Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Clarke, Associate Professor, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University

The Morrison government’s decision to scrap Victoria’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) agreement with China was based on Australia’s new Foreign Relations Act, which says the foreign minister may

ensure that arrangements entered by state or territory governments, and associated entities, are not negotiated, entered or continue in operation where they adversely affect Australia’s foreign relations or are inconsistent with Australia’s foreign policy.

In explaining her decision on Victoria’s BRI agreement, Foreign Minister Marise Payne reiterated that it was

about prioritising Australia’s national interests and ensuring there is consistency across our foreign relations.

The implication, of course, being that Victoria’s BRI agreement was not in “Australia’s national interests”.

Yet, the nature of the agreement itself, the controversy and debate surrounding it, and the overall trajectory of Australia-China relations suggests that the decision was as much performative as a practical defence of Australia’s “national interests”.

Vague agreements to ‘promote cooperation’

The nature of Victoria’s BRI “deal”, contrary to some of the breathless commentary surrounding it, was a largely a hum-drum affair.

The deal amounted to two non-legally binding memorandums of understanding (MOUs), signed in October 2018 and October 2019. These spoke vaguely of mutual commitments to “promote practical cooperation” of Chinese firms in Victorian infrastructure and Victorian firms in “China and third-party markets”.

Read more: Why is there so much furore over China’s Belt and Road Initiative?

The first MOU received input from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), while the second proceeded without federal oversight.

Although Canberra was arguably right to be concerned that the second MOU proceeded without input from DFAT, the federal government’s position on the Belt and Road Initiative was not definitively settled. It was sending mixed messages.

For instance, then-Trade Minister Steve Ciobo represented Australia at China’s Belt and Road Forum in Beijing in May 2017. And several months later, the federal government signed an MOU that committed to allowing Australian companies to cooperate with Beijing on BRI-related infrastructure projects in third-party countries.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison himself also stated in an interview with a Chinese magazine in November 2018 that

Australia welcomes the contribution the Belt and Road Initiative can make in meeting the infrastructure needs of the region, and we’re keen to strengthen engagement with China in regional trade and infrastructure developments that align within the international standards of governance and transparency.

Simultaneously, however, the Morrison government resisted signing a general Belt and Road MOU with Beijing, and voiced concerns about the transparency and ultimate aims of the initiative.

DFAT Secretary Francis Adamson noted in November 2017 that Canberra would

think constructively yet clearly about the principles, rules and institutions that underpin an initiative such as Belt and Road given its scale, ambition and complexity.

What will this move mean going forward?

In the years since, Canberra’s position on BRI has clearly been informed by its concerns about its geopolitical effects.

The Morrison government also has a desire to develop alternatives to Beijing’s gambit in our immediate neighbourhood, such as signing on to the “Blue-dot Network” infrastructure investment program with the United States and Japan in November 2019.

More broadly, as relations with China have deteriorated rapidly as a result of Beijing’s “wolf warrior” diplomacy, concerns about Chinese influence and interference in Australia, and Canberra’s ill-fated pursuit of an independent inquiry into the origins of COVID-19 — among other issues — it is unsurprising the federal government has now made use of its powers under the Australian Foreign Relations Act.

Read more: China enters 2021 a stronger, more influential power — and Australia may feel the squeeze even more

The question remains as to the ultimate effect of this latest development in Australia-China relations.

Given that Victoria’s BRI agreement was almost practically meaningless, the decision appears largely symbolic in nature. It’s designed to demonstrate to the Australian public, the Chinese leadership, and Australia’s allies that Canberra is holding firm in its “push back” against Beijing.

While Payne has asserted the government remains “absolutely committed to our continuing engagement with China”, it is difficult to see how this decision contributes to that goal.

Indeed, Beijing predictably responded with anger, claiming the decision demonstrates the Morrison government has “no sincerity in improving China-Australia relations”.

Biden reasserting US leadership in region

That, in fact, may precisely be the point as far as Canberra is concerned, given not only the current state of bilateral relations but also the emerging approach of the Biden administration.

US President Joe Biden has already asserted that US-China relations will be defined by “extreme competition”. And his secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has sparred with his Chinese counterpart on China’s “unfair” economic practices, repression in Hong Kong and Xinjiang, and Beijing’s “regional assertiveness”.

Moreover, Biden has proclaimed that “America is back”, and that it will work with allies and partners around the world

to secure the peace and defend our shared values and advance our prosperity.

These signals have been music to many ears in Canberra because they appear to demonstrate both the Biden administration’s recommitment to US leadership in the region and Biden’s acceptance that strategies of “engagement” with Beijing have failed.

All of this simply reinforces the downward trajectory of Australia-China relations.

Although Canberra may well be comfortable with this state of affairs, it should remain wary of locking itself into an adversarial relationship with its largest trading partner while its alliance partner’s ultimate strategy toward China remains a work in progress.

Two key Biden administration officials (National Security Council Indo-Pacific Coordinator Kurt M. Campbell, and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, for instance, have noted that American strategy toward Beijing should “seek to achieve not a definitive end state akin to the Cold War’s ultimate conclusion”, but rather “a steady state of clear-eyed coexistence on terms favourable to US interests and values”.

Canberra needs to remain alive to the possibility the Biden administration may seek to attenuate the costs of “extreme competition” through a strategy of “coexistence”. In such a scenario, performative “push back” leaves Australia vulnerable.

Read more: China’s efforts to win hearts and minds with aid and investment may make all the difference if there’s a cold war with the US

– ref. Why scrap Victoria’s ‘meaningless’ Belt and Road deal? Because it sends a powerful message to Beijing – https://theconversation.com/why-scrap-victorias-meaningless-belt-and-road-deal-because-it-sends-a-powerful-message-to-beijing-159536

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stefan Broer, Head of molecular nutrition group, College of Medicine, Biology and Environment, Australian National University

From time to time, generally when there’s a public case of a hunger strike, people ask me how long a person can survive without food.

The hunger strike generating attention at the moment is that of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. Navalny, who was arrested in January after returning to Russia, began refusing food on March 31 in protest at not being able to access medical care in prison. This means he’s been fasting now for more than three weeks.

Based on the science of long-term fasting, Navalny could theoretically continue his hunger strike for another number of weeks. But reports suggest he’s experiencing problems with his kidneys, which may be caused by underlying health issues. He’s now in a prison hospital, with concerns circulating he is very ill.

To put the specifics of Navalny’s situation aside, a normal adult human can actually survive a surprisingly long time without food, provided they have an adequate intake of water, which contains some minerals.

Starvation is a long process

I advise my undergraduate students to avoid hunger strikes to generate public pressure, because generally it takes too long for health risks to become severe enough to garner the expected attention.

Evolution has prepared us well to starve. It’s conceivable early hunter-gatherers and early farmers endured extended periods without adequate food. We’re also aware of pictures of prisoners of war with a skeletal appearance who were undernourished for months, if not years.

The science is pretty well understood, thanks to a pioneer in this field, George F. Cahill, and his colleagues. In the 1960s Cahill worked with volunteers in fasting experiments of up to 40 days, and established many of the ways our bodies seem to adapt to long periods without food.

Read more: By jailing Alexei Navalny, the Kremlin may turn him into an even more potent opposition symbol

The main challenge to long-term fasting is our brain. It consumes 20% of our total energy, regardless of mental activity. It also loves glucose, our preferred energy provider when we’re eating normally.

The body’s stores of glucose are fairly limited and run out in less than one day when we stop eating. But your body knows what to do. While you’re sleeping or fasting, your body starts to convert muscle mass into glucose, thereby keeping glucose levels up.

Producing glucose from muscle protein is a good way to keep up glucose in the short term, but you don’t want to lose muscle mass in case you need to be active again.

Enter fat. Fat is our best energy store. In contrast to glycogen (our stores of glucose in the body), fat doesn’t need water to be stored with it, meaning it gives you far more energy for an equivalent amount. Per gram, fat has more than twice the energy content of carbohydrates and protein.

Even a person at a normal weight has about 15kg of fat and 6kg of protein in the form of muscle. Almost all the fat is dispensable, but only part of the muscles can be wasted to avoid damage to vital organs.

So fat stores are mobilised during fasting to sustain the body. But they provide limited capacity to generate glucose. To keep your brain happy, your body has two tricks up its sleeve. First, fat is converted into ketone bodies — an alternative energy supply to glucose — through a process called ketogenesis.

You can push your body to make ketone bodies by eating a lot of fat and minimal glucose (think ketogenic diets), or by starving. The levels of ketone bodies in blood rise after a couple of hours of fasting, and skyrocket over the next couple of days of fasting. Importantly, your organs prefer them over glucose to generate energy.

The second trick is that your brain starts using ketone bodies as an energy source as well. This is an important trick to minimise the loss of muscle mass, by reducing the demand for glucose. The brain works very well on ketone bodies and there’s no reduction of intellectual capacity.

Read more: Chemical messengers: how hormones make us feel hungry and full

In summary, the body has some nifty ways of using muscle mass and fat to produce the energy we need, when it’s not coming directly from glucose. And we can usually survive until these alternate supplies are depleted.

So, how long?

A normal person might last for almost three months without eating if resting; two months is considered a safe bet.

An obese person could take much longer to starve, perhaps 6-12 months, because of the considerably larger fat mass their body can draw on for energy supplies. However, loss of muscle mass could impair mobility, heart and kidney function.

For a person on a hunger strike, the feeling of hunger first increases but then subsides. In response to starvation and malnutrition, a person is likely to experience chronic fatigue, and a range of negative effects on their mood.

However, not drinking any water is much more dangerous than abstaining from food. It will cause serious health problems and death a lot more quickly.

Read more: What is the chemical agent that was reportedly used to poison Russian politician Alexei Navalny?

– ref. Alexei Navalny has been on a hunger strike for over 3 weeks. How long can humans survive without food? – https://theconversation.com/alexei-navalny-has-been-on-a-hunger-strike-for-over-3-weeks-how-long-can-humans-survive-without-food-159349

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Meghan Hockey, PhD Candidate, Accredited Practising Dietitian, Deakin University

Almost half of all Australians live with a chronic disease, which contribute to some 90% of deaths.

It’s no secret our diet can have a major impact on our health. But our new umbrella review, published this week in Advances in Nutrition, provides compelling evidence that pro-inflammatory diets increase the risk of 27 chronic diseases and premature death. An umbrella review is a review of multiple reviews, and is among the highest levels of evidence.

What’s more, reducing inflammation by eating better could cut our risk of developing certain chronic diseases.

Read more: The rise of ultra-processed foods and why they’re really bad for our health

Clear evidence

A pro-inflammatory diet is one that, over the long-term, may lead to increased inflammation in the body. Such a diet often includes high amounts of commercially baked goods, fried foods and fatty meats, and at the same time is low in fruits, vegetables and other healthy foods.

We reviewed and pooled data from 15 meta-analyses, which is a type of study that summarises data from lots of individual studies. All up, we looked at 38 health outcomes from four million people from across the world.

We found strong evidence for a link between pro-inflammatory diets and heart attacks, premature death and certain cancers including bowel cancer, pancreatic cancer, respiratory cancers and oral cancers. There was also evidence pro-inflammatory diets were linked with depression.

Read more: Plant-rich diets may help prevent depression – new evidence

By bringing together data from populations all over the world, we were able to provide a comprehensive and reliable overview of the research to date. We also looked at the strength of the evidence of studies and found that for most outcomes, evidence was limited, highlighting the need for more research.

Because of the type of study we did, we were unable to determine cause and effect, so we can’t conclusively say pro-inflammatory diets cause these chronic diseases yet. But we found clear evidence a pro-inflammatory diet is linked with an increased risk of developing certain chronic diseases and premature death.

But what is inflammation, and what role does our diet play?

Inflammation is part of our body’s natural defence processes. It’s our immune system’s response to an irritant, be that an infection or injury, and is often a welcome sign our body is working to protect us. For example, swelling when you roll your ankle delivers resources to help repair the damage.

But when inflammation can’t be turned off, this process may start to work against us.

Persistent low levels of inflammation (known as chronic inflammation) can be problematic and is linked to premature death and conditions including coronary heart disease and depression, to name a few.

We can detect whether chronic inflammation exists by a simple blood test that looks at levels of inflammatory markers in the blood. Our diet is one factor that influences levels of these inflammatory markers, among many.

Take the “Western diet”, for example, which consists of calorie-dense, ultra-processed foods and is low in fruits, vegetables and other plant-foods. This type of dietary pattern has been linked to higher levels of inflammation.

Conversely, healthy dietary patterns have been linked to lower inflammatory markers. This includes the Mediterranean diet, which is high in fruits, vegetables, legumes, olive oil and oily fish, and low in ultra-processed, refined foods.

Read more: Mediterranean diet increases gut bacteria linked to healthy ageing in older adults

The potential for diets to be pro- or anti-inflammatory can be measured using a tool known as the Dietary Inflammatory Index.

The index takes into account a number of nutrients, compounds, and foods that have been identified in research as having either anti- or pro-inflammatory properties.

Using foods to fight inflammation

Despite promising marketing claims you might see online, there’s no magic supplement or superfood to combat all our inflammation woes.

Instead, you should focus on improving your overall diet quality, rather than on a single food or nutrient. This is because many nutrients and foods interact with one another and can work together to improve inflammation.

As for what to eat?

1. Load up your plate with a wide variety of plant foods such as fruits, vegetables, wholegrains and legumes, like chickpeas and lentils. These foods are high in anti-inflammatory nutrients, such as fibre and a range of vitamins. They also contain unique “phytochemicals”, such as polyphenols which are plant compounds that have potential antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects

2. Flavour your food liberally with herbs and spices, and sip on tea and coffee regularly. These are also great sources of polyphenols

3. Enjoy oily fish regularly, such as salmon, sardines and mackerel, which are rich in anti-inflammatory omega-3 fatty acids

4. Reduce your intake of foods that may fuel inflammation. These include foods high in trans and saturated fats, found in commercially baked goods, fried foods and fatty meats.

Read more: Phytonutrients can boost your health. Here are 4 and where to find them (including in your next cup of coffee)

Given almost half of us live with a chronic disease, and many more are likely at risk, adopting an anti-inflammatory diet could be very beneficial for your health, and may help you live longer too.

– ref. Clear evidence for a link between pro-inflammatory diets and 27 chronic diseases. Here’s how you can eat better – https://theconversation.com/clear-evidence-for-a-link-between-pro-inflammatory-diets-and-27-chronic-diseases-heres-how-you-can-eat-better-158451

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Louise Moana Kolff, Lecturer, UNSW

Two videos were removed this week from the Australian government’s recently released sexuality education resource for schools.

The government released the Good Society resource in mid April, which consists of more than 350 materials including videos, digital stories and podcasts to teach respectful relationships in schools. The two videos that were removed had been widely criticised by politicians, sexuality educators, and sexual assault support groups for missing the mark on sex education.

One clip, showing a couple on a film set that looks like a retro diner, aims to teach about consent through the metaphor of a milkshake. After a young man rejects a young woman’s milkshake, she smears milkshake in his face, saying sentence “Drink it all!”.

The scene is followed by somewhat confusing diagrams of a football field with a voiceover explaining ideas about shared decision making.

I’m a visual culture researcher interested in how information about sexuality and relationships can effectively be communicated to young people. I have compiled several examples of sexual education videos that better meet the needs of young people.

What works in sexual education?

The milkshake metaphor in the Good Society video is confusing because it is meant to teach about sexual consent, but doesn’t ever mention sex. Nor does it explain what the metaphor stands for.

Young people already see a explicit and distorted representation of sex in pornography. Generally, boys start watching around the age of 13 and girls around 16. So, it seems antiquated to produce sexuality education resources that don’t speak directly about sex.

Research shows straightforward language is best when teaching young people about sexuality and relationships.

The Good Society resource attempts to use humour to engage the audience. Research shows humour can be an effective strategy in public health campaigns. However, sustained behaviour change relies on easily understood messages, a feeling the information is personally relevant to the targeted audience, and a sense of self-efficacy (the individual knowing how to act on the information they see).

Read more: Not only are some of the government’s consent videos bizarre and confusing, many reinforce harmful gender stereotypes

Because the Good Society resource was confusing, the humour was confusing as well. And the video failed to create a clear sense of personal relevance and self-efficacy.

Here are videos that work better.

Australia — rhinos and astronauts

The Practical Guide to Love, Sex and Relationships was developed by expert sexuality education researchers at the Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society (ARCSHS) at La Trobe University.

The resource includes a series of humorous but straightforward animated videos dealing with sex, pornography, relationships, consent and gender.

One video for students in years 9 and 10, illustrates sexual desire and consent by using a couple of astronauts and then a couple of pirates.

Though these depictions may sound as confusing as the milkshake metaphor, the metaphors in these videos are clearly explained. And the use of colloquial language provides a sense of relevance. The narrators of the videos talk directly to young people:

“You’re 14, 15, 16 … there’s a lot of shit going on,” says a female narrator.

“That looks like electricity”, a male narrator says when lightning bolts are drawn coming towards the head of a boy.

“It’s a metaphor for all the shit going on,” the female narrator responds.

The drawings are informal and engaging, as opposed to the football field diagrams used in The Good Society resource.

The video ends with a set of questions teenagers can ask themselves to gauge whether they feel comfortable in a situation. Clear advice helps create a sense of self-efficacy.

Read more: Not as simple as ‘no means no’: what young people need to know about consent

Another video, with the same two narrators discusses the stereotypes women and men have to grapple with. It uses a rhinoceros as a metaphor for sexual desire, with a man and woman on top.

The male voice says: “I’m the guy, I’m supposed to be ‘oh yeah, can’t wait to get in her pants.’”

Then the female voice says: “And I’m the girl, I’m supposed to be ‘umm, I don’t know, ummm, I’m not sure umm …’”

Sweden’s explicit cartoon

Scandinavia is known for leading the way in progressive sexuality education. The low teenage pregnancy rates in Scandinavian countries (Norway and the Netherlands have some of the lowest teen rates in the world and Sweden’s is roughly one-fourth of Great Britain’s) are regularly touted as proof of its effectiveness.

In Sweden, an animated video produced by The Swedish Association for Sexuality Education follows four teenagers receiving an unexpected lesson from a substitute teacher.

As they ask the teacher questions, many topics are discussed from the appearance of genitalia, to respect in relationships and STDs.

The animation includes a scene where two of the students try to have sex, but fumble with condoms and nerves. The scene seems very real, and would be relevant to the lived experience of many teens.

Incorporated into the narrative are gay and lesbian storylines, making it relevant to a diverse audience. The fact the story is animated allows for more explicitness, without moving into the realm of pornography.

The video has an age restriction but can be viewed on YouTube.

New Zealand’s porn stars

Although not part of a school education program, the New Zealand government campaign, Keep it Real Online, aims to help parents navigate digital safety. A video shown on television is a good example of how humour can be used effectively to approach sensitive topics.

In the clip two porn stars visit a mother, saying her son has been watching them on every device possible. What makes the video great is its ability to be funny and engaging. And the same time, it allows the viewer to identify with the shocked boy, who is told the porn stars would never act like that in real life, and with the mother, who realises it is time to have frank conversation with her son about sex.

Read more: Sexuality education can counter what kids learn from porn, but some teachers fear backlash when tackling ‘risky’ topics

The humour is disarming, but the lesson is clear: porn is scripted and performed by actors, and should not be perceived as real life.

And then there’s the cup of tea

And finally, there’s the very well-known video which explains consent through the metaphor of offering someone a cup of tea. Again, it clearly identifies the metaphor in the beginning, and goes through the idea of asking someone for sex, but instead replacing sex with tea. If you ask someone if they want a cup of tea and they’re not sure if they do, then the video advises

you can make them a cup of tea or not, but be aware they might not drink it, and if they don’t drink it then — and this is the important part — don’t make them drink it.

It is crucial we get sexuality education right for teenagers who need to not only navigate sexuality and relationships, but also deal with the proliferation of pornography and technology.

If we want to teach teenagers about sexual consent, we will need to talk about sex not milkshakes.

Read more: Young people are hungry for good sex education. I found a program in Mexico that gets it right

– ref. Teaching young people about sex is too important to get wrong. Here are 5 videos that actually hit the mark – https://theconversation.com/teaching-young-people-about-sex-is-too-important-to-get-wrong-here-are-5-videos-that-actually-hit-the-mark-159438

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Shams Rahman, Professor of Supply Chain Management, RMIT University

The 2013 Dhaka garment factory collapse, killing more than 1,100 workers and injuring 2,600 more, is the clothing industry’s worst ever industrial incident.

It is not just the body count, though, that made the collapse of the Rana Plaza, a nine-story building in the Bangladeshi industrial city of Savar (near Dhaka ) capture global attention (briefly) and spur activism around the world to improve the treatment of garment workers.

This had been an accident waiting to happen. Structural cracks in the building had been discovered the day before. Businesses on the lower floors (shops and the bank) were closed immediately. The five garment factories on the upper floors made their workers keep working. On the morning of April 24 2013 there was a power outage. Diesel generators at the top of the building were turned on. Then the building collapsed.

The official death toll is 1,132. But these things are never clear-cut. That number doesn’t include, for example, Nowshad Hasan Himu, a volunteer who spent 17 days in the rescue work that pulled more than 1,000 survivors from the rubble. Some could be only be freed by amputating limbs. Himu rescued dozens alive, and also moved the dead. On April 24 2019, the sixth anniversary of the disaster, he committed suicide.

He could not forget. We should not forget.

Global attention

The Rana Plaza collapse briefly shone a spotlight on the underbelly of the global fashion business, a US2.4 trillion industry that employs about 40 million of the world’s poorest workers in in dangerous and degrading conditions. About 4 million of them in Bangladesh, the second-biggest “ready made garment” exporter in the world, after China.

Activist groups such as Clean Clothes Campaign lobbied for compensation for the victims – many still suffer from their injuries – and better conditions for garment workers generally. For this was no isolated incident. Garment workers routinely died in factory fires and faced other dangers.

At least 29 global brands were identified as doing business with one or more of the five factories in the Rana Plaza building.

Each was “a complicit participant in the creation of an environment that ultimately led to the deaths and maiming of thousands”, said Clean Clothes Campaign. Yet the problem was far wider than just those brands. It was a systemic problem. In a sense every shopper choosing clothes on the basis of cheapest price was complicit.

The industry vowed to do better. Within a month 222 companies signed the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh, a legally binding agreement meant to ensure garment workers had safe workplaces.

Things have improved. But not enough. Eight years on, the fundamental problems in global supply chains – the disconnect between profits, accountability and responsibility – remains.

Compliance a charade

This disconnect was glaring when we interviewed Bangladesh manufacturers and Australian retailer in 2018 as part of our research.

Retailers maintained they were living up to their obligations by only sourcing garments from manufacturers complying with the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh.

But manufacturers told us their compliance was often a charade. As one said:

Changes brought in after Rana Plaza, such as limiting the worker overtime hours and availability of a nurse and a childcare worker in the facility, are often only done for the day of auditing.

The reason: to keep costs low. As another manufacturer said:

Though we are complying to the rules established by the retailer to promote safe production practices, price and quality still plays an important role in getting the orders.

Pocketing the profits

Here’s the problem illustrated in terms of a T-shirt.

According to Clean Clothes Campaign – an organisation backed by 230 unions, non-government organisations and research bodies – just 0.6% of the retail price of a t-shirt goes to the worker. The factory owner takes 4% as profit. The brand label takes 12%. But the retailer takes 59%.

These numbers are, of course, averages. They don’t claim to be the exact profit split for every shirt. But they do give a fair impression of how the system is weighted. Next time you see a t-shirt for less than $10, therefore, think about how much the maker made.

Improving conditions for workers must certainly involve internal reforms in Bangladesh, both through more stringent labour and health and safety laws as well as regulation and enforcement. But easing the incessant pressure placed by buyers on suppliers to cut costs is also crucial.

Factory operators told us they wanted buyers to insist on better conditions for workers, and to pay enough to ensure that could happen. They welcomed contracts that stipulating spending money on safer building and higher pay.

Economic pressures increasing

But it is the pressure to cut costs that has intensified with the COVID crisis.

Between March and June 2020, brands cancelled clothing orders worth billions of dollars to Bangladeshi makers. By September more than 357,000 of the nation’s 4 million garment workers had lost their jobs, and many more were forced to accept lower pay. (Total textile exports for 2020 were down nearly 17%, according to the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association.)

In November 2020, Oxfam in partnership with Monash University published a report raising “serious questions about the commitment of brands to ensuring workers in their supply chains are paid living wages and work in decent conditions”.

Based on about 150 surveys and 22 in-depth interviews with industry stakeholders, it rated purchasing practices of Australia’s 10 leading fashion retailers.

Overall, manufacturers rated H&M Group the best (3 out of 4). Big W, Kmart and Target Australia got 2.5. Best&Less, Cotton On, Inditex and Myer scored 2.

Worst performers were The Just Group (Just Jeans, Jay Jays, Jacqui E, Peter Alexander, Portmans, Dotti) and Mosaic Brands (Millers, Rockmans, Noni B, Rivers, Katies, Autograph, Crossroads and Beme). These two companies, along with Myer, also declined to participate in the research.

To solve the disconnect between profits, accountability and responsibility, retailers and brands must be much more closely involved in knowing and caring about what goes on in the factories they source from.

– ref. 8 years after the Rana Plaza tragedy, Bangladesh’s garment workers are still bottom of the pile – https://theconversation.com/8-years-after-the-rana-plaza-tragedy-bangladeshs-garment-workers-are-still-bottom-of-the-pile-159224

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Craig Mark, Professor, Faculty of International Studies, Kyoritsu Women’s University

As tensions with China continue to grow, Japan is making moves to join the “Five Eyes” intelligence-sharing alliance. This week, Japan’s ambassador to Australia, Shingo Yamagami, told The Sydney Morning Herald he was “optimistic” about his country coming on board.

[I] would like to see this idea become reality in the near future.

This comes as New Zealand voices its concerns over using the Five Eyes process to pressure China.

What is this spy alliance? And what are the benefits and risks to bringing Japan on board?

What is the Five Eyes?

Beginning as an intelligence exchange agreement between the United States and United Kingdom in 1943, it formally became the UKUSA Agreement in 1946. The agreement then extended to Canada in 1948, and Australia and New Zealand in 1956.

This long-running collaboration has been particularly useful for sharing signals intelligence, or intelligence gathered from communications and information systems. The group’s focus has shifted over time, from targeting the USSR during the Cold War, to Islamist terrorism after the September 11 attacks in 2001, to the rising challenge from China today.

Japan’s intelligence infrastructure

There is a significant intelligence tradition in Japan. After the Meiji Restoration of the 19th century, the imperial Japanese army and navy and Ministry of Foreign Affairs developed extensive intelligence networks. These aided the rise of the Japanese empire in its wars against China, Russia and eventually the Western allies in the second world war.

After the war, Japan’s intelligence services were revamped under American supervision. Japan has since been an important base of operations for US intelligence operations in Asia, particularly by military intelligence, the CIA and the National Security Agency.

The Japanese intelligence community now comprises a range of services, including the Ministry of Defense’s Directorate for Signals Intelligence, which provides expertise in regional signals intelligence. Given Japan’s proximity to China, North Korea, and Russia, Japan may well be an attractive addition to the Five Eyes alliance.

There is also a precedence for formal intelligence sharing with the West. As well as its long-running collaboration with the US, an Information Security Agreement was signed between Australia and Japan in 2012. At the end of 2016, the US, Japan and Australia signed a similar trilateral agreement deepening the extent of covert security cooperation.

Japan’s close relationship to the US is seen in Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga’s visit last week to the US, the first foreign leader to be officially hosted by President Joe Biden. The talks in Washington focused heavily on China.

Previous reluctance to expand the group

While the Five Eyes group has often cooperated with the intelligence services of Japan on an ad hoc basis — as well as those of France, Germany and Israel — there has so far been reluctance among the Five Eyes members to formally broaden the alliance.

The US especially has had doubts in the past about the security and reliability of the Japanese intelligence community. In particular, this is due to concerns over its relative lack of overseas experience.

In 2013, the Abe government passed a controversial Designated State Secrets Law to reduce these vulnerabilities and present Japan as a more valuable security partner. The ensuing revamp of the intelligence services, under firmer central direction of a National Security Council, has reformed Japan’s capabilities to some extent.

But further complicating matters, New Zealand has now shown its hesitancy about using Five Eyes to pressure China. This threatens to undermine the unity and stability of the alliance, even raising the prospect of New Zealand leaving Five Eyes altogether.

What about China?

Japan’s relationship with China — its neighbour and main trading partner — could potentially be a stumbling block. This relationship was managed fairly successfully under the Abe government, where the mutual benefits of trade and investment were prioritised.

This has largely continued under Suga, but more hawkish members of the government are starting to push a tougher line against China.

Read more: Quad group makes vaccine deal as a wary China watches on

With the ongoing territorial dispute over the Senkaku Islands, and more assertive demonstrations of force by the People’s Liberation Army, relations between China and Japan have become much frostier. As Japan is on the “frontline” with China, becoming a Five Eyes member has the potential to improve its strategic position via stronger support from its alliance partners.

Leadership change in Japan?

The best prospect for Japan joining Five Eyes probably lies with cabinet minister Taro Kono. He is the minister for administrative reform, responsible for supervising Japan’s COVID-19 vaccine rollout. In his previous tenure as defence minister, Kono was enthusiastically in favour of Japan joining Five Eyes.

The energetic, media-savvy and ambitious Kono is widely favoured to replace Suga as prime minister if he does not survive a vote for leadership of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party in September. An election for the lower house of the Diet (Japan’s parliament) also must be held by October.

Security environment could make the decision

A more threatening security environment overall may hasten the push towards a “Six Eyes” anyway.

A cyber attack on the Australian parliament in 2019 was implicitly blamed on China, while the US counterintelligence establishment is still reeling from the consequences of the massive Russian SolarWinds cyber attack and Moscow’s interference in the 2016 and 2020 US presidential elections.

Read more: Japan is facing a fourth COVID wave and sluggish vaccine rollout. Will it be ready for the Olympics?

This week, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police have blamed the People’s Liberation Army for organising hundreds of cyber attacks on Japanese companies, universities and government departments, including Japan’s space agency JAXA. This is certain to harden opinion against China.

If all members agree, especially with encouragement from the US, it would be fairly straightforward for Japan to formally join the Five Eyes. If the regional security environment continues to deteriorate, the declaration of a Six Eyes alliance incorporating Japan would be a clear diplomatic signal of a determination to confront China in intelligence and espionage.

– ref. From Five Eyes to Six? Japan’s push to join the West’s intelligence alliance – https://theconversation.com/from-five-eyes-to-six-japans-push-to-join-the-wests-intelligence-alliance-159429

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hussein Dia, Professor of Future Urban Mobility, Swinburne University of Technology

The recent crash of a Tesla car in the United States, in which two people died, has reignited debate about the capabilities and safety of today’s “self-driving” technologies.

Tesla cars include an “autopilot” feature which monitors surrounding traffic and lane markings, and the company is currently rolling out a more advanced “full self-driving” system which promises automatic navigation, stopping at traffic lights, and more.

Investigators say it appears nobody was in the driver’s seat of the vehicle when it crashed. Tesla chief executive Elon Musk has said no self-driving features were in use at the time.

Nonetheless, the tragic incident has raised questions over self-driving technology: how safe is it, and how much attention does it require from drivers?

What do we mean by ‘self-driving’?

Experts talk about six levels of autonomous vehicle technology, ranging from level 0 (a traditional vehicle with no automation) to level 5 (a vehicle that can independently do anything a human driver can).

Most automated driving solutions available on the market today require human intervention. This puts them at level 1 (driver assistance, such as keeping a car in a lane or managing its speed) or level 2 (partial automation, such as steering and speed control).

These capabilities are intended for use with a fully attentive driver prepared to take control at any moment.

Level 3 vehicles have more autonomy and can make some decisions on their own, but the driver must still remain alert and take control if the system is unable to drive.

In the past few years, several fatal crashes involving level 2 and level 3 vehicles have occurred. These crashes were largely attributed to human error, and to mistaking these levels of automation for full self-driving capabilities.

Vehicle manufacturers and regulators have been criticised for not doing enough to make these systems more resilient to misuse by inattentive drivers.

The path towards higher levels of automation

For higher levels of automation, a human driver won’t necessarily be involved in the driving task. The driver would effectively be replaced by the AI self-driving software.

Level 4 is a “self-driving” vehicle that has a bounded scope of where and when it will drive. The best example of a level 4 vehicle is Google’s Waymo robotaxi project. Other companies are also making significant progress in developing level 4 vehicles, but these vehicles are not commercially available to the public.

Level 5 represents a truly autonomous vehicle that can go anywhere and at any time, similar to what a human driver can do. The transition from level 4 to level 5, however, is orders of magnitude harder than transitions between other levels, and may take years to achieve.

While the technologies required to enable higher levels of automation are advancing rapidly, producing a vehicle that can complete a journey safely and legally without human input remains a big challenge.

Three key barriers must be overcome before they can be safely introduced to the market: technology, regulations and public acceptance.

Machine learning and self-driving software

The self-driving software is a key differentiating feature of highly automated vehicles. The software is based on machine learning algorithms and deep learning neural networks that include millions of virtual neurons that mimic the human brain.

The neural nets do not include any explicit “if X happens, then do Y” programming. Rather, they are trained to recognise and classify objects using examples of millions of videos and images from real-world driving conditions.

The more diverse and representative the data, the better they get at recognising and responding to different situations. Training neural nets is something like holding a child’s hand when crossing the road and teaching them to learn through constant experience, replication and patience.

While these algorithms can detect and classify objects very accurately, they still can’t mimic the intricate complexities of driving. Autonomous vehicles not only need to detect and recognise humans and other objects, but must also interact with, understand and react to how these things behave.

They also need to know what to do in unfamiliar circumstances. Without a large set of examples for all possible driving scenarios, the task of managing the unexpected will be relatively resistant to deep learning and training.

Regulations

Policy-makers and regulators around the world are struggling to keep pace. Today, the industry remains mostly self-regulating, particularly in determining whether the technology is safe enough for open roads. Regulators have largely failed to provide criteria for making such determinations.

While it is necessary to test the performance of self-driving software under real-world conditions, this should only happen after comprehensive safety testing and evaluation. Regulators should come up with a set of standard tests and make companies benchmark their algorithms on standard data sets before their vehicles are allowed on open roads.

In Australia, current laws do not support the safe commercial deployment and operation of self-driving vehicles. The National Transport Commission is spearheading efforts to develop nationally-consistent reforms that support innovation and safety to allow Australian to access the benefits of the technology.

Read more: Who (or what) is behind the wheel? The regulatory challenges of driverless cars

A graduated approach to certification is needed, in which a self-driving system could first be evaluated in simulations, then in controlled real-world environments. Once the vehicles pass specific benchmark tests, the regulators can allow them on open roads.

Public acceptance

The public must be involved in decisions regarding self-driving vehicle deployment and adoption. There is a real risk of undermining public trust if self-driving technologies are not regulated to ensure public safety. A lack of trust will affect not only those who want to use the technology, but also those who share the road with them.

Finally, this incident should serve as a catalyst to bring regulators and industry to establish a strong and robust safety culture to guide innovations in self-driving technologies.

Without this, autonomous vehicles would go nowhere very fast.

– ref. ‘Self-driving’ cars are still a long way off. Here are three reasons why – https://theconversation.com/self-driving-cars-are-still-a-long-way-off-here-are-three-reasons-why-159234

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Douglass S Rovinsky, Associate research scientist, Monash University

The thylacine (Thylacinus cynocephalus), commonly known as the Tasmanian tiger, is an Aussie icon. It was the largest historical marsupial predator and a powerful example of human-caused extinction. And despite being extinct since 1936, it still gets featured in popular media.

But much is still unknown about the thylacine, as its extinction left us with almost no direct observational data. We do know it was a member of the canid family which includes dogs, wolves and foxes. But several mysteries remained regarding its specific ecology, including the question of whether it was more wolf-life or dog-like.

In a new study published in BMC Ecology & Evolution, my colleagues and I tackle this question. We show the thylacine was actually most similar to canids which evolved to hunt small animals — not to the wolf (Canis lupus) or wild dog/dingo (Canis lupus dingo), which are large-prey specialists.

Read more: The Tasmanian tiger was hunted to extinction as a ‘large predator’ – but it was only half as heavy as we thought

Moulded by our environments

When European colonisers first saw the thylacine, they noted its wolf-like appearance and judged it based on that assumption: like the wolf, it would pose a threat to their livestock.

This superficially wolf-like appearance has been taken to mean the thylacine is a textbook example of convergent evolution: where two unrelated animals evolve similar traits in response to similar pressures. The similarities are so striking it’s even sometimes called the “marsupial wolf”.

Studying convergent evolution is a promising way for scientists to infer the behaviour and ecology of extinct animals that can’t be directly observed. Ecology is the study of how species interact with their physical surroundings. So, if an extinct animal shares a similar shape with one living today, we can assume they probably filled a similar ecological niche.

Since the thylacine’s ecology is uncertain, comparisons with comparable species are one of the only ways to understand it. And it’s wolf-like appearance at face value has led to the thylacine and its ecology being assumed similar to that of the grey wolf and its closest relatives, such as the dingo.

But what if that was wrong?

Getting into the right headspace

We decided to put this assumption of ecological similarity to the test. To do so we needed a wide range of ecologically meaningful animals to compare with the thylacine. After all, even though the thylacine was a marsupial (like a koala) it’s fair to say it wasn’t hanging out in trees munching on eucalyptus!

Using hand-held 3D scanners, we scanned hundreds of skulls from 56 different species of carnivorous mammals, with specimens obtained from more than a dozen museums around the world. This enabled us to build a skull “shapespace” to then see where the thylacine would fit among the others.

We looked for evidence of convergent evolution by observing which of the other carnivorous mammals’ skulls were shaped most like the thylacine’s.

A case of mistaken identity

It turns out the skull shape of the thylacine is significantly convergent with that of some canids, but not with the usual suspects. We found no meaningful level of convergence with either the grey wolf or the dingo, and only a small degree with the red fox.

What we did find, however, was strong support for convergent evolution between the skulls of the thylacine and another rag-tag group of canids: African jackals and South American “foxes” (which aren’t actually foxes). Ecologically, these canids are vastly different from the wolf and dingo. Also, unlike the wolf, they specialise in hunting small prey.

This brings us back to one of the more powerful uses of studying convergent evolution: the ability to infer the ecology of an extinct animal. Since the thylacine’s skull shape was more similar to that of the African jackals and South American “foxes” than the wolf, it likely shared a similar ecological niche with the former.

Therefore, the thylacine probably also preferred hunting relatively small prey such as pademelons, bettongs, bandicoots and young wallabies.

Interestingly, however, one of the most striking findings was that the thylacine did not actually overlap with any of the other predators, canid or otherwise. While it was similar to some canids, it was not identical. This highlights that even our more precise analysis may paint the thylacine with too broad a brush.

Judged by appearance

The thylacine was hunted to extinction for its wolf-like appearance. This reaction, like most based on first glance, was devastatingly wrong. Although the thylacine turns out to not be very wolf-like, it’s still a wonderful example of convergent evolution.

Read more: Why did the Tasmanian tiger go extinct?

Then again, it truly was different enough from other carnivorous mammals that we still can’t say we precisely understand its ecological niche. When we lost the thylacine, we lost something truly unique for its time.

Our understanding of the thylacine is, even now, that of a faded and blurry snapshot. Perhaps, with more research in the coming years, we can make it a little more clear.

– ref. Like a jackal in wolf’s clothing: the Tasmanian tiger was no wolfish predator — it hunted small prey – https://theconversation.com/like-a-jackal-in-wolfs-clothing-the-tasmanian-tiger-was-no-wolfish-predator-it-hunted-small-prey-159343

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kevin Davis, Emeritus Professor of Finance, The University of Melbourne

After the Bank of Queensland agreed to buy ME Bank from Australia’s industry superannuation funds in February, it needed to raise A$1.35 billion quickly.

The way it did it depleted the wealth of quite a few retail shareholders.

Its shares had been trading for $8.41 each. It offered big institutions extra shares for $7.35 each, about 12% less than the going price, and even less than the $9.11 the shares rose to within days.

The retail investors (usually small investors) who owned more than 60% of the company, got an opportunity to take part as well, but the offer document gave them just ten days to do so.

An earlier takeover meant many of the small shareholders lived in Western Australia and some didn’t get their offer documents in time to get them back by the deadline, an outcome the Bank has sheeted home to Australia Post

In the event,around half of the company’s tens of thousands of retail shareholders did not part, losing about $900 each on average.

Like petrol, shares can get diluted

To understand why, and to understand how we made that calculation, it helps to use an analogy.

Suppose your car’s petrol tank is half full with fuel worth $1.60 a litre.

Then suppose you fill the rest of the tank with discounted fuel that costs $1.40 a litre. The value of the blended fuel in the tank is $1.50 per litre.

It’s the same with company shares issued at a discount.

Read more: Shareholder activism sounds good, but it can’t change much

Afterwards the average value of all of the shares is lower, because the new ones were issued at a lower price.

The amount lost by shareholders who didn’t avail themselves of the opportunity to buy extra shares at a discount can be worked out using a bit of maths involving the size of the issue and the discount. That can give us the theoretical ex-rights price, known as TERP.

The TERP is “theoretical” because it assumes no factors other than the discounted issue affect the share price. For the Bank of Queensland, the TERP was $8.11.

Shareholders might have lost $900 each

For an average retail shareholder with about 3,000 Bank of Queensland shares (worth about $25,000 before the issue) the loss from not taking part in the issue of discounted shares can be calculated easily.

The TERP calculation implies that the share issue caused their 3,000 shares to fall in value from $8.41 to $8.11, losing them around $900.

(As it happened, other share market events, and investor views on the bank’s prospects meant the actual price jumped.)

Why wouldn’t small shareholders have taken part?

One reason might be to avoid increased exposure to the issuer (the Bank of Queensland). Another might be that they didn’t have the funds.

Yet another might be that they didn’t understand that their shares would be devalued, or that they didn’t receive the offer documents in enough time to mail them back by the deadline.

Regardless, they’ve lost money as a result of the bank’s decision to issue discounted shares.

The institutions and retail shareholders who did take part did well at their expense. And it needn’t have happened.

An alternative that David Petrie of Stratford Advisory Group has identified and that we have developed could ensure the holdings of non-participating shareholders are not devalued.

It needn’t have happened

Our proposed alternative would require companies that offer shares at a discount to also issue bonus shares at no-cost to existing shareholders who don’t take part.

The size of the required bonus can be easily calculated using the TERP.

Issuing bonus shares would have a very low administrative cost — little more than the stroke of a pen.

With such a mechanism in place, the companies could concentrate on efficiently raising funds, confident that none of their retail shareholders would have their holdings devalued.

Read more: What limits shareholder activism is the free-rider problem

This ought to be attractive to companies and to governments wanting to protect small shareholders. Institutional investors mightn’t like it because they would no longer gain from losses imposed on existing retail investors.

While there are some details of the proposal that space precludes us from spelling out here, we would hope that the government and regulators such as the Australian Securities Exchange would see its merits.

But they would need to stand up to vested interests well aware of how much they benefit from the way things are.

– ref. Small shareholders can be left worse off when companies raise funds. Here’s how to protect them – https://theconversation.com/small-shareholders-can-be-left-worse-off-when-companies-raise-funds-heres-how-to-protect-them-159346

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dominic O’Sullivan, Adjunct Professor, Faculty of Health and Environmental Sciences, Auckland University of Technology and Professor of Political Science, Charles Sturt University

As part of a major overhaul of the health system, health minister Andrew Little yesterday announced a new Māori health authority.

The authority will be able to commission primary health services and make joint decisions with a newly created centralised health agency. It’s a simple idea, and one with radically transformative potential. But it’s not new.

In 2019, the Waitangi Tribunal found consistent Crown failure in the health care and well-being of Māori. It recommended establishing an independent authority to oversee Māori primary health services.

The government’s announcement responds to a 2020 Health and Disability System review, which also called for a separate Māori health authority, but could not come to a consensus on the powers it should have. Four of the six members thought the idea that it should have the power to commission health services had such merit they dissented from the recommendation the authority should have only advisory powers.

The potential is for a Māori primary health system explicitly focused on Māori needs. Māori decision makers would decide what needs to be done, how and by whom. The success of the authority hinges on how independent it will be, and its accountability to Māori people.

By Māori for Māori

The 2019 Waitangi Tribunal report also found that decision-making models don’t adequately reflect Māori experiences of what works and why. Tureiti Lady Moxon, one of the claimants to the tribunal, explained the proposed authority’s logic:

We would prefer to be the designers of our own destiny.

While the new authority will provide policy advice, its most important influence will come from the decisions it makes about the primary health services to purchase and from whom. It will then be able to decide whether these providers do a good enough job to have their funding continued.

Read more: Māori and Pasifika leaders report racism in government health advisory groups

Opposition leader Judith Collins claimed there wouldn’t be much public support for a “separatist model” that would give “people operations based on race, not on need”.

But the idea that anybody would demand an operation they don’t need is not a sensible starting point for the serious debate we need to have about how the authority should work with other parts of the revamped health system.

Getting funding levels right and eliminating racism

The tribunal found chronic underfunding is one of the reasons for poor Māori health outcomes. It recommended the Crown and the health inquiry claimants work out a methodology for determining how much money is needed to achieve fair outcomes.

It’s a complex question at the intersection of te Tiriti o Waitangi policy, moral philosophy and health economics. Answering it accurately will determine how well the authority can do its job.

But an equally important question is the institutional racism the tribunal found in the health system, and how this gets in the way of people’s opportunities for good health.

Many questions remain about the scope the authority will have to develop the health system to give everybody the same opportunity for good health.

How will it be accountable to Māori as well as to the health minister? How will Māori be able to show they have confidence in the knowledge and expertise of the people appointed to the authority?

What relationships will it have with the ministry of health and the newly created public health agency? How independent will it be and will there be significant Māori engagement in the ministry’s oversight function?

Read more: Two inquiries find unfair treatment and healthcare for Māori. This is how we fix it

Yesterday’s announcement spoke of enabling Māori “leadership and partnership”. But leadership and partnership don’t always work well together.

The bicultural partnership people often read into te Tiriti o Waitangi (the Māori text) or the Treaty of Waitangi (English version) usually positions the Crown as senior partner and Māori as the junior partner. This view doesn’t foster the independent leadership the authority will need if it’s to make a real difference and, as the health minister said, give “true effect to tino rangatiratanga”, or Māori people’s authority to make decisions for themselves.

Considering te Tiriti in all decisions

We have developed the Critical Tiriti Analysis policy framework, which could help ensure the transformed health system respects te Tiriti and puts the Māori health authority in the best position to succeed.

The framework requires policy makers to consider how te Tiriti informs both existing and new policies. In relation to yesterday’s announcements, it provokes the following questions:

• How will the health system maintain tika (correct) relationships with mana whenua (groups with authority over land), mātāwaka (kinship groups) and other Māori communities?

• How will the health system’s processes, actions and decision making be informed and shaped by Māori worldviews?

• How will Māori-led decision making and leadership (which is a bigger aspiration than partnership) be put into practice across the sector?

• How will barriers to Māori advancement, such as institutional racism, be eliminated?

• Given the history of health inequities, how will resources be distributed and prioritised to ensure equitable outcomes for Māori?

• How will Māori worldviews, values, tikanga (correct processes) and wairuatanga (spirituality) be normalised within the health system?

The proposed changes are potentially transformative. But just how transformative depends on how these questions are answered and on the strength of the government’s commitment to no further breaches of te Tiriti.

Abolishing the authority, as the opposition National party proposes, would be such a breach.

– ref. New authority could transform Māori health, but only if it’s a leader, not a partner – https://theconversation.com/new-authority-could-transform-maori-health-but-only-if-its-a-leader-not-a-partner-159425

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephanie Brown, Senior Principal Research Fellow, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute

Childhood should be a happy and carefree time, but often it doesn’t work out that way. Children are exposed to all the stresses and strains that affect the families and communities in which they grow up. Recent research shows this can have lifelong implications for health.

In a study conducted by our research group at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, we found one in three children (and their mothers) in the study had experienced intimate partner violence or domestic abuse by the time the children in the study turned ten.

Findings from the same study, published today in the British Medical Journal’s Archives of Childhood Disorders, show children exposed to intimate partner violence by age ten are two to three times more likely to have a psychiatric diagnosis and/or emotional and behavioural difficulties.

And it isn’t just children’s mental health affected, but their physical health and development too. We found children exposed to intimate partner violence were also two to three times more likely to have impaired language skills, sleep problems, elevated blood pressure and asthma.

Mothers in the study completed questionnaires three, six and 12 months after giving birth, and in the fourth and tenth years after having their first child.

At age ten, we studied a smaller group of the children via face-to-face activities designed to assess their cognitive and language development. We also interviewed mothers to assess their child’s mental health.

How can services and schools help?

Our findings have important implications for policy. Up to half of all children in our study who had language difficulties and mental and physical health problems had been exposed to intimate partner violence before age ten.

The findings highlight the need for health services and schools to be very attentive to the role intimate partner violence might be playing in children’s health, behaviour and language development.

If child health services and schools don’t recognise and respond to intimate partner violence, interventions to support children with health and developmental problems are likely to be less effective.

Given one in three families are affected, and an even higher proportion of children experience health and language difficulties, this shouldn’t be something health services and schools put in the “too hard basket”.

Mothers’ and children’s health are linked

Our research highlights the extent to which the health and well-being of mothers and their children are inextricably linked. In our paper published in BMJ Open earlier this year, we showed mothers who had experienced intimate partner violence in the ten years after the birth of their first child were three to five times more likely to experience anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress (PTSD) symptoms. And they were around twice as likely to experience back pain and incontinence.

This extra burden of ill health experienced by both women and children exposed to intimate partner violence compounds other social and economic challenges women face in trying to achieve safety for themselves and their children. It’s critical women and children in need of support to heal and recover from the impact of intimate partner violence are able to access affordable and culturally appropriate health care.

Studies consistently show there are many barriers women have to overcome, including shame, fear of judgement, and cost and availability of health care and other support services in regional communities. For women whose first language isn’t English, and Aboriginal women, there are extra cultural, language and systems-level barriers. Systems-level barriers include the persistence of cultural stereotypes, limited availability of language services, and experiences of discrimination when seeking care and support.

Read more: Tackling economic abuse of women must be part of our domestic violence response

Achieving the best possible outcomes

While the type and severity of adversity may overwhelm some children, there’s evidence individual skills (such as the ability to regulate emotions), relationships with extended family, and supportive school environments that foster a sense of belonging do support children’s resilience.

Communities, schools and health services all have important roles to play in fostering children’s resilience and supporting mothers to access care for their children when needed.

Read more: Acting on family violence: how the health system can step up

Anyone at risk of family and domestic violence and/or sexual assault can seek help 24 hours a day, seven days a week, either online or by calling 1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732). Information is also available in 28 languages other than English.

If this article has raised issues for you or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call Lifeline on 13 11 14 or beyondblue on 1300 22 4636.

– ref. How intimate partner violence affects children’s health – https://theconversation.com/how-intimate-partner-violence-affects-childrens-health-159132

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Matt McDonald, Associate Professor of International Relations, The University of Queensland

Days out from a much-anticipated climate summit convened by US President Joe Biden, the federal government has moved to position itself as serious about emissions reduction.

On Wednesday Prime Minister Scott Morrison pledged A$539 million to advance two emerging technologies: clean hydrogen and carbon-capture and storage (CCS).

When Morrison takes the virtual global stage this week, we can expect he’ll point to this investment and other dubious climate policies, as well as roll out carefully chosen facts to paint the government in the best possible light.

Such an approach may appease the Coalition party room, and perhaps some voters. But most Australians want real action on climate change. And the rest of the world, accustomed to Australia’s shifty climate stance, is unlikely to fall for Morrison’s diversion tactics.

A perfect storm

Biden has invited 40 world leaders to the virtual summit, which begins on Thursday night our time. He is expected to announce a significant new emissions reduction commitment for the US, and call on other nations to ramp up climate action.

Australia goes into the meeting firmly on the back foot. It’s widely viewed as a laggard on emissions reduction and in 2020 ranked last on climate policy among 57 countries and the European Union.

Australia’s key coal export markets in China, South Korea and Japan have all recently outlined a timetable for net zero emissions, while the European Union committed to this target long ago.

Morrison says a net-zero goal is his preference but has not yet committed to it.

Australia will also face pressure to up its climate game while negotiating post-Brexit trade deals with the UK and EU. The EU has already announced plans to introduce a carbon levy on all imports.

Read more: Scott Morrison has embraced net-zero emissions – now it’s time to walk the talk

Closer to home, Australia’s Pacific neighbours – for whom climate change is an issue of survival – have demanded Australia transition away from fossil fuels. Australia committed to increase its diplomatic engagement with the region through the so-called Pacific Step-Up, but there are clear signs our poor climate action performance is undermining this pledge.

Ahead of the summit, the Morrison government also faces domestic pressure on climate policy. Even before the devastating Black Summer bushfires, a survey found Australians considered climate change as the most serious threat to the national interest. And Lowy polls consistently point to public support for strong climate action.

Even Australian-based industry groups and businesses have called for a transition away from fossil fuels. This includes the traditionally conservative National Farmers Federation, which is calling for a net-zero commitment.

But any attempt by Morrison to embrace a stronger climate stance will be met with opposition from some in the Coalition party room. Queensland Nationals senator Matt Canavan sent a public warning to the Prime Minister on Tuesday, tweeting:

Morrison’s smoke screen

So where does this leave Morrison as he prepares to address the leaders summit? As US climate scientist Michael Mann pointed out in The Guardian, the Morrison government appears to be deploying a smoke-and-mirrors approach – loudly promoting policies such as its low-emissions technology roadmap “to distract from their clear record of inaction on climate”.

The announcement of A$539 million for clean hydrogen and carbon-capture and storage (CCS) seems proof of that. And there are plenty of reasons to be concerned if the government sees this spending as a core pillar of its response to the climate emergency.

Carbon capture and storage requires significant amounts of water for cooling. It’s extremely expensive to establish and run, and only applies to electricity generation. The method is unproven at scale, and still releases substantial CO₂. CCS also involves subsidising the fossil fuel sector, rather than investing funds into new forms of renewable energy.

Read more: Climate change is a security threat the government keeps ignoring. We’ll show up empty handed to yet another global summit

Hydrogen is potentially a clean energy source, but only when produced using renewable electricity. The government has left the door open to supporting hydrogen produced using fossil fuels, where the carbon is captured and stored.

There are also concerns Australia has radically overestimated the likely extent of the export market for hydrogen.

We can expect Australia to trot out other dubious claims to climate action at this week’s summit. Morrison this week told a business dinner that “domestic emissions have already fallen by 36% from 2005 levels” – a figure that conveniently omits fugitive emissions from coal and gas produced for export.

And Morrison is sure to spruik the decline in Australia’s per capita emissions. But as I’ve pointed out before, our emissions per capita remain disproportionately high, even among key trading partners.

The world is watching

The technology funding is Morrison’s attempt to walk the line between competing pressures. It throws a lifeline to the fossil fuel industry and placates internal party dissent, while attempting to appear to the rest of the world that Australia is acting on climate change.

But the announcement is telling for what it isn’t: a clear commitment to achieving net zero emissions by the middle of the century, or an increase in its Paris Agreement targets – currently set at a 26-28% emission cut between 2005 and 2030. Reports suggest Morrison is not expected to make a concrete pledge on either policy at the summit.

But public concern, international action and market forces are all pushing in the opposite direction to the Morrison government. This creates a sense the government’s position on climate change simply isn’t sustainable.

And this week’s summit puts Australia under global scrutiny like never before. As US Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned this week:

Our diplomats will challenge the practices of countries whose action – or inaction – is setting the world back […] When countries continue to rely on coal for a significant amount of their energy, or invest in new coal factories, or allow for massive deforestation, they will hear from the United States and our partners about how harmful these actions are.

It appears the US, at least, won’t be convinced on the sincerity of the Morrison government’s climate concern, or the adequacy of its actions.

Read more: ‘Failure is not an option’: after a lost decade on climate action, the 2020s offer one last chance

– ref. Scott Morrison can’t spin this one: Australia’s climate pledges at this week’s summit won’t convince the world we’re serious – https://theconversation.com/scott-morrison-cant-spin-this-one-australias-climate-pledges-at-this-weeks-summit-wont-convince-the-world-were-serious-159381

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nicolas Pirsoul, Policy Analyst and Research Assistant, University of Auckland

Since the fatal Havelock North campylobacter outbreak in 2016, freshwater quality has rightfully been a major political issue in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Pipes bursting in Wellington, lead contamination in Otago and concerns about tolerable levels of nitrates in the country’s drinking water are all signs of a system in crisis.

Ultimately, our use of and access to freshwater resources come down to how they are managed. To that end, the government is working on big changes to freshwater governance structures.

The so-called Three Waters initiative includes a controversial proposal to shift control of water services from local authorities to publicly owned multi-regional agencies.

But while local control has clearly not been ideal, water policies developed by central government have also been inadequate. As was recently reported, the working group studying nitrates in freshwater met only twice in 18 months and was recently disbanded.

The Ministry for Primary Industries opposed the introduction of stricter nitrogen levels in rivers because of the potential economic impact on agriculture and horticulture.

Given access to clean water is a fundamental human right and the majority of New Zealanders would benefit from cleaner water, we have to ask: how democratic are New Zealand’s water policies?

The democratic deficit

While the primary industry sector undeniably plays a key role in New Zealand’s economy (5-7% of GDP for agriculture), its true contribution might look quite different if environmental impacts – and freshwater quality in particular – were taken into account.

Currently, New Zealand taxpayers shoulder the heavy cost of lax oversight and regulation of freshwater. While the public is aware of the issue of freshwater quality, arguably there is less awareness of the democratic deficit contributing to the problem.

Read more: New Zealand government ignores expert advice in its plan to improve water quality in rivers and lakes

In a liberal representative democracy such as New Zealand’s, political decisions result from elections. The three-yearly electoral cycle, however, tends to encourage symbolic politics geared towards winning votes rather than generating long-term solutions to complex problems like freshwater quality.

In 2017, for example, Labour campaigned on cleaning up our waterways. Its eventual plan, “Essential Freshwater: Healthy Water, Fairly Allocated”, appeared promising but is ambiguous and short on detail or substance. Some of the promised reforms have since been delayed.

Elections won’t help

With no real mechanism for public participation beyond the next general election or non-binding public consultation and submission processes, New Zealanders are left largely powerless.

A vote for the National opposition would only exacerbate the problem, given the party has said Labour’s proposed freshwater standards would be “gone by lunchtime” if it was elected.

So far, the Three Waters proposal to centralise responsibility for water services seems unlikely to increase opportunities for public participation in policy formation.

For all these reasons, we argue that by first improving our democratic system we can then begin to solve environmental problems such as freshwater quality.

Fresh water requires fresh ideas

Effective alternatives already exist but these require challenging the assumption that democracy is synonymous with elections.

The first step would be to reinvigorate democracy at the local level. Although many important environmental decisions are made locally, public participation in local body elections remains very low in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Perceived council failures, infighting and financial strife have eroded public confidence and led to calls to radically reform the current system.

Read more: Report shows New Zealand’s ‘fragmented’ environmental research funding doesn’t match most urgent needs

Enabling the public to play a key role in a real, participatory process could change this. It might also counter the tendency for local government to be captured by vocal, self-selecting, minority interest groups.

One way of achieving that is through a system known as “sortition”. This involves selecting representative assemblies by lottery instead of election or appointment. This model has two main goals: genuine representation and informed public input.

Assemblies are randomly selected from the population and then filtered to create a microcosm of the community in terms of age, gender, ethnicity, location, socio-economic status and even attitudinal bias.

The case for ‘sortition’

Unlike referendums, sortition emphasises quality over quantity. The selected citizens deliberate with experts to reach informed conclusions. The outcome of this deliberative process is then used to guide policy-making.

These deliberative assemblies can be temporary and focused on specific issues, or they can be embedded as permanent mechanisms within the institutions of a territorial or state authority. Remuneration is sometimes offered as an incentive to participate.

Read more: Drinking water study raises health concerns for New Zealanders

Sortition is becoming increasingly popular around the world as a potential remedy for “democratic fatigue” and populist politics. In Utrecht in the Netherlands, for example, sortition was used to design the city’s energy plan.

Reinvigorating local democracy with sortition-based citizen assemblies might not only prevent policy capture by vested interests but also help keep central government accountable.

Improved local democracy would increase public trust in political institutions in general. But it might also lead to more practical, equitable solutions to problems that directly affect citizens — such as the quality of their water.

– ref. If we want to improve NZ’s freshwater quality, first we need to improve the quality of our democracy – https://theconversation.com/if-we-want-to-improve-nzs-freshwater-quality-first-we-need-to-improve-the-quality-of-our-democracy-159322

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Carroll, Researcher and Senior Manager, Strategic Information, Monash University

Career-related motivations are among the most important factors in Australian students’ decision to undertake higher education. This means universities must demonstrate their graduates’ ability to find work when seeking to recruit students in an increasingly competitive tertiary education marketplace. Our research shows double degrees (students study for two degrees at once) can greatly improve new graduates’ prospects of finding full-time work.

Some combinations increased the success rate by as much as 40% compared to students with a single “generalist” degree. The gains were biggest for students in the arts and sciences.

Yet double degrees are often overlooked as a way to improve graduates’ employability. Universities’ efforts to improve graduates’ employment outcomes generally focus on curricular and extracurricular programs such as work-integrated learning, internships and workshops. These will continue to grow in importance, as graduates are increasingly competing in a labour market where the supply of high-quality graduate jobs is failing to keep up with the production of graduates.

Read more: 1 in 4 unemployed Australians has a degree. How did we get to this point?

However, recent Monash University research, as yet unpublished, shows something even more fundamental to universities — the structure of our educational offerings – can have a major impact on graduates’ employment outcomes. In particular, offering double degrees for undergraduates can make a significant difference.

Why offer double degrees?

Monash University has had a long-term focus on strengthening its double-degree offerings. The aim is to give students a more versatile skill set that increases their career flexibility and opportunities.

This focus on double degrees involves a huge resource commitment. It shapes many facets of Monash’s operations, from the design of our courses to the physical layout of our campuses.

Our approach is designed to prepare graduates to adapt to varying labour market demand for skills across different academic disciplines. The demand for specific disciplines expands and contracts based on economic forces that are often hard to predict.

A problem graduates then face is that the skills acquired in one academic discipline are not universally transferable. A student completing a law degree, for example, might be highly capable, but would struggle to leverage their skills (at least without substantial retraining) to become an engineer if that discipline was in greater demand. To improve employment outcomes, then, graduates need a broad skill set that allows them to be productive across different sectors.

Read more: Cheaper courses won’t help graduates get jobs – they need good careers advice and links with employers

What did the research find?

When the results of the most recent national Graduate Outcomes Survey were released, a key question for Monash was whether our investment in double degrees had helped graduates weather the labour market shocks of the pandemic. The national employment rate for new graduates fell from 72.5% in 2019 to 69.1% in 2020.

We examined undergraduate employment rates across Monash’s faculties based on whether students had undertaken double degrees. This yielded a number of interesting findings.

First, double-degree students have significantly higher full-time (FT) employment rates around six months after course completion for second degrees in humanities and social sciences (HASS) and in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).

Second, we found this effect is greatest for so-called “generalist” degrees. These do not have career pathways as clearly defined as other disciplines. Specifically, graduates from courses in science and in arts/art, design and architecture were much more likely to find full-time work if they completed a double degree.

The effect is less pronounced for more vocationally oriented courses, such as education, engineering (paired with STEM) and law (paired with HASS). This is not to suggest double degrees are not valuable for students in these disciplines. Double degrees allow students to keep their options open, insulating them somewhat from the notoriously unpredictable supply and demand for graduate skills.

Read more: Humanities graduates earn more than those who study science and maths

Isn’t it just the kind of person who does double degrees?

These results prompted the question: are double degrees responsible for these strong employment outcomes, or are the people who study double degrees inherently more employable to begin with? In other words, do double degrees improve graduate employability, or do they merely reflect graduate employability?

To investigate this, we modelled graduate employment based on double-degree completion and students’ background characteristics. The effect held — the advantage associated with double degrees does not appear to be simply an artefact of the type of individual who chose to enrol in one.

Ultimately, Monash’s commitment to double degrees played a substantial role in achieving the highest full-time undergraduate employment rate of Victorian-based universities in 2020.

What explains the employability benefit?

So, why do double degrees give graduates such an advantage in the labour market? This is a much harder question to answer.

There is likely to be a human capital benefit, in that double-degree holders have gained a greater depth and breadth of skills than those with single degrees. The labour market recognises this through a greater likelihood of receiving a job offer.

There is likely also to be a signalling benefit as employers, faced with very little information on the productivity of the graduates sitting opposite them in job interviews, use the double degree as a sign of their productivity. It’s likely they make offers to graduates on this basis.

In a practical sense, the mechanism behind the effect of double degrees on employability is less important than the existence of the effect itself. Whether the effect is due to human capital factors, signalling or their combined effect, double degrees offer a significant employment benefit to the students who complete them and to the universities that develop and promote them.

– ref. Want to improve your chances of getting a full-time job? A double degree can do that – https://theconversation.com/want-to-improve-your-chances-of-getting-a-full-time-job-a-double-degree-can-do-that-157306

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Julia Prendergast, Senior Lecturer, Writing and Literature, Swinburne University of Technology

Each year, The Stella Prize honours writing by women. Good. We’ve come a long way. We’ve a long way to go.

The 2021 shortlist encompasses contemporary fiction, historical fiction, and non-fiction, and undertakes impressive trapeze acts across genre boundaries.

The books investigate the riddle of familial duty and the cost of patriarchy; Australia’s racist colonial history; species-ism and humanity as it exists within the natural world; the devastating impact of sexual violence for victims as well as criminal justice professionals; the trauma associated with physical violence inflicted upon women.

The authors write about sacrifice, grief, mental illness, power, privilege and connectivity.

Collectively, the books are testament to the minds of thinking, writing women mapping the architecture of social and cultural change.

Fathoms: The World in the Whale by Rebecca Gibbs

Many of us enjoy venturing a few metres out into the sea to swim, surf or just cool off. Rebecca Gibbs’ enthralling Fathoms: The World in the Whale presents whales as immense, enigmatic, intelligent and majestic sea creatures, but also vividly describes the intricate ecosystem of the vast oceans in which they live and die.

Drawing from science, history, literature, art and mythology, Fathoms is both epic in scale and rich in detail about the life cycle of whales, their behaviours and sociality.

This sweeping research is interspersed with Gibbs’ own quest for understanding, which begins at a whale stranding and continues through experiences of eating whale meat and closely observing these mammals on a whale watching tour.

This makes Fathoms filled with information but also personal, as Gibbs weaves her own insights and feelings about whales and the natural world into the narrative.

Arguing passionately for whales’ right to survive, many of her stories of our treatment of these creatures are heartbreaking and haunting. Whether it is humans hunting and killing whales and overfishing their food sources, or our polluting the oceans and destroying their habitats, whales remain highly vulnerable.

This could make for profoundly depressing reading. Instead, Fathoms is optimistic. We can address over-fishing, stop polluting the seas and start working seriously on restorative remediation.

This message is especially important in a year in which concern for the environment has fallen behind the issues raised by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Fathoms calls for a new “Save the Whales” campaign. Public activism has stopped most whaling and we can rise to this new challenge, in the process also safeguarding countless numbers of no less important sea creatures.

–Donna Lee Brien

Revenge: Murder in Three Parts by S. L. Lim

Revenge: Murder in Three Parts has a vortex-like rhythm, with its gut-wrenching tale about the cost of fortitude and self-sufficiency.

If you break between sittings, you are likely to dream in the way narrative wires us to dream: circling standalone memories that never stand alone in the mind’s eye, turning time inside out.

Yannie lives in Malaysia, her life largely devoted to caring for her parents.

Despite her intellectual feats, which exceed her brother’s exponentially, her parents tell her they can’t afford to send her to university. They have agreed to provide additional support for Yannie’s brother to undertake further study. He, too, betrays Yannie.

The reader falls for Yannie, wanting to know and unknow her in the way we want to unknow all of those things we know innately and immediately yet incompletely.

Yannie is highly emotionally intelligent, artistic and thoughtful. Her everyday practice is self-denial. The word “entropy” emerges literally and metaphorically throughout the novel. Lim invites us to consider the ramifications of the slow seep of unused energy, the cost of duty and sacrifice, deep inequity, unrequited longing.

Revenge is an unflinching investigation of how a life cultivates a mind. Lim pushes us to consider the enduring and sometimes devastating impact of missed moments and our thinking upon them.

Books that do not end, and will never end, leave us with questions. At the heart of this book is the following question: “What does it take, to see and not see […] at the same time?”

–Julia Prendergast

The Animals in that Country by Laura Jean McKay

The Animals in that Country is that rare thing: an intellectually ambitious, formally innovative Australian novel that is accessible to a broad readership. It’s also wonderfully macabre.

The central character is Jean, a mature-aged alcoholic working her way up at a remote wildlife park. She used to clean the dunnies, now she drives the little tourist train.

Jean’s ambition is to become a ranger, but anyone can see she’s incapable of completing the required certificate. Her boss changes the subject whenever it comes up.

Jean has one sober day per week: it’s a massive effort, but it’s a service in aid of maintaining her primary human relationship with her six-year-old granddaughter, Kimberly.

Kimberly and Jean love animals. They work tirelessly together on a scrapbook filled with plans for their own animal park. The relationship between these two is precious, refreshingly full and beautifully rendered by McKay: cementing Jean, despite all her faults, as a heroine with true heart.

I was surprised at how bloody funny this book is. The first 50 pages move a little slowly, and at times the Aussie vernacular is too over-cooked, even for comic effect, but once Jean hits the road in pursuit of Kimberly, who has been stolen by her mother’s ex, the narrative takes a sophisticated turn and the book’s extraordinary, slightly surreal central project, takes off. Down the highway, we’re in the realm of horror.

This is a work of fiction utterly capable of swaying the cultural imaginary.

McKay completed this novel as part of a creative writing PhD at the University of Melbourne, and it is a testament to the quality of writing coming out of Australia’s higher-degree writing programs: well-researched, impeccably crafted, and, above all, intelligent.

–Julienne van Loon

Witness by Louise Milligan

Sexual assault and murder carry high maximum sentences for good reason. They cause damage, havoc and lifelong pain and can rip society apart. None of us want perpetrators to stay hidden and unjudged. We want the criminal justice system to do its work.

And so, when victims of sexual assault envy murder victims “because they don’t have to relive being killed, over and over”, when what finally breaks them is not the crime but what happens next, we all have a stake in making justice work better.

In Witness, Louise Milligan asks where is the balance to be struck between the rights of defendants and the rights of witnesses – and of complainants in particular.

Can we presume an accused person to be innocent – as she agrees we should – without irreparably damaging the lives of those who report sexual crimes and give evidence?

Milligan has the credentials: court reporter; investigative journalist; witness in the trial of Cardinal George Pell; and the victim of the crime committed by an invisible stranger who repeatedly threatened to kill her.

Milligan has clearly earned the trust not only of victims, but also of judges and senior barristers who speak candidly about the impact of vicarious trauma on them and their colleagues, and who know they are working in an imperfect system.

She writes about the “cognitive dissonance” required for a barrister to be able to belittle a child witness, ultimately proved to be telling the truth about sexual abuse, and then go home to their own children.

Witness is a harrowing read. Not because Milligan has sensationalised the experiences described to her: the court transcripts speak for themselves. But because she exposes the damage done, not only to complainants, but to everyone involved in the criminal justice system, and makes it our concern.

-Julia Prendergast

Stone Sky Gold Mountain by Mirandi Riwoe

Stone Sky Gold Mountain is a bellwether novel, acknowledging Australia’s racist colonial history, suggesting that settlers from many countries were complicit in the worst outrages against Indigenous people, and underlining centuries of attack and control of women by men.

Set in 1877 in Queensland’s Palmer River goldfields the novel imagines a gap in Australian history, bringing to the foreground young working women, shackled by class, gender and race, seeking freedom and tenderness in a violent shanty town.

The story begins with the exiled Lai Yue and his sister Ying questing for gold to free their siblings, sold into slavery to pay their father’s gambling debts; and with the grieving and myopic Meriem, a single mother keeping house for a whore.

Ying dresses as a boy to survive. Meriem and her employer Sophie ply traditional women’s trades – housekeeping and sex work – and the three defend each other.

We fear for Lai Yue, burdened with filial duty, paying the price of men’s brutality to each other. Chinese speculators outnumber Europeans yet remain vulnerable to racism, their homeland criminal gangs, known as tongs, and starvation. Is Ying’s brother enlivened only by conscience, or is his inner voice darker, more unsettling than that? Who is responsible when an explosion of frontier violence subsumes him?

Taken deep into each character’s consciousness, we absorb their trauma and resilience.

The bush and riverscape seethe with heat and humidity. Riwoe’s language is assured, lyric and lush with vivid imagery of transplanted Chinese culture.

Historical detail is always immediate and visceral. As befits a good crime novel, each chapter cranks up tension, escalates action, and coded objects – a green ribbon tied around a tree, blackbirds, snakes’ eyes and sour plums, talismanic wood carvings – lead readers towards inevitable climaxes.

Ghosts and opium memes bring foreboding. How does one tell white men apart when they all look the same? Ever ironic, Riwoe. Read in two sittings. Twice.

–Gay Lynch

Bass Rock by Evie Wyld

At the opening of Evie Wyld’s The Bass Rock a young girl discovers a suitcase washed up on the beach: a dead woman’s fingers inching out, and between them, an eye that blinks.

At the novel’s closing, a woman is hurriedly packing a suitcase for her and her daughter, intending to leave an abusive marriage. She is waiting for a taxi when the front door quietly closes.

These two short scenes frame a novel that dwells on the violence inflicted on three women by manipulating and aggressive men. Set on the coast of Scotland, the dark volcanic Bass Rock looms over North Berwick as a dark presence around which the stories are fashioned.

In the 21st century, Viviane is living an unpredictable existence in London, when her Uncle Christopher requests she look after the family home in North Berwick until it is sold.

Shortly after the second world war, Ruth is living in the same North Berwick house with new husband Peter and his two sons.

In the 18th century, Joseph recounts how Sarah, accused of being a witch and brutally raped by village boys, is saved from being burned by his father. But when the thugs rally support, the girl and family must run, or they could all burn.

The Bass Rock has seven sections, each containing five chapters that move from the present through to the past and back again. Themes of mental illness and grief are braided into the novel, and the young children in Ruth’s story, become the older characters in Viviane’s.

At the end of each section a short tale is recounted about a nameless woman; each woman suffering maltreatment.

This is a deeply disturbing novel, yet one also revelling in grace and the small wonders of life: new and fragile friendships, tender moments of love and unearthly happenings.

–Catherine McKinnon

The 2021 Stella Prize winner will be announced at 8pm AEST tonight, April 22.

– ref. The Stella shortlist: your guide to 2021’s powerful, emotional books – https://theconversation.com/the-stella-shortlist-your-guide-to-2021s-powerful-emotional-books-158782

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

The Morrison government has cancelled the belt and road agreements Victoria has with China.

In the first decisions under the government’s new foreign arrangements scheme allowing it to quash arrangements states, territories and public universities have with foreign governments, Foreign Minister Marise Payne announced four Victorian agreements would end.

Two are with China, and the others are with Iran and Syria.

The agreements with China are the memorandum of understanding on the belt and road initiative signed in October 2018, and a subsequent more detailed framework agreement signed in October 2019.

The agreement with Iran related to student exchanges and dates from 2004. The protocol with Syria was for scientific co-operation, and goes back to 1999.

Payne, who makes the determinations under the law, said the agreements were “inconsistent with Australia’s foreign policy or adverse to our foreign relations” under the scheme’s test.

The action is likely to elicit another sharp response from China, which is extensively targeting Australian trade and regularly delivers rhetorical attacks.

The Victorian buy-in to the belt and road network – China’s global infrastructure and development strategy – was seen as a prime target when the government first announced its plan to overhaul agreements with foreign governments and their entities.

Scott Morrison said last year about belt and road that it was a program Australia’s foreign policy did not recognise “because we don’t believe it is consistent with Australia’s national interest”.

The foreign arrangements scheme, operating since December, was driven substantially by concern about foreign interference in Australia, in particular from China.

It also reflects the broader principle that foreign relations are a national matter and agreements by states and territories with foreign governments should not be at odds with the federal government’s policies.

Federal sources say the Victorian agreements with China have not yielded any tangible outcomes for the state.

The other two agreements have been overtaken by major changes in relations with those countries.

Payne said under the audits of existing and proposed foreign arrangements required by the new law, she had been notified of more than 1000 arrangements.

“States and territories have now completed their initial audit of existing arrangements with foreign national governments.

“The more than 1,000 notified so far reflect the richness and breadth of Australia’s international interests and demonstrate the important role played by Australia’s states, territories, universities and local governments in advancing Australia’s interests abroad.”

Payne has approved a proposed Memorandum of Understanding on Cooperation on Human Resources Development in Energy and Mineral Resources Sector between the Western Australian and Indonesian governments.

A spokesperson for the Victorian government said the law was “entirely a matter for the Commonwealth government”.

– ref. Morrison government quashes Victoria’s belt and road deal with China. – https://theconversation.com/morrison-government-quashes-victorias-belt-and-road-deal-with-china-159480

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

Scott Morrison says he hopes to focus the conversation at this week’s Biden climate summit on the question of how to achieve net-zero emissions, declaring there has been enough conversation about the timing.

Ahead of his speech to the virtual summit overnight Thursday (AET), Morrison has announced next month’s budget will contain a new $565.8 million for backing low emissions international technological partnerships by co-funding research and demonstration projects.

The partnerships will leverage $3 to $5 in co-investment for every dollar the government puts in.

Referring to joining President Biden and other leaders Morrison told a Wednesday news conference, “I’m seeking to focus that conversation, it’s now about the ‘how’ – there [have] been enough conversations about the ‘when’, it’s about the how, now”.

Morrison’s emphasis on the “how” in getting to net zero comes as the British government focused this week on speeding up its efforts, announcing it would legislate to “reduce emissions by 78% by 2035 compared to 1990 levels”.

The UK statement said that in addressing the summit, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson “will urge countries to raise ambition on tackling climate change and join the UK in setting stretching targets for reducing emissions by 2030 to align with net zero”.

Biden is set to announce a new target for the United States.

Morrison is pivoting his government’s policy towards formally embracing later this year the widely-accepted 2050 net-zero target but, mindful of some naysayers in Coalition ranks, he has not signed up yet.

For the international partnership program, Australia is having discussions with potential partners including the United States, the UK, Japan, Korea and Germany.

The government wants to get international collaboration on technologies through projects in Australia and technology transfer, and is tying the effort into its emphasis on jobs.

“The world is changing and we want to stay ahead of the curve by working with international partners to protect the jobs we have in energy-reliant businesses, and create new jobs in the low emissions technology sector,” Morrison said in a statement.

“These partnerships mean Australia will keep leading the way in low emissions technology that also means more jobs here at home.”

Energy Minister Angus Taylor said the technologies prioritised under the government’s technology investment roadmap “have the potential to substantially reduce or eliminate emissions from sectors that account for 90% of global emissions”.

But Australia couldn’t on its own make these technologies globally scalable and commercially viable.

The government money for the partnerships investment is over eight years.

This week Morrison also announced $539.2 million for hydrogen and carbon capture hubs and technologies.

“I want Australia and hydrogen technology to be synonymous around the world,” he told reporters on Wednesday. “And it’s a key point I’ll be making at the climate summit over the next few days – that Australia is really putting the flag right out there when it comes to ensuring that we lead the world in hydrogen technology.

“The hydrogen that can fire up furnaces that used to be done by other forms of fossil fuels, that can run those trucks, that can run long-distance transport, and do all of the things we need it to do, solving these problems.”

He again stressed his government’s approach to emissions reduction was based on “technology not taxes”.

– ref. Morrison wants to focus on the ‘how’ rather than the ‘when’ in climate debate – https://theconversation.com/morrison-wants-to-focus-on-the-how-rather-than-the-when-in-climate-debate-159442

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

Sunday is ANZAC day – and this year it comes at a particularly important time for Australia’s military image.

Last week, Scott Morrison announced Australia’s remaining troops will leave Afghanistan by September, following President Biden’s announcement of the United States withdrawal.

One negative legacy of Australia’s participation in this conflict is documented in the Brereton report on Australia war crimes, which detailed alleged incidents of unlawful killing and cruelty by some special forces troops.

Among the report’s recommendations was the revocation of the Meritorious Unit Citation that had been awarded to some 3,000 soldiers.

The Chief of the Australian Defence Force, Angus Campbell, agreed with the recommendation. But critics were fierce and this week the new Defence Minister Peter Dutton said the award would not be revoked.

Executive Director of the Australia Defence Association Neil James joins the podcast, to discuss the withdrawal from Afghanistan, the strategic risk China poses, and the high profile new minister in the portfolio.

James is concerned the departure of international forces from Afghanistan will lead to more instability.

“By withdrawing and without a peace agreement with the Taliban, it’s going to be a reasonable problem. The simple thing about all wars is they always end when one side gives up or both sides get tired. And in this case, unfortunately, the message being sent to the Taliban is that the international community has given up.”

On China, James is concerned about any “number of flash points that could easily cause a war, even if only accidentally”.

Taiwan “is the big flash point.”

“President Xi will seek to legitimise his presidency by, in his words, absorbing Taiwan back into the motherland. That will automatically cause a war for the simple reason that Taiwan is a functioning democracy and a lot of the world’s democracies will probably object to that. That’s the biggest flash point.”

On the controversial Dutton decision to override Campbell over the citation, James believes the minister did the wrong thing.

“I think probably, to be brutally frank, he was ill advised. And I think if he [had] bothered to consult a bit more broadly and understood the implications of what he was doing, he may not have done it.”

“[The revocation] needs to be done for the simple reason that the revocation of the citation isn’t an Australian issue – it’s an international issue. We’re showing the world that we’re taking the Brereton report seriously.

“We admit the war crimes occurred even if we have difficulty convicting anyone of it, eventually. They certainly definitely occurred. And therefore, we have to be seen to be doing something about it.

“And by cancelling the revocation, we’re actually sending the wrong message internationally about Australia’s commitment to international law. But we’re also sending the wrong message internally within the defence force about unprofessional behaviour.”

While James thinks Dutton was “the only bloke who could have taken over the ministry after [Linda] Reynolds” was moved, he remains a strong defender of Reynolds.

Even before the Brittany Higgins matter, Reynolds faced considerable criticism from commentators. James believes there was a sexist element in some of the attacks on her performance in the portfolio, and he condemns those who thought Australia couldn’t be “taken seriously as a country when both the foreign minister and the defence minister were female”.

“I mean, that’s just absurd in the 21st century. It was actually absurd for most the late 20th century.”

Additional audio

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

– ref. Politics with Michelle Grattan: military ‘watch-dog’ Neil James on Afghanistan, China, and Peter Dutton – https://theconversation.com/politics-with-michelle-grattan-military-watch-dog-neil-james-on-afghanistan-china-and-peter-dutton-159444

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nathan James Enriquez, PhD Student, University of New England

Tyrannosaurus rex is perhaps the most famous of all dinosaurs. It and its closest kin, a group referred to as “tyrannosaurs”, have been embedded in popular culture as powerful and mobile predators.

Consider the below scene from the 1993 blockbuster Jurassic Park; an adult T. rex chases down a speeding Jeep — much to the thrill of the audience.

But Jeeps and fanciful theme parks aside, are these depictions realistic?

Our research, published today in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, shows while young tyrannosaurs may have indeed been the vision of wrath depicted above, they likely became broader-footed, bulky and less mobile in adulthood.

A new perspective

Previous arguments about the way tyrannosaurs did (or didn’t) run either focused on their bones, or relied on computer models to simulate their running abilities.

Apart from being smaller, the skeletons of young tyrannosaurs are also more lightly built than their bulkier parents, which suggests they were probably faster and more nimble for their body size. Juveniles tended to have relatively longer legs and smaller skulls, and weighed much less than a fully grown adult.

In fact, the volume of leg muscles needed to sustain a fast running pace in a six-tonne adult T. rex would have probably been biologically impossible. This would require the dinosaur having as much as 86% of its total body weight just as leg muscle!

However, skeletons only represent part of the story. Fossilised footprints provide a unique snapshot in time of how an animal (or species) moved about its environment — one not provided by skeletons.

Fossilised footprints are a fleshed-out image of the feet as they once appeared in real life, with the soft parts still intact.

In 2015 and 2018, our team discovered a new collection of tyrannosaur footprints in rocks at a lonely outpost in western Canada, which we introduce for the first time in our new paper.

These footprints presented a unique opportunity to study how tyrannosaurs’ foot shapes changed from youth to adulthood. If their relative mobility decreased as they grew — as was previously hypothesised from studying their skeletons — then we’d expect this to be expressed in foot shape, too.

Younger and swifter animals would have more slender feet, whereas older individuals would have bulkier feet, less suited for speed and agility.

Read more: How many _Tyrannosaurus rex_ walked the Earth?

Tracking ancient footprints through bear country

The tyrannosaur tracks we found remain preserved in a wilderness area near Grande Prairie in Northwestern Alberta, Canada. The region is known for its bitter cold winters, which causes the rivers to flood in spring as snow-melt rolls off the nearby Rocky Mountains.

The footprints themselves are preserved along a bank of the Redwillow River, surrounded by Boreal forest, which today is home to wildlife including brown bears, black bears and wolves.

Thankfully our close encounters were largely with deer, although swarms of mosquitoes were a constant nuisance.

Tyrannosaur footprints in this area can be identified by the presence of three long and narrow toes, often with sharp, pointed claw marks. We found up to ten footprints, all about 72 million years old, ranging from 30 to 62 centimetres in length.

Although no bones were discovered, the footprints may have belonged to Albertosaurus. This tyrannosaur lived in Alberta at that time and was an earlier and smaller relative of T. rex.

My, what big heels you have!

Using a method called geometric morphometrics, we analysed the best tyrannosaur footprints from our collection of tracks, along with previously discovered footprints.

This method mathematically removes the effect of overall size difference between each footprint while examining important differences in footprint shape.

Applied to our samples, we found the main difference across all footprints was the surface area and width of the heel relative to the footprint’s length.

Larger prints had proportionally larger heels while smaller tracks had narrower, smaller heels.

This difference likely relates to the imposing size of an adult tyrannosaur, or specifically an adult Albertosaurus, which may have weighed between 1,300 and 2,200 kg.

A wider and more fleshy heel probably helped adults maintain balance and support increased weight, but likely came at the expense of speed and agility.

Our work on footprints serves to support the hypothesis that as tyrannosaurs grew they underwent a shift from quick, sprightly juveniles to slower, heavy-set adults.

Slowed down by old age

Would this have been a problem for catching food as an adult tyrannosaur? Probably not. The large four-legged herbivores they hunted, such as Edmontosaurus regalis (which weighed about 4,000kg), were probably even slower.

So what about that chase scene from Jurassic Park?

Well, we still can’t be certain exactly how fast an adult T. rex could run. But we can say heavier and bulkier adults were probably slower for their body size than more slender juveniles.

Perhaps it should have been a juvenile tyrannosaur chasing that Jeep instead. Although, this wouldn’t have been quite as scary.

Read more: Curious Kids: could dinosaurs evolve back into existence?

– ref. Fat-footed tyrannosaur parents couldn’t keep up with their skinnier offspring, fossil footprints reveal – https://theconversation.com/fat-footed-tyrannosaur-parents-couldnt-keep-up-with-their-skinnier-offspring-fossil-footprints-reveal-154188

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Patrick Stokes, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Deakin University

In the 1840s, a series of strange books started to appear in Copenhagen. The books were credited to outlandish pseudonyms: Victor Eremita (“victorious hermit”), Hilarious Bookbinder, Vigilius Haufniensis (“the watcher in the marketplace”), and more.

The author of these books was a theology graduate named Søren Kierkegaard. He wasn’t using pseudonyms to hide his authorship, however, but to make a point about what it is to truly inhabit a view of life. That, he complained, was precisely the problem with the other philosophers of his era. They published under their real names, but wrote as if they weren’t living, breathing, mortal people at all, but mere abstract conduits for pure reason.

Cut to 180 years later, and philosophers are again asserting the right to publish under made-up names. But these philosophers, it seems, want to use pseudonyms to do the very thing Kierkegaard accused his contemporaries of doing: abstracting authors out of ethical reality.

Philosophers Peter Singer, Jeff McMahan, and Francesca Minerva have announced a new academic outlet, the Journal of Controversial Ideas, as a safe space for unpopular views.

An “open access, peer-reviewed, interdisciplinary journal specifically created to promote free inquiry on controversial topics,” it will give authors the option to publish their work under a pseudonym “in order to protect themselves from threats to their careers or physical safety.”

Read more: Is cancel culture silencing open debate? There are risks to shutting down opinions we disagree with

Singer certainly knows first-hand the personal cost of taking unpopular philosophical positions. Few philosophers have aroused such sustained outrage.

Equally, few philosophers have had the sort of practical impact that Singer has through his work on animal ethics in particular. I don’t share Singer’s utilitarianism, but I’ve long admired the determination with which he follows through a line of argument.

Apart from wanting to ensure people’s safety, it’s unsurprising to see philosophers defending the value of rigorous open inquiry in this way. It also comes at a time when philosophy as a profession is wrestling with difficult issues about the ethics of its own practice. The status of trans women in particular has been the site of incredibly painful recent arguments within the discipline.

Research and responsibility

The new journal is not meant to be entirely pseudonymous. Real-name submissions are encouraged, and pseudonymous authors can claim authorship of their work at a later time or reveal it to selected people (such as employers).

Pseudonymity is not an inherently bad thing. Apart from focusing the reader on the argument rather than the author, it can, in many cases, give a say to people who could otherwise not participate in public discourse. On the other hand, pseudonymity in academic publishing has already been abused to sneak pseudoscientific claims into the scholarly literature.

The bigger issue here is that academic inquiry does not take place in a vacuum. Speaking, writing, and publishing are actions, and therefore subject to moral evaluation like any other action. Research is something we do – and as such, something we are ethically responsible for. We’re agents, not mere conduits.

Few people, perhaps, pay attention to academic publishing. Yet to push a finding through the brutal gamut of peer review grants it authority. And that has downstream consequences. It can feed, for instance, into the ways issues of race and gender are discussed in broader society.

It is entirely reasonable to point out that the practice of research, however innocently it might be intended, has effects that researchers cannot simply shrug off. Using a pseudonym might protect you from being blamed for those effects. But it does not change your responsibility for them.

The Journal of Controversial Ideas has been described as a response to so-called “cancel culture”. “Clearly there has been an increase in various forms of behaviour that can intimidate people from writing on controversial topics,” Singer told The Australian. There are indeed genuine problems with the scale on which people get called out for problematic comments or behaviour on social media.

But that doesn’t make us less answerable for what we write and publish. We cannot and must not avoid difficult topics. The challenge for researchers, then, is to work on these topics in a way that doesn’t implicitly suspend responsibility for what we say and do. We cannot pretend that academic inquiry is somehow quarantined from the rest of the ethical universe, and claim a right to evade accountability for our work.

If a certain way of talking about race, for example, has historically served detestable ends, are you implicating yourself in those ends by taking that approach or using that language?

If your way of approaching a topic calls the validity of a marginalised person’s very existence into question — or when such people tell you that’s what you’re doing, whatever you might have assumed — are you prepared to face up to the moral liability you’re taking on?

Read more: Friday essay: a new front in the culture wars, Cynical Theories takes unfair aim at the humanities

Are you, in the end, making life better for other people, or worse?

In light of that standard, a pseudonymous journal devoted entirely to “controversial” ideas starts to look less like a way to protect researchers from cancel culture, and more like a safe-house for ideas that couldn’t withstand moral scrutiny the first time around.

– ref. Safe space or shirking accountability? A new Journal of Controversial Ideas will allow academics to write under pseudonyms – https://theconversation.com/safe-space-or-shirking-accountability-a-new-journal-of-controversial-ideas-will-allow-academics-to-write-under-pseudonyms-159433

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Evangeline Mantzioris, Program Director of Nutrition and Food Sciences, University of South Australia

A drink with your breakfast, lunch or dinner can make your meal more enjoyable. But have you considered whether your drink of choice may affect the way your body absorbs the nutrients in your food?

Dietary factors that can increase the uptake of other nutrients are called enhancers, while those that can reduce the uptake of other nutrients are called inhibitors, or anti-nutrients.

One of the most common nutrient deficiencies worldwide is iron, and can result in a condition called iron deficiency anaemia.

So if you’re looking to increase your iron levels, it’s worth thinking not just about what you’re eating — but what you’re drinking too.

A bit about iron

Iron deficiency can develop when we don’t get enough iron, or don’t absorb iron to the extent our body needs. It’s more common in women, and can cause weakness and fatigue, among other symptoms.

If you’re worried you may be iron deficient, you can get a blood test from your general practitioner.

There are two forms of iron in our diets; haem iron and non-haem iron. Haem is an iron-containing protein that forms part of the haemoglobin, a protein in your red blood cells that transports oxygen around your body.

Haem iron is found in animal sources of food, like meat, and is more easily absorbed into the body.

Non-haem iron is found in plant foods, like grains, beans and nuts, and is less easily absorbed.

Read more: I’ve been diagnosed with iron deficiency, now what?

Some enhancers

Choosing a drink that contains vitamin C — such as orange, tomato or grapefruit juice — around the time of your meal will increase the amount of the non-haem iron you can absorb.

In one study, 100mg of vitamin C increased iron absorption four-fold. This is roughly equivalent to what you’d get from one glass of orange juice.

Keeping this in mind is particularly important for people who don’t eat meat, as all of their dietary iron will be non-haem iron.

Some inhibitors

Tea is a popular drink with meals and is often enjoyed with Asian cuisine. But tea contains a bioactive compound called tannin, which is an inhibitor of non-haem iron absorption.

Tannin is classed as an organic compound called a polyphenol. It’s also found in many foods including cocoa, almonds, grapes, berries, pomegranates, and spices (for example, vanilla and cinnamon), which may find their way into drinks like smoothies.

Kombucha, a popular fermented tea drink, still contains some tannins.

Unfortunately the news is no better for coffee drinkers — coffee contains tannins too. And the chlorogenic acid in coffee is also an important inhibitor of iron absorption.

Tea and coffee are considered the strongest inhibitors of iron. A cup of tea reduces iron absorption by about 75%-80%, and a cup of coffee by about 60%. The stronger you make them, the greater the effect will be.

So it’s best to avoid tea and coffee while eating and for two hours before and after the meal. This is roughly the length of time food and drinks sit in your stomach before they’re fully absorbed.

This includes breakfast, a meal at which many people most commonly consume tea and coffee. For most of us breakfast normally consists of cereal and/or bread. Both of these naturally contain significant levels of iron and sometimes these products have iron added.

So if you’re iron deficient, it may be time to consider opting for a small glass of orange juice at breakfast, or preferably the whole orange (as you get fibre with it too), and saving the tea or coffee for a little later.

Read more: What is kombucha and how do the health claims stack up?

A little from column A, a little from column B

There has always been speculation dairy may inhibit iron absorption, but to date the evidence seems to suggest it has no effect.

However plant-based milks, such as soy milk, contain phytates, a compound that stores phosphorus in plants, which inhibit iron absorption.

Meanwhile, alcohol increases the absorption of iron, so a beer would be classed as an enhancer.

If you favour a glass of wine, you should select a white over a red. Red wine contains more tannins and other polyphenols, so overall red wine inhibits iron absorption.

But as we know drinking alcohol increases the risk of cancer and is linked to other health concerns, you shouldn’t start drinking alcohol to increase iron absorption.

Read more: Should I let my kids drink juice? We asked five experts

So what’s the take-home message?

The bioactives I’ve mentioned also provide many nutritional and health benefits, and they’re all found in plant products. It would be virtually impossible to avoid tannins in your diet and still be consuming the healthy number of serves of fruit and vegetables.

This advice is mostly relevant if you’ve been diagnosed as iron deficient or with iron deficiency anaemia. And even if this is the case, you can still enjoy these drinks outside of meal times.

If your iron levels are within the normal range there’s no need to be concerned as your body is absorbing enough to meet your needs with what you’re drinking and eating.

– ref. What to drink with dinner to get the most iron from your food (and what to avoid) – https://theconversation.com/what-to-drink-with-dinner-to-get-the-most-iron-from-your-food-and-what-to-avoid-156579

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Pi-Shen Seet, Professor of Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Edith Cowan University

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has highlighted workforce skills as the “single biggest challenge facing the Australian economy” in recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic. Employer surveys also show it’s a top concern.

Adding to these concerns is an expected 85% fall in net overseas migration in 2020-21 from 2018-19 levels because of COVID-related border closures. The Committee for Economic Development of Australia (CEDA) has stressed the urgency of increased and more flexible temporary and permanent migration as global competition for skills and talent intensifies in the post-pandemic recovery. Australia also risks losing talented individuals to more attractive destinations.

Read more: There may not be enough skilled workers in Australia’s pipeline for a post-COVID-19 recovery

Federal Immigration Minister Alex Hawke is more optimistic. He says the pandemic hasn’t harmed Australia’s reputation as a migrant destination. At a CEDA livestream discussion yesterday, Hawke said migration would be crucial for Australia’s recovery from the pandemic.

What is being overlooked in this debate is that, as a recent Productivity Commission report notes, Australia might not really have a skills shortage. Rather, the problem is a skills mismatch.

Why migration matters now

Australia typically relies on immigration for almost two-thirds of its population growth, and skilled migrants are an important source of talent.

COVID-related closures of national and state borders added to the problems of industry sectors that rely on temporary and permanent migrants to overcome skills shortages. Many have had trouble finding workers (e.g. fruit-picking) or will have trouble as the economy recovers (e.g. hospitality, digital and data opportunities).

CEDA recently launched a report calling for an increase in permanent skilled migration. This report and a 2019 CEDA report aim to show recent waves of migrants have not reduced wages or jobs of Australian-born workers.

CEDA’s latest report calls on the federal government to:

1. set up a government-regulated online platform for matching skills to jobs

2. update the Australian and New Zealand Standard Classification of Occupations Codes to ensure people with essential or cutting-edge skills can immigrate

3. be more transparent about how it assesses what occupations are in demand and included on the skilled occupation lists.

CEDA describes the Global Talent Scheme (GTS) as “very restrictive”. Minister Hawke acknowledged post-COVID Australia’s migration policies have to be more flexible and responsive. He pointed to the increased GTS intake of 15,000 spots in 2020-21, a tripling of last year’s allocation.

Yet the shape and make-up of the migration program remain unclear. Questions during yesterday’s discussion elicited few new details.

What are the issues with this approach?

According to the Productivity Commission, the way to modernise and grow the economy is via the three Ps: population, participation and productivity. As well as the population impacts of migration, CEDA claims to be offering solutions for both participation, as skilled migrants have “lower unemployment rates and higher labour-force participation rates”, and productivity, as skilled migrants are younger and contribute to human capital accumulation.

In practice, increased migration works by growing the population, increasing numbers of taxpayers and producing so-called spillover effects in housing, retail and domestic tourism etc.

CEDA cites an Australian National University study that found migrants account for 7% of the average rate of labour productivity growth between 1994–95 and 2007–08. However, the Productivity Commission reports productivity has slowed since the mid-2000s despite high migration.

Evidence indicates employers are not nurturing talent from migration to its full potential. Nearly one in four permanent skilled migrants work in a job beneath their skill level. Research also highlights the need to tackle the disconnect between identified skills shortages and the unwillingness of employers to employ new migrants.

Read more: There’s one big problem with Australia’s skilled migration program: many employers don’t want new migrants

How to fix these problems

The solutions CEDA proposes are largely quick fixes and echo previous recommendations from CEDA and employer groups like the Australian Chamber of Commerce. Stop-gap government measures to help employers fill shortfalls include a 50% wage subsidy for apprentices or trainees and tailored quarantine arrangements for seasonal workers. But the systemic problem of skills matching, leading to underemployment and unemployment, has been neglected.

This problem is not unique to Australia. Migrants do essential work in many countries. Research has found many countries have designated these migrants – including those typically considered “low-skilled” such as crop pickers, care assistants and hospital cleaners – as “key” or “essential” workers whose supply needs to be protected and even expanded during the health emergency.

In Australia, some analysts have pointed to the skills shortage as a policy ruse to distract attention from the lack of infrastructure investment to cope with rapid population growth as well as employers wishing to restrict wages growth.

One in four unemployed Australians are graduates. But Australian employers might not want to employ and train them if they can get similarly skilled employees from overseas who are willing to work for lower pay.

Read more: 1 in 4 unemployed Australians has a degree. How did we get to this point?

The problem is worse among international graduates and students – 60% of the latter lost their jobs during the pandemic. Yet they studied in universities and through VET providers that were supposedly providing them with the skills Australian employers need.

The Business Council of Australia (BCA) has recognised the need to improve skills matching and development. It has called for a more flexible vocational education and training (VET) system that emphasises life-long learning with innovations like micro-apprenticeships. This allows for employees and apprentices to be rapidly trained and regularly upskilled in response to technology and market changes.

This is similar to micro-credentials – qualifications based on smaller blocks of learning. These can formalise soft and hard skills attained at work, such as teamwork, critical thinking and problem solving. They can also help fill skill gaps such as working with big data.

There are other gaps in the CEDA proposals. For example, when the federal government announced its Modern Manufacturing Strategy in October 2020, it recognised that not enough manufacturers have experience in scaling up in areas that provide good returns. Despite a brief mention of data scientists in regard to skilled occupation lists not being updated since 2013, the CEDA report largely focuses on traditional industries.

Our research shows Australia needs to develop new skills in disruptive technologies to capitalise on the opportunities of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

Read more: Jobs are changing, and fast. Here’s what the VET sector (and employers) need to do to keep up

The pandemic has simply added to the urgency of increased collaboration between the higher education and VET sectors, employer organisations, industry and government to deliver more targeted and flexible skills development programs.

– ref. Migration is a quick fix for skills shortages. Building on Australians’ skills is better – https://theconversation.com/migration-is-a-quick-fix-for-skills-shortages-building-on-australians-skills-is-better-159207

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Clare Corbould, Associate Professor, Contemporary Histories Research Group, Deakin University

The unprecedented conviction of police officer Derek Chauvin for the murder and manslaughter of George Floyd is testament to the hard work of Black Lives Matter organisers and protesters.

It might seem as though someone who spent nine minutes and 29 seconds pressing his weight through his knee into another man’s neck – all captured on video – would be a slam dunk for a conviction. But history shows us otherwise.

Thirty years ago, blurry footage taken with a home camcorder from an apartment balcony showed the world four white police officers beating Rodney King, an African American man on his knees. The police used batons, between 53 and 56 times.

Those officers were charged with excessive force and assault. Their lawyers argued they could not get a fair hearing in Los Angeles, so the trial was moved to a conservative county with a higher proportion of white residents – reflected in the makeup of the jury.

Read more: The racist roots of American policing: From slave patrols to traffic stops

Their lawyers also argued, successfully, that the audio on the recording be omitted because it would prejudice the jury. Instead, they screened it frame by frame. Without the sounds of the blows striking King and the screams of bystanders urging the police to stop, the video persuaded jurors of the defence lawyers’ arguments that the officers were acting in self-defence.

One juror later told reporters she believed King was in “total control” of the event. That juror believed one of the defence lawyers, who said “there’s only one person who’s in charge of this situation and that’s Rodney Glenn King”. She was sure a Black American man presented a violent threat, even while on his knees and clearly injured.

This idea – that Black bodies somehow contain coiled violence ready to be unleashed at any moment – has justified police violence for years. This is true for police perceptions of African American women, such as Breonna Taylor in her own home, as well as for African American men.

It has meant the legal test of whether the use of force is “excessive” has fallen further along the spectrum of violence when it comes to cases in which the victim is Black. This is true in Australia, too, where more than 400 Indigenous people have died in custody since the 1991 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, and not one person has been convicted of a crime.

This belief means that even when police killings are captured on video, as in the cases of Eric Garner, Philando Castile and Alton Sterling, prosecutors find reasons not to indict and juries find reasons not to convict.

This belief also means that even when the victim of a police shooting is a child, like 12-year-old Tamir Rice, shot by an officer previously deemed unfit for the job, no police officer was charged with a crime.

Of course, police violence that disproportionately targets African Americans long predates portable video cameras. As many have noted since Floyd’s murder, the origins of US policing lie in the control of supposedly disorderly populations –whether of enslaved people or, after the end of slavery, an impoverished class of labourers including Black people and immigrants.

As African Americans migrated from the agricultural southern states to cities in the US South and North, police forces adapted accordingly. Ever since, at every stage of the “law enforcement” process, Black people are disproportionately the target.

This includes in law-writing; neighbourhood patrols; the exercise of discretion over arrest, indictment, and plea bargains at trial; jury decisions; and judges’ decisions regarding fines and sentences.

Whether it’s the so-called 1960s War on Crime or the 1980s War on Drugs, the whole of policing in the US rests on anti-black racism.

As historian Khalil Gibran Muhammad argues in his excellent book, The Condemnation of Blackness, the entire justice system itself rests on the criminalisation of Black Americans. For many, the apparent criminality of Black people is evident in the proportion of them in prison or on bail or remand or parole. It’s a vicious circle.

Reports and commissions by government, not-for-profit organisations and academics have long identified racism as the cause of the problem. This started in the 1920s with the report into the 1919 Chicago Race Riot. The 1968 Kerner Commission Report made recommendations that have been repeated reports since.

So why is the problem so intractable?

In short, profit. The “justice system” in the United States generates enormous revenue. Where African-descended people were once enslaved to provide cheap labour, they are now policed, charged, indicted and incarcerated at staggering rates.

It cannot be left to police departments to reform themselves. The only reason Chauvin has been convicted is because of the extraordinary labour of activists, which has focused attention on this case. Almost simultaneous with the verdict on the charges being read out, another African American child — this time a 15-year-old girl called Ma’Khia Bryant — was shot dead by Ohio police.

It is time, rather, that calls to abolish police be taken more seriously. To many, this campaign seems outlandish. But as the work of Ruth Wilson Gilmore and others points out, democracies elsewhere in the world flourish with only a small fraction of the proportion of incarcerated people as in the United States. “Where life is precious, life is precious,” Gilmore says.

Read more: Justice for George Floyd: Derek Chauvin’s guilty verdicts must result in fundamental changes to policing

Achieving a society in which police and prisons are not necessary is no easy task, especially when those profiting from current arrangements hold so much sway. We need, as writer, Mellon Foundation president, and inaugural poet Elizabeth Alexander says, the imagination and courage of Black artists.

Alexander points to Pat Ward Williams, who asked in 1986 of photographs of lynched Black people, “Can you be Black and look at this?”

In his closing statement to the jury, prosecutor Jerry Blackwell said with anguish:

You were told, for example, that Mr. Floyd died because his heart was too big […] [but] the truth of the matter is – that the reason George Floyd is dead is because Mr Chauvin’s heart was too small.

– ref. Relief at Derek Chauvin conviction a sign of long history of police brutality – https://theconversation.com/relief-at-derek-chauvin-conviction-a-sign-of-long-history-of-police-brutality-159212

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ana Manero, Research Fellow, Australian National University

Recent flooding in the Sydney Basin pushed thousands from their homes and left others facing enormous insurance costs.

These events show how traumatic and costly it can be to live in areas vulnerable to disaster. Too often, socio-economically disadvantaged populations are disproportionately affected.

Some flood dangers, however, can be far less visible – to planners, developers and home-buyers. Sometimes, the danger comes from groundwater beneath the surface.

Earlier this year, for example, residents of the New South Wales town of Stuarts Point were evacuated and decontaminated after sewage spilled into their streets, as septic tanks filled with shallow groundwater.

And across Perth’s Swan Coastal Plain, groundwater damage to buildings, parks, roads and piping has cost local residents millions of dollars in remedial works.

These problems are not inevitable. Our recent report shows how changes to urban planning, building design and construction practices could reduce groundwater risks. That means better outcomes for residents, developers, governments and the environment.

Urbanisation can cause the water table to rise

In many cities around the world, the water table is only a few metres or less below the ground. Groundwater levels tend to naturally rise and fall with winter rains and summer drying, as this UK video demonstrates:

However, urbanisation can cause the water table to rise above its “natural” level.

When we clear bush or farmland for housing, we reduce opportunities for plants to intercept and soak up rainwater. More rain then infiltrates through the soil and causes aquifers to fill up more quickly.

Balancing the short and long-term costs

The urban suburbs most affected by high groundwater are typically newer and cheaper. To attract buyers, developers must keep prices low, but mitigating the risk of groundwater flooding is expensive.

Developers sometimes import and install sand as “construction fill” to elevate the ground level. They may also install drainage to control groundwater levels. These sorts of measures can represent one-third of the price of developing a housing lot.

Such measures on their own, however, don’t solve the problem.

Our recent report for the Cooperative Research Centre for Water Sensitive Cities suggested ways to improve groundwater management on Perth’s Swan Coastal Plain. These findings may help people in other areas dealing with similar problems.

Obstacles and opportunities for change

First, we identified three key obstacles:

• the data needed to predict how groundwater will respond to new developments is not always available

• local authorities may struggle to find the human and technical resources to fully assess proposals for managing groundwater

• business-as-usual designs for new developments are not usually resilient enough to cope when water tables rise.

Deeper problems are generated by the planning process. In Western Australia, high groundwater and waterlogging does not preclude land from being zoned for urban development.

Developers are also not required to address water management in detail until later stages of planning, by which time they may have already made substantial investments. This creates its own risks.

Water management plans at the subdivision level are addressed on a case-by-case basis by local authorities. That makes it difficult to determine and reduce cumulative impacts on flood risk at regional scales.

We also identified ways to improve housing development in high groundwater areas. For example, groundwater could be drained, diverted and used for direct irrigation in the drier months.

“Lightweight” or “highset” homes and floodable public open spaces could also help reduce groundwater risks. Incentivising such improvements would benefit the public and the environment.

Policy change is needed — and, in some places, already underway

There’s also an urgent need to update planning policies to consider groundwater flood risk and how the cumulative impacts of development affect that risk. Fortunately, change is already underway in many places.

Such policies are being proposed in Sydney (via updates to a NSW government planning document called the Flood Prone Land Package).

In Britain, the UK Environment Agency requires mapping of groundwater-flooding regions, and discourages development in these areas.

In the United States, cities in the San Francisco Bay area are developing metrics to assess vulnerability to groundwater flooding as sea levels rise. Pierce County in Washington state is updating its flood management plan to address persistent groundwater flooding.

A legacy of liveable, resilient and equitable cities

Expanding our cities into environmentally vulnerable areas will only aggravate environmental injustice, as disadvantaged populations are forced to pay the price of poor planning policies.

Preventing such structural injustice requires planners be aware of all forms of environmental risk, including from groundwater.

We must address flooding risks early in the development process, and apply best practices from design to construction when high groundwater land is being developed.

This will require boldness from governments, consultancies, developers and financiers. The payoff will be a legacy of liveable, resilient and equitable cities.

Greg Claydon, a member of the Board of Directors at CRC for Water Sensitive Cities, contributed to this article. This story is part of a series The Conversation is running on the nexus between disaster, disadvantage and resilience. You can read the rest of the stories here.

– ref. How the water and sewage under your feet could end up flooding your home (and what to do about it) – https://theconversation.com/how-the-water-and-sewage-under-your-feet-could-end-up-flooding-your-home-and-what-to-do-about-it-158527

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tony Walker, Vice-chancellor’s fellow, La Trobe University

Chinese President Xi Jinping’s muscular speech to the Boao Forum Asia annual conference was clearly designed to send a signal to the United States that China regarded the change of administration as an opportunity for a renewed dialogue on contentious issues.

Xi did not take a backward step in his remarks, which emphasised a shifting international power balance. He avoided directly naming the US in his relatively brief address opening the forum, but America was clearly in his sights.

He wants the Biden administration, and the international community for that matter, to accept China not only as an emerging superpower but also as an equal in addressing global challenges.

In a telling statement, Xi said:

Global governance should reflect the evolving political and economic landscape.

This is shorthand for saying that because of its growing weight economically and militarily, China expects to be given its due.

The title of Xi’s speech, Pulling Together Through Adversity and Toward a Shared Future for All, was clearly designed to emphasise China’s global leadership aspirations.

Xi did not make specific reference to widening criticism of China’s human rights abuses in its Xinjiang region, its interference in Hong Kong in contravention of its undertakings to the UK, its pressure on Taiwan, and its assertiveness in the South China Sea.

However, building international displeasure on all these issues formed a backdrop for a speech that warned against countries “bossing others around”. This was a clear reference to the US at the head of a global coalition increasingly exercised about China’s provocative behaviour.

Read more: Why China’s attempts to stifle foreign media criticism are likely to fail

Xi also spoke of the dangers of “decoupling” global economies. He called for greater global integration.

His speech to the Boao forum is more than usually significant this year. It marks an important statement by a Chinese leader early in a US administration, and also comes just days before a climate summit to be hosted by US President Joe Biden.

Xi will participate in the summit along with other world leaders, including Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

The Biden multilateral climate summit could hardly represent a sharper contrast with the “America First” policies of the previous Trump administration.

On the face of it, this is a positive development.

Significantly, Xi devoted a section of his speech to climate issues.

We will build a closer partnership for green development. We will strengthen cooperation on green infrastructure, green energy, and green finance.

Xi’s reference to a green agenda comes days after the US and China resolved to fight climate change “with the seriousness and urgency that it demands.’’

America’s climate czar, John Kerry, and his Chinese counterpart resolved to strengthen cooperation in combating global warming in three days of talks in Shanghai.

The Shanghai climate accord, ill-defined though it might be, represents the most positive development in Sino-US relations since the Obama administration left office in 2017. At the very least, it indicates a willingness by Beijing and Washington to work together on issues that require global coordination.

Biden has made it clear he will press for more ambitious greenhouse gas emission targets. He is expected to allude to these at the climate summit that will be held virtually.

Xi’s choice of the Boao Forum for a keynote enabled him to set the stage, from China’s perspective, for his participation in the Biden event, given expectations the US will seek to reassert a global leadership role.

The Boao forum has evolved since it was first held on Hainan Island 20 years ago, to the point now where it is described as the “Asian Davos”.

This is a reference to the World Economic Forum gathering held in the Swiss town of Davos each year, to which political and business leaders gravitate.

The Chinese version is important in the sense Beijing regards it as a counterweight to Davos, which is dominated by Americans and Europeans.

The forum this year has some 2,000 participants. The heads of the International Monetary Fund and the United Nations addressed it by video link.

Read more: Australia has a great chance to engage in trade diplomacy with China, and it must take it

Prominent American business figures in attendance include Apple’s Tim Cook, Tesla’s Elon Musk, Blackstone’s Steven Schwarzman, and Bridgewater Associates’ Ray Dalio.

The convening of the forum, after it was cancelled last year due to the pandemic, and amid tensions surrounding the US-China relationship, give the event added significance. The number of high-level attendees underscores the complexities of China’s fractious relationship with the rest of the world.

The world might want to distance itself, given disquiet about China’s various provocations. But the international community can hardly ignore economic realities. China, whose economy is on fire with growth rates in double digits, is contributing about one-third to global growth.

– ref. Xi Jinping sends message to US on China’s rising power in Boao address – https://theconversation.com/xi-jinping-sends-message-to-us-on-chinas-rising-power-in-boao-address-159324

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nicholas Steyn, Research assistant, University of Auckland

With the opening of a quarantine-free travel corridor between New Zealand and Australia this week, it’s easy to forget COVID-19 is still spreading globally, faster than ever, with more than three million deaths recorded worldwide.

Within a day of the travel bubble opening, a fully vaccinated border worker who cleans planes coming from countries with high rates of COVID-19, tested positive and was transferred to a quarantine facility.

Such cases show why it remains absolutely essential to maintain strict border measures to keep the virus out of the trans-Tasman bubble.

Since January 1 2021, 397 international arrivals in New Zealand have tested positive for the virus. Most have been contained in managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) facilities.

But we have seen some cases leak out from the border. These fall into two main categories: returnees leaving managed isolation while still infectious and frontline border workers becoming infected with the virus.

To consider the effectiveness of various border policies, we pulled together data on transmission of COVID-19 and rates of false negative test results into a mathematical model. The research, published today, allowed us to quantify the risk of community outbreaks under different quarantine and testing regimes.

Managing risk from international arrivals

Our research shows that a 14-day stay in managed isolation, with tests on day three and day 12, is highly effective in stopping international arrivals from re-introducing COVID-19 into the community. Under this regime, most border cases are either detected and isolated until recovery, or are no longer infectious by the end of their 14-day stay.

By comparison, reducing the time spent in managed isolation would greatly increase the risk. We found that with a five-day stay, around 25% of cases would still be infectious when they entered the community.

Given recent arrival numbers, this would mean multiple border-related cases in the community every week. Sooner or later a major outbreak like Auckland’s August cluster would be inevitable.

Read more: Genome sequencing tells us the Auckland outbreak is a single cluster — except for one case

Managing risk from frontline border workers

The research also looked at various testing regimes for frontline border workers. We found that weekly routine testing roughly doubles the chance an infection will be detected while it still has a clear link to the border.

The recent case of a worker at the Grand Millenium MIQ facility was an example of this.

When we find a case with a clear link to the border, typically only a small number of people are infected. The outbreak can usually be contained through contact tracing without the need to raise the alert level.

On the other hand, if border workers are not tested regularly, it increases the chance the outbreak could spread into the community. This means a large number of people could be infected by the time the outbreak is detected. This is why, when we find a new case with no clear link to the border, it tends to prompt a more serious response.

Overall, our results show regular routine testing of border workers is essential in minimising the risk of community outbreaks and reducing the need for lockdowns to control them.

Stopping spread within managed isolation facilities

Transmission of the virus between people staying in managed isolation creates a risk that returnees could catch the virus there and remain infectious when they complete their stay. An example of this happened at the Pullman Hotel in January, when a woman who had recently left the facility tested positive.

Genome sequencing then showed she had been infected by another guest at the Pullman sometime during their stay.

To minimise transmission within managed isolation, it’s important we detect cases as early as possible. The data we analysed showed that prior to November, we were picking up around 70% of cases in the first week after arrival. Since January, this has increased to around 85%, helped by the introduction of day 0/1 tests.

But our systems are still not perfect, as recent cases in two MIQ facilities have shown. Emptying out these facilities to allow a thorough check of the ventilation systems is a good move. We know that poorly ventilated corridors allow the virus to linger in the air, which has led to transmission between guests in adjacent rooms in the past.

Vaccination of border workers

Most border staff have now been vaccinated. This will reduce the health risks for this group, which has the highest exposure to COVID-19 of anyone in New Zealand.

The Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine being used in New Zealand looks to be highly effective in reducing transmission as well as disease. Vaccinating frontline workers will therefore also provide an additional layer of defence at the border.

But since the rest of the population is mostly unvaccinated, we still need to guard against the real risk of a major outbreak if the virus does get out into the community.

Read more: Vaccination alone will not provide full protection. When borders open, NZ will still be managing COVID-19

Our other (not yet peer reviewed) research shows that regular testing remains crucial even after border workers are vaccinated. This is because even the best vaccines aren’t perfect.

There is a risk vaccinated workers could be asymptomatic but still transmit the virus to others. And the only way to pick up asymptomatic infections is routine testing.

The virus that causes COVID-19 is tricky and evolving. We are still learning about new transmission routes and need to constantly evaluate and improve our border systems to minimise the risks of returnees spreading the virus to others.

Until the majority of New Zealand’s population is vaccinated, the border will continue to be our main line of defence. Effective border processes will allow New Zealanders to return home safely while minimising the risk of COVID-19 to our communities.

– ref. Why strict border control remains crucial if we want to keep the travel bubble safe – https://theconversation.com/why-strict-border-control-remains-crucial-if-we-want-to-keep-the-travel-bubble-safe-159325

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Mintrom, Professor, Monash University

On Monday, Scott Morrison announced a royal commission into veteran suicides — the fourth royal commission set up under his prime ministership.

But while Morrison says he hopes this will be a “healing process” and it comes after sustained community lobbying, we know royal commissions don’t always fix problems.

Only last week, we marked 30 years since the 1991 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. Far from a celebration, much of the commentary about the anniversary has emphasised the lack of progress since the commission’s final report.

We have a long tradition of royal commissions in Australia — dating back before federation. And their powers and capabilities for scrutinising evidence mean they can have an impact for decades to come. But royal commissions can also fail to generate policy change.

In a recent study, we reviewed royal commissions from January 1970 to December 2019 to identify the factors that can increase policy influence.

We found royal commissions that had major influence used three key strategies: a clear and useful definition of the problem, working together with advocates, and making recommendations that can work in the real world.

Framing the problem

Policy problems — such as the quality of aged care or responses to disasters — are often extremely complex, with many different attributes. So framing exactly what the problem is and how the royal commission looks at it is important.

Another component here is the royal commission also needs to develop a compelling narrative around how to address the problem.

For example, the Aboriginal Land Rights Commission was established by the Whitlam government in 1973. In the final report, commissioner Edward Woodward framed his land rights recommendations as the natural progression of an earlier commitment that needed to be honoured by Australia — rather than a radical break from existing policy. The historic Aboriginal Land Rights (NT) Bill 1976 followed on from these recommendations.

Here, Woodward successfully defined a potentially political problem as a practical issue with a natural fix.

Building a support base

Although members of royal commissions cannot be expected to establish or lead social movements, they do have opportunities to engage with stakeholders, advocates and policymakers. If they do this well, they will have a ready-made coalition of experts and interested parties to support the implementation of the report recommendations.

This also makes it much harder for governments to ignore important recommendations.

Read more: Next month’s federal budget is the time to stop talking about aged care and start fixing it

An example is provided by the 2009 Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission. Here, the royal commission kept the affected communities and broader public engaged and involved, holding 26 community consultations and 55 days of hearings that were live-streamed and open to the public and media. It then developed its recommendations reflecting the theme of ongoing shared responsibility. Among the commissioners, there was similar importance placed on cohesion.

As a result, the government of Victoria accepted all but one of the recommendations and committed more than A$900 million to implement them.

Looking ahead to implementation

Policy change needs recommendations that are feasible and politically acceptable.

The final report of the child abuse royal commission made 409 recommendations in 2017. These recommendations were directed at Commonwealth and state governments, but also at institutions such as churches, schools, local governments, and the criminal justice system.

Since then, the commission has been regarded as having a strong and ongoing impact — for example, the National Redress Scheme is securing compensation for victim-survivors. The federal government also reports annually on progress.

This can be attributed to the commissioners’ careful planning and their efforts to strike a balance between what needed to be done and what was politically feasible. For example, they held a series of review hearings that followed up with institutions to assess what, if any, measures had been taken since the initial hearings. This allowed them to avoid duplicating recommendations and provided a chance to reflect on previous suggestions.

In an example of what to avoid, the aged care royal commission made 148 wide-ranging recommendations for the fundamental reform of the aged care system. However, the commissioners disagreed on a number of recommendations and this undermines their influence. It also gives governments far more leeway to adopt policies that suit them, and ignore those that don’t.

No guarantees

As the federal government moves to set up a new royal commission, our research shows royal commissions can have significant policy influence. But this is not guaranteed.

Royal commissions have long served as vital contributors to policy-making and continue to serve a significant role. So it is extremely important those who lead them and those who observe them appreciate the strategies they can use to raise the odds they will leave enduring legacies of public value.

Read more: One veteran on average dies by suicide every 2 weeks. This is what a royal commission needs to look at

– ref. We studied 50 years of royal commissions — here’s how they make a difference – https://theconversation.com/we-studied-50-years-of-royal-commissions-heres-how-they-make-a-difference-159231

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Vincent Ho, Senior Lecturer and clinical academic gastroenterologist, Western Sydney University

On Monday, Victorian health authorities released figures showing they’d received 389 reports of “gastro” outbreaks so far in 2021.

The health department said this was four times higher than the average.

There are many different types of bacteria and viruses that can cause gastroenteritis. But in this instance it’s most likely to be a virus called “norovirus”.

It’s a very contagious virus that passes between people quite easily. Studies estimate the reproduction number (or R₀) for norovirus in the population to be around 2, but this can go as high as 14 in an outbreak with no intervention. In other words, during an outbreak at a childcare centre without any control measures, one child can potentially infect an average of 14 other children. By contrast, the R₀ for COVID-19 is estimated to be between 2 and 4.

Read more: Explainer: what is gastroenteritis and why can’t I get rid of it?

How does it spread?

Over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, we’ve learned a lot about how the coronavirus spreads. We’ve learned it transmits mostly by respiratory droplets, smaller aerosols that can hang in the air that you can then breathe in, and less commonly via surfaces.

But what about gastro? Gastro caused by norovirus spreads primarily via the “foecal-oral route” — basically, when particles from someone’s poo end up in someone else’s mouth. You can also pick up the virus by coming into contact with someone’s vomit.

Most commonly this happens because you touch a surface or a person contaminated with this virus and then touch your mouth. It can spread rapidly in childcare centres because kids often play very physically, and they might not understand proper physical distancing and handwashing in the way adults do.

It can also spread very easily in places like cruise ships.

Read more: Cruise ships can be floating petri dishes of gastro bugs. 6 ways to stay healthy at sea this summer

It can take between 12 and 72 hours to develop symptoms after coming into contact with norovirus. Symptoms include vomiting, diarrhoea, stomach pains, and nausea. It generally takes a few days to recover, and isn’t doesn’t usually require serious medical attention. But it might be worth contacting your GP if your symptoms haven’t resolved in three days. Make sure to drink as much water as you can so you don’t get dehydrated.

If you have these symptoms make sure you stay home, and don’t return to work, school or childcare until 48 hours after your symptoms resolve. Returning earlier can mean you spread the virus.

Norovirus is very resistant

Some of you might be wondering how a virus survives in a state that endured such a long COVID-19 lockdown last year.

Well — norovirus is a very hardy virus. Research suggests it’s able to survive long periods on different surfaces and across varied temperatures. It’s often present at low levels across different environments, and in many types of food, for example oysters. It can survive in water for many months.

We can’t really eliminate this virus, but we can mitigate it’s spread.

How can we stop it?

The gold standard method is washing your hands thoroughly for 20 seconds with soap and water.

I suspect many of us have become a bit complacent with handwashing and instead are slapping on alcohol-based hand sanitiser when we can, although this is anecdotal.

However, even though hand sanitiser is convenient, it doesn’t work as well against norovirus as thorough handwashing does.

One study even suggests that using both methods simultaneously — washing your hands with soap and water and also applying hand sanitiser — actually increases the number of bacteria on your hands, though the exact way this occurs is unknown.

It’s best to simply wash your hands for 20 seconds. But disinfecting surfaces is also important. If someone in your home or workplace is vomiting due to a gastro type illness, make sure you very quickly disinfect the nearby surfaces. You want to wear gloves and properly disinfect surfaces using hot water with a detergent, or even bleach, both of which can kill norovirus.

Parents, childcare workers and teachers should also teach kids good hygiene and handwashing skills. And, for us grownups, we should follow our own advice.

Read more: Why hand-washing really is as important as doctors say

– ref. Victorian gastro outbreak: how does it spread, and how can we stop it? A gastroenterologist explains – https://theconversation.com/victorian-gastro-outbreak-how-does-it-spread-and-how-can-we-stop-it-a-gastroenterologist-explains-159329

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Pauline Lenancker, Research scientist, James Cook University

The invasive ant world is a competitive one, rife with territorial battles and colony raids. And yellow crazy ants (Anoplolepis gracilipes), one of the world’s worst invasive species, have an especially interesting trait: they’re the only invasive ant known to have workers who can reproduce.

Worker reproduction has big implications for a colony’s social dynamic. So we observed and experimented with more than 200 captive colonies of yellow crazy ants to understand what triggers worker reproduction and the potential costs and benefits for the colony.

We used a range of techniques, including removing queens and observing worker behaviour, and setting up ant gladiator rings to test how well reproductive workers fought other ants.

It wasn’t just for fun — learning about ants’ basic biology, including reproduction, may allow us to better understand their success and tailor management programs to help save the ecosystems they threaten.

Life in the queendom

Yellow crazy ants are thought to originate in southern or southeastern Asia but have spread across much of the Indo-Pacific, including several locations in Australia. They’re most well known for the cascade of ecological effects they’ve caused on Christmas Island by killing red land crabs and contributing to the damage, such as tree die-back, caused by scale insects.

Attempts to control or locally eradicate them are ongoing on Christmas Island, in Arnhem Land, and several locations in Queensland, including in and around the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area.

Like honey bees and wasps, yellow crazy ants are social insects. In these colonies, queens, workers and males all play distinct roles.

Queens and workers are all females. The queens reproduce, while the aptly named workers are the colony’s labourers, primarily responsible for bringing in food, caring for the queens’ offspring and defending the colony. The sole role of males is to mate with a queen before dying.

This elaborate task division is thought key to the success of social insects. However, in yellow crazy ant colonies, workers challenge the reproductive monopoly of the queen and produce males.

We could differentiate workers with active ovaries from regular workers by looking at their abdomen, which would be oversized as eggs take up space in the larger workers’ abdomen.

When the queen was present, typically less than 20% of workers in our captive colonies had oversized abdomens. When we removed the queen, as much as half of the workers became oversized. We returned the queen after two months, and found the number of oversized workers decreased.

Our findings are consistent with the idea queens inhibit worker reproduction through pheromones, one of many chemical signals in ant colonies influencing ant worker behaviour and colony dynamics. Indeed, an ant queen’s failure to “smell” fertile may leave her subject to eviction or execution.

More lazy than crazy

So, did our yellow crazy ant queen wannabes behave more like workers or royalty? Our observations of oversized and normal workers revealed stark differences in behaviour.

Regular workers foraged during 85% of observations, whereas oversized workers were seen looking for food in only 5% of observations. Most of the time, oversized workers were immobile and remained sheltered inside their nests.

These oversized workers are slow to move when the nests are disturbed, not displaying the fast, erratic movement for which the species is named. Their behaviour was more similar to queens than workers.

Colony and resource defence is another important task for workers, as yellow crazy ant colonies often compete with native ants.

To test how these sluggish workers compare to normal workers in colony defence, we placed three oversized workers in one container, three regular workers in another, and paired each group with one gladiator, the charismatic green tree ant.

Green tree ants (Oecophylla smaragdina) are native and known for being very aggressive and territorial.

Our two videos show the typical response of oversized and regular workers.

In the first video, each encounter between a yellow crazy ant and green tree ant ends with the green tree ant rapidly retreating, often after having her legs bitten and pulled by the yellow crazy ant.

In the second video, you can see how oversized workers were more sedentary, less aggressive and less likely to start fighting with the green tree ant than normal workers in the first video. They were also less likely to kill their oppon-ant.

It seems oversized workers are lazy and would be ineffective at defending the colony. So why do they occur at all?

Like walking vending machines

Generally, ant colonies need workers to function and only the queen can produce this caste. In the ant world, the death of the queen signifies the death of the colony.

However, if the queen dies after laying eggs, including one destined to become a queen, then the virgin queen who eventually emerges can mate with a worker-produced male. This is important because males are unlikely to be present unless the colony is very large.

So while workers lack organs for receiving and storing sperm, their ability to produce males asexually may extend the life of the colony.

What’s more, oversized workers can produce sterile eggs as well, which serve as food for the queen and other colony members. We believe these workers may be like walking vending machines within the colony, providing food when conditions aren’t suitable for foraging.

We also found males with mismatched eyes. These odd-looking individuals may possess a female eye on one side and a smaller male eye on the other side.

Such individuals are potentially sex mosaics, with male and female genes spread across their body in patches. Whether these individuals function as normal males is a question for further research.

What’s next?

Researchers don’t know the full story of yellow crazy ant reproduction, but it’s likely to be highly complex and potentially unique. Our study contributes to solving this mystery.

Eradication and control programs for yellow crazy ants will benefit from understanding their reproductive system and behaviour. It can shed light on how even a few workers and eggs — who may be inadvertently moved around by humans or persist after control treatment — could eventually build into large numbers.

Likewise, understanding foraging behaviour is useful for planning insecticidal baiting, because effective baiting relies on foraging ants bringing bait back to the colony to share with queens and larvae.

We have no doubt future genetic work and experiments will shed further light on the fascinating reproductive biology of yellow crazy ants.

Read more: Bridges, highways, scaffolds: how the amazing engineering of army ants can make us smarter creators

– ref. Tiny Game of Thrones: the workers of yellow crazy ants can act like lazy wannabe queens. So we watched them fight – https://theconversation.com/tiny-game-of-thrones-the-workers-of-yellow-crazy-ants-can-act-like-lazy-wannabe-queens-so-we-watched-them-fight-158426

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Romain Fathi, Senior Lecturer, History, Flinders University

The number of Australians attending Anzac Day dawn services has fallen by about 70% between 2015 — the centenary of the Anzacs’ landing at Gallipoli — and 2019.

Last year, Anzac Day dawn services were cancelled due to COVID-19, but attendance had started to erode well before the pandemic. Is this collapse simply the product of commemorative fatigue? Or is it symptomatic of a broader and growing disinterest in the day and what it represents?

My research looked at changing patterns in the commemoration of Anzac Day overseas and, more recently, at data on attendance at Australian dawn services. The biggest decline in crowd numbers was at Gallipoli itself, where numbers fell from 10,000 in 2015 to 1,434 in 2019.

In Canberra, 120,000 attended the dawn service in 2015 compared to just 35,000 in 2019. This is despite it being home to the lavishly funded Australian War Memorial, where a proposed $500 million extension faces increasing community opposition .

In Melbourne, dawn service attendance fell from 85,000 to 25,000 in the same period. In Perth, it fell from 75,000 to 20,000, and in Adelaide from 20,000 to just 5,000.

Consistent data for regional and rural areas is harder to obtain, but they too have witnessed a significant fall over the same period.

This waning interest is even more striking given the amount the federal government has spent on ways of engaging with the Anzac tradition.

In 2018, the Department of Veterans’ Affairs opened the Western Front’s most expensive interpretative centre, the $100 million John Monash Centre in northern France. The Department forecast at least 110,000 visitors annually but in 2019, the Monash Centre barely met half of this target, with just 54,000 visitors.

Additionally, Australia’s first-world-war centenary commemorative program, is reported to have cost over $600 million — the largest commemorative budget worldwide for the centenary — even though Australians only represented about 0.6% of all troops in the war.

Has such a commemorative extravaganza, with its nationalistic overtones, turned many Australians off dawn services?

Last Anzac Day, Prime Minister Scott Morrison declared it “our most sacred day”. He was speaking from the Australian War Memorial, “our most sacred place”.

As fewer attend ceremonies across the nation, one wonders if such words still resonate with the public. Indeed former PM John Howard’s efforts to make Anzac a touchstone in the culture wars are starting to stall.

Read more: Friday essay: do ‘the French’ care about Anzac?

A fading relevance?

Like other commemorative days, Anzac Day has seen several memory cycles in Australian history. There were larger crowds of parade attendees in the interwar period, and exceptionally small numbers in the 1970s as Australians contested the Vietnam war and the Anzac tradition. Crowds grew again in the years leading up to the centenary, but this lavish, government-sponsored commemorative wave has been followed by an enormous fall.

Covid-19 has further estranged Australians from Anzac Day: few took up the call last year to commemorate it in their driveways following the cancellation of official services.

Still, more than just commemorative fatigue or the pandemic, it seems what is really eroding Australians’ participation in dawn services is the fading relevance of past wars to younger, more diverse demographics.

In recent years, many young Australians have contested what some consider a whitewashed national narrative. On Australia Day 2018 in Melbourne, more took part in Invasion Day / Day of Mourning rallies than in official Australia Day events, with a “Change the Date” campaign gaining popular traction.

Anzac Day has not evaded this mood, with some calling for a greater Indigenous voice in its commemoration. The meaning of Anzac is increasingly contested space as a result of generational change and evolving values.

Read more: On Anzac Day, we remember the Great War but forget our first war

Marches for climate action, women’s rights and Black Lives Matter have also recently attracted larger turnouts than Anzac Day dawn services. Tackling global issues such as climate change, racism and violence against women gets more Australians in the streets than commemorating war.

The great diversification brought about by post-war migration programs has made the genealogical connection to the Anzacs more tenuous. Additionally, more recent wars have required fewer Australian troops than the two world wars and Vietnam, meaning the number of living veterans is shrinking. If fewer people embody the Anzac Spirit, this represents another challenge to its longevity.

Traditions are regularly reinvented; they are not set in stone. As Empire Day and God Save the Queen lost their relevance, Australians replaced them.

If Anzac Day dawn services are to draw large crowds again, they will need to become more relevant.

To do so, they could become more inclusive of other demographics and narratives, be less militaristic, and focus on peacekeeping. Recognising the Frontier Wars as part of Australia’s military tradition would also go a long way towards reconciling the nation’s complex past.

– ref. Crowds at dawn services have plummeted in recent years. It’s time to reinvent Anzac Day – https://theconversation.com/crowds-at-dawn-services-have-plummeted-in-recent-years-its-time-to-reinvent-anzac-day-157313

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

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has announced next month’s budget will include a further $539.2 million government investment in new clean hydrogen and carbon capture, use and storage projects.

This comes ahead of this week’s summit on climate convened by US President Joe Biden, which Morrison will address overnight Thursday (AET). The virtual summit of some 40 leaders will have two sessions of two hours, spread over two days.

Morrison said in a Tuesday night statement that given a fast-changing world “Australia will need to be competitive in a new energy economy to support the jobs of Australians, especially in our heavy industries and regional areas that depend on affordable and reliable energy”.

“We cannot pretend the world is not changing. If we do, we run the risk of stranding jobs in this country, especially in regional areas”.

The breakdown of the funding is:

• $275.5 million to accelerate the development of four additional clean hydrogen “hubs” in regional areas and implement a clean hydrogen certification scheme

• $263.7 million to support the development of carbon capture, use and storage projects and “hubs”.

Hydrogen hubs are where users, producers and exporters are located in the same region, aimed at maximising the use of and investment in hydrogen. Potential areas for the hubs include the Latrobe Valley (Victoria), Darwin (Northern Territory), the Pilbara (Western Australia), Gladstone (Queensland), the Hunter Valley (NSW), Bell Bay (Tasmania) and the Eyre Peninsula (South Australia).

Potential CCS hub areas include Moomba (SA), Gladstone, the Darling Basin (NSW), the North West Shelf and Bonaparte Basin (WA), Darwin, and south-western WA.

The hydrogen funding is over five years; the CCS component is over a decade. CCS is a controversial technology.

As Morrison seeks to pivot towards embracing a 2050 target of net-zero emissions, ahead of the Glasgow climate conference late this year, he is caught between the pressure from the United States administration, and some resistance in Coalition ranks.

Queensland Nationals senator Matt Canavan tweeted on Tuesday, “Australia trying to go for net zero emissions is like the 10 year old boy who thinks he is superman and jumps off his parent’s roof. He doesn’t have the technology, and he is going to fall flat on his face”.

A speech this week from US Secretary of State Antony Blinken underlined the determination of the Biden administration to push other countries hard on the climate issue.

“Our diplomats will challenge the practices of countries whose action – or inaction – is setting the world back,” Blinken said.

“When countries continue to rely on coal for a significant amount of their energy, or invest in new coal factories, or allow for massive deforestation, they will hear from the United States and our partners about how harmful these actions are.”

Blinken said the US would “seize every chance we get” to raise climate issues “with our allies and partners, and through multilateral institutions”.

“We will convey a strong message to the meeting of the G7 next month, whose members produce a quarter of the world’s emissions.”

Australia has been invited to attend the G7 meeting, although it is not a member.

Morrison said in his announcement, “It is essential we position Australia to succeed by investing now in the technologies that will support our industries into the future, with lower emissions energy that can support Australian jobs.

“There is a strong appetite from business for the new emissions reduction technologies that they know will be needed to run their operations and keep employing Australians and grow jobs for the future.”

Meanwhile Labor leader Anthony Albanese attacked Morrison’s Monday comment that “we’re not going to achieve net zero in the cafes, dinner parties and wine bars of our inner cities”, saying it showed “his heart isn’t in this”.

“He couldn’t resist have a snipe at people who are concerned about climate change as being all somehow inner city latte sippers,” Albanese said.

“He still just doesn’t get it.”

He said Morrison was “crab-walking towards announcing net zero by 2050”.

Asked whether there should be a ban on new coal mines, Albanese said, “As a general principle, I’m not into banning things. But what is of course happening is that the markets are speaking, and the markets are all headed in one direction”.

Albanese denied it was contradictory to support both net zero by 2050 and continued coal exports. “The international system that we’ll participate in counts emissions where they occur.”

– ref. Hydrogen and carbon capture receive extra funding, as Morrison prepares for Biden summit – https://theconversation.com/hydrogen-and-carbon-capture-receive-extra-funding-as-morrison-prepares-for-biden-summit-159361

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amanda Porter, Senior Fellow (Indigenous Programs), The University of Melbourne

Cultural warning: This article contains names and images of deceased Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. This article also contains links to graphic footage of police violence.

This month marks 30 years since the final report of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. The report consists of five volumes, several regional reports and 339 recommendations. It included 99 individual death reports of Aboriginal deaths in custody that occurred between January 1 1980 and May 31 1989.

Numbers 205-208 of these recommendations address ethical ways the media should report on Aboriginal affairs. The way Aboriginal deaths in custody are reported can cause distress for affected families and communities, and fuel racial biases and prejudices among non-Indigenous Australians.

The Black Lives Matter movement has highlighted the media’s tendency to frame Indigenous stories through a deficit lens. However, misrepresentation of Indigenous people in the media also has potential to influence acts of harm. As the National Inquiry into Racist Violence in Australia was told three decades ago,

the media may generate a climate which provides legitimacy for racist violence.

Earlier this month, the Sydney Morning Herald published an article by commentator Anthony Dillon. It illustrated how prevalent misinformation and inaccuracies still are in the way the media discuss Aboriginal deaths in custody.

Myth: Aboriginal deaths in custody rates are not high

Some in the media tend to downplay the rate at which Indigenous people are dying in custody. Examples of this include Dillon taking issue with Senator Pat Dodson’s characterisation of Aboriginal deaths in custody as a “festering crisis.” Another is Herald Sun columnist Andrew Bolt stating Aboriginal deaths in custody claims are “wildly exaggerated”.

The reality is the rate of Aboriginal deaths in custody remains a source of national shame, with 474 deaths since the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody handed down its final report in 1991.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are also among the most incarcerated people in the world.

This is especially true for Aboriginal people in Western Australia and the Northern Territory. Aboriginal people make up over 85% of the NT’s prison population and 90% of police detention.

Read more: Indigenous deaths in custody: inquests can be sites of justice or administrative violence

Myth: Aboriginal people die in custody ‘due to natural causes’

In his piece, Dillon argues the majority of Aboriginal deaths in custody are “due to natural causes”.

The term “natural causes” is deeply political. It is a term used to mitigate the responsibility of police and corrections staff for deaths in custody.

Some prominent examples of this:

Read more: Four Aboriginal deaths in custody in three weeks: is defunding police the answer?

Myth: Aboriginal people are less likely to die in custody than non-Indigenous people

The royal commission found Aboriginal people do not die at a greater overall rate than non-Indigenous people in custody.

However, it makes an important distinction, saying Aboriginal people die in custody at a significant rate comparable to their proportion of the whole population.

The report goes on to say this occurs not because Aboriginal people in custody are more likely to die, but because they are incarcerated more frequently.

Myth: there is no evidence of mistreatment or racism towards Aboriginal people by police or corrections staff

There is plenty of video evidence to demonstrate a pattern of excessive violence and unnecessary force when police arrest Aboriginal people. For example:

There have been numerous investigations into mistreatment and racism towards Indigenous people, such as national inquest on racist violence and a coronial inquest into unconscious racism playing a role in the death of Aunty Tanya Day.

And many other reports and studies such as:

These myths and further misinformation cause harm

Misinformation about deaths in custody has the potential to retraumatise the families and communities of people who have died in custody. Bereaved families often have to live through the pain of losing loved ones knowing they were innocent, did nothing wrong and in some cases should never have been arrested.

This grief is compounded by the knowledge that many of these deaths were preventable, and there is little chance anyone will be held accountable for them.

Read more: Kumanjayi Walker murder trial will be a first in NT for an Indigenous death in custody. Why has it taken so long?

Families and communities are also expected to carry the grief of losing someone in horrific circumstances. Examples include a baby dying after her mother was arrested and the baby separated from her, and an Elder dying of heat stroke after travelling in a prison van for four hours in 56 degree heat.

Recommendation 208 of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody says because Aboriginal people have been disappointed by the portrayal of Indigenous people in the media, media outlets should form relationships with Aboriginal organisations. The recommendation states,

The purpose of such contact should be the creation of a better understanding, on all sides, of issues relating to media treatment of Aboriginal affairs.

Honest and ethical reporting on Aboriginal people is not being undertaken with claims such as this one by Dillon:

simply diverting Aboriginal people from prison will only likely change where they die, given their poorer health status.

And this statement, by Sky News’ Alan Jones:

Aboriginal Australians were far more likely to die at the hands of other Aboriginal Australians than at the hands of white people.

These statement are plainly false and deeply unethical. There are countless examples of Indigenous women and children who have been the victim of violent crimes at the hands of non-Indigenous people.

33-year old Aboriginal woman Lynette Daley was brutally murdered by non-Indigenous men Adrian Attwater and Paul Maris. A non-Indigenous man was under investigation for the death and molestation of Mona-Lisa and Cindy Smith

Misinformed and insensitive reporting can cause additional pain for families and communities. It also spreads misinformation about Aboriginal people, fuelling racial prejudices, stereotypes and hatred towards Black people.

Rather than allowing victim and criminal narratives to dominate media representation of Aboriginal people, mainstream media outlets need to centre the work of families and communities who are doing the work to end Black deaths in custody.

The royal commission recommendations 205-208 were written for Australian media outlets. They require action and leadership from editors, journalists and managers. Journalists and editors would do well to read the recommendations and to act on them.

– ref. Not criminals or passive victims: media need to reframe their representation of Aboriginal deaths in custody – https://theconversation.com/not-criminals-or-passive-victims-media-need-to-reframe-their-representation-of-aboriginal-deaths-in-custody-158561