menstruation) result in poorer outcomes.

Although we don’t fully understand why, concussion outcomes appear to be worse when progesterone levels are high. However, these effects may be negated when women take the contraceptive pill.

Despite these differences, women are an understudied population when it comes to concussion, resulting in a lack of gender-specific treatment guidelines.

Read more: What does concussion do to the brain?

Repeated concussions and long-term risk: a complex area

In the context of long-term brain injury and sport, we’ve perhaps most often heard about a condition called chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).

Male former AFL players Danny Frawley and Shane Tuck were both diagnosed with CTE when their brains were examined after their deaths.

CTE is described as a delayed-onset and progressive neurodegenerative disease, with symptoms appearing in midlife or decades after exposure to head traumas. It’s believed these changes lead to an abnormal buildup of a protein called “tau”, which can damage brain cells.

But CTE is not the only way in which changes to the brain might present over time. To date, no sportswoman has been diagnosed with CTE (including Barclay).

An article in The Guardian reported Barclay “did not have a substantial clinical history of concussion and her brain did not show evidence of her having sustained a concussion in the weeks before she died”.

Brain bank research can detect white or grey matter changes but may not be able to ascertain which of several possible factors (for example, concussions, substance use, undiagnosed mental illness, ageing) led to the development of brain pathology in a given case.

Brain changes seen in some deceased athletes have also been found in people with a variety of neurological and psychiatric disorders, but with no known history of head trauma or participation in risky activities such as contact sports or military combat.

So there’s a lot we don’t know, and more research we need to do, including involving people outside professional sport.

Increased focus on women is important

Women have higher rates of Alzheimer’s disease than men. Although a history of head trauma is a potential risk factor for developing dementia and other neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson’s, studies have not yet examined the interaction between sport-related concussions and neurodegenerative diseases in women.

We need studies in women to assess the interaction between exposure to single or repeated head impacts and the potential changes in brain and behaviour across the lifespan.

These studies need to use precise tests of attention, response speed and other cognitive abilities, and include indices of genetic risk factors, mental health, and menstrual cycle function pre- and post-injury.

Barclay’s groundbreaking donation to the Australian Sports Brain Bank is an important step towards gender equity in concussion research.

But to further advance our understanding, brain donors should participate in long-term studies during their lives that consider multiple causal or protective factors.

Read more: Here’s what we know about CTE, the brain condition that affected Danny Frawley

– ref. Sport concussion in women: are they increasing, and are there long-term cumulative effects? – https://theconversation.com/sport-concussion-in-women-are-they-increasing-and-are-there-long-term-cumulative-effects-160097

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adam Karg, Associate Professor, Business School, Swinburne University of Technology

Some buy sporting memorabilia for love. Others for money.

The world record for most money paid for a sports-related item goes to the original Olympic manifesto written in 1892 by International Olympic Committee founder Pierre de Coubertin. It changed hands in 2019 for US$8.8 million. In second place is the New York Yankees jersey worn by legendary American baseball player Babe Ruth, sold in 2012 for USA$4.4 million.

As in all markets for collectibles, scarcity equals value.

Which is why sport organisations, memorabilia sellers and collectors are getting excited about non-fungible tokens – or NFTs – a blockchain-enabled technology that proves unique ownership of digital content.

NFTs open up a huge new market to sell limited-edition images, videos and artwork. They also enable the original licensees – be it sports organisations or individual athletes – to share in resale profits.

NFTs are already sweeping the art market. In March, auction house Christie’s sold an NFT of a work by American digital artist Mike Winkelmann, known as Beeple, for US$69 million. Auction house Sotheby’s last month sold a single pixel for $US1.36 million.

Could we see similar NFT values in the sports collectibles market? Quite possibly.

Though tangible items such as uniforms, balls and bats will likely continue to be prized collectibles, collectors are already paying big bucks for digital versions of old favourites such as trading cards.

Leading the game is the US National Basketball Association, which began selling limited-edition “Top Shots” – digitally packaged and NFT-authenticated video highlight clips – in October 2020. Like traditional trading cards, these are sold in “packs”. Some videos are common, others rare. One such rare “moment” – in reality about half a moment – of basketball superstar LeBron James dunking reportedly changed hands in April for US$387,000.

Who knows what someone might pay for that moment in decades to come?

It might be millions more. Or much much less. Because this market, for all its early promises of rich rewards, is not without its downsides, with potential for significant environmental and social costs.

What are non-fungible tokens (NFTs)?

Something is fungible when it has a standardised and interchangeable value. It is replaceable by something else just like it. Cash is the obvious example. Non-fungible essentially means something unique, non-replaceable.

So NFTs are essentially digital certificates, secured with blockchain technology, that authenticate an item’s provenance – that it is a limited edition or one of kind – and enable it to be bought and sold as such.

An NFT provides scarcity of digital content that can be relatively easily copied – a photo of Indian cricket great Sachin Tendulkar making a world-record score, for example, or a video of tennis No. 1 Ash Barty winning at Wimbledon.

Read more: What are NFTs and why are people paying millions for them?

There are big opportunities

The potential riches are evident from the NBA’s Top Shot sales, which accounted for US$500 million in transactions in the first three months of the year. This was a third of the total US$1.5 billion in NFT transactions, according to DappRadar, which tracks blockchain markets.

Last month San Francisco-based NBA team the Golden State Warriors was the first US professional sports team to issue its own NFT collection, which includes limited-edition digital versions of championship rings and ticket stubs.

Individual athletes are also selling their own branded items in NFT form. NFL quarterback Patrick Mahomes, for example, is selling signed digital artwork. Champion skateboarder Mariah Duran and paralympian Scout Bassett are among a group of elite women athletes who will release NFTs this month. Expect to see many more selling NFTs in the wake of the Toyko Olympics.

There are also risks

But there are some big downsides.

The first is environmental – because of the energy used in blockchain verification processes.

Of course, making and transporting physical goods has a range of environmental impacts, but by one calculation the carbon footprint of selling an NFT artwork is almost 100 times that of selling and transporting a print version. In February, French digital artist Joanie Lemercier cancelled the sale of six works, and urged others to do the same, after calculating those sales would use the same amount of electricity in ten seconds as his studio used in two years.

Eliminating this downside of NFTs will depend on more efficient technology and more renewable energy.

Read more: NFTs: why digital art has such a massive carbon footprint

The second is social – of people only seeing NFTs as a way to make money.

As in any market where prices are rising rapidly, there is the danger of a speculative bubble. Here, the risk is that buyers spend big on virtual items that may end up being virtually worthless when the bubble bursts.

Last year also saw large and continuing market growth in traditional sport collectibles such as trading cards, along with retail investment in cryptocurrencies and stock markets more generally. So, while the value attached to NFTs may prove to be enduring, it is possible some part of the early interest in sport NFTs is driven by “irrational exuberance” and patterns of people spending more time and money online due to the COVID pandemic.

Read more: NFTs are much bigger than an art fad – here’s how they could change the world

There are likely to be many more sport organisations and athletes peddling their digital wares in the near future. It is though, difficult to predict whether sales will continue this trajectory, how and when this trend might “normalise”, or if NFTs indeed represent a speculative bubble.

Particularly for fans playing in this market, care should be taken to not let emotions trump prudence and good judgment.

– ref. NFTs hit the big league, but not everyone will win from this new sports craze – https://theconversation.com/nfts-hit-the-big-league-but-not-everyone-will-win-from-this-new-sports-craze-158762

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nicole Moore, Professor of English, UNSW

Any social movement needs inspiration. It needs people who can imagine a different future and, more than that, make that future graspable.

Kate Jennings did that for the Australian women’s movement — with her incandescent anger, her sharp tongue and her courage, ready and able to speak straight into the face of power. Her death, in New York aged 72, offers a moment to reflect on the role of writers and literature as forces of social transformation.

many women are beginning to feel the necessity to speak for themselves, for their sisters.

i feel that necessity now.

When Jennings lined up for her turn to speak at a Vietnam moratorium rally on the lawns of Sydney University in 1970, she was a half-drop-out from Sydney’s English Department, living in Glebe.

With the group of determined women libbers at her back, she perhaps wasn’t clear what her speech would do — that it would effectively inaugurate second-wave feminism in Australia and help it become a movement with its own momentum. A new chapter for the world’s longest revolution. But she did know that the time had come.

Read more: Brazen Hussies: a new film captures the heady, turbulent power of Australia’s women’s liberation movement

When the speech appeared as a performative poem in her 2010 retrospective collection Trouble: Evolution of a Radical, she recalled that the group had conceived it as deliberately incendiary.

“Call the speech what you like — agitprop, political theatre, over the top, in your face — but we were genuinely angry, famously fed up. I wrote the speech at a boil: we were getting nowhere asking the men in the movement to listen to us.”

Written from within the mix of galvanising struggles then being fought around the world, the speech tore shreds off those for whom women’s issues were secondary or trivial. She compared the number of Australian men who’d died in Vietnam with the number of women who’d died from illegal abortions.

It was a shocking thing to do then: a similar comparison, now, of the victims of domestic violence to the number of Australian soldiers lost to recent conflicts or suicide, would be met with outrage too. The speech was hardline, uncompromising, militant.

okay i’ve stopped trying to understand my oppressor

i know who my enemy is

i will tell you what i feel, as an individual, as a woman

i feel that there can be no love between men and women

And that passion came from poetry. It wasn’t the theorists or social commentators who inspired the radical feminism powering the speech, she recalled, but the eloquence of visionaries.

In 2010, she listed Robin Morgan, Ti-Grace Atkinson, Valerie Solanas’s SCUM (Society for Cutting Up Men) Manifesto as her touchstones. This was writing that was “unafraid to be emotional, luminous with rage,” she recalled. “Manifestos and poems that jumped off the page. I loved it.”

Mother I’m Rooted

Jennings’ other extraordinary contribution to the transformational feminism of the 1970s is one of its most revelatory — the huge, collaborative women’s poetry collection called Mother I’m Rooted, published in 1975.

Its confronting title is a distillation of the protest and exhaustion she saw in the poems. With Alison Lyssa, another poet and activist, she planned an anthology as inclusive as possible and advertised for poems — “trying to reach the women Out There”. Within two months they had over 500 replies.

The final volume lists 152 poets, including established ones, unknowns with new feminist pseudonyms, seasoned activists from the old left and many names that would go on to make their marks. It has experimental, Greek-Australian writers contesting the definition of poetry and forthright, white, working-class women writing about the washing — though no First Nations poetry.

It is a beautiful social document now, broken up by lambent photographs of ordinary women together. And its call for women’s control over not just what counted as poetry but over the publishing process itself was hugely influential, arguably changing the literary landscape in Australia forever.

Fierce honesty

Across her writing life, Jennings produced essays, novels, short stories and journalism, as well as poetry, all written with a fierce honesty and wit, refusing what she saw as cant and sentiment.

After she moved to New York in 1979, she continued to write about and for Australia, but often with an outsider’s cynicism. Women Falling Down in the Street, a collection of short stories from 1990, won a Queensland Premier’s Literary Prize and perhaps typified her interest in revisionary engagement with her part in Australia’s cultural life.

The novel Snake, from 1994, explored with concision and power her country childhood on a farm outside Griffith in NSW, and found an international readership.

In 2002, after her husband’s death from Alzheimer’s disease, she published Moral Hazard, a short but perfectly voiced novel about a writer making a living on Wall Street to support a dying partner. One of the few Australian novels to confront the operations of capital directly, even pre-empting the 2008 global collapse, it won a number of prizes, including the ALS Gold Medal.

The legacy she leaves is complex and multi-voiced, marked often by a reassessment of her younger self by the older Jennings and, perhaps, by a certain distrust of any shared story she couldn’t control.

But that legacy has been transformative and extraordinary, by any measure.

– ref. ‘Famously fed up’. How the work of feminist writer Kate Jennings changed Australia – https://theconversation.com/famously-fed-up-how-the-work-of-feminist-writer-kate-jennings-changed-australia-160267

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Laura Glitsos, Lecturer in Arts and Humanities, Edith Cowan University

New South Wales Deputy Premier John Barilaro is reportedly threatening legal action against YouTuber and political satirist Jordan Shanks, better known as friendlyjordies, over allegedly defamatory and “racist” comments. Shanks’s parodying of Barilaro has included imitating him with a strong Italian accent.

In 2019, Shanks received a similar legal threat from then-politician Clive Palmer after labelling him a “dense humpty dumpty”, among other profanities. Shanks’s video responding to Palmer’s lawsuit has been viewed more than one million times, with a likes-to-dislikes ratio indicating overwhelming support from viewers.

The latest threat against Shanks reminds us of the key role parody and satirisation now play in the nation’s political discourse. This type of humour provides a way to discuss issues in a way traditional media outlets can’t risk doing. Perhaps this is because parody, by its very nature, is expected to be cheeky (and even offensive).

Add to this contemporary Western society’s desire for freedom of speech — coupled with our increasing connectedness afforded by the internet — and one could argue it has never been easier to create and consume political satire.

But where does the value of this content lie? And is there evidence to suggest it can influence people’s personal politics?

Necessary provocation?

Effective political satire will often cause outrage. Anger may be directed at the satirist or the issue being discussed; in either case, a strong emotional response indicates the audience is tuned in.

Take Shanks, who has been criticised repeatedly for his offensive brand of comedy. And despite being quite open about his political allegiance to the Labor Party, he has offended people right across the political spectrum.

But regardless of anyone’s personal views on him, one could argue Shanks’s brashness and crudity, combined with scathing wit, are what make him relatable to Australians. As former Curtin University academic Rebecca Higgie explains in her research, Australians’ unique sense of larrikinism popularises this particular brand of political discourse.

Prior to the pandemic, a major study of the 2019 federal election found trust in government was at its lowest since the 1970s. In such a landscape, where there is widespread concern regarding how democracy is performing, it becomes easier to understand why some people may trust satirists over politicians and/or mainstream media.

The former, at least, are more willing to put their brand on the line and embrace vitriol from the public.

At last count, Shanks had more than 480,000 subscribers on YouTube. As a crude comparison, the Australian government’s official channel had just over 600, while SBS Australia had about 42,000. (The ABC and SkyNews both had many more.)

Sick of old formats

Research published in March confirmed that “user-generated parodies”, such as those made by Shanks, are far better received by audiences than parodies produced through mainstream or commercial media outlets.

This is in keeping with the general trend towards the fracturing of legacy media institutions, as well as increasing calls for media diversity — manifested in ex-Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s bid for a royal commission into News Corp’s ideological domination of Australia’s media landscape.

Myriad studies and surveys carried out in a marketing context have also found user-generated content, as opposed to “professional” or “traditional” content, is more likely to resonate, be trusted, be remembered and influence consumers.

This is particularly illuminating in light of the federal government’s recent problematic “consent” videos, attempting to teach sexual consent by using tacos and milkshakes as metaphors for sex. The videos were heavily criticised by the media and public.

How social media changed the game

According to research, the explosion of social media has unsurprisingly generated an increase in political parodies. And these have certainly become difficult to ignore for anyone engaged in Australia’s broader political conversation.

Apart from friendlyjordies, major satirists leading on this front include the fake news publication The Betoota Advocate, satirical comedy group The Chaser and YouTube channel The Juice Media, which gave us “Honest Government Ads”.

That said, there’s still contention as to whether political parodies can “change people’s minds” on political issues. One 2006 study found the political comedy of The Daily Show With Jon Stewart led to audiences having a more negative view of the politicians being parodied, as well as a more cynical view of the overall US electoral system.

Similarly, researchers from Paris’s Sorbonne Business School claim funny YouTube videos had a real stake in negatively impacting Donald Trump’s “Build a Wall” policy.

The YouTube video “Do You Wanna Build a Wall? Donald Trump (Frozen Parody)” received more than 37 million views and 467,000 interactions, while a similar Peppa Pig-themed parody was viewed more than 49 million times.

Then again, there is research that suggests otherwise. In one study focusing on US television presenter Stephen Colbert’s brand of political satire, researchers analysed how the show was received by both liberal and conservative audiences. They found

[…] there was no significant difference between the groups in thinking Colbert was funny, but conservatives were more likely to report that Colbert only pretends to be joking.

This suggests while viewers from all ends of the political spectrum can “enjoy” Colbert’s political satire, conservatives didn’t necessarily receive the satirical jokes as satire. That is, they didn’t always sense Colbert was being sarcastic.

The researchers suggest this may be because of Colbert’s deadpan delivery style, which could leave ambiguity for some viewers. According to them, conservative viewers found a way to make Colbert’s liberal humour agreeable to their own ideology. They liked the show, but not for the same reason as liberal viewers.

Healthy democracy

Sometimes parody can help all of us see the lighter side of things. For example, the Twitter account “Aus Gov Just Googled” probably gives most people a laugh, except maybe members of the actual government. A recent tweet mocking the government’s misguided sexual consent videos could be enjoyed by both ends of the political spectrum:

It remains to be seen how Barilaro’s legal threats against Shanks will play out. But Australia has a legacy of political satire that connects to our sense of larrikinism and our egalitarian brand of “taking the piss”. Shanks is an example of how, in the age of the internet, anyone can extend and champion this legacy.

And while some online parodies might be absolute shockers — especially if you’re on the receiving end — they remain a sign of a healthy democracy.

– ref. NSW deputy premier threatens to sue FriendlyJordies, reminding us that parody hits in a way traditional media can’t – https://theconversation.com/nsw-deputy-premier-threatens-to-sue-friendlyjordies-reminding-us-that-parody-hits-in-a-way-traditional-media-cant-159345

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stan Karanasios, Associate professor, The University of Queensland

The success of Australia’s COVID-19 vaccine rollout will depend on everyone’s willingness to receive it. But experts have warned vaccine misinformation online puts Australia’s communities at risk, and some more than others.

Often, misinformation and undue scepticism are spread on social media. In March, the ABC reported on WeChat posts spreading the false claim the Pfizer vaccine can integrate with people’s DNA to transform them into “genetically modified humans”.

Studies have shown that people who rely on social platforms such as YouTube for their information are significantly less willing to be vaccinated. Adding to that, research conducted by a Griffith University team found reports about the AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines’ (very rare) link to blood clots had led to a drop in vaccine acceptance rates.

In such a rapidly shifting information landscape, we have to make sure those most at risk from COVID-19 are empowered to get vaccinated early.

Read more: Australian vaccine rollout needs all hands on deck after the latest AstraZeneca news, mass vaccination hubs included

False claims spread like wildfire

My colleagues and I surveyed 215 residents in Victoria to find out how vulnerable groups accessed emergency-related news. Survey participants (all of which used social media) included elderly residents, geographically or socially isolated people, and people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.

We found 73% of respondents accessed emergency-related news on social media, the second preference after television. Facebook was the platform of choice and was used “often” by 70% of respondents. On average, social media was used more frequently by younger people and women.

The information landscape during a pandemic can be compared to that during a large bushfire: there are high-levels of uncertainty and risk, coupled with large volumes of information. In both scenarios individuals rely on affiliated and geographical groups for important notices, such as community and postcode groups on Facebook.

Of the people we surveyed, 40% percent believed information encountered on social media could be more accurate than official sources. And the vast majority (88%) said they expected to use social media as a news source in the future. Also, more than half reported getting their information through family or friends (65%), who said they themselves found it on social media.

Sourcing emergency information from social media can complicate our understanding of difficult issues. There are huge volumes of content, the quality is often poor and it can be difficult — particularly for vulnerable groups — to separate fact from fiction.

Filling knowledge gaps

Experts explain how the purveyors of misinformation exploit our willingness to share content without thinking. Even if even a small percentage of what we share is inaccurate, it creates a feedback loop that exacerbates the problem of a high information load coupled with poor information quality.

Adding to this, we know a person’s individual biases and worldview can also make them more vulnerable to misinformation.

Of those we surveyed, 61% felt they had very specific information needs during emergencies based on factors such as age, location and personal circumstances. When there’s a gap between a person’s information needs and information provided by the government, they must fill this gap with other sources.

The good news is there are several ways all of us can help curb vaccine misinformation on social media and, consequently, in our communities.

How to help

For a start, the federal governemnt’s Department of Health has a useful site addressesing common concerns around vaccine development and efficacy. It even responds to conspiracy questions such as: “Can COVID-19 vaccines connect me to the internet?”.

Trusted sites should always be referred to in discussions about vaccines. There are also online guides to help individuals refine their own ability to spot misinformation.

Our research found 87% of respondents thought it was important for official emergency response organisations to use social media. So perhaps it would be beneficial for these groups to increase their visibility on these platforms.

Beyond this, the younger and more tech-savvy among us can help those who are older, or culturally or linguistically diverse. If you know someone who gets their vaccine information from Facebook or a similar platform, redirect them to a more reputable source such as a government website, government-approved social media page or trusted news outlet.

Social media groups have a role to play, too. Group administrators and active members should ensure official health information is shared on pages, as they are often a “go to” source of information for the public. And where misinformation does sneak in, it must always be challenged or reported.

Read more: Cutting the ABC cuts public trust, a cost no democracy can afford

– ref. The first step to curbing COVID vaccine misinformation is finding out who is most vulnerable. Our research sheds some light – https://theconversation.com/the-first-step-to-curbing-covid-vaccine-misinformation-is-finding-out-who-is-most-vulnerable-our-research-sheds-some-light-158309

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stuart McLean, Professor Emeritus, University of Tasmania

Foxes, like other animals, use scent to communicate and survive. They urinate to leave their mark, depositing a complex mix of chemicals to send messages to other foxes. Research by myself and colleagues has uncovered new information about these scents that could help control fox numbers.

Urine scent marking behaviour has long been known in foxes, but there has not been a recent study of the chemical composition of fox urine.

We found foxes produce a set of chemicals unknown in other animals. Some of these chemicals are also found in flowers or skunk sprays. One is so potent, a tiny leak was enough to force the evacuation of a building we were working in.

The results suggest a highly evolved language of chemical communication underlying foxes’ social structure and behaviour. Our research could help improve these methods and protect vulnerable native wildlife from one of Australia’s worst feral pests.

The fox problem

The European red fox was introduced into Australia in the 1870s for recreational hunting, and within 20 years had expanded to pest proportions. The animals are now found in all states and territories except Tasmania.

Foxes hunt and kill native wildlife and have helped drive several species of small mammals and birds to extinction. They also kill livestock, spread weeds and can threaten the health of humans and pets by transmitting disease.

Current fox control methods mainly depend on lethal baits, which can also kill other animals, and trapping and shooting which alone cannot reduce the large fox populations now present.

Knowledge of the chemistry of fox society could help develop new, better methods of population control.

Read more: When introduced species are cute and loveable, culling them is a tricky proposition

Making sense of smell

Mammals, including humans and foxes, smell airborne substances when molecules enter the nose and bind to receptors in the lining of the nasal cavity. The receptors send a signal to the brain’s olfactory cortex, leading to the sensation of smell.

Foxes have an acute sense of smell. They rely on scents to communicate with each other, find food, avoid predators and locate breeding partners. This ability is beneficial for animals active at night when visibility is low, and enables them to avoid dangerous encounters.

Messages can also be deposited as scent marks to be “read” after the marker has departed. This is useful for claiming and defending territory.

Foxes have two glands from which they emit scents. These comprise:

• a patch on the tail known as the “violet gland” because of its floral odour

• a pair of sacs either side of the anus.

Fox scents are also present in the animal’s urine.

Read more: Invasive predators are eating the world’s animals to extinction – and the worst is close to home

On the scent

My colleagues and I have investigated fox scents in the violet gland. More recently, we also investigated the scent chemicals in fox urine, assisted by hunting groups in Victoria.

We analysed the urine of 15 free-ranging wild foxes living in farmlands and bush in Victoria. Foxes there are routinely culled as feral pests, and the urine was collected by bladder puncture soon after death.

Among our key findings were a group of 16 sulfur-containing chemicals which, taken together, are unique to foxes. Some are also found in skunk defensive sprays.

Fox scents are mostly very potent, and have been described as unpleasant and “musty”. They are also persistent – if you get fox scent on your skin it’s very hard to wash off.

One incident demonstrates the smelliness of these chemicals. We’d purchased two drops of a compound to compare against our own samples. Unfortunately, the container leaked and the resulting bad odour, while not dangerous, led to our university building being evacuated.

In contrast, another group of chemicals in fox scents are normally found in flowers. These were present in fox urine but more abundant in the tail gland. They are derivatives of carotenoids, the red and yellow pigments in fruits and flowers.

Foxes eat a lot of plants. The presence of plant-derived scents may signal good nutrition, and research suggests dietary carotenoids are particularly important for the general health of mammals.

Read more: Killing cats, rats and foxes is no silver bullet for saving wildlife

Chemical communicators

The chemistry of fox scents is rich and unique. This suggests foxes have evolved a complex language of chemical communication.

Just as modern drug therapies are based on knowledge of the human body’s internal chemical signalling, an understanding of chemical communication between foxes could lead to novel methods of fox management.

For example, scents signifying a dominant fox could be used to deter subordinate foxes. Conversely, scents that attract foxes could be used to overcome bait shyness.

This could be combined with the non-lethal baiting agent cabergoline, which inhibits the fertility of vixens. And mating could be disrupted if mate choice is found to be determined by chemical signals.

Such new methods may lead to longer-term and more effective control of fox numbers, bringing huge benefits to agriculture and biodiversity in Australia.

The author would like to acknowledge advice on this article from Dr Duncan Sutherland of Phillip Island Nature Parks, Victoria, and the generous assistance of Victorian fox hunting groups which helped collect urine samples.

– ref. Fox scents are so potent they can force a building evacuation. Understanding them may save our wildlife – https://theconversation.com/fox-scents-are-so-potent-they-can-force-a-building-evacuation-understanding-them-may-save-our-wildlife-159337

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kathryn Shine, Journalism Discipline Lead, Curtin University

Last week, the ABC announced it had achieved a milestone it had been trying to reach for more than two years. For the first time, in the previous month of March, it had equal numbers of women and men appearing in its news coverage.

This may seem surprising. You might expect the gender ratio of people quoted in the news would mirror the gender split of our society.

But that’s not the case. Studies of news coverage from around the world have consistently found more than 70% of people seen, quoted and heard in the news are men, while women make up less than 30%.

When it comes to “expert” sources, around 80% are men.

In response to this imbalance, the BBC started its 50:50 equality project in 2017. The ABC followed suit in December 2018. Other media organisations, such as Bloomberg, have introduced similar initiatives.

Despite these encouraging programs, the Global Media Monitoring Project, which analyses sources in news content from around the world on a set day every five years, has reported overall progress in bringing women’s voices into the news is “extremely slow”.

This means news tends to be male-centric, and women are denied the legitimacy, authority and status that often come with inclusion in the news. As a journalist and news researcher, I was interested to learn more about why women are so under-represented.

Is it because, as some journalists will argue, women are reluctant to be interviewed as news sources? Or is it because journalists tend to turn to the same sources again and again, and most of these experienced sources are men?

My research, which included interviewing 30 female academic experts about their attitudes towards interacting with the news media, suggests the latter is more likely.

All but one of the experts I spoke to said they would be willing to be interviewed for a news story. Most understood and appreciated the value of getting their work out into the community via the news.

However, they were not totally comfortable with being in the news. Most of them lacked confidence about the process. This was in part due to fears about their performance, but also due to a lack of knowledge about how the news media operate and what journalists want from them.

So how can journalists address these concerns and be more likely to secure a “yes” when approaching a female source for an interview? And how can sources improve their interactions with journalists and get the most out of their experiences with the media?

Read more: Bloomberg has decided women matter; it’s time Aussie media did

Tips for journalists

Be very clear. Expert sources typically have little knowledge about how the media work. You have a much better chance of securing an interview if you explain exactly what you need in terms of the nature of the interview and the time required.

Make a case. Experts need to demonstrate that their work and research is being seen and heard, and is having an impact. Media engagement is a crucial way to do this. Remind prospective sources about the benefits of promoting their work and research through news coverage.

Be willing to negotiate. Where there is some flexibility about the timing or location of an interview, be prepared to discuss this with the source. Try to come to an arrangement that suits you both. Sometimes, a source might just want 10 minutes to prepare for an interview first.

Respect the source and their time. Sources are much more likely to agree to an interview if the journalist appears to have some knowledge of their research and area of expertise. It’s also important for journalists to recognise that expert sources are usually very time-poor (just like journalists).

Give feedback. Do this during and after the interview, if possible. The experts I spoke to all wanted to know how they had performed in their interviews, and how they could improve.

Tips for sources

Say yes, but … It does not have to be an unconditional yes. It’s okay to say: “Yes, I can do the interview but I need 30 minutes to prepare.” Or “Yes, but I’m not willing to talk about this particular topic or issue.”

Ask questions. You don’t have to let the journalist ask all the questions. If you don’t know what the journalist wants from you, ask.

Don’t over-prepare. Most interviews are brief and will probably only take about 10 minutes. Don’t waste time over-preparing or over-thinking. Trust your expertise and knowledge.

Cut yourself a break, but learn from your mistakes. Listen back to or watch your interviews to see how you can improve. But recognise it takes time and practice to become a polished media commentator.

Be authentic. For radio and TV interviews in particular, try to relax and let your personality and passion for your work come through.

– ref. Male voices dominate the news. Here’s how journalists and female experts can turn this around – https://theconversation.com/male-voices-dominate-the-news-heres-how-journalists-and-female-experts-can-turn-this-around-160209

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Blaxland, Professor, Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University

Talk of war has become louder in recent days, but the “drumbeat” has been heard for some time now as China’s military capabilities have grown. China does not want war, at least not yet. It’s playing the long game and its evident intentions become more unnerving.

Scholars like Brendan Taylor have identified four flash points for a possible conflict with China, including Korea, the East China Sea, the South China Sea and Taiwan, but conventional war is not likely at this stage.

Where tensions are currently high

The armistice between North and South Korea has held for nearly 70 years. The pandemic has severely constrained North Korea’s economy and its testing of intercontinental ballistic missiles has ceased, for now. China has a stake in keeping Kim Jong-un’s regime in power in the North, but the prospects of reverting to a hot war have flowed and ebbed.

Just south of Korea, in the East China Sea, China has intensified its military activities around the Japanese-claimed but uninhabited Senkaku Islands. China appears to be wearing down Japan’s resolve to resist its claims over what it calls the Diaoyu Islands.

The United States has assured Japan the islands fall under their mutual defence security guarantee. But a confrontation with China could test US backing and possibly set the stage for escalated confrontation elsewhere.

Similarly, China’s industrial-scale island building in the South China Sea has resulted in extensive military hardware and infrastructure. This will enable the Chinese to consolidate their position militarily and assert control over the so-called nine-dash line — its vast claim over most of the sea.

The US Navy continues to conduct freedom of navigation operations (FONOPS) in the sea to challenge China’s claims. With thousands of marked and unmarked Chinese vessels operating there, however, the risk of an accident triggering an escalation is real.

In 2016, an international tribunal rejected China’s claims to the waters in a case brought by the Philippines. Despite being a signatory to the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea, China has ignored the tribunal’s ruling and continued to intrude on islands claimed by both the Philippines and Indonesia.

Recently, 220 Chinese vessels were anchored for months at a reef inside the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone. China’s actions appear premised on the dictum that possession is nine-tenths of the law.

Like China’s seizure of the Scarborough Shoal in 2012 that preceded its massive island construction further south, China could conceivably take the unwillingness of the US to challenge its latest moves as a cue for more assertive action over Taiwan.

This is, after all, the main prize Beijing seeks to secure President Xi Jinping’s legacy.

Why Taiwan’s security matters

Taiwan presents the US and its allies with a conundrum. It is a liberal open democracy and the world’s leading computer chip maker. It also sits in the middle of what military strategists refer to as the “first island chain” stretching from Japan in the north to the Philippines in the south. Its strategic significance is profound.

Having adopted a “One China” policy since 1979, the US security guarantee for Taiwan is conditional and tenuous. Reflecting growing unease over China’s actions, polls show strong US public support for defending Taiwan.

So far, ambiguity has served US interests well, providing some assurance to Taiwan while discouraging the PRC from invading.

This guarantee has been important for Japan, as well. With its pacifist constitution, and occasional concern over US commitment to its defence, Japan would be closely watching how the US approaches its Taiwan policy.

Read more: Australia would be wise not to pound ‘war drums’ over Taiwan with so much at stake

China is so far avoiding open war

Meanwhile, China has metamorphosed both economically and militarily. An exponential growth in China’s military capabilities has been matched by a steep rise in the lethality, accuracy, range and quantity of its weapons systems. On top of this, Beijing has ratcheted up its warlike rhetoric and tactics.

Last month, Xi made a muscular speech to the Boao Forum Asia, calling for an acceptance of China not only as an emerging superpower but also as an equal in addressing global challenges.

Sometimes actions speak louder than words. And China’s actions so far have avoided crossing the threshold into open warfare, refusing to present a “nail” to a US “hammer”. This is for good reason.

If war did break out, China would be vulnerable. For starters, it shares land borders with 14 countries, bringing the potential for heightened challenges, if not open attack on numerous fronts.

Read more: Is it time for a ‘new way of war?’ What China’s army reforms mean for the rest of the world

Then there are the economic concerns. China has significant Japanese, US and European industrial investments, and is also overwhelmingly dependent on energy and goods passing through the Malacca Strait between Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia, the Indo-Pacific’s jugular vein.

This reliance on the Malacca Strait — referred to by one analyst as the “Malacca dilemma” — helps explain why China has invested so much capital in its Belt and Road Initiative and studiously avoided open conflict, at least until it is more self-reliant.

To avoid outright war, China evidently reckons it is better to operate a paramilitary force with white-painted ships and armed fishing vessels in the thousands to push its claims in the South China Sea and East China Sea and constrict Taiwan’s freedom of action.

It also recently passed a new law allowing its coast guard to act more like a military body and enforce maritime law — again in violation of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.

China is also expanding its “grey zone” warfare against Taiwan, which includes cyber attacks, repeated incursions of its air space and territorial waters, and diplomatic isolation to undermine Taiwan’s resolve and ability to resist.

Read more: Explainer: what is ‘hybrid warfare’ and what is meant by the ‘grey zone’?

Would America’s allies help defend Taiwan?

This persistent and escalating challenge by Chinese forces has demonstrated Taiwan’s inability to fully control its waters and air space. Beijing is continuing to build a fleet of amphibious capabilities to enable an invasion of Taiwan.

US pundits are also no longer confident the Americans would win in an outright war over Taiwan, with Washington’s top military officer in the region arguing one could happen within six years.

Taiwan lacks allies other than the United States, but Japan is mindful of the consequences of a US failure to defend Taiwan. Its ocean surveillance and coastal defence capabilities would be exposed if China took Taiwan. But Japan’s constitution precludes direct involvement in defending Taiwan.

Under its Anzus obligations, the US could call on Australia for military support to defend Taiwan. The mutual assistance provisions are not automatically invoked, but the implications of Canberra standing on the sidelines would be profound.

Warnings about rhetorical drumbeats of war remind us the US is no longer the world’s only superpower and suggest Australia should prepare for a more volatile world.

Rather than rely solely on the US, Australia should bolster its own defence capabilities. At the same time, it should collaborate more with regional partners across Southeast Asia and beyond, particularly Indonesia, Japan, India and South Korea, to deter further belligerence and mitigate the risk of tensions escalating into open war.

– ref. China does not want war, at least not yet. It’s playing the long game – https://theconversation.com/china-does-not-want-war-at-least-not-yet-its-playing-the-long-game-160093

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Paul Komesaroff, Professor of Medicine, Monash University

India’s COVID-19 crisis has revived a longstanding debate about whether foreign governments should come to the aid of countries facing major economic or humanitarian challenges and, if so, what kind of help they should provide.

There’s a common assumption foreign aid produces undoubted benefits. But there’s actually limited evidence that it does. Increasing data suggests it may perpetuate existing inequities and inefficiencies, enable corruption, and generate adverse cultural and economic effects.

There are serious questions about the underlying causes of India’s crisis. There’s evidence the Modi government repeatedly ignored warnings from public health experts and refused to plan for the predicted increases in need. Instead, it pursued a public discourse of misinformation, promoted fake cures, withheld health data, intimidated journalists, and encouraged super-spreading events.

Government officials also continue to deny the existence of shortages of vaccines and other medicines. These facts suggest there are underlying structural obstacles, which aid contributions would be unlikely to reverse.

Read more: COVID in India: how the Modi government prioritised politics over public health

But the moral arguments about the obligations humans have to each other are well established. So is the principle that we should come to someone’s aid if they’re in need. We are also bound by mutually beneficial values such as equity, justice, solidarity and altruism. Consequentialist philosophers, who argue the only things that matter are outcomes (rather than principles, obligations or intentions), claim foreign aid generally provides more benefit than harm overall.

Unfortunately, the fact we have a moral obligation to rescue someone from harm provides little or no guidance about what kind of help or assistance is thereby required.

We should enter into discussions, led by the Indian people, about what kinds of support are likely to make a difference.

As imperfect as the outcome may be, Australia might genuinely be able to help in areas such as assisting the development of expertise and infrastructure, and advocating for the relaxation of vaccine patent restrictions.

Here’s how Australia can help

Last week, Australia committed to sending an initial support package of ventilators, oxygen, and personal protective equipment to India.

If we choose to act further, we should do so in a generous and compassionate manner, but also with prudence and circumspection. We should be realistic about the limited options available to us. Aid cannot be given with conditions attached — for example, that it be directed preferentially to those in greatest need.

What’s more, it cannot be contingent on the enforcement of a value system that’s contrary to those presently in authority. Foreign donors have no straightforward right to insist on the abolition of corrupt or counterproductive policies and practices in the countries they’re supporting.

However, there are options available to us that can ensure we actually make a difference — and some of these may appear to undermine our own interests.

Top health officials have suggested wealthy countries, which have contracted to purchase many more vaccine doses than they need, should urgently donate excess vaccines to middle- and lower-income countries such as India. Some people may argue that, because of our present lesser need, Australia could donate its entire stock of available vaccines. However, this wouldn’t likely be of much benefit given the logistical, political and structural impediments described above.

Instead, we should draw on our experience over the past year in developing effective processes for responding to the pandemic. We should offer to provide India with expertise about quarantine measures, hygiene, masks, and vaccine education campaigns. Our experts and policymakers could respectfully advise on appropriate economic and social policies.

What’s more, we could call for the relaxation of patent and other intellectual property restrictions. These have, since the late 1980s, imposed severe limits on the ability of poorer countries to produce vaccines and pharmaceuticals developed in the United States and Europe. Although India is the world’s largest vaccine producer, the current demand obviously exceeds supply.

What vaccines are available are much less likely to find their way to poorer sections of India’s population than wealthier ones. This is partly because of insufficient government support, but is also exacerbated by the refusal of rich countries (including Australia) to allow the relaxation of the strict patent laws that prevent state-of-the-art vaccines being manufactured cheaply and efficiently in developing countries.

Read more: Over 700 health experts are calling for urgent action to expand global production of COVID vaccines

There’s already a well-tested mechanism for suspending patent restrictions in an emergency, known as the “Doha Declaration”. This was negotiated in 2001 in response to the urgent need for increased access to newly developed HIV medications. This instrument is ready to use and could be implemented rapidly. Australia should announce its unqualified support for the immediate application of the Doha Declaration to COVID vaccine production.

But that’s not all

India’s huge pharmaceutical industry has previously provided vaccines and medicines to developing countries — many of them in Africa — largely funded by the World Health Organization. The Indian crisis has left these countries vulnerable, through no fault of their own.

Rather than merely responding to the crisis in India, largely self-inflicted by its own government, we should also turn our attention to the increasingly urgent needs of those countries that now face their own major emergencies as a consequence.

Regardless of what anyone does, many people will still die. All that’s open to us is to act ethically in accordance with our own values, informed by knowledge about the complexity of the multiple forces at work.

– ref. India is facing a terrible crisis. How can Australia respond ethically? – https://theconversation.com/india-is-facing-a-terrible-crisis-how-can-australia-respond-ethically-159992

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tanya Latty, Associate professor, University of Sydney

The busy buzz of pollinating bees is a sound most of us associate with summer. If you live in temperate regions of Australia, you may start to notice fewer insects as the weather gets colder. Across most of the continent, however, some flower-visiting insects are active all year round – and some are more common in cooler months.

Planting winter-blooming flowers is a great way to support beneficial garden insects. Now is the perfect time to start planning your pollinator-friendly winter garden.

Flowers are an important source of food for insects such as bees, butterflies, wasps and hoverflies. Sugary nectar is an important source of carbohydrates, while pollen packs a powerful protein punch.

Planting flowers also attracts and sustains predatory insects. This can help keep pest species under control, meaning less need for pesticides.

Know your winter-active insects

First, let’s look at which pollinators and helpful predators you can expect in your garden in winter. This guide, as well as the below gardening tips, applies primarily to temperate regions of Australia where temperatures become cool over winter.

The temperate region comprises the areas shown in blue below. It includes the coastal rim that curves from inland of Brisbane down to Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne and Adelaide, as well as Tasmania.

One of the most common pollinators is the Western honeybee (Apis mellifera). This introduced species evolved in cooler regions of the world and tends to be more cold-tolerant than most native bees. They’ll start to leave the hive when the temperature rises above 13℃, but are most active above 19℃.

Most native Australian bees prefer warmer temperatures. But a few species, such as reed bees (Exonerua) and the sugarbag bee (Tetragonula carbonaria), make an appearance on warmer winter days when the temperatures reach the mid- to high teens (although the sugar bag bee is usually not found south of Sydney).

Flies tend to be relatively tolerant of cooler temperatures, and are the stars of winter pollination. Hoverflies (Syrphidae), in particular, are garden superheroes.

Adult hoverflies feed on nectar and pollen and can pollinate a range of plants. As a bonus, the maggot-like larvae of some hoverfly species are voracious predators, happily eating soft-bodied pests such as aphids.

Read more: It’s bee season. To avoid getting stung, just stay calm and don’t swat

Hoverflies are often mistaken for bees or wasps because of their similar yellow and black patterning. The resemblance is not accidental; hoverflies have evolved to mimic the appearance of stinging wasps and bees. Don’t let them fool you – hoverflies cannot sting and are generally harmless.

Some hoverfly species lay their eggs in stagnant water. The resulting larvae are known by the unflattering name “rat-tailed maggots” because they breathe underwater through a long, thin siphon that resembles a tail. Don’t worry if you find these alien-looking critters swimming in your pond or beneath potted plants – the adults are flower-loving vegetarians that can help with pollination.

Read more: Hidden women of history: Eleanor Anne Ormerod, the self taught agricultural entomologist who tasted a live newt

Other flies such as blowflies (Calliphoridae) are also active through the cooler months. Although blowflies are often considered pests, they play an important role in the pollination of some fruits including avocado and mango, as well as seed production for carrot, celery and cauliflower.

With the right planting, you can also attract predators such as parasitoid wasps, lacewings and ladybird beetles. These insects mostly feed on other insects, but live longer and produce more offspring when they have access to a sweet sip of nectar.

So now we’ve met our winter pollinators and predators, read on for three ways to support them in your garden.

1. Plant lots of flowers

The easiest – and most beautiful – way to support winter insects is to plant lots of colourful winter-blooming flowers. Winter-loving brassicas such as broccoli, bok choi and mustard greens produce flowers that are a favourite food of many insects. Letting a few of these veggies go to flower will help support your local beneficial insects.

Salvias such as chia (Salvia hispanica) and basils such as sweet basil (Ocimum basilicum) will attract and support a variety of flower-visiting insects.

Native flowers such as coastal rosemary (Westringia fruticosa), Happy Wanderer (Hardenbergia violacea), wattles (Acacia) and grevilleas are excellent for some of our pickier native insects.

2. Create variety

When planning your winter garden, aim for a variety of colours, shapes and blooming times. Ideally, something should be in bloom all year round. Try to include as many native species as possible. Different winter-active insects have different preferences, so a variety of flower types can ensure you cater to a wider range of insects.

For example, a winter survey of community gardens in Sydney found honeybees were most abundant on sweet basil, lavender (Lavendula) and borage (Borago officinalis), while hoverflies (Melangyna_sp) preferred Brassica rapa, Veronica persica and Stellaria media.

The differences in flower preferences likely reflect differences in the shape and length of insect mouth parts. Honeybees have relatively long tongues that can access nectar in tube-shaped flowers (such as basil and lavender).

Hoverflies, with their shorter tongues, have an easier time accessing nectar and pollen from shallower, daisy-like flowers. By planting a variety of flower shapes, you can make sure no insect misses out.

3. Avoid insecticides

Even organic or so-called “eco-friendly” insecticides may harm beneficial insects. Instead of insecticides, try low-impact options such as removing caterpillars by hand, or using a water spray to remove aphids.

If you feel you must use insecticides, read the label carefully and choose selective baits and sprays, which target one type of insect, over broad-spectrum sprays (such as pyrethrins, pyrethroids and neonicotinoids) which kill insects indiscriminately. Keep in mind that in some cases, using insecticides can actually make your pest problems worse by killing beneficial predatory insects.

Get planting!

Planting a garden for winter-active insects is a wonderful way to support local wildlife. Your garden will thrive as a result of the free pollination and pest control services these beneficial insects provide.

So get planting, and enjoy the delight of a buzzing garden full of helpful insects.

Read more: Why tiny ants have invaded your house, and what to do about it

– ref. These 3 tips will help you create a thriving pollinator-friendly garden this winter – https://theconversation.com/these-3-tips-will-help-you-create-a-thriving-pollinator-friendly-garden-this-winter-157880

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Melissa Conley Tyler, Research Associate, Asia Institute, The University of Melbourne

Indications are that the federal government is very cautious about accepting a Victorian government proposal to establish an additional hotel quarantine stream. The plan is to start bringing back 120 international students and event workers per week from May 24. It might seem like a drop in the ocean – more than 150,000 students are stranded overseas – but it’s an important start.

Australia benefits from international students returning: not just directly in the higher education sector, which has had massive job losses since Australia closed its borders, but also in the flow-on economic benefits from student spending in areas like housing, food and services. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, international education was Australia’s third-largest export industry, worth about A$40 billion a year to the wider economy.

Read more: As hopes of international students’ return fade, closed borders could cost $20bn a year in 2022 – half the sector’s value

If a solution is not found soon, there might be fewer international students to return. Australia risks falling behind competitors, like the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States, that are welcoming and assisting international students. The long-term impact on Australia’s reputation as a study destination should also be considered.

Many international students have been very tenacious in continuing to study, but they are finding it extremely difficult. They need to believe there is some hope of return.

Victoria’s current proposal is less ambitious than some of its earlier plans. It’s a shame it didn’t take up plans to use student accommodation for quarantine.

Read more: How unis can use student housing to solve international student quarantine issues

And it’s a real shame it didn’t look at options other than hotel quarantine for students from low-risk locations.

The return of students from places like Vietnam or Taiwan poses a negligible risk to the Australian community. Ideally the system design should reflect this, leaving more quarantine spots available for those who need them.

Even with these faults, Victoria’s proposal is the first plan that would enable an ongoing stream of international students to return. It doesn’t pit international students against returning Australians: it’s an additional program, so it won’t take a single place from those who are trying to get home. It could build confidence to scale up – and give international students some comfort.

Why the year-long wait for a plan?

With such a strong self-interest case for Australia, the question is why this hasn’t been tried sooner. Pilot programs for South Australia and the ACT were announced then postponed. New South Wales has called for expressions of interest, but there are no firm plans. The only pilot that actually went ahead brought back 63 incredibly lucky students to Charles Darwin University.

So why hasn’t there been more urgency? Some of the explanations apply to all groups who want to return.

The federal government does not want to take responsibility for quarantine. We saw that again the last few days in its response to Victoria’s plans for cabin-style quarantine on federal land.

Outbreaks from quarantine hotels have spooked state governments and the public. Victoria, which suffered one of the world’s longest lockdowns, has not been as strong an advocate as might have been expected from a state whose biggest export industry is international education.

Read more: The government keeps shelving plans to bring international students back to Australia. It owes them an explanation

Isolationism ultimately hurts Australia

The lack of urgency in finding solutions to enable travel is hard to explain given the sheer number of people and groups affected, including at least 34,000 stranded Australians, international students, workers in the tourism sector and ultimately every business that depends on students and migrants. Cutting itself off from the world harms Australia deeply.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s statement that Australia is in “no hurry” to reopen was jarring. Perhaps the strong reaction to making it a crime to return from India might cause the government to reconsider. Opinion polling shows 33% think the federal government has not done enough to help Australians to return.

For international students in particular the problem has been compounded by the federal government’s lack of sympathy – bordering on antipathy – towards the higher education sector. Some of this is likely to be party politics, but one factor worth considering is the impact of defence and security concerns about China in stigmatising international engagement by Australia’s universities.

Australia’s success in international education is now being viewed as dependence. Some see it as a positive that the higher education sector is being forced into structural reform. Federal MP Bob Katter went so far as calling universities “prostitutes” who have “sold their bodies and souls” to the Chinese Communist Party. Federal Education Minister Alan Tudge has explicitly called on universities to diversify students’ source countries.

Read more: Which universities are best placed financially to weather COVID?

It will be a tragedy if Australia manages to kill off its third-largest export industry. Rational economic and public health policy would be for Australia to pull out all stops to help international students to return, particularly those from low-risk countries. Any steps in this direction, no matter how small, would be welcome.

– ref. We have so many good reasons to give international students hope, so why the lack of government urgency? – https://theconversation.com/we-have-so-many-good-reasons-to-give-international-students-hope-so-why-the-lack-of-government-urgency-159996

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jason M. Gibson, Research Fellow, Deakin University

After 140 years, researchers have rediscovered an Aboriginal ceremonial ground in Victoria’s East Gippsland. The site was host to the last young men’s initiation ceremony of the Gunaikurnai back in 1884, witnessed by the anthropologist A.W. Howitt.

Howitt’s field notes, combined with contemporary Gunaikurnai knowledge of their country, has led to the rediscovery. The site is located on public land, on the edge of the small fishing village of Seacombe. Its precise location had been lost following decades of colonial suppression of Gunaikurnai ritual and religious practices.

Researchers from the Howitt and Fison Archive project and the Gunaikurnai Land and Waters Aboriginal Corporation began searching for the site in 2018. While it lacks archaeological traces, such as middens, rock art, stone arrangements or artefact scatters, the importance of such ceremonial grounds is under-recognised. They are a central feature of Australian Indigenous conceptions of landscape and have considerable historical and cultural importance.

The Jeraeil

In the first few weeks of 1884, the Gunaikurnai peoples of Gippsland were preparing for a historic gathering. After decades of discussion and negotiation with Howitt, who was also a local magistrate and power broker, they finally agreed to allow him to record their secretive young men’s initiation ceremony, known as the Jeraeil.

Last held in 1857, just a few years before Howitt arrived in Gippsland, the Jeraeil had ceased to be performed due to tighter governmental restrictions and stern dissuasion from Christian missionaries.

On January 30 1884, all the required Gunaikurnai people had assembled. Those coming from the Lake Tyers Mission came on the paddle steamer Tanjil. Those from Ramahyuck Mission, on the shores of Lake Wellington, arrived on the steamer Dargo.

Convinced that an Aboriginal initiation ceremony from this part of the colony would never be performed again, Howitt arranged and paid for his primary Kulin informants from the Melbourne area, William Barak and Dick Richards, to attend so they could contribute their commentary on Victorian ceremonies.

The event, which lasted four days, began with a series of preliminary ceremonies involving men and women singing together. The women kept time by beating on rugs folded in their laps and hitting digging sticks on the ground. Many of the performances that followed were restricted only to men, with six youths eventually initiated into manhood.

“It was remarkable,” Howitt commented, that although he had known many of these men “intimately,” and for a long time, they had kept these “special secrets […] carefully concealed” from him for many years.

Howitt’s published description of the Jeraeil, along with the equally significant work on similar ceremonies in New South Wales produced by Robert Hamilton Mathews, went on to influence the way religious life and ritual in south-eastern Australia was understood.

Finding the site

Lacking from Howitt’s record, however, was a precise description of where the historic ceremony had been held. A recent project to work on Howitt’s field notes in collaboration with Gunaikurnai people has uncovered new details, including a sketch map of the ceremony ground, sparking community interest in finding the site.

Howitt’s drawing of the ceremony ground, along with his notes and newspaper articles, enabled the research team to positively locate the site, on the edge of Seacombe, near the McLellan’s strait, which links Lake Wellington with the Southern Ocean.

The site’s significance lies not in any immediately observable physical property, but in its historical and cultural associations. They span the story associated with this place, including the local creation stories associated with Bullum Baukan (a woman with two spirits inside her); the complicated relationship with Howitt; interactions with other colonial authorities and the status of the Jeraeil in anthropological literature.

Discovery of this site means it is now protected under the (Victorian) Aboriginal Heritage Act 2006. All Aboriginal cultural heritage is protected in Victoria whether it has been formally registered or not and it is an offence to harm it.

The Jeraeil site is arguably one of the most significant of places in terms of the ritual and ceremonial life of Gunaikurnai people. However, the prospect of erecting signage at the Jeraeil site can produce mixed responses.

On the one hand, telling the world about these places might secure them. On the other, the Gunaikurnai live in a region dotted with monuments that remind people of the colonial violence enacted by men such as Scottish explorer Angus McMillian. One plaque brazenly describes McMillan as an explorer who achieved “territorial ascendancy over Gippsland Aborigines”.

Victorian Aboriginal cultural heritage continues to be damaged as happened with the recent partial destruction of the Kooyang Stone Arrangement in Lake Bolac. Some in the Gunaikurnai community fear too little is being done to protect such places but also worry about the public’s readiness to embrace Aboriginal cultural heritage.

Still, it is imperative places like the 1884 Jeraeil ground are better understood, recognised and protected. Not only does it tell a story of Aboriginal cultural practice but of shared Aboriginal and European interactions we should all know more about.

– ref. After 140 years, researchers have rediscovered an important Aboriginal ceremonial ground in East Gippsland – https://theconversation.com/after-140-years-researchers-have-rediscovered-an-important-aboriginal-ceremonial-ground-in-east-gippsland-155119

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mohiuddin Ahmed, Lecturer of Computing & Security, Edith Cowan University

It has been a big year for cryptocurrency. Bitcoin is worth six times what it was 12 months ago, and the joke currency Dogecoin has seen a hundredfold increase in price. A boom in “non-fungible tokens”, or NFTs – tradable tokens based on the same technology as cryptocurrency – is transforming the art market.

With this growth has come renewed scrutiny, with critics attacking Bitcoin in particular as a speculative bubble that uses vast amounts of electricity and produces no real value.

A new cryptocurrency called Chia, which has just begun trading, sets out to remedy these flaws while upholding cryptocurrency’s promise of a secure, decentralised form of payment.

Chia is the brainchild of Bram Cohen, who invented the BitTorrent peer-to-peer filesharing system. He claims it will be more reliable than other cryptocurrencies, and more environmentally friendly too.

What is cryptocurrency?

Unlike traditional currencies such as the dollar or euro, which are issued by central banks and rely on trust in governments, cryptocurrencies rely on a decentralised database called a blockchain, secured by sophisticated cryptographic tools.

The first cryptocurrency was Bitcoin, released in 2009, and today there are at least 5,922 cryptocurrencies available. Bitcoin is still by far the biggest; the total value of all Bitcoin now in existence is some US$1.2 trillion.

Read more: Demystifying the blockchain: a basic user guide

Despite this booming popularity, very few retailers accept cryptocurrency as payment.

Governments around the world are also exploring digital currencies. The Bank of England is hiring a dedicated team to explore the possibilities in this area, while the Australian Stock Exchange is reviewing applications for a cryptocurrency-based exchange-traded fund. Germany is one of the frontrunners in embracing crypto, and is heavily investing in blockchain solutions for institutional investment.

How is Chia different from Bitcoin?

Bitcoin and most other cryptocurrencies use a system in which currency is created or “mined” using computers to solve mathematical puzzles. These are known as “proof of work” systems — solving the puzzle is proof that your computer has done a certain amount of work.

Read more: The ‘utopian’ currency Bitcoin is a potentially catastrophic energy guzzler

Doing this work takes specialised hardware and lots of energy. Bitcoin mining has helped create shortages of graphics processors, and by some estimates it is more energy-intensive than copper mining and uses more electricity than some entire countries.

Chia runs on a system that should use less energy, called “proof of space and time”. In this system, users need to show they have reserved a specific amount of hard drive space at a precise time.

So Chia won’t use huge amounts of electricity, and won’t see miners buying up every graphics card in sight. But the requirement for hard drive storage space may lead to other drawbacks.

Hard drive price surge

Even before its official launch, Chia has used more than an exabyte of data storage. That’s the equivalent of about a million of the 1 terabyte hard drives you might find in an average desktop computer.

According to the South China Morning Post, hard drive prices in China have begun to soar as Chia miners stockpile storage. The price of 12-terabyte drives has increased by 59% since Chia was announced in February this year, and most professional-quality hard drives with more than 8 terabytes of capacity are sold out.

Vietnam is also seeing hard drive shortages as a result of China’s Chia craze.

We may well see similar effects in other countries in the not too distant future. At present, Chia lacks the name recognition and celebrity endorsements that have helped the likes of Bitcoin and Dogecoin to soar, but it has a clear cost advantage.

We can expect cryptocurrency miners will be inclined to try Chia, as a cheaper option than established cryptocurrencies. Eventually, hard drive manufacturers may also revise their prices to increase their own revenue.

Time will tell how Chia ends up performing on the market. If it takes off, we can expect a boom in hard drive prices. But on the flipside, it might also mean graphics processor prices come back down.

– ref. New Chia cryptocurrency promises to be greener than Bitcoin, but may drive up hard drive prices – https://theconversation.com/new-chia-cryptocurrency-promises-to-be-greener-than-bitcoin-but-may-drive-up-hard-drive-prices-160114

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Louise Humpage, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Auckland

The government’s recently announced health sector reforms go well beyond what its expert health review had recommended. This was rightly welcomed by many in the sector, but it does raise the question: if radical change can be made in health, why not the same for welfare?

For years now, benefit recipients, welfare advocates and their allies have been calling for a significant increase in core benefit levels to provide a liveable income.

They have also called for major changes in how Work and Income (WINZ) deals with people with chronic illness and disability and those in relationships; how it treats benefit recipients seeking assistance; and how it makes decisions about discretionary hardship and supplementary assistance.

Back in 2019, the Welfare Expert Advisory Group’s analysis stressed that immediate and significant reform in all of these areas was long overdue. It made 42 key recommendations but only a handful have been addressed. Almost two years on, we are still waiting for real action.

Life on a benefit ‘soul destroying’

My recent research involving benefit recipients’ experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic suggests this delay is causing real hardship and emotional stress for those relying on core benefits to survive.

Only some of those interviewed had received the full $25 per week increase provided in April 2020, due to reduced Temporary Additional Support payments or increased public housing rents. This year’s indexation of benefits to wages was welcome but inadequate to meet significant shortfalls in weekly income.

They have described their lives as “soul destroying” and a “daily grind”, resulting in feelings of hopelessness, despair and the impression they did not belong to the “team of five million”.

During the national lockdown, for example, already inadequate food budgets were made to stretch even further as shoppers hoarded staples, cheaper options flew off the shelves, and people with disabilities or sole parents who were not allowed to take their children shopping had to pay delivery charges.

Read more: COVID-19 is predicted to make child poverty worse. Should NZ’s next government make temporary safety nets permanent?

Dangers of a two-tier welfare system

In response to increasing pressure to act on social security, the government has suggested it might establish a two-tier unemployment insurance scheme. Workers would contribute directly to an unemployment insurance fund that would pay a significant proportion (possibly up to 80%) of their previous wages if they become unemployed.

But this would simply mean those who have been recently employed will be better off than those who have not.

The same principle underpinned the government’s Income Relief Payment for those who lost their jobs due to COVID-19. This benefit was paid at a higher rate and with easier eligibility conditions than the standard Jobseeker Support.

Unemployment insurance is common in some countries, so there is considerable international evidence indicating it creates a two-tier system: those already well off due to high wages continue to be privileged by receiving higher unemployment benefits than those on lower wages when they become unemployed.

At least, they are better off for one or two years, before they are relegated to the safety net system that sole parents, people with disabilities or chronic illness, refugees, migrants and others with weak attachment to the labour market are forced to rely on.

Privileging the already privileged

Such systems usually offer very low core benefits and increase social stigma by suggesting these groups are not as “deserving” as those more recently unemployed.

Indeed, one of my research participants described how the temporary Income Relief Payment came as a “kick in the gut” and was a significant blow to their mental health for precisely this reason.

Read more: New authority could transform Māori health, but only if it’s a leader, not a partner

A permanent form of unemployment insurance would send the message that we care more about shoring up the middle class, who already own homes and have retirement investments, than ensuring sick and disabled people or sole parents have enough to eat and a healthy home to live in.

Introducing an unemployment insurance system wouldn’t improve the living standards and emotional well-being of the sole parents and those living with disabilities or chronic illness who took part in my research.

Liveable incomes for all

Nor would it improve the “toxic culture” of WINZ or address many of the other problems highlighted by the Welfare Expert Working Group and various research studies.

Rather, it will reinforce existing inequalities, likely increase child poverty rates, and take up public service time and resources that could be better spent improving the current welfare system.

Read more: Children had no say in New Zealand’s well-being budget, and that matters

The radical reform we need is a system that provides a liveable income for all when we are unable to support ourselves, as is often inevitable at some stage in our lives.

This system would treat benefit recipients with dignity and respect, no matter what their circumstances or prior history, value the contributions sole parents make to society by bringing up our tamariki, and recognise the particular needs and strengths of people living with disability or illness.

This is the kind of welfare overhaul I hope is announced in the 2021 Budget.

– ref. If New Zealand can radically reform its health system, why not do the same for welfare? – https://theconversation.com/if-new-zealand-can-radically-reform-its-health-system-why-not-do-the-same-for-welfare-160247

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kaaren Mathias, Lecturer in Health systems and policy, University of Canterbury

As India’s COVID-19 crisis continues, the percentage of the population testing positive for the virus has grown from 4.2% to 18.4% in the past 30 days.

With more than 300,000 new cases reported each day, hospitals and crematoria face collapse. Global media have been awash with heartbreaking images, statistics and stories showing the failure of the country’s health system in the face of surging infections and deaths.

The fracture lines in India’s health system have been developing for years. After decades of under-investment in healthcare and preventative health, India has one of the most privatised health systems in the world. As a consequence, healthcare costs are a leading cause of poverty.

As my recent research into rural mental health services shows, patients are caught between the under-resourced public sector and the profit-focused private health market. Some even many, have to “sell a buffalo to pay for a brain scan”.

Lack of investment in health

Back in 1946, India’s visionary Bhore Committee report declared in its preamble that:

No individual should fail to secure adequate medical care because of inability to pay for it.

In 2021, countries like Vietnam, South Korea and China have successfully contained COVID-19 with few deaths, while in India hundreds of thousands are sick with the virus without adequate medical care.

Promised oxygen generation plants have not been set up and most days I receive messages from colleagues in India seeking hospital beds and oxygen cylinders for loved ones gasping with severe COVID-19 infections.

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

The cost of healthcare pushes many into destitution. The global average of out-of-pocket healthcare costs is 18.2%, but in India the number is 62.7%.

While India has bounced along with 8% or higher growth in GDP for the past three decades, in 2018 the Indian government invested just 1.3% of GDP in healthcare. The average investment in health across South Asia is twice that at 3.5% and New Zealand and Australia spend over 9.0% of their GDP on health.

In the past two decades, use of public hospitals has dropped in India, from 43% in 1993-4 to 32%. In 2011, 70% of community health centres could not provide emergency obstetric care.

Not trustworthy and not trusted

My research into community health systems also underlines that in a country as diverse and vast as India, one size cannot fit all.

A key component of the treatment gap for people with neurological and mental health problems is that the system has not engaged with the priorities of local communities. The health system is not trustworthy and not trusted.

The consequences of India’s flawed health system are obvious. In the field of nutrition (the most basic building block of health) India is among the world’s top 20 for stunting (38.7% for children under five).

A third of children are not immunised and India’s ranking in basic health indicators compared to regional neighbours has dropped. In a list of 195 countries, ranked by the healthcare access and quality index, India is behind neighbours Bhutan and Sri Lanka.

The smaller but more resilient nations of Nepal and Bangladesh have a lower per capita GDP, but in 2020 both achieved an infant mortality rate of under 26 per 1000 live births. In India, more than 28 per 1000 babies died.

Read more: COVID in India: how the Modi government prioritised politics over public health

Rising infant and maternal deaths

India’s COVID-19 surge has revealed a system in disarray. During the country’s harsh lockdown in March and April last year, healthcare was less affordable, less accessible and of poorer quality.

While the private sector is much larger than the public sector, it handled less than 10% of cases during the first COVID-19 wave. Many private hospitals stayed closed for weeks.

Rationing of public services meant limits had to be introduced on the number of COVID-19 tests per day. Diverting resources (personnel, resources, hospital beds, policymaker attention) to respond to COVID-19 meant vaccination rates have slowed and maternal mortality worsened in the past 12 months.

As a consequence of disruptions to neonatal and child health services, India is expected to record an increase in the number of deaths among under fives by 15% (154,000 deaths) for 2020. The Indian economy is predicted to contract by 10% or more, which means more people in poverty and less cash to pay for health infrastructure and staff.

Read more: India COVID crisis: four reasons it will derail the world economy

Health systems are complex but they are not rigid. They can be resilient and responsive to new challenges like COVID-19. There are some simple steps India could take to strengthen its failing health system.

It could invest in the public sector — staff, infrastructure, medicines and equipment. It could set up accountable governance structures and prioritise care for those experiencing inequities in access and outcomes. Maybe COVID-19’s exposure of its fragmented health system will push India to rebuild, from the ground up.

– ref. Selling a buffalo for a brain scan: India’s COVID-19 crisis reveals deep fractures in its health system – https://theconversation.com/selling-a-buffalo-for-a-brain-scan-indias-covid-19-crisis-reveals-deep-fractures-in-its-health-system-160180

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

How hard is Scott Morrison willing to poke the panda? That’s a question posed by the government’s review of the Chinese company Landbridge’s 99-year lease of the Port of Darwin.

The defence department is to advise on the security implications of the lease, granted by the Northern Territory government in a $500 million highly controversial deal in 2015.

At the time, then-United States president Barack Obama chided prime minister Malcolm Turnbull for not giving the Americans a heads up about the deal.

Turnbull added insult to injury by suggesting the president should subscribe to the NT’ News, where it was reported.

Although the federal government had no formal part in the lease at the time, the NT government sought federal advice. The defence department, ASIO and others in the national security establishment were not fazed by it. Neither was the national security committee of the Coalition cabinet.

The defence department secretary at the time, Dennis Richardson, and Duncan Lewis, who headed ASIO, both defended the arrangement when questioned by a senate committee.

Nevertheless, the deal had many critics and subsequently the federal government acted to ensure that in future such proposals would go before the Foreign Investment Review Board.

Fast forward to the present, and this week the new and hairy-chested defence minister Peter Dutton told the Sydney Morning Herald cabinet’s national security committee had asked his department to review the lease and “come back with some advice”. The work was already under way, Dutton said.

Last week Morrison had flagged the move, saying if the government received any advice from the defence department or intelligence agencies suggesting “there are national security risks there then you’d expect the government to take action”.

The Port of Darwin came into the frame after Foreign Minister Marise Payne cancelled two Victorian government agreements with China that were under that country’s Belt and Road Initiative.

Read more: Why scrap Victoria’s ‘meaningless’ Belt and Road deal? Because it sends a powerful message to Beijing

She was implementing the recent legislation for the examination of agreements state and territory governments and public universities have (or propose) with foreign governments.

The Port of Darwin lease, being with a commercial company, does not fall within that legislation, but the segue to discussion of its future was inevitable.

Despite its defenders at the time, it is clear the deal should never have been concluded. But it is less clear what should be done about it now.

The increasing assertive and aggressive stands by China seem to argue for the lease to be broken.

While the lease is only over the commercial port, the Chinese presence sits somewhat uneasily with the growing US military footprint in northern Australia.

Peter Jennings, executive director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) think tank, says: “I do think this is probably the moment that the government needs to step in”. He believes the government should buy out the lease and then sell it to a less problematic owner.

If the judgement is that a time of reckoning will come in relation to the port, a case can be put for not delaying that time.

On the other hand, does the government want to make the present difficult relationship with China significantly worse?

Overturning a major commercial deal is a big step (much bigger than killing the Victorian BRI agreements) and the government would have to give substantial reasons. The action would cause offence to China and probably invite more trade retaliation.

The decision would turn the focus onto other Chinese investments in Australian infrastructure, including the 50% stake in the Port of Newcastle, and stakes in the power grid.

It would be taken as implying a more general signal about Australia’s attitude to Chinese investment and perhaps about investment from some other countries.

Managing both the diplomatic and foreign investment messages would be tricky, to say the least.

Asked on Tuesday about the various complications, Morrison told Seven “we’ll just take this one step at a time”.

He said he wasn’t presuming anything about the advice to come, and he was sure it would include “many options”. He also noted the commercial port area was separate from “where our military and defence facilities are”.

Now that the future of the Port of Darwin has been put on the table, a significant factor in the mix is domestic public opinion, which is very distrustful of China. The government has raised expectations of action, which it will have to deal with if it decides not to act.

One way out of a vexed situation could be to seek a middle course – for example putting in place certain conditions (on reporting, governance and the like) for this and other relevant ports under the revised security of critical infrastructure legislation that is now going through the parliament.

Whatever is decided will be a revealing test of the power of the China hawks in and around the government.

– ref. View from The Hill: Port of Darwin review opens a Pandora’s box – https://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-port-of-darwin-review-opens-a-pandoras-box-160288

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Steven Freeland, Professorial Fellow, Bond University / Emeritus Professor of International Law, Western Sydney University, Western Sydney University

A large piece of space debris, possibly weighing several tonnes, is currently on an uncontrolled reentry phase (that’s space speak for “out of control”), and parts of it are expected to crash down to Earth over the next few weeks.

If that isn’t worrying enough, it is impossible to predict exactly where the pieces that don’t burn up in the atmosphere might land. Given the object’s orbit, the possible landing points are anywhere in a band of latitudes “a little farther north than New York, Madrid and Beijing and as far south as southern Chile and Wellington, New Zealand”.

The debris is part of the Long March 5B rocket that recently successfully launched China’s first module for its proposed space station. The incident comes roughly a year after another similar Chinese rocket fell to Earth, landing in the Atlantic Ocean but not before it reportedly left a trail of debris in the African nation of Cote D’Ivoire.

At the time, experts noted this was one of the largest pieces of human-made debris ever to fall to Earth. We cannot say with certainty what fate awaits this latest piece of space junk.

Litter from space

Australia already holds the record in the category of “who can be hit by the biggest piece of space junk”. In 1979, the 77-tonne US space station SkyLab disintegrated over Western Australia, peppering the area around the southern coastal town of Esperance with fragments.

At the time, the event was met with with excitement and a sense of lightheartedness, and many pieces were collected by space enthusiasts. Esperance shire council flippantly issued NASA with a fine for littering, and a US radio station later raised enough money to pay the debt.

Although there have been no recorded deaths or serious injuries from people being hit by space debris, that’s no reason to think it’s not dangerous. Just one year before SkyLab’s demise, a Soviet remote sensing (spy) satellite, Cosmos 954, plummeted into a barren region of Canada’s Northwest Territories, spreading radioactive debris over several hundred square kilometres.

With the Cold War at its height, the sensitivity of the nuclear technology on board Cosmos 954 led to an unfortunate delay in locating and cleaning up the wreckage, because of the distrust between the Soviet Union and the Canadian/US recovery effort.

The clean-up operation took months but located only a portion of the debris. Canada billed the Soviet Union more than C$6 million, having spent millions more, but was ultimately paid only C$3 million.

Read more: Trash or treasure? A lot of space debris is junk, but some is precious heritage

Since the late 1970s, pieces of space debris have fallen to Earth regularly and are viewed with increasing concern. Of course, more than 70% of Earth is covered by oceans, and only a minuscule fraction of the remaining 30% is covered by your house. But for anyone falling foul of the extremely long odds, the consequences would be truly disastrous.

It was just a quirk of fate that Cosmos 954 did not land on Toronto or Quebec City, where the radioactive fallout would have necessitated a large-scale evacuation. In 2007, pieces of debris from a Russian satellite narrowly missed a Chilean passenger plane flying between Santiago and Auckland. As we send more objects into space, the chances of a calamitous crash-landing will only increase.

Read more: Two satellites just avoided a head-on smash. How close did they come to disaster?

Who pays to clean up the mess, anyway?

International law sets out a compensation regime that would apply in many circumstances of damage on Earth, as well as when satellites collide in space. The 1972 Liability Convention, a UN treaty, imposes liability on “launching states” for damage caused by their space objects, which includes an absolute liability regime when they crash to Earth as debris.

In the case of the Long March 5B, this would impose potential liability on China. The treaty has only been invoked once before (for the Cosmos 954 incident) and therefore may not be regarded as a powerful disincentive. However, it is likely to come into play in the future in a more crowded space environment, and with more uncontrolled reentries. Of course, this legal framework applies only after the damage occurs.

Read more: It’s not how big your laser is, it’s how you use it: space law is an important part of the fight against space debris

Other international guidelines regarding debris mitigation and long-term sustainability of space activities set out voluntary standards intended to limit the probability of collisions in space, and minimise the breakup of satellites either during or after their missions.

Some satellites can be moved into a graveyard orbit at the end of their operational life. While this works well for certain specific orbits at a relatively high altitude, it is impractical and hazardous to start moving the vast majority of satellites around between orbital planes. Most of the millions of pieces of space junk are destined either to orbit in an uncontrollable manner for many years or, if they are in low Earth orbit, to gradually descend towards the Earth, hopefully burning up in the atmosphere before contact with terra firma.

A globally coordinated space traffic management system will be vital to avoid collisions that would result in loss of control of satellites, leaving them to tumble helplessly in orbit or fall back to Earth.

Comprehensively tracking every satellite’s movement and functionality is even harder than it sounds, because it would inevitably require countries to be willing to share information they often currently regard as confidential matters of national security.

But, ultimately, global cooperation is essential if we are to avoid an unsustainable future for our space activities. In the meantime, don’t forget to gaze upwards every now and then — you might spot some of the most spectacular litter on the planet.

– ref. A giant piece of space junk is hurtling towards Earth. Here’s how worried you should be – https://theconversation.com/a-giant-piece-of-space-junk-is-hurtling-towards-earth-heres-how-worried-you-should-be-160254

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ben Egliston, Postdoctoral research fellow, Digital Media Research Centre, Queensland University of Technology

The ABC’s latest Four Corners report is an investigation into how videogames are “deliberately designed to get people hooked”.

It describes the use of gambling-like “loot boxes” in games, the hotly debated notion of videogame addiction and, to a lesser extent, the “predatory techniques” of using user data and AI to increase spending in freemium games (free to play games which are monetised through in-app transactions and advertising).

The process of monetising and collecting data through videogames does require scrutiny, as it can be problematic for some users. But in working out what the harms are, we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact videogames are enjoyable and valuable for the vast majority.

How do game companies use data?

Videogame production is increasingly supported by collecting large amounts of player data. Game developers use this data to optimise game design and, perhaps more commonly, how games are monetised.

Historically, data about players’ actions and gaming experiences have been collected through quality assurance testing, or by game developers trawling through online forums. This has changed with the rise of data mining and analysis, referred to as telemetry, or more commonly as “data analytics”.

Such approaches were once limited to large “Triple A” companies such as EA or social gaming giants like Zynga. Only the biggest game designers could afford in-house software engineers to create these systems, and data analysts to use them.

Today data analytics are relatively cheap, accessible tools aimed at both big and small independent developers. Data analytics suites are a core feature of game development software, are offered by tech giants such as Amazon and are also sold by standalone analytics providers such as GameAnalytics.

Analytics might involve simple data such as the number of downloads, or may provide more complex insights, such as in-game behaviour, playing time and frequency of play.

The shift to freemium play, encouraged by smartphone platforms, has made it particularly important to collect data on in-app purchasing. This could include players’ geographic location, their device and operating system and their spending habits.

In turn, this can help game developers to determine which players are more likely to spend money while playing, and how to optimise the placement of in-game ads — a major source of revenue in freemium games.

The software Game of Whales — named after the industry’s practice of calling big spenders “whales” — claims to use AI to track players’ behaviour in real-time and interact with them in a way that maximises “lifetime value”, which is the total amount of revenue a player will generate while playing a game.

These tools are framed as allowing both large and smaller developers to create conditions which increase player spending. For example, they might minimise ads and encourage increased playing time for a high-value “whale”, while providing more ads for users who are unlikely to make in-app purchases.

This is the subset of the gaming industry that frames itself as being able to “control” players through data analytics.

What’s the data on the data?

However, while analytics companies would suggest their products work as promised, we lack scholarly evidence that data capture allows videogame companies to control our minds or our wallets.

As critics of Harvard Professor Shoshana Zuboff’s surveillance capitalism theory would argue, just because game companies collect our data, that doesn’t mean they can automatically control how we behave. Data does not rob us of our agency, writes Virginia Tech’s Lee Vinsel:

[…] it seems that Mark Zuckerberg can’t sell me fucking socks, let alone purposefully/significantly change my politics or self-concept.

Research on how developers use data analytics reflects this ambivalence. One study of French videogame company Ubisoft, and its use of data, suggests data collection “augments” (or enhances) products, rather than necessarily manipulating users into continued spending via microtransactions.

Read more: Facebook’s virtual reality push is about data, not gaming

Are you being manipulated?

The recent Four Corners report frames the gaming industry as a largely manipulative one. It attacks the industry’s calculated pricing strategies, which can affect how we value in-game purchases.

But these same strategies are also widely used in the restaurant industry. Even supermarkets are designed so customers spend as much time as possible inside.

Push notifications that encourage play and consumption have a real-world equivalent, too, such as scent machines at Disneyland used to boost cotton candy and caramel apple sales.

Yet, we don’t think of these subtle techniques as completely robbing us of our agency. So why does the gaming industry draw so much criticism?

Are there solutions?

Many of the mobile and freemium games discussed in the Four Corners report are designed for children who do need greater protection since, according to some psychologists, they don’t “comprehend commercial messages in the same way as more mature audiences”.

In part, concerns about spending in games can be attributed to parents and non-players misunderstanding how virtual goods can actually have real value for players.

A virtual outfit can still help someone express their identity. A helpful strategy could be for parents to discuss with their kids what it means to spend real money on virtual goods and why they want to.

Although, the way some games target whales to encourage unlimited spending is a source of genuine concern. When it comes to monetising responsibly, game platforms and developers both have a role to play.

The solution may be to introduce spending limits, which research has found helps gamblers avoid problem gambling.

Looking after children

It’s important not to conflate issues with how game companies encourage in-game spending with gaming addiction, about which there is significant disagreement among scholars.

Speaking to the Four Corners team, one psychiatrist frames gameplay through language such as “detox” and “relapse”. This approach, which critics refer to as a form of “concept creep”, can result in children’s play being unnecessarily pathologised.

Read more: Gaming addiction as a mental disorder: it’s premature to pathologise players

In our research, we found reason to be concerned by how this type of discourse can negatively affect children with healthy digital play habits, by stigmatising their play, causing parent-child conflict and devaluing concern about drug and alcohol addiction.

Children have the right to play and this extends to the digital world.

– ref. Sure, video games want to get you hooked on spending. But there’s no evidence they can manipulate you – https://theconversation.com/sure-video-games-want-to-get-you-hooked-on-spending-but-theres-no-evidence-they-can-manipulate-you-160182

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz, PhD Student/Epidemiologist, University of Wollongong

In early 2020, during the first thrashes of the pandemic, we were all talking about herd immunity.

At that stage, many commentators were arguing we should let COVID-19 rip through populations so we could get enough people immune to the virus that it would stop spreading. As I argued at the time, this was a terrible idea that would overwhelm hospitals and gravely sicken and kill many people.

Now we have safe and effective vaccines, we can aim to reach herd immunity in a much safer way. It’s certainly possible we’ll be able to reach and maintain local herd immunity in certain regions, states and countries. However the pandemic ends, it will involve this immunity to some extent.

But it’s still very uncertain whether long-term, global herd immunity is achievable. It’s quite likely the coronavirus could continue to spread even in places with high proportions of their populations vaccinated. It will probably never be eliminated.

However, if we’re all vaccinated, we’ll be largely safe from the worst ravages of the infection even if it does break out.

What is herd immunity again? And what does it mean for us long-term?

There are a few different definitions of herd immunity. Nevertheless, they all deal with the “reproductive number” of a disease, known as the R number. This is the average number of people an infected person will pass a disease on to, at a certain point in time.

Read more: What is herd immunity and how many people need to be vaccinated to protect a community?

The R number depends on how infectious a disease is. Measles is often used as an example, because it’s one of the most infectious diseases. In a group of people among whom no one is immune to the disease, on average one person will pass measles on to around 15 others.

But as more people in the community become immune, either through vaccination or getting the disease and recovering, each infected person will pass on the infection to fewer and fewer others. Eventually, we reach a point at which the R number is below 1, and the disease starts to die out. The R number falling below 1 here is in a population where there are no social restrictions, so the disease starts to die out because of immunity and not because of measures like lockdowns. This is one definition of herd immunity.

However, another potential definition is that herd immunity is a state where enough people are immune in a population that a disease won’t spread at all. One of the more confusing parts of the pandemic is we scientists haven’t always used the same definition across the board.

For example, when we say “reached the herd immunity threshold”, we could be talking about a transient state where we’re likely to see another epidemic in the near future, or a situation where the vast majority of a population is immune and thus the disease won’t spread at all. Both are technically “herd immunity”, but they’re very different ideas.

How’s herd immunity calculated?

COVID-19 has an R number somewhere between 2 and 4 in groups of people where no one is immune. Using a simple mathematical formula, 50-75% of people need to be immune to COVID-19 for the R number to fall below 1 so it starts to die out, in a population with no social restrictions. Some researchers have done more complex versions of this calculation throughout the pandemic, but that’s the basic idea behind them all.

However, herd immunity is a moving target. For example, if everyone in your local population is taking great care to socially distance, COVID-19 won’t spread as much. Therefore, in practice, different cultures spread diseases to different extents, so the R number varies in both place and time.

Vaccines are the ultimate path to long-term immunity

Vaccines give us immunity against diseases, often to a greater extent than contracting the disease itself, and without the nasty consequences of being sick.

Our COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective. Without going too much into the debate over which one is better, they are all capable of getting us to a point at which the disease would no longer spread through the community. For some vaccines, the percentage of people who we need to immunise is higher. But it’s the same basic idea regardless, and we need to vaccinate as many people as we can to have a shot at herd immunity.

We can already see this happening in some places. For example, in the United Kingdom and Israel, enough people have been vaccinated that even though restrictions are being relaxed, infection rates are staying low or continuing to drop. This is a beautiful sight.

The coronavirus will probably never be eliminated

Even with great vaccines, the problem is complex. There are almost always communities who aren’t immunised, for various reasons, even in countries with large proportions of the total population vaccinated. These small communities can continue to get sick and spread the disease long after the general population has passed the herd immunity line, which means there may always be some risk of COVID-19 outbreaks.

On top of this, new variants of the virus have emerged. Our current vaccines are probably enough to provide most people with immunity to the original strain in the long term. But several variants may substantially reduce our vaccines’ effectiveness as time goes by, so we may need boosters at some point.

What’s more, the global situation isn’t rosy. India and Brazil are currently experiencing horrifying COVID-19 outbreaks. The global case count continues to rise, partially because developed nations have hoarded vaccine doses jealously, despite this being a terrible approach to a pandemic. Rising case numbers anywhere increase the chances even more variants pop up, thereby impacting us all.

Even if we overcome vaccine hesitancy and global inaction, and we immunise most of the world, we may not be protected against the virus forever. Even higher-income nations may never get rid of COVID-19.

It’s quite likely this virus will never be eradicated (eliminated from every country across the globe). There may be places where the disease is gone, where local campaigns are successful, but there’ll also be places where the disease is still spreading.

Read more: COVID-19 will probably become endemic – here’s what that means

What does this mean for Australia?

This presents a challenge for Australia. We have virtually no local COVID-19 transmission, so there’s no real risk from the virus as long as our border controls hold steady.

However, we probably can’t maintain this level of vigilance forever. And even with our very effective vaccines, we may not have long-term herd immunity — of any definition — to COVID-19.

At some point in the future, it’s likely we will see some cases of COVID-19 spreading in even the safest places in the world, including Australia.

Even so, getting vaccinated enormously reduces your risk of severe outcomes like hospitalisation and death. We should aim to vaccinate as many people as possible, while acknowledging that the future is inherently uncertain, and herd immunity is a challenging goal.

– ref. We may never achieve long-term global herd immunity for COVID. But if we’re all vaccinated, we’ll be safe from the worst – https://theconversation.com/we-may-never-achieve-long-term-global-herd-immunity-for-covid-but-if-were-all-vaccinated-well-be-safe-from-the-worst-159821

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

What in America they call the State of the Union, in Australia we call the federal budget.

As surprising as it may seem, Australian budgets aren’t really about money — they’re about values.

As a case in point, a key part of next week’s budget will be an announcement about childcare, but the childcare measures won’t start until 2022-23.

It’s not clear that they’ll need to be in the 2021-22 budget in order to get approved.

Indeed, the budget’s formal title is Appropriation bill (No. 1) 2021-22. The budget bill will deal only with appropriations for 2021-22.

But the theatre that has built up around the presentation of that bill — the budget speech — has given it the space to deal with so much more.

Legally, the budget needn’t deal with much

Last year’s speech mentioned values, twice. It spoke of our “cherished way of life”, of the courage, commitment, and compassion of healthcare workers and volunteer firefighters, of our “invisible strength”.

And it extended the low and middle income tax offset for another year.

Legally, the budget bill can’t include tax measures. That’s outlawed by the Constitution.

Tax measures have to be introduced in separate legislation, measure by measure — or not be introduced at all. Our government can continue to collect tax at the existing rates for as long as it likes, unlike in Britain where tax collections form the core of the budget bill and need to be re-authorised every year.

In Australia, government spending does need to be re-authorised every year but only spending which is for the “ordinary annual services” of government.

Everything else — the vast bulk of government spending, everything from Medicare to pensions to grants to the states to family support to support for private schools and private health insurance — is ongoing, approved on a never-ending basis under so-called “standing appropriations” or “special appropriations”.

At the last count there were 240 such special appropriations, covering everything from the funding of universities to paid parental leave.

The Department of Finance says 167 of them are unlimited, meaning there is “no defined ceiling on total expenditure”.

What’s left, what actually needs to be re-approved in the budget each year, is little more than the payment of rent and public service wages, suggesting that if the Senate had rejected “supply” (the budget appropriation bill) during the 1975 constitutional crisis as it had threatened to do, the Whitlam government could have taxed and spent much as before, although it would have had to get private banks to advance public servants’ wages, something it was investigating doing.

Practically, it deals with most things

It might be because it needs to do so little that the budget has come to do so much.

Now the “forward estimates” for spending and revenue and the state of the economy go out for four years, and some of them for ten.

The budget has become a statement of the government’s values in part because it puts numbers on those values — how much it is prepared to spend on health compared to defence, how much it plans to spend on superannuation tax concessions for high earners compared to pensions for low earners.

Which makes it a statement of values

As with the US President’s State of the Union speech, it’s the only night of the year in which the government sets out clearly what stands for and what it plans to do.

An accident of history means it’s the treasurer rather than the prime minister who delivers the statement of values, although the treasurer speaks for the prime minister, as Joe Hockey spoke for Tony Abbott in 2014 when he infamously declared his budget to be for “lifters, not leaners”.

Josh Frydenberg’s values will be apparent in how he responds to a surging iron ore price (last year’s budget assumed US$55 a tonne and on a slightly different measure it’s currently north of US$180) and much stronger than expected recoveries in jobs and the share market.

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

It would be tempting to wind back spending and push up taxes in order to close the budget deficit without seeing how far the recovery can run.

That Frydenberg says he won’t, not until he gets the unemployment rate below 5% and hundreds of thousands more Australians are in jobs, is a statement of values.

That he is reportedly planning to spend an extra $10 billion (over the four-year “forward estimates”, not per year) on responding to the findings of the aged-care royal commission when the commission identified much greater needs might also be a statement of values.

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

As might the forecasts he makes for immigration, for the spending on mental health promised in response to the Productivity Commission inquiry, for the rollout of vaccines for Australians and vaccines for countries that need them more than Australia.

They’ll all be part of a program that makes clear what the government stands for and against which it can be judged.

– ref. The budget is a window into the treasurer’s soul. Here’s what to look for Tuesday night – https://theconversation.com/the-budget-is-a-window-into-the-treasurers-soul-heres-what-to-look-for-tuesday-night-160086

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robert McLachlan, Professor in Applied Mathematics, Massey University

Climate Explained is a collaboration between The Conversation, Stuff and the New Zealand Science Media Centre to answer your questions about climate change.

If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, please send it to climate.change@stuff.co.nz

I’ve heard the gravity changes when Antarctica melts will lower the seas around New Zealand. Will that save us from sea level rise?

The gravitational changes when Antarctica melts do indeed affect sea levels all over the world — but not enough to save New Zealand from rising seas.

The ice ages and their effects on sea level, geology, flora and fauna were topics of intense scientific and public interest all through the 19th century. Here’s how James Croll explained the “gravity effect” of melting ice in his 1875 book Climate and Time in their Geologic Relations:

Let us now consider the effect that this condition of things would have upon the level of the sea. It would evidently tend to produce an elevation of the sea-level on the northern hemisphere in two ways. First, the addition to the sea occasioned by the melting of the ice from off the Antarctic land would tend to raise the general level of the sea. Secondly, the removal of the ice would also tend to shift the earth’s centre of gravity to the north of its present position – and as the sea must shift along with the centre, a rise of the sea on the northern hemisphere would necessarily take place.

His back-of-the-envelope calculation suggested the effect on sea level from ice melting in Antarctica would be about a third bigger than average in the northern hemisphere and a third smaller in the south.

A more detailed mathematical study by Robert Woodward in 1888 has falling sea level as far as 2000km from Antarctica, but still rising by a third more than average in the north.

Read more: Ancient Antarctic ice melt caused extreme sea level rise 129,000 years ago – and it could happen again

Sea-level fingerprints

Woodward’s method is the basis of determining what is now called the “sea-level fingerprint” of melting ice. Two other factors also come into play.

1. The elasticity of the earth’s surface means the land will bounce up when it has less ice weighing it down. This pushes water away.

2. If the ice is not at the pole, its melting shifts the south pole (the axis of rotation), redistributing water.

Combining these effects gives the sea-level fingerprints of one metre of sea-level rise from either the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) and Greenland (GIS), as shown here:

Woodward’s method from 1888 holds up pretty well – some locations in the northern hemisphere can get a third more than the average sea level rise. New Zealand gets a little bit below the average effect from Antarctica, and a little more than average from Greenland. Overall, New Zealand can expect slightly higher than average sea level rise.

Combining the sea-level fingerprints of all known sources of melting ice, together with other known changes of local land level such as subsidence and uplift, gives a good fit to the observed pattern of sea level rise around the world. For example, sea level has been falling near West Antarctica, due to the gravity effect.

Sea-level rise is accelerating, but the future rate is uncertain

The global average rise in sea level is 110mm for 1900-1993 and 100mm for 1993–2020. The recent acceleration is mostly due to increased thermal expansion of the top two kilometres of the oceans (warm water is less dense and expands) and increased melting of Greenland.

But the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment satellite has revealed the melting of Antarctica has accelerated by a factor of five in recent decades. Future changes in Antarctica represent a major source of uncertainty when trying to forecast sea levels.

Much of West Antarctica lies below sea level and is potentially subject to an instability in which warming ocean water melts the ice front from below. This would cause the ice sheet to peel off the ocean floor, accelerating the flow of the glacier towards the sea.

In fact, this has been directly observed, both in the location of glacial “grounding lines”, some of which have retreated by tens of kilometres in recent decades, and most recently by the Icefin submersible robot which visited the grounding line of the Thwaites Glacier, 2000km east of Scott Base, and found the water temperature to be 2℃ above the local freezing point.

Read more: If warming exceeds 2°C, Antarctica’s melting ice sheets could raise seas 20 metres in coming centuries

The big question is whether this instability has been irreversibly set into motion. Some glaciologists say it has, but the balance of opinion, summarised by the IPCC’s report on the cryosphere, is that:

Observed grounding line retreat … is not definitive proof that Marine Ice Sheet Instability is underway. Whether unstable West Antarctic Ice Sheet retreat has begun or is imminent remains a critical uncertainty.

The IPCC special report on 1.5℃ concluded that “these instabilities could be triggered at around 1.5℃ to 2℃ of global warming”.

What’s in store for New Zealand

Predictions for New Zealand range from a further 0.46 metres of sea-level rise by 2100 (under a low-emission scenario, with warming kept under 2℃) to 1.05 metres (under a high-emission scenario).

A continued rise in sea levels over future centuries may be inevitable — there are 66m of sea level rise locked up in ice at present — but the rate will depend on how fast we can reduce emissions.

A five-year, NZ$7m research project, NZ SeaRise, is now underway, seeking to improve predictions of sea-level rise out to 2100 and beyond and their implications for local planning.

– ref. Climate explained: when Antarctica melts, will gravity changes lift up land and lower sea levels? – https://theconversation.com/climate-explained-when-antarctica-melts-will-gravity-changes-lift-up-land-and-lower-sea-levels-155464

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sangeetha Pillai, Senior Research Associate, Andrew & Renata Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law, UNSW Law School, UNSW

There is a growing public and political outcry over the federal government’s sudden decision to ban Australians from coming home from India.

But as everyone from Indian community leaders to human rights leaders, famous cricketers and Coalition MPs calls on the government to rethink the policy, is it legal? Is a High Court challenge an option?

What is citizenship?

In terms of common law, citizenship is a relationship between an individual and their nation, where each owes fundamental obligations to the other. In broad terms, the citizen’s job is to be loyal to the nation. The nation’s job is to protect its citizens.

Last year, a record number of people pledged allegiance to Australia and became citizens. The largest group of new citizens were Indian migrants, with over 38,000 becoming Australians in 2019-20.

Now, under the Australian government’s tough new travel ban, 9,000 Australians remain stranded in India, which is currently battling a deadly COVID-19 second wave and oxygen and vaccine shortages.

Some were granted permission to travel to India to see dying relatives or attend funerals. Others travelled there pre-pandemic and have since been unable to return to Australia.

Despite having done nothing wrong, these Australians have been left unprotected by a government that has failed to hold up its end of the citizenship bargain.

How does the travel ban work?

The ban makes it unlawful for anyone, including Australian citizens, to enter Australia if they have been in India in the past 14 days. It was made under sweeping powers conferred on federal Health Minister Greg Hunt by the 2015 Biosecurity Act.

Section 477 of the act allows Hunt to issue “determinations” imposing any “requirement” that he deems necessary to control the entry or spread of COVID-19. These determinations cannot be disallowed by parliament. Thanks to a provision aptly known as a “Henry VIII clause”, they also override any other federal, state or territory law.

If a person breaches the travel ban, for instance by transiting through a third country, the Biosecurity Act states they may face criminal penalties of five years imprisonment, a $66,000 fine, or both (even if Prime Minister Scott Morrison says jail time is unlikely).

Hunt says the ban is a “temporary pause”. It will lapse on May 15. However, if he deems it necessary, he could use his broad powers to reintroduce it, or impose similar restrictions.

As political pressure builds to remove the ban early, the government says it is “constantly” reviewing it.

Is the ban legal?

Another basic principle of citizenship is citizens may freely return to their countries. Under common law, this stems from the Magna Carta. It is also an important principle of international law, enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

In March, two Australians stranded in the United States took their case to the United Nations Human Rights Committee. They argued government policies blocking their return contravene international law.

The committee has not reached a decision, but in April it asked Australia to ensure their prompt return, noting they faced “irreparable harm”.

What about our domestic law?

Whether the ban is legal under Australian domestic law is a different question. Although the Department of Home Affairs says Australian citizens can “apply for an Australian passport and re-enter Australia freely”, there is no codified right of return under Australian law. This sets us apart from many countries that have a bill of rights, and include this right.

Read more: The crisis in India is a terrifying example of why we need a better way to get Australians home

A High Court challenge is an option, but there is no clear path to success.

The High Court has said little on the subject. A 1908 case suggests citizens may have a common law right to return to Australia, provided this has not been taken away by parliamentary law. The Biosecurity Act of course thoroughly displaces any such right.

Due to the deep links between citizenship and the right of return, it has been suggested citizens may have an implied constitutional right to enter Australia. There is no case law on this yet — just a single, vaguely worded sentence in a 1988 High Court case — and there are good reasons why it might be a difficult case to argue in Australia.

Implied rights must be derived from the text and structure of Australia’s Constitution, which says nothing about Australian citizenship, and little about the relationship between the government and the people, besides providing for democratic elections.

Does it breach the Biosecurity Act?

Another argument might be the travel ban is unlawful on the grounds Hunt failed to comply with the conditions for making a determination under section 477 of the Biosecurity Act.

These conditions require him to be satisfied, before imposing the ban, that it was “likely to be effective” in stopping the spread of COVID-19, “appropriate and adapted” to this purpose, and “no more restrictive or intrusive” than the circumstances required.

Importantly, it is Hunt personally who must be satisfied of these conditions. This means if he reached that conclusion on reasonable grounds, he has not broken the law, even if a different approach might have been available.

Yesterday, Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly’s advice to Hunt in advance of the travel ban was released. Kelly’s advice emphasises the significant risk quarantine leakage poses to the Australian community and says a travel ban on arrivals from India until 15 May would be effective, proportionate and limited to what is necessary.

In light of this, it seems likely that a court would see the determination as a reasonable exercise of Hunt’s power.

Beyond the law, what about moral arguments?

But, legality aside, let’s return to the idea that Australia has a fundamental responsibility to protect its citizens. In February 2020, Hunt acknowledged this, pointing to two related national priorities: to contain the virus and protect citizens at home, and protect and support Australians abroad.

There may be circumstances in which these priorities conflict with each other. But it is hard to see the conflict in this situation. Quarantine and effective contact tracing have seen those within Australia substantially protected against COVID-19. We have not needed blanket bans on returns from the US, the United Kingdom or other countries that have experienced virus surges.

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

Kelly’s advice points to potential strain on quarantine, and Morrison has said the ban ensures that “our quarantine system can remain strong”. But the federal government could protect more people in Australia and abroad (not to mention ease pressure on countries experiencing COVID-19 strain), if it worked to bring citizens home while devoting more resources towards strengthening the quarantine system.

Yet the government has resisted this, despite a clear constitutional power over quarantine, the recommendations of public health experts and a national review.

Meanwhile, 9,000 Australians in India are anxiously waiting for a change to the law, which would at least legally permit them to try and return home.

– ref. Is Australia’s India travel ban legal? A citizenship law expert explains – https://theconversation.com/is-australias-india-travel-ban-legal-a-citizenship-law-expert-explains-160178

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

In recent years, Wake in Fright (1971) has cemented its reputation as one of the most important Australian films. But for decades after its release it was almost impossible to find a version to watch.

In the early 1970s, the Australian film industry was still in its infancy. But Australian television was in full stride, and there were hints of an emerging national cinema.

Directed by Canadian Ted Kotcheff, and adapted from Kenneth Cook’s 1961 novel of the same name, Wake in Fright, which premiered at Cannes in May 1971, emerged at a moment when Australian art and literature was consciously attempting to express a distinct cultural nationalism.

While the comic film Barry McKenzie, which came out the following year, projected outwards as broad farce, turning the vulgarity of the Australian character back at empire, Wake in Fright turned inwards, finding psychological horror inland.

European art films were cross-pollinating with Hollywood. A truly international art cinema seemed possible, and the Australian landscape provided a novel setting.

Fifty years on, Wake in Fright remains an uncomfortable and unvarnished portrait of Australia, with unforgettable images of mangled kangaroo corpses and discarded beer cans.

An ugly country

The film explores the ugliness at the heart of the Australian project, and the toll of extracting precious metals from the earth.

Teacher John Grant (Gary Bond) leaves his outback schoolhouse, heading back to Sydney for the holidays. He stops overnight in Bundanyabba (a thinly-veiled stand-in for production location Broken Hill), and loses his savings in a night of drunkenness and two-up, leaving him stranded.

Read more: Let’s honour the Anzacs by making two-up illegal again

In episodic fashion, John is drawn into the lives of the eccentric locals, including the unhinged Doc Tydon (Donald Pleasence), the languid, repressed Janette (Sylvia Kay) and the roughabout Dick (Jack Thompson, in his film debut). The film culminates in a bloody kangaroo hunt — captured when the production accompanied a real-life hunting expedition.

Wake in Fright is filled with moments of wry humour and deadpan surrealism, as when a performatively sombre ANZAC observance momentarily halts the equally ritualised swill at the local RSL.

Wake in Fright explores the contradictions of “the Yabba”, where grand colonial architecture abuts slag heaps under the oppressive, beating sun.

It remains a compelling portrait of class anxiety and the tensions between metropolitan and rural Australian life. The social economy of the Yabba trades on “aggressive hospitality”, suspicion of outsiders and inferiority complexes, embodied in the local cop (Chips Rafferty, in his final role).

The uptight, superior John takes on a civilising mission through his teaching, while dreaming of the cooling respite of coastal Sydney. Yet it only takes a single night in the Yabba to turn John to beer-soaked savagery.

Tydon, John’s sinister counterpart, makes a mockery of his medical qualifications, embracing his animalistic nature as a perverse badge of honour. Alcohol fuels John’s descent — and the film’s depravity — erupting in the monstrous kangaroo carnage.

At the film’s conclusion, John’s return to the schoolhouse mirrors the opening, implying all this will happen again.

The film’s release has acquired its own mythology: screenings were met with stunned silence, or cries of “that’s not us.”

Wake in Fright did receive some positive notices, and an extended run in France after its Cannes premiere. But in Australia, the film fell victim to an American distributor uncertain of how to effectively market it to Australian audiences.

After its initial release, it quickly fell into obscurity, unless one happened across its single television screening in 1988, which seeded fuzzy, half-remembered impressions of its horrors.

Lost and found

For decades it was believed there was no extant film print of sufficient quality to permit restoration for home media release or theatrical re-release.

The National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA) was established in 1984, 13 years after Wake in Fright’s release, and began to acquire all films produced through government agencies, with producers encouraged to deposit prints. But before this films were regularly lost to obscurity.

There was little incentive for commercial distributors to contribute to the NFSA — particularly in cases where films failed to perform at the box office — and until the adoption of digital cinema projection it was standard practice for distributors to destroy release prints after theatrical runs.

It is thought 90% of Australia’s silent film history is lost, and Wake in Fright appeared to have suffered the same fate.

Fortunately, after a protracted search, the film’s editor Tony Buckley located a 35mm negative print in 2004 at a CBS storage facility in Pittsburgh, in a container marked “for destruction”.

It was repatriated to Australia, and restored at the NFSA.

The restored print screened again at Cannes in 2009, and was released theatrically worldwide, marketed as “a lost classic from the outback.”

It has since inspired a monograph, book chapters and articles, a production history, a theatrical adaptation and a contemporary television miniseries remake.

Read more: A radical new adaptation eviscerates the dominance of male voices in Wake in Fright

Wake in Fright’s shift from a fuzzy memory to a cornerstone of Australian cinema demonstrates how malleable film canons are. Fifty years on from the premiere, Wake in Fright’s reappraisal and reclamation demonstrate the roles marketing and distribution can play in shaping our understanding of film history.

It is also a testament to the importance of institutions like the NFSA in reviving and showcasing underseen works — including those that reveal aspects of ourselves we might find uncomfortable.

– ref. ‘That’s not us’. Wake in Fright at 50, a portrait of an ugly Australia that became a cinema classic – https://theconversation.com/thats-not-us-wake-in-fright-at-50-a-portrait-of-an-ugly-australia-that-became-a-cinema-classic-159221

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jared Mondschein, Senior Research Fellow, US Studies Centre, University of Sydney

Federal Education Minister Alan Tudge’s push for better engagement between universities and industry signals renewed ambition and dynamism among higher education policymakers. Research commercialisation is being pitched as the way to rejuvenate a higher education sector plunged into crisis by the COVID-19 pandemic. Government has a crucial role to play in this process, and we have identified three specific steps it can take to help Australia catch up with the world’s best.

Australia’s public universities are world-class research bodies. But, unlike many universities in places like Europe and the United States, they are not good at building on that research for commercial returns. Australia’s level of research commercialisation is one of the worst in the developed world.

Read more: How to get the most out of research when universities and industry team up

This has been a vexed issue for Australian universities and governments for many years. Tudge has highlighted how research spending in Australia is four times what it was 20 years ago, but invention disclosure numbers remain basically unchanged. Compared to Australia, public research organisations in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom and others have two or more times the level of invention disclosures and start-ups for every billion dollars spent on research.

Tudge pointed to the example of Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Its inventions generate more than A$2 billion in annual sales. For comparison, the most any Australian university received from foreign student tuition fees in 2019, the last pre-pandemic year, was less than A$1.1 billion.

Read more: As hopes of international students’ return fade, closed borders could cost $20bn a year in 2022 – half the sector’s value

3 big steps towards commercialising research

The minister has detailed some ways the federal government has encouraged commercialisation. These include adjustments to government grants for research. Yet these efforts are certainly not novel or sufficient. More can and should be done.

Benchmarking research commercialisation policies across other countries, we advocate three ways government can assist.

1. Federal and state governments should work to attract innovative anchor firms and venture capital firms to Australia.

Anchor firms are large, research-and-development-intensive and innovation-oriented organisations. Venture capital firms provide funding to the sort of start-up companies and small businesses expected to have high-growth potential.

Both sorts of firms are often integral to supercharging the commercialisation of research. Few, if any, of the most innovative technologies in the world would have been as ubiquitous without one or both of these two critical pillars of research commercialisation being involved at some point.

Australia’s woeful rankings in academic-industry collaboration cannot be blamed solely on universities. Australian industry itself invests less in research and development (R&D) than most of the developed world.

Read more: Australia can do a better job of commercialising research – here’s how

Anchor firms generally invest more heavily in R&D. They also are integral to supercharging commercialisation, through economies of scale (bigger consumer base) and scope (multiple markets).

Venture capital firms commercialise innovations on a global scale. Their presence in Australia has grown considerably in recent years. Australia’s Early Stage Venture Capital Limited Partnerships has helped, but more can be done.

Israel, for example, leads the world in venture capital investments as a percentage of GDP, but it wasn’t always this way. Under the Yozma program from 1993 to 1998 the government provided 40% of the money raised by private investors in the country. It operated in tandem with a direct investment program targeting small, high-growth start-ups.

2. Help academics to be more commercially focused (versus solely focused on research and teaching).

Cultural change must begin early with the future academic workforce, and governments should work with universities to achieve this. The government should consider bolstering initiatives focused on early-career researchers.

While select Australian universities and CSIRO have industry PhD programs, they are under-resourced and uncommon. Many are still in a pilot stage.

Countries like France and Denmark have carried out government-backed industry PhD programs with documented success. Their success is built on buy-in from all stakeholders and reliably consistent government support.

Benchmarking Australia’s policies against these countries and others helps identify ways for government to enhance applied research and industry engagement. These include ease of secondment from academia to industry, the maturing of industry postgraduate programs, non-university-based applied research institutes, and more.

3. Create a national Technology Transfer Office.

University research is typically commercialised through a technology transfer office (TTO). These can vary considerably in their function, mandate and structure from one university to the next. Some have a limited scope, leading to subpar commercialisation outcomes.

The federal government should create a national TTO that universities can access through a hub-and-spoke model, rather than duplicating resources with institution-level TTOs. This national office would have a larger objective beyond merely protecting institutional intellectual property and maintaining an inward institutional-looking perspective.

Like the German model, an Australian TTO should provide a bridge between the academic world and entrepreneurs, investors, industries and communities. It should work with the likes of the Australian Trade and Investment Commission to promote Australian R&D capabilities as well as state-based agencies such as Investment NSW.

Read more: Chief Scientist: science will drive a post-pandemic manufacturing boom

Echoes of the last crisis

According to Margaret Gardner, chair of the Group of Eight representing research-intensive universities, the plight of Australian public universities is the most dire since the second world war.

The lack of government intervention to support the export education sector during the pandemic has left universities with huge shortfalls in foreign student tuition fees, which they relied on to fund research. At the same time, security concerns have dramatically increased government oversight and regulation of university operations. An apparent policy shift towards prioritising vocational education over higher education, most notably through the Job-Ready Graduates Package, adds to the pressures on universities.

As with WWII, a worldwide crisis has forced massive government interventions in Australia’s economy. The plight of Australian public research universities is dire, meaning government has a critical role to play.

– ref. Our unis are far behind the world’s best at commercialising research. Here are 3 ways to catch up – https://theconversation.com/our-unis-are-far-behind-the-worlds-best-at-commercialising-research-here-are-3-ways-to-catch-up-159915

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Georgia Cervin, Honorary Research Fellow, The University of Western Australia

The Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) has released its report on the culture and practice of gymnastics in Australia. Titled Changing the Routine, the report was commissioned by Gymnastics Australia in August 2020, after athletes shared stories online and in the media of the harms they had suffered in gymnastics.

The AHRC found evidence of bullying, harassment, abuse, neglect, racism, sexism and ableism across the sport, which has been going on for decades.

Its five key findings were:

• current authoritarian coaching practices risk harm to athletes, and there is little coach accountability or regulation

• there is inadequate understanding and prevention of the many behaviours that constitute child abuse and neglect in gymnastics

• a win-at-all-costs culture that accepts negative and abusive coaching behaviours has resulted in the silencing of athlete voices and an increased risk of abuse

• the focus on the “ideal body”, especially for young female athletes, combined with harmful weight-management and body-shaming practices can result in long-term eating disorders

• gymnastics hasn’t appropriately addressed complaints of abuse and harm due to lack of expertise, resource and complicated governance.

A toxic and dehumanising culture

The report did not investigate individual allegations of abuse. But it is damning in its analysis of gymnastics culture in Australia and the treatment of its athletes. Peppered throughout are harrowing quotes from 57 interviewees and 138 written submissions, detailing physical, psychological and sexual abuse.

The recurring theme is the dehumanising experiences of the gymnasts: voiceless, dismissed, and discarded if they failed to achieve athletic victories. The gymnasts repeatedly describe a “toxic” culture of control, which included being forced to train with injuries, being isolated and alone, and suffering long-lasting physical and emotional damage.

These stories echo what has been seen in the research for some time now.

One gymnast said:

Over time, I was conditioned to accept being yelled at, be berated, humiliated, submissive, follow orders, not laugh, be emotionless and, worst of all, condition[ed] to accept that the coach[‘s] behaviour was normal, acceptable.

Another explained the long-lasting impacts it had on her:

We were trained to be really obedient […] without any kind of personality or any kind of individual traits […] always doing what was expected of us so we didn’t get punished. I think that’s had a huge impact on my life as an adult far beyond the years when I was doing gym and I think it’s really problematic […] I think it makes us ripe for abusive relationships.

It’s also clear these negative experiences cause a lot of emotional turmoil for the athletes, whose “first love” became a source of abuse. One submission reads:

I loved gymnastics; I hate the culture. I use past tense because the abusive and inhumane treatment I experienced ultimately [led] to my hatred of the sport. I might currently hate gymnastics, but I longed for it. I needed it. I could not live without [it]. I did not know who I was without it; it defined me.

The commission concluded a “win at all costs” culture across the sport underpinned both authoritarian coaching and the dehumanising of athletes.

The goal of winning medals was prioritised over any concern for athlete welfare. And when gymnasts did win medals, this was seen to justify unacceptable behaviours. One submission explained:

The importance of winning medals takes precedence over everything else.

And this ethos wasn’t limited to high performance – it was seen in clubs and recreational gymnastics too.

Abuse in gymnastics is a gendered issue

The AHRC noted that a key risk factor in the culture is not only the power imbalance between coach and athlete, which is seen in many sports, but also in the gendered nature of gymnastics.

Not only does it have a high proportion of female participants, those athletes are also subjected to negative stereotypes, ideals and expectations around gender. This is essential to understanding the risk of abuse in gymnastics, and the AHRC’s observation is well supported by the research.

The research on women’s artistic gymnastics shows the sport was designed to showcase stereotypical femininity. This expectation wasn’t limited to bodily movement. It included the way female gymnasts were expected to behave: obedient, passive and docile.

In my book, I argue these gendered expectations of gymnasts, coupled with the age (often gymnasts begin training seriously from five and traditionally peaked around 16) and perceived expertise difference between the child athletes and adult coaches, is a compounding power imbalance that makes female gymnasts more vulnerable to abuse.

Read more: Girls no more: why elite gymnastics competition for women should start at 18

Where to now?

Gymnastics Australia described the report as “confronting”. It acknowledged the systemic issues that had negatively affected athlete well-being, and expressed “deep concern” over the gymnasts’ experiences described in the report. It apologised unreservedly to the athletes and their families, and committed itself to oversee the response to the report.

While this apology is an important first step, gymnasts are yet to see any organisation take responsibility for the harms gymnasts suffered under their watch. The culture cannot change without this essential component of accountability.

Read more: Survival of the fittest: the changing shapes and sizes of Olympic athletes

With the framework provided by this review, clubs and state institutions and organisations might undertake investigations into their own roles in athlete harm. Then they can begin the process of acknowledging institutional failures and the damage done to young gymnasts, and issue genuine apologies for their acts.

This kind of accountability is where cultural change begins. It’s also part of the redress process that athletes are seeking.

What better way to address the silencing of athlete voices than to listen to them?

– ref. A ‘toxic’ and dehumanising culture: how Australian gymnastics needs to reform in wake of damning report – https://theconversation.com/a-toxic-and-dehumanising-culture-how-australian-gymnastics-needs-to-reform-in-wake-of-damning-report-160197

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jeremy Moses, Associate Professor in International Relations, University of Canterbury

When it comes to dancing, pulling a sled, climbing stairs or doing tricks, “Spot” is definitely a good dog. It can navigate the built environment and perform a range of tasks, clearly demonstrating its flexibility as a software and hardware platform for commercial use.

Viral videos of Boston Dynamics’ robotic quadruped showcasing those abilities have been a key pillar of its marketing strategy. But earlier this year, when a New York art collective harnessed Spot to make a different point, the company was quick to deny its potential for harm.

The project, “Spot’s Rampage”, involved fitting a sample of the robotic dog with a paintball gun and allowing internet users to take remote control of the creature to destroy various art works in a gallery. It ended with Spot failing to function correctly, but Boston Dynamics used Twitter to strongly criticise the stunt:

We condemn the portrayal of our technology in any way that promotes violence, harm, or intimidation. Our mission is to create and deliver surprisingly capable robots that inspire, delight and positively impact society.

“Spot’s Rampage” was not the first to imagine the potential to use robot quadrupeds for violent ends. Spot also inspired the “Metalhead” episode of dystopian TV series Black Mirror, in which robot quadrupeds relentlessly pursue and kill human prey.

This is more than science fiction, however. A serious debate over the regulation or banning of lethal autonomous weapons systems is happening under the auspices of the United Nations, including how such systems should comply with existing humanitarian laws.

Robot anxiety

This contrast between the potentially violent robot of “Spot’s Rampage” and “Metalhead” and Boston Dynamics’ insistence that Spot be viewed as a force for good illustrates the tensions we have observed in our research.

As part of a larger project looking at debates on lethal autonomous weapons, we made a detailed study of 88,970 tweets about Spot from 2007 to 2020. The results indicate public responses have been significantly less positive than Boston Dynamics would like.

Read more: Female robots are seen as being the most human. Why?

Despite the generally playful and peaceful presentation of Spot in Boston Dynamics’ videos, and obvious public interest and fascination with the technology, there is also recurring scepticism and concern from Twitter users.

The word cloud below maps the most commonly used negative language in those tweets. Words such as “terrifying”, “war” and “doomed” are noticeably prominent.

Analysis of the use of emotive words shows recurring features of conversations about Spot: dark humour, sarcasm and suspicion about the intended uses of the technology. Associations between Boston Dynamics, its previous owner Google, the military and killer robots portrayed in popular culture (such the Terminator films) also recur.

Boston Dynamics CEO Robert Playter has dismissed such negative public reactions as “fiction” grounded in the “rogue robot story” and misunderstandings of the technology.

Depictions of robots that will not harm humans and even save lives have been a mainstay of public messaging by both Boston Dynamics and the US military’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. From fighting COVID-19 to search and rescue to taking soldiers out of harm’s way, the potential humanitarian applications of robotic quadrupeds in civilian and military service are emphasised.

Military connections

But negative reactions should not be too easily discounted. Boston Dynamics’ technology was advanced through military funding, and military applications have been seen as a key market. In 2019, company founder and then CEO Marc Raibert signalled Boston Dynamics “will probably have military customers”.

And in the month following the “Spot’s Rampage” prank, the robot was tested by the NYPD and by French armed forces in combat exercises — although public backlash against the NYPD trials have brought an early end to its contract with Boston Dynamics.

Read more: Abusing a robot won’t hurt it, but it could make you a crueller person

Meanwhile, other robotics companies, including Boston Dynamics’ competitor Ghost Robotics, have actively and successfully sought contracts with the US military.

Ghost Robotics CEO Jiren Parikh has said its Vision 60 quadruped “can be used for anything from perimeter security to detection of chemical and biological weapons to actually destroying a target”.

More recently, Ghost Robotics released footage of its robot quadruped firing a projectile into a target to demonstrate its potential use for bomb disposal.

The apparent flexibility of these machines, which can carry different payloads and be fitted and programmed for different missions, suggests a range of potential applications, including as lethal autonomous weapons.

As long as the military end-use remains uncertain and the technology itself is still developing, we should remain wary of attempts by developers, marketers and military advocates to shape and manage public sentiment with the promise of “saving lives”.

– ref. Is ‘Spot’ a good dog? Why we’re right to worry about unleashing robot quadrupeds – https://theconversation.com/is-spot-a-good-dog-why-were-right-to-worry-about-unleashing-robot-quadrupeds-160095

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Julien Louys, ARC Future Fellow, Griffith University

From the moas of New Zealand to the dodos of Mauritius, humans have hunted many island-dwelling species to extinction in the relatively recent past. But our research reveals humans haven’t always necessarily been agents of ecosystem destruction.

Our study, published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows that until around 12,000 years ago, the arrival of humans on new islands didn’t spell certain doom for the animals that already lived there, and that in most cases their extinction was due to many different factors.

That has since changed, of course. When humans first arrived in New Zealand around the years 1250–1300, they brought with them sophisticated toolkits, advanced maritime technologies, and a few animal companions. They landed in an ecosystem that had never seen any of these things.

Within a few centuries of landing, the biggest animals on these islands, the giant moas, were extinct, and alongside them numerous other birds, reptiles and amphibians. The true extent of these extinctions will probably never be known, but almost certainly runs to more than 30 different species. In other Pacific islands the scenario was much the same.

Further afield, on the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius, the arrival of humans was so inextricably linked to the demise of the dodo that this species has become a global emblem of extinction.

These events, relatively recent in evolutionary terms, have fostered a powerful and enticing narrative: that humans are perennially the agents of destruction and ecological folly.

The overkill hypothesis

These episodes of overhunting prompted the US geoscientist Paul Martin to propose his “overkill hypothesis” to explain extinctions of iconic species at the hands of humans. Martin surmised that when humans arrived in North America, they began hunting the biggest animals they found. Within a few generations, these “megafauna” had been wiped out.

This hypothesis has since been applied around the world. Megafauna extinctions in Africa, Europe, North America, South America and Australia have all been attributed to humans overhunting animals, destroying their habitats, or both.

In a relatively obscure part of the world, however, our earlier research revealed a different story. We work in Nusa Tenggara Timur, a series of small islands found in eastern Indonesia and Timor-Leste and north of Australia. Although these islands have never been connected to the mainland, the earliest records of humans date to about 45,000 years ago. They also hosted various now-extinct species, including stegodons (elephant-like creatures), giant rats, and birds.

As we analysed fossil and archaeological records across several of these islands, it became clear the extinctions here were not caused by human overkill. Some species from Nusa Tenggara Timur, such as the stegodons, disappeared well before modern humans arrived. Others, like the giant rats, lived alongside people for tens of thousands of years, withstanding millennia of hunting and consumption.

Why were these island extinctions so different from the more famous human-caused examples elsewhere? Perhaps it was the fact that humans arrived relatively early, in smaller numbers, and with less sophisticated hunting tools. Or perhaps it was the nature of the islands themselves.

To try to answer these questions, we mounted a global investigation of the impacts of humans and their evolutionary ancestors on the species that lived on islands. Our study covered a huge span of time known as the Pleistocene: from 2.6 million years ago, when humans’ evolutionary ancestors began spreading across the globe, to 11,700 years ago, shortly before modern humans developed agriculture and new technologies.

This vast period predates the times when most islands in the Pacific and Indian Oceans were first occupied.

We assembled leading archaeologists and palaeontologists who study island ecosystems. Next, we compared notes to see whether the extinctions of animals on each of these islands coincided with the arrival of humans.

Humans off the hook?

On only two islands, Cyprus and Kume, were all extinctions coincident with humans’ arrival. Some other extinctions on other islands also coincided with human colonisation. But, broadly speaking, the dominant pattern across all the islands we examined was that there was no relationship between humans arriving, and local animals going extinct.

This was true of both oceanic and continental islands (islands connected to continents during periods of lowered sea levels). In the latter, extinctions mostly happened when the islands were connected to the mainland. In the former, we found that volcanic eruptions weren’t coincident with extinctions either.

Read more: It was growing rainforests, not humans, that killed off Southeast Asia’s giant hyenas and other megafauna

Our study revealed important aspects of the relationship between islands, humans and extinctions. First, no two islands are the same. Each will be impacted differently by people, and in some cases the impacts may not necessarily be detrimental – in fact, they could conceivably even be beneficial.

Second, it was not until the past few millennia that humans began to wreak widespread destruction on island ecosystems. These are a result of overhunting, yes, but probably more from environmental degradation, introduction of invasive species, and overpopulation.

Read more: Aboriginal Australians co-existed with the megafauna for at least 17,000 years

Our research shows that even in the most fragile ecosystems — islands — humans have not always been the agents of destruction they are today. We should be wary of projecting recent human behaviours and their negative impacts into the deeper past. And taking a broader view of prehistoric extinctions will help inform our current efforts to save the species that survive today.

– ref. Humans weren’t to blame for the extinction of prehistoric island-dwelling animals – https://theconversation.com/humans-werent-to-blame-for-the-extinction-of-prehistoric-island-dwelling-animals-160092

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sukhmani Khorana, Senior Research Fellow, Western Sydney University

In the past five years, the number of overseas-born migrants from India grew more than any other group in Australia, increasing from 449,000 to 721,000. Indian residents leapfrogged New Zealand-born and China-born migrants in the 2020 government figures to rank second in the country, behind only those from England.

Despite their increasing numbers and growing political voice, it appears those of Indian origin still do not matter enough in the mainstream Australian public sphere.

This is most apparent in the recent travel ban imposed by the federal government on flights from COVID-ravaged India. Not only are Australian citizens prohibited from entering their own country, they also risk fines of up to $66,000 or five years’ jail time if they attempt to do so.

This has left stranded 9,000 Australians who have signalled an interest in returning home, including 650 classified as “vulnerable”. Critics have decried the punitive nature of the travel ban as racist.

After attacks, a stronger voice

People of Indian descent have long experienced discrimination and racism in Australia.

In 2009–10, a series of savage attacks on Indian students in Melbourne shook the community and resulted in widespread protests, blanket coverage in the Indian media and plummeting student enrolment numbers.

The racially motivated attacks were significant enough to force the Australian government to apologise and compel then-Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to mend diplomatic relations by making a visit to India and setting up the Australia India Institute.

It was widely thought at the time that Rudd did so to rescue the Australian higher education industry, which had become increasingly reliant on international students from India.

In 2013, my colleagues and I organised the first conference of the Indian diaspora in Australia. This was in response to an Australia India Institute report in the wake of the student attacks, which found the Indian-Australian community was not politically active and “flying under the radar”.

My research on the attacks showed the Indian-Australian community had in fact transformed from being “de-wogged migrants” to “rabble rousers”. This means that due to India’s greater economic strength on the global stage, those migrating to other countries have higher levels of pride in their home country. This, in turn, makes them more likely to speak up against perceived discrimination in Australia.

Why do Indian-Australians feel singled out now?

The current crisis over Australian residents being stranded in India has not elicited a similar reaction from the government.

Even though the nation’s chief medical officer has warned Australians could die during the travel ban — and doctors, human rights groups and the Indian-Australian community have forcefully criticised the move — Prime Minister Scott Morrison has stood firm.

How can such a decision be explained? Some commentators have said the government is trying to deflect attention from the failures of its own quarantine system by introducing such a punitive measure on health grounds.

Read more: The crisis in India is a terrifying example of why we need a better way to get Australians home

The real question is why those flying from India are being singled out. Such drastic steps were not in place when the US, the UK and Europe were going through similarly deadly and infectious COVID outbreaks in the past year.

One possible explanation is the Indian community in Australia is simply an easy target, especially when India is in an unprecedented crisis. Indian officials and media are likely to be preoccupied with more pressing domestic matters and may not complain about the treatment of Indian-Australians the way they did during the student attacks a decade ago.

And despite the Indian-Australian community growing in size in Australia and being increasingly represented in the media and politics, it appears those of Indian origin are still largely perceived as an “other” or a “model minority”.

Indian-Australians and their allies have more platforms than ever to express their legitimate anger over the travel ban, but that doesn’t mean those in power are listening.

How the Indian community can amplify its voice

On the one hand, the Australian government ought to have learned the lessons of the Melbourne student attacks and should take the lead in changing negative perceptions of its multicultural communities.

This is more important than ever with the rise of racist incidents towards Asian people since the onset of COVID.

Even before the pandemic, those of Indian heritage living in Australia reported experiencing high levels of “subtle racism” in their everyday lives. Anecdotally, this can range from being told to “go back to where you came from” in public places, to being asked to prove one’s worth and qualifications when carrying out jobs that are not regarded as stereotypically “Indian”.

On the other hand, there is still more the Indian diaspora could do to have a political voice that is take seriously in times of crisis. This is not just about speaking up for one’s own interests through formal political representation. A political voice can be achieved in other ways, such as

• listening to the voices and concerns of their younger generations and encouraging them to speak out in appropriate public forums

• showing solidarity with other communities that are subject to racism and discrimination

• using community groups to work constructively with politicians.

While there is more work to be done by the Indian diaspora in Australia to be politically proactive, it does not absolve elected leaders of the responsibility they owe to all Australian citizens to protect them. Migrants report increased feelings of belonging and civic engagement when they feel cared for.

Read more: The problem with Apu: why we need better portrayals of people of colour on television

– ref. It’s not surprising Indian-Australians feel singled out. They have long been subjected to racism – https://theconversation.com/its-not-surprising-indian-australians-feel-singled-out-they-have-long-been-subjected-to-racism-160179