Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lisa Gibbs, Academic, Population Health, The University of Melbourne

Ten years on from the 2009 Victorian Black Saturday fires, in which 173 people died, 3,500 buildings were destroyed and entire townships were wiped out, about two thirds of people from highly impacted communities reported they felt “mostly” or “fully recovered”.

Their perceptions of community recovery were much lower, however, with only about a third of people in the worst-affected areas feeling their community was “mostly” or “fully recovered”.

These are among the key findings of the Beyond the Bushfires report released today, a major investigation of the long-term impacts of one of the worst natural disasters in Australian living memory.

As the climate warms and disasters are predicted to become more frequent and intense, the report recommends governments invest in preparing long-term frameworks for recovery from major disasters and find innovative ways to boost community resilience before, during and after the moment of crisis.

Failing to address these longer term impacts risks entrenching disadvantage, because disaster-hit communities — many of which were struggling even before the fires — can struggle for years after the flames are out.

Investing in disaster resilience now, and normalising the idea that recovery is a long-term project, can help put communities in a better position to withstand disasters when they inevitably strike.

A long tail

Our report draws on data from more than 1,000 participants who told us of their experiences through community meetings, repeated surveys (three, five and 10 years after the fires) and in-depth interviews (three to five years after the fires).

We also spent a lot of time in the first five years visiting communities, being part of community meetings and speaking with contacts built up over many years.

The main finding to emerge is that these events have a long tail. There’s no quick clean-up to get things back to normal. Mental health impacts can linger for many years. People are generally extraordinarily resilient and we need to applaud that, but the disruption to lives continues well after the initial crisis clears.

We found:

• a slump in life satisfaction from three to five years after the bushfires, which improved again at ten years after the bushfires

• ten years after the fires, 22% of people were reporting symptoms consistent with a diagnosable mental health disorder, including post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and psychological distress — more than twice the levels in low-impacted communities

• around 10% of people in high-impacted communities reported anger problems five years after the fires. This was three times higher than in low and moderately impacted communities and more common among women, younger people and the unemployed

• in the first three to four years following the bushfires, reports of violence experienced by women were seven times higher in high bushfire-affected areas when compared with low bushfire-affected regions. For women, experiences of violence were also linked with income loss and poorer mental health

• a sense of community cohesion was lower in high-impact communities ten years after the bushfires

• loss of income, property loss and relationship breakdown increased the risk of mental health impacts

• most people who rebuilt felt the timing of their rebuild was about right.

We often see a huge outpouring of public compassion and support in the aftermath of a major disaster. But our report recommends governments and service providers ensure support (and funding) is spread over years rather than rushed out.

Among our key recommendations is that governments establish a staged five-year framework for recovery from major disasters. This would account for extended mental health impacts and support short- and long-term recovery, resilience and community connectedness.

Financial advice, help with navigating building regulations, relationship counselling and job retraining are all needed over the years following a disaster. A variety of mental health supports are also needed.

Change is needed not just at the government level, but society-wide. The public needs to recognise recovery is a long-term project. There is often public pressure for agencies and governments to act quickly, which risks funds being only spent on immediate needs. There’s then precious little left for later staged interventions.

But some needs may not be initially apparent. We must allow people to recover at their own pace, in their own way and have long-term support in place to do that.

Building community can build disaster resilience

The role of social networks and community groups is incredibly important. We found people who belonged to a local community group tended to have better outcomes in the three to five years post bushfires than those who did not. These benefits seemed to extend across the wider community in areas where many people belong to local community groups.

Support for community groups means building and providing access to spaces where people can meet and socialise, supporting access to relevant equipment and materials, giving training opportunities and providing funding.

Spaces that allow people to gather and connect are crucial. But there should be more than one meeting space to allow for differences in communities.

School-based bushfire education and recovery support programs are also needed. This would teach children and teenagers how to live in bushfire-risk environments and involve them in local bushfire preparedness and recovery initiatives.

If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call Lifeline on 13 11 14. 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. More than a decade after the Black Saturday fires, it’s time we got serious about long-term disaster recovery planning – https://theconversation.com/more-than-a-decade-after-the-black-saturday-fires-its-time-we-got-serious-about-long-term-disaster-recovery-planning-158078

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

There’s great excitement about Australia potentially producing hydrogen as a clean fuel at large scale, for export to countries such as Germany, Japan and South Korea.

Hydrogen (H₂) is a useful energy carrier, and doesn’t release greenhouse gas when that energy is recovered. But carbon dioxide (CO₂) can be emitted when hydrogen is produced, depending on whether the process uses renewable energy or fossil fuels.

Dr Alan Finkel – the federal government’s special adviser on low-emissions technology and a former chief scientist – said this month: “The world’s going to need a lot of hydrogen, and so the more ways we can get that hydrogen the better”.

But our analysis, released today, shows producing hydrogen from fossil fuels carries significant risks. The process can emit substantial greenhouse gas emissions – and capturing these emissions at a high rate may make the process more expensive than hydrogen produced from renewable energy. These findings have big implications as Australia looks to become a hydrogen superpower.

‘Clean’ hydrogen from coal or gas?

Zero-emissions “green hydrogen” is produced via the electrolysis of water, when the process is powered by renewable energy.

Hydrogen can also be produced from fossil fuels – including coal and gas. This can leads to a lot of CO₂ emissions, even when some carbon is captured and stored.

Several strategy documents leave the door open for Australia to produce “low-emissions” hydrogen from fossil fuels. These include the National Hydrogen Strategy Finkel spearheaded as chief scientist, and the federal government’s Technology Investment Roadmap.

In a recent Quarterly Essay, Finkel said CO₂ from hydrogen production will need to be captured and stored – in fact, he argued, importing countries would insist on it. This, Finkel says, means hydrogen from fossil fuels would be “clean hydrogen”.

But rates of carbon capture and storage (CCS) vary. And the greater the rate of emissions captured and securely stored underground, the more expensive the process.

Read more: Putting stimulus spending to the test: 4 ways a smart government can create jobs and cut emissions

A focus on emissions intensity

Globally, only a few large-scale hydrogen plants currently operate, and the rates of carbon capture achieved in practice are rarely reported.

When assessing whether a fuel source is low-carbon, we calculate its “emissions intensity”. This refers to how many kilograms of CO₂ is associated with the energy produced.

Our analysis found the emissions intensity of fossil-fuel based hydrogen production systems are substantial, even with carbon capture.

For example, the production of hydrogen from coal, if 90% of emissions are captured, has an emissions intensity not much below that of using gas for the same energy content. The same goes for hydrogen from gas, with a 56% capture rate.

Our analysis also takes into account so-called “fugitive emissions” released during the extraction and processing of fossil fuels. They are typically ignored, but are significant.

Read more: For hydrogen to be truly ‘clean’ it must be made with renewables, not coal

Under global accounting rules, emissions from hydrogen production will count against the producing country’s inventory. But many hydrogen importers concerned about climate change will want to know what emissions were released in production.

This can be done through hydrogen certification schemes. For example, the European Union has developed the CertifHy Guarantee of Origin scheme which accounts for the origins of hydrogen used. It includes information on whether the hydrogen was produced using renewable or non-renewable energy sources (such as nuclear, or fossil fuels with CCS).

Under this scheme, only hydrogen produced from natural gas with a high carbon-capture rate (towards 90%) could be called “low-carbon” hydrogen.

These high capture rates are assumed in major reports and national strategies – including Australia’s – but have not been achieved at a large-scale commercial plant. Japan’s Tomakomai CCS demonstration project has achieved a 90% capture rate – but at a very high cost.

Now, a look at costs

At the moment, producing hydrogen with fossil fuels generally costs less than producing it with renewables-powered electrolysis. But the cost of electrolysis with renewable energy is falling, and could become cheaper than fossil fuel with carbon-capture options, as the graph below shows.

Our analysis found hydrogen from gas or coal costs between US$1.66 and $1.84 per kilogram without the carbon being captured and stored. This rises to between US$2.09 and $2.23 per kilogram with high carbon-capture rates.

A carbon penalty, such as is applied in Europe, would make hydrogen from fossil fuels more expensive. A penalty of US$50 per tonne of CO₂ pushes the central production cost estimate up to between US$2.24 and $3.15 per kilogram.

By comparison, Australia’s Technology Investment Roadmap set a target for “clean hydrogen” to be produced for under A$2 per kilogram, or US$1.43.

The true cost of carbon avoidance using CCS varies widely and is often not well defined. Current cost projections rely on optimistic estimates of CO₂ transport and storage costs, and generally do not include monitoring and verification costs for long-term storage.

So how does all this compare to “green” hydrogen?

Our analysis found the median estimate for renewables-based electrolysis falls from US$3.64 per kilogram today to well below US$2 per kilogram.

The cost of producing hydrogen with renewables depends mainly on the cost of electricity, as well as the capital cost and how intensively the electrolyser is used. The cost of solar and wind power has fallen dramatically in the past decade, and this trend is likely to continue.

As electrolysers are deployed at scale, their costs may decrease rapidly – pushing down the cost of green hydrogen.

More may not be better

So what does all this mean? If Australia pushes ahead with producing hydrogen from fossil fuels, two possible risks emerge.

If carbon-capture rates are low, we may lock in a new high-emissions energy system. And if capture rates are high, those production facilities could still become uncompetitive. This raises the risk of stranded assets – investments with a short economic life, which do not make a viable return.

Investment decisions for large scale hydrogen production will ultimately be taken by businesses, on the basis of commercial viability. But governments have an important role early on as they set expectations and assist pilot projects. The fossil fuel route is becoming a riskier bet.

– ref. Australia is at a crossroads in the global hydrogen race – and one path looks risky – https://theconversation.com/australia-is-at-a-crossroads-in-the-global-hydrogen-race-and-one-path-looks-risky-157864

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrea Durbach, Emeritus Professor, Faculty of Law, UNSW

Allegations of sexual assault and harassment in the nation’s corridors of power once again reveal two consistent features of this conduct: a culture that enables such behaviour, and a high degree of impunity that invites its recurrence. University campus culture was similarly in the spotlight following the release of damning reports in 2017. The lesson to be drawn here is that while these reports led to several practical changes (necessary as they are), what is now called for is transformative change.

Two recent cases highlight the challenges of overcoming deeply entrenched systemic problems in Australian institutions.

Last August, a former Australian National University student successfully sued a university residential college. She did this after five years of seeking acknowledgement of some responsibility and redress for an alleged sexual assault by a male student following a John XXIII College “hazing ritual”. To date, no criminal charges have been brought.

In civil proceedings, the ACT Supreme Court found the college had condoned a “hard-drinking” culture “as a badge of honour”. It had also failed in its duty of care to the complainant by mishandling her allegations. The court found several dismissive comments by the head of the college were “entirely inappropriate” and “a massive departure from the pastoral duty of care [he] had”.

Read more: Brutal rituals of hazing won’t go away — and unis are increasingly likely to be held responsible

A 2019 workplace investigation commissioned by the University of Melbourne found a senior academic had sexually harassed a young woman colleague in breach of the university’s workplace behaviour policy. The internationally renowned academic, who denied the allegations, has retained his role, although the vice-chancellor this month declared sexual harassment “has no place at our university or in society”. The university would not reveal what action, if any, it has taken against him.

What came out of the university reviews?

A three-year research project, begun in 2015, investigated how to strengthen Australian university responses to sexual assault and harassment. It included the first national student survey about these problems.

The project led to the release of two reports in 2017. The reports were Change the Course by the Australian Human Rights Commission and On Safe Ground by the Australian Human Rights Centre (now Institute) at UNSW.

These reports provided analyses of the survey data, comparative research on international university good practice, and recommendations for universities, residential colleges, the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA) and government.

Since then, several reviews of university responses by the Australian Human Rights Commission and another by TEQSA suggest Australian universities have, in the main, acted on these recommendations. They have:

• implemented policies and mechanisms to better capture reports of student sexual misconduct

• trained staff and student representatives in how to manage disclosures of sexual assault and harassment

• provided counselling services (or engaged external sexual assault service providers)

• conducted consent/respectful relationship training

• developed student apps with links to support services and campus security.

Read more: University students aren’t reporting sexual assault, and new guidelines don’t address why

All 39 Australian public universities also committed to a second national student survey this year.

Most of these responses, while laudatory, are essentially reactive. The same can be said of government responses to the recent claims of sexual assault and harassment in parliament. It has set up inquiries and reviews into workplace conduct, which will investigate:

• barriers to reporting

• the effectiveness of response and reporting mechanisms

• the availability and utility of support services

• best practice in the prevention and handling of workplace bullying, sexual harassment and sexual assault.

Hierarchies of power are part of the problem

We have seen comparable investigations of other Australian institutions. The Australian Defence Force undertook such a review from 2011 to 2014. More recently an inquiry by the High Court of Australia exposed analogous accounts of sexual assault and harassment.

In all these environments, hierarchies of power make reporting of such conduct precarious for complainants and the prospect of accountability remote.

Read more: Deep cultural shifts required: open letter from 500 legal women calls for reform of way judges are appointed and disciplined

The surveys, reports, reviews and investigations referred to above have all clearly identified the pervasive reach and harm of sexual assault and harassment. They have usefully recommended practices and procedures.

What is absent from many institutional responses, though, is the less concrete issue of understanding. How do they tackle a culture of inequality that enables and condones sexual assault and harassment, mainly against women?

Many institutions and corporations confronted with this conduct are caught between ensuring the safety and well-being of a victim of harm and protecting the institution’s reputation. Last week, a US$852 million (A$1.1 billion) settlement involving the University of Southern California highlighted this conflict of interest. When institutions seek to mediate this tension, the seemingly less immediate but larger project of transformation can be limited and overlooked.

In a speech to parliament following the nationwide March 4 Justice rallies, Victorian Liberal MP Russell Broadbent acknowledged “the anger, the hurt” and “the disregard for women that has led to this fork in the road”. He spoke of the need to “effect change” and “so enrich the nation”.

Read more: The women’s march was a huge success. Now comes the hard part: how to actually get something done

Governments need help from experts

The national imperative for change requires governments to move urgently to engage experts in the field – from academia and civil society. For decades, these experts have sought to identify and fathom the entrenched inequities that give rise to sexual violence in all its dire forms.

Universities can and must make a contribution that goes beyond compliance with minimal standards of “best practice”. They offer two critical communities, students and academics, who have the perspectives and expertise fundamental to resolving a social problem of national concern.

Students have diverse personal and social experiences both outside and within the academy. They also offer the long-term potential to influence drivers of change.

Practitioner academics, with civil society (including innovative and overstretched sexual assault services), continue to undertake highly relevant research. Their work integrates complementary disciplines and practices, such as public health, psychology, sociology, law, criminology and digital technology. They are well placed to devise effective approaches.

Traditional policymaking cannot achieve the enormous task now before government. This approach will fail if the values, structures and systems underlying dysfunctional behaviours remain in place. And the costs of inertia on these issues have far-reaching consequences for the political, social and economic health of the country.

Surveys, reports, reviews and investigations that lead to good practice, procedures and remedial measure are essential to address immediate needs. However, government on its own is unsuited to achieve lasting, transformative change. The wealth of academic and civil society expertise and evidence-driven solutions are needed to support this exacting process.

Read more: Bad times call for bold measures: 3 ways to fix the appalling treatment of women in our national parliament

– ref. Politicians need expert help to change culture of sexual violence and impunity. We don’t need yet another review to tell us that – https://theconversation.com/politicians-need-expert-help-to-change-culture-of-sexual-violence-and-impunity-we-dont-need-yet-another-review-to-tell-us-that-157429

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sally Breen, Senior Lecturer in Writing and Publishing, Griffith University

In this series, writers pay tribute to fictional detectives on the page and on screen.

Frannie Thorstin, the narrator of Susanna Moore’s neo-noir novel In The Cut (1995) is a collector of urban slang. A divorced English professor living alone, she is writing a book on dialects. So, the novel is peppered with eclectic lists of words that connect to the themes of the book — desire, sexual obsession and violence against women.

“The words themselves,” she says, “… in their wit, exuberance, mistakenness and violence — are thrilling to me.”

One such list runs a graphic gamut: from “virginia, n., vagina (as in ‘he penetrated her Virginia with a hammer’)” to “dixie cup, n., a person who is considered disposable”.

Frannie’s eye is forensic, catching on the smallest gestures and imbuing them with meaning, the minutiae of a world alive with possibilities, portents, and signals. When she enters rooms her eyes scan like cameras, cataloguing and framing. In this way Frannie fulfils the detective function in the novel better than the actual detectives into whose macho orbit she is drawn. The latter spending most of their time ribbing each other and holding up bars, without doing much detecting at all.

Some collection

If Frannie is a collector of words, she is also a collector of men, sometimes by force of circumstance, sometimes by design. The fatal combination of her sex appeal and intellect fuels an increasing sense of dread, caught as she is in a sticky web of male attention.

I keep a list in my head, on the edge of consciousness, that now and then forces me to acknowledge it: A friend John Graham, seems to be keeping an eye on me. A student of mine Cornelius Webb, has developed an attachment to me that may be harmless but that is certainly inappropriate. He too seems to be watching me. Jimmy Malloy, a homicide detective, is investigating the abduction and murder of a young woman who shortly before her death was sucking his cock. Something which I do now.

Her fascination with Malloy’s body tallies with her manner of interpretation, both cerebral and sensual. She fantasises about him, in scenes which celebrate self-pleasure: “dreaming him through my nightgown” and when she’s with him her eye never strays, “he turned a quarter in his fingers, as if he were practising a magic trick. As always, I was pulled in by the small gesture”. A force-field of desire runs between them, erotic and unstable.

As a reader, the combination of poetry, sensuality and irreverence draws me to Frannie too — but unlike the men in her life those aspects don’t also drive me crazy. Her colleague Mr Reilly denounces her lack of boundaries. Her student Cornelius says, “you be looking to fuck with me since day one”. Malloy feels “like I’m running all the time. Running just to stay even”.

‘Stop analysing every fucking thing.’ He pronounced the word ‘every’ as if it had three syllables.

‘I thought you liked it.’ I said.

‘I did at first.’

Read more: From crime fighters to crime writers — a new batch of female authors brings stories that are closer to home

A dark milieu

In this re-figuring of classic noir tropes, Malloy is the femme fatale, his partner Detective Rodriguez plays the killer and Frannie is caught somewhere between. This multiplicity of characterisation is common to neo- and post-noir genres, where the lone figure of a Sam Spade or Phillip Marlowe recedes and a more complicated milieu emerges.

The lines between the good guys and the bad guys are not just ambiguous and ultimately reasserted, but erased completely. The reassurance of the classic noir detective becomes an illusion. Even Frannie’s well-honed capacities for observation are not enough to save her, she is not able to solve the mystery in time and rather than being redemptive the denouement is devastating.

Read more: My favourite detective: Sam Spade, as hard as nails and the smartest guy in the room

Author Susanna Moore has said that after she spent two years reading classic detective fiction, she realised most of those guys couldn’t write sex. Or at least not the kind she wanted to write.

In the Cut operates as meta-fiction. A book about writing and semiotics, clues and signs, a rewiring of noir expectations and tropes, personified by Frannie — a woman who refuses to fit neatly into the dominant narrative.

A crime fiction character we needed but perhaps weren’t ready for. Reactions to the book and the film were extreme. Director Jane Campion’s 2003 film was released with an R rating and had a ruinous effect on the career of “America’s Sweetheart” Meg Ryan, who played Frannie and went on to discuss the role in an excruciating interview with Michael Parkinson.

Potent feminised sexuality in proximity to violence proved too much for some, even though the film version was sanitised by producers.

Despite the divergent endings of the book and film, romantic mythologies are presented in both as insidious methods of control and entrapment.

Critics failed or perhaps refused to see this, but Frannie is aware of it from the start. “A dangerous combination for me,” she says. “Language and passion”. But even her self-awareness doesn’t prepare us for her end.

– ref. My favourite detective: In the Cut’s Frannie Thorstin and her fatal attractions – https://theconversation.com/my-favourite-detective-in-the-cuts-frannie-thorstin-and-her-fatal-attractions-151371

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

A Labor government would set up a $15 billion National Reconstruction Fund to promote manufacturing in Australia’s post pandemic economy.

The fund, to be announced on Tuesday as Labor begins its national conference, would partner with private investors and superannuation funds, which have access to large reserves of capital.

It would be aimed at helping build new industries and boosting existing ones. The $15 billion would be provided through a combination of loans, equity, co-investment and guarantees.

In a statement on the plan, Anthony Albanese and shadow minister for national reconstruction. Richard Marles, say the pandemic has highlighted the serious deficiencies Australia has in its manufacturing capabilities and its ability to be globally competitive in innovation and technology.

“If there is anything that COVID has taught us, it is the need for Australia to be a place which makes things – to have our own industrial and manufacturing capabilities, our own sovereign capabilities,” they say.

“From commercialising our historic capacity in science and innovation to boosting the development of medical devices and pharmaceuticals, through to reviving our capability to make cars, trains and ships, today’s announcement will support the businesses in these industries to secure the capital and investment to grow and prosper,” Albanese and Marles say.

The fund would concentrate on a range of strategic industries. These would include resources value adding; food and beverage processing; transport; medical science; renewables and low emission technologies; defence capability, and enabling capabilities across engineering, data science and software development.

Objectives of the fund would be to:

• reduce the risk of investment in innovation

• help firms grow by support for new investment especially in regional areas

• strengthen self-sufficiency and industrial diversity in Australia by assisting businesses build national sovereignty and decrease the risks in their supply chains

• support regional developoment by enhancing private sector investment in industries of the future.

Labor would model the fund on entities such as the successful Clean Energy Finance Corporation, which was set up by the Labor government. It has invested billions to promote the transition to renewable energy, energy efficiency and low emissions technologies.

Labor’s proposed fund would have an independent board.

Assistance it provided would need to return rates above the government borrowing rate.

The $15 billion capital provided would be off-budget.

Labor points out that according to the OECD Australia ranks last in manufacturing self-sufficiency among industrialised countries. It produce just over two thirds of what it uses.

The pandemic as well as the deepening Australia-China tensions have increased debate over the past year about the need for greater self-sufficiency especially in certain key areas, such as medical supplies. The pandemic led to supply chain problems which are still being experienced for some products.

– ref. Labor’s plan for $15 billion ‘reconstruction fund’ to promote post pandemic manufacturing economy – https://theconversation.com/labors-plan-for-15-billion-reconstruction-fund-to-promote-post-pandemic-manufacturing-economy-158085

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

Scott Morrison has brought two “lenses” to his ministerial reshuffle.

The first is the one that drove the shakeup initially: dealing with the problems presented by Christian Porter and Linda Reynolds.

The second, the “lens” on which Morrison is now primarily focused, is all about trying to manage the deep problem he and his government are facing with women’s anger and issues.

Minister for Women Marise Payne called it a “gender equality lens”.

Morrison wants to make his “women’s problems” – to the extent they can be addressed at a policy level – a whole-of-government challenge.

The situations of Porter and Reynolds have been resolved as expected. Porter goes from the nation’s first law officer to minister for industry, science and technology. Reynolds has lost defence to Peter Dutton and moved to government services and the NDIS.

It’s an inevitable comedown for both, softened by remaining in cabinet. Reynolds, struggling in defence even before the Brittany Higgins maelstrom broke, should be relieved at the move, although service delivery is exacting. Porter’s current preoccupation is with clearing his name, the main objective of his defamation action against the ABC.

Morrison likes creating structures. Remember his decision to set up the national cabinet, and then make it permanent. In his reshuffle, he’s used a combination of promotions and new machinery to send his message about the importance he now places on women’s issues, and to boost the government’s policy clout in relation to them.

When it comes to promotions and extra responsibilities, it’s a case of almost every woman (leaving aside Reynolds) getting a prize, with some being significant winners.

Michaelia Cash becomes Australia’s second female attorney-general (after Labor’s Nicola Roxon). She also assumes the other part of Porter’s old empire – industrial relations.

Karen Andrews, who’s been outspoken during the government’s present crisis, moves to the key national security area of home affairs.

Melissa Price stays in defence industry but returns to cabinet, taking the number of women there back to seven.

Anne Ruston is elevated into the leadership group, and has minister for women’s safety (which she already deals with) added to the title of her families and social services portfolio.

Further down the totem pole, Jane Hume and Amanda Stoker have additional, women-related, responsibilities buttoned onto existing jobs. Hume takes on women’s economic security, while Stoker becomes assistant minister for women, and assistant minister for industrial relations.

In his structural change, Morrison has erected an edifice that simultaneously boosts and dilutes the role of Payne, who has been widely criticises for under-performing in recent weeks.

He and Payne will co-chair a new “cabinet taskforce” that will include all the women in the ministry.

It is to “to drive my government’s agenda and response to these key issues involving women’s equality, women’s safety, women’s economic security, women’s health and well-being”.

Also on this group will be Treasurer Josh Frydenberg, Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack, and Finance Minister Simon Birmingham.

Payne would be “effectively amongst her female colleagues, the ‘prime Minister for Women’, holding the prime, ministerial responsibilities in this area as the Minister for Women,” Morrison enthused, a description even he quickly thought he should amend to “the primary Minister for Women […] just to ensure that no one gets too carried away with puns”.

“It is her job to bring together this great talent and experience across not just the female members of my cabinet team and the outer ministry and executive, but to draw also in the important contributions, especially in areas such as health and services and aged care and other key important roles that go so much to women’s well-being in this country,” Morrison said.

The taskforce will both work up ideas and apply the “equality lens” to other policies coming up through government.

Whether this super-coordinating role will end up augmenting the power of Payne as minister for women, or watering it down, will only become clear over time.

What’s clear now is that the government needs louder, more active female ministerial voices speaking out on issues and promoting the government’s case.

While there was a good argument for moving Payne from the women’s portfolio, including her heavy load as foreign minister, Morrison chose to leave her there.

This is typical Morrison – not wanting to give ground to critics, and also staying loyal.

But surely he has told her she will have to step out more in the media – unless all the other women are supposed to fill the gap she’s left in the public discourse. By giving women’s issues formal stakes in so many portfolios, Morrison has also provided these ministers with licences to speak.

The real test of the effectiveness of this reshuffle on the women’s front will be policy outcomes – immediately, in next month’s budget, and then post budget and in the policies the government takes to the election.

The reshuffle, however, doesn’t relieve the immediate pressures on Morrison, who will continue to be hammered over condoning disgraced Queensland Liberal Andrew Laming remaining in the parliamentary party while welcoming his intention not to seek preselection again.

With a knife edge majority, Morrison doesn’t want to lose a parliamentary number to the crossbench, so he’ll defend the indefensible. For his part Laming, on health leave and supposed to be concentrating on the counselling he’s undertaking to gain “empathy”, was on radio on Monday defending his actions.

He insisted the photo he’d taken showing a woman’s underwear was “completely dignified” – a working woman “kneeling in an awkward position, and filling a fridge with an impossible amount of stock, which clearly wasn’t going to fit in the fridge”.

As his fellow Coalition MPs will tell you, Laming’s a very strange cat.

Meanwhile the allegations keep coming.

Victorian Nationals MP Anne Webster has complained about the behaviour of a Coalition colleague towards her in the chamber just last week. The incident wasn’t serious (compared with everything else going on), and the man apologised.

Interviewed on the ABC, Webster said, “When I told my husband, he asked the question, ‘Where has he been? Under a rock?’”

Indeed. Probably with more than a few of his colleagues.

The full proposed Morrison ministry can be found here.

– ref. View from The Hill: Morrison sets up his own women’s network but will it produce the policy goods? – https://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-morrison-sets-up-his-own-womens-network-but-will-it-produce-the-policy-goods-158072

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rick Sarre, Emeritus Professor of Law and Criminal Justice, University of South Australia

Queensland federal MP Andrew Laming has been accused of taking an inappropriate photograph of a young woman, Crystal White, in 2019 in which her underwear was showing. When challenged about the photo this week, he reportedly replied:

it wasn’t meant to be rude. I thought it was funny

Inappropriate photography is a criminal offence in Queensland. Whether or not Laming’s behaviour amounted to an offence for which he could be charged is a matter for the police to determine. (White is reportedly considering taking her complaint to police.)

So, what do the laws say about this kind of behaviour, and what rights to privacy do people have when it comes to indecent photographs taken by others?

What can ‘upskirting’ include?

A new term has entered the lexicon in this regard: “upskirting”. The act of upskirting is generally defined as taking a sexually intrusive photograph of someone without their permission.

It is not a recent phenomenon. There have been incidents in which people (invariably men) have placed cameras on their shoes and photographed “up” a woman’s skirt for prurient purposes. Other instances have involved placing cameras under stairs where women in dresses or skirts were likely to pass by.

The broader category of “upskirting” can also include indecent filming of anyone without their knowledge, including photographing topless female bathers at a public beach, covertly filming women undressing in their bedrooms, or installing a camera in a dressing room, public toilet or a swimming pool changing room.

Read more: Andrew Laming: why empathy training is unlikely to work

With every new electronic device that comes on the market comes the possibility of inappropriate use and, thus, the creation of new criminal offences.

We saw that with the advent of small listening devices. With this technology, it was now possible to record private conversations, so legislators had to create offences under the law to deal with any inappropriate use.

The same thing happened with small (and now very affordable) drones, which made it possible to capture images of people in compromising positions, even from a distance. Our laws have been adjusted accordingly.

And in recent years, lawmakers have been faced with the same potential for inappropriate use with mobile phones. Such devices are now ubiquitous and improved technology has allowed people to record and photograph others at a moment’s notice — often impulsively, without proper thought.

How have legislators responded in Australia?

There is a patchwork array of laws across the country dealing with this type of photography and video recording.

In South Australia, for instance, it is against the law to engage in “indecent filming” of another person under part 5A of the state’s Summary Offences Act.

The term “upskirting” itself was used when amendments were made in 2007 to Victoria’s Summary Offences Act. This made it an offence for a person to observe or visually capture another person’s genital region without their consent.

In New South Wales, the law is equally specific in setting out the type of filming that is punishable under the law. It outlaws the filming of another person’s “private parts” for “sexual arousal or sexual gratification” without the consent of the person being filmed.

Queensland’s law, meanwhile, makes it an offence to:

observe or visually record another person, in circumstances where a reasonable adult would expect to be afforded privacy […] without the other person’s consent

Interestingly, the Queensland law is more broadly worded than the NSW, Victorian or South Australian laws since it makes it an offence to take someone’s picture in general, rather than specifying that it needs to be sexually explicit.

The maximum penalty for such an offence in Queensland is three years’ imprisonment.

What would need to be proven for a conviction

Just like any criminal offence, the prosecution in a case like this must first determine, before laying a charge, whether there’s enough evidence that could lead to a conviction and, moreover, whether such a prosecution is in the public interest.

Once the decision to charge is made, a conviction will only be possible if the accused pleads guilty or is found guilty beyond reasonable doubt. (Being a misdemeanour, this could only be by a magistrate, not a jury.)

The role of the criminal law here is to bring offending behaviour to account while also providing a deterrent for the future conduct of that person or any other persons contemplating such an act.

Read more: View from The Hill: Morrison should appoint stand-alone minister for women and boot Andrew Laming to crossbench

As with any criminal law, its overarching purpose is to indicate society’s disdain for the behaviour. The need to protect victims from such egregious and lewd behaviour is an important consideration too.

Any decision by a Queensland magistrate to convict a person alleged to have taken an indecent photo would hang on three facts:

• whether the photo was taken by the person accused

• whether the victim believed she should have been afforded privacy

• and whether she offered no consent to have the photo taken.

Other mitigating factors might come into play, however, including whether the photograph was impulsive and not premeditated, whether the image was immediately deleted, and whether the alleged offender showed any regret or remorse for his actions.

Recently a Queensland man, Justin McGufficke, pleaded guilty to upskirting offences in NSW after he took pictures up the skirts of teenage girls at a zoo while they were looking at animals.

In another case, a conviction for upskirting was deemed sufficient to deny a man permission to work with children in Victoria.

In a moment of impulsivity — and with the easy access of the mobile phone — anything can happen in today’s world. Poor judgements are common. Women are invariably the targets.

The laws on filming, recording and in some cases distributing the images of another person are clear — and the potential consequences for the accused are substantial. One would hope that any potential offenders are taking note.

– ref. What is “upskirting” and what are your rights to privacy under the law? – https://theconversation.com/what-is-upskirting-and-what-are-your-rights-to-privacy-under-the-law-158060

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Catherine Bennett, Chair in Epidemiology, Deakin University

Greater Brisbane enters a three-day lockdown from 5pm today after it recorded four additional COVID cases in the community, taking the total number to seven.

Other Australian states and territories have introduced varying levels of restrictions for people who have been in the affected areas.

Since we heard of the initial positive case on Friday, the way things have played out has been a little shambolic.

It’s a pity we’ve got to a point where we need another lockdown in Australia, but it’s imperative Queensland health authorities use this time to connect all the dots in this outbreak. While genomic sequencing can tell us several of these cases are linked, how they’re linked remains something of a mystery.

Here we go again

To recap, we learned on Friday a 26-year-old man from the Brisbane suburb of Stafford had tested positive to COVID-19. He was infected with the B.1.1.7 variant, which originated in the United Kingdom.

The Queensland health department said genomic sequencing confirmed this case was linked to a case earlier this month — a doctor at Brisbane’s Princess Alexandra Hospital who tested positive on March 12 after treating a COVID-positive returned traveller a few days earlier.

We hoped we’d escaped an outbreak as a result of that case, but this shows you can never be too vigilant when it comes to COVID-19. The genomic linkage tells us at least one case slipped through the contact-tracing net.

Read more: The UK variant is likely deadlier, more infectious and becoming dominant. But the vaccines still work well against it

The 26-year-old reportedly developed symptoms last Monday (March 22), but only sought a test on Thursday (March 25).

Given what we know about the infectious period of the virus, health authorities deemed he could have been infectious a couple of days before that. They’ve released exposure sites from March 20 onwards.

But although we’re told he’s linked to the hospital case, we don’t know exactly how. It’s important we have this information to identify others who may be at risk.

The time it takes to develop symptoms after exposure (the incubation period) is usually around five to six days. The time lapsed between the hospital case (who was exposed on March 9) and this one (likely exposed on March 16 or 17) suggests there may be one or more missing links.

After this man tested positive, health authorities rightly tested his close contacts — not only with PCR testing to identify current infections, but with serology testing. This picks up antibodies against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, to indicate if someone has recovered from the virus. We call this an upstream search. The man’s brother returned a positive serological result.

Could this brother be the missing link? Reports suggest authorities believe he is — but there’s a vagueness about the nature of the link, and also about where the brother had been while he was infectious.

It’s helpful to have the genomic link back to the Princess Alexandra Hospital incident so we know where to look to unpack the full outbreak picture. But genomics alone don’t tell us whether the brother was a direct exposure — for example, whether he visited the hospital at that time or had some other connection with the doctor who was infected — or whether there are more intermediary cases to be found.

Although he’s now recovered, it’s still important we ascertain precisely where he got the virus, and his movements while he was potentially infectious. If we can’t link him to the hospital in any way beyond the genomic test results, we’re still essentially looking at a mystery case.

Read more: How the latest COVID cases slipped through in NSW and Queensland — and what we can do better

The second case reported on Saturday, a 20-year-old man from Strathpine in the Moreton Bay region north of Brisbane, is also a direct contact of the 26-year-old man. He is currently COVID-positive and could have been infected at the same time.

Today we had two more cases linked to that cluster: work colleagues of the Strathpine case.

And importantly, we now have two other community cases that have not at this stage been epidemiologically linked to this cluster — a nurse who has worked on the COVID ward at the Princess Alexandra Hospital, and her sister.

The health department is waiting on genomics to confirm they are “linked”. But it’s essential we understand the epidemiological connection, not just the genomic similarity of strains.

So what now?

In addition to the fact the chains of transmission haven’t been mapped out clearly, we’ve also seen some mixed messages over recent days.

Reports the Strathpine man held a house party while waiting for his test results were later retracted. Little things like this mean there’s an element of confusion at a time when it’s essential public messaging is clear.

These “circuit-breaker” lockdowns have been positioned as a safety net allowing contact tracers to get on top of cases before they become larger outbreaks. They must be implemented quickly to work, and we now wait and see whether this one has been imposed quickly enough.

I believe health authorities will be able to bring this outbreak under control in the coming days. But we also need to ask the question: how did it come to this?

The fact we’re contending with this latest cluster at all indicates the follow-up after the hospital case earlier this month wasn’t sufficient; an outbreak was insidiously unfolding under the radar. At least one person who was exposed was able to fall through the cracks. This is an issue Queensland health authorities will need to review, and other states and territories can learn from.

– ref. COVID in Brisbane: 3-day lockdown begins as authorities scramble to find missing links – https://theconversation.com/covid-in-brisbane-3-day-lockdown-begins-as-authorities-scramble-to-find-missing-links-158053

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sue Williamson, Senior Lecturer, Human Resource Management, UNSW Canberra, UNSW

As federal parliament continues to erupt with allegations of harassment and abuse, one of the responses from our most senior leaders has been empathy training.

These are programs that help people to see the world from other people’s perspectives.

Over the weekend, Prime Minister Scott Morrison ordered disgraced Coalition MP Andrew Laming to do a private course on empathy. As Morrison told reporters

I would hope […] that would see a very significant change in his behaviour.

This follows Laming’s apology for harassing two women online and then confessing he didn’t know what the apology was for. Soon after Morrison’s announcement, Nationals leader Michael McCormack said he would get his party to do empathy training as well.

If we can […] actually learn a few tips on how to not only be better ourselves, but how to call out others for it, then I think that’s a good thing.

Many people — including opposition MPs, women’s advocates and psychologists — were immediately and instinctively sceptical. After all, if someone needs to take a course on how to be empathetic, surely something fundamental is missing, which no amount of training can fix?

The problem with empathy training

People are right to be dubious about empathy training — it has all the hallmarks of a human resources fad.

A parallel can be drawn with the introduction of unconscious bias training a few years ago. Neither are likely to be a silver bullet — or even a significant help — when it comes to discrimination and harassment.

Researchers have found requiring employees to undertake mandatory training, such as diversity training or sexual harassment training, can backfire. When people are “force fed”, they rebel and pre-existing beliefs are reinforced.

On top of this, training programs aimed to increase awareness about gender equality and discrimination are often seen by employers as remedial at best. At worst, they are punishment, which can also lead to a backlash from participants. The empathy training being given to Laming firmly sits in this camp — he has been found to have harassed women, so now he must be punished by attending a course.

Read more: Memo Liberal women: if you really want to confront misogyny in your party, you need to fix the policies

Similarly, one-off sexual harassment training has been found to be not only ineffective, but can make matters worse. American researchers found men forced to undertake sexual harassment training become defensive, and resistant to learning. But worse than this, male resistance can result in men blaming the victim, and thinking women are making false claims of sexual harassment.

So, the research findings are clear. One-off, mandatory diversity training and sexual harassment training do not work. While there is little data so far on the success of empathy programs, previous research gives no indication they would work either.

What does work?

It is not all bad news for empathy course conveners, however. Voluntary training is more successful, as volunteers are already primed for learning and concerned about gender equality and eliminating sexual harassment. Research also shows empathy can be taught, but the subject has to be willing to change.

But if mandatory training has limited effectiveness, what will work to eliminate sexual harassment? We certainly don’t need any more indications our federal parliament and our broader society needs to change.

As Dr Meraiah Foley and I have previously argued, for training to be effective, it needs to do several things.

Firstly, it needs to be complemented by affirmative action measures, such as setting targets to increase the numbers of women in leadership. This is why the renewed debate about quotas in the Liberal Party is so important.

Secondly, the training needs to lead to new structures and new accountability for behaviour. This can be achieved by course participants identifying desirable behaviours that can progress equality at work. For example, small actions such as ensuring women participate equally in meetings sends a signal their opinions are valued.

Participants then log when they enacted those behaviours, and discuss progress with trained facilitators. Participants continue to reflect, and act, and later, share experiences and identify successful strategies.

Read more: Bad times call for bold measures: 3 ways to fix the appalling treatment of women in our national parliament

Thirdly, for workplace gender equality to progress, the ongoing process of behaviour change needs to be complemented with systemic organisational change. As I have written elsewhere, researchers recommend organisations adopt short and long-term agendas, to achieve small, immediate wins, while deeper transformations occur.

Structural change starts with an examination of human resource processes and policies to uncover gender bias and discrimination. No doubt Kate Jenkins will be undertaking such a task in her review of workplace culture at parliament house.

The bigger change we need

Examining process and policies, however, is not enough. Changing the language, and other symbolic expressions in organisations are also an important part of culture change to embed gender equality. For example, making sure meeting rooms are named after women and portraits of women — as well as men — adorn the walls sends a subtle yet powerful message the space also belongs to women.

Changing the ways of working, the rituals and artefacts of parliament house will help to change the culture.

Structural and systemic change to achieve gender equality is slow. While sending recalcitrant politicians to training courses may seem like an unavoidable first step, it is not where we need to focus attention.

– ref. Andrew Laming: why empathy training is unlikely to work – https://theconversation.com/andrew-laming-why-empathy-training-is-unlikely-to-work-158050

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonti Horner, Professor (Astrophysics), University of Southern Queensland

If you stepped outside on the weekend and thought, “Gosh, the full moon looks nice tonight”, you are not alone.

According to Google Trends, Moon-related searches are up by more than 60% over the past week in Australia, led by Western Australia and Queensland.

Technically, the Moon is currently “waning gibbous” which means the moment of maximum fullness has passed, and it’s now starting to look smaller. But it’s still quite spectacular.

As someone teaching first-year astronomy at the moment, where much time is spent discussing the Moon, here are my answers to some of the most common recent Moon questions.

Read more: How big is the Moon? Let me compare …

1. A full moon is how many times brighter than a half moon?

You might think a half moon (first quarter or last quarter, depending on where you are in the phases) is half as bright as the full moon. However, if you add up all the light being reflected from the Moon to us here on Earth, a half moon is a fair bit less than half as bright as the full moon. In fact, the full moon is roughly six times brighter than the half moon.

The main reason for this comes down to shadows. When the Moon is full, the Earth is between the Sun and the Moon. So when you look at the Moon rising in the evening, the Sun has just set, behind your back.

That means the side of the Moon facing Earth is fully illuminated. With the Sun at our backs, shadows cast by objects on the Moon are pointing away from us, hidden from view. So we see the maximum amount of the Moon lit up, nice and bright.

At half moon, however, the Sun is shining onto the Moon from one side so the craters, mountains, rocks and pebbles on the Moon all cast shadows. That reduces the amount of the Moon’s surface that’s lit up, so less light is reflected towards us than you’d otherwise expect.

Interestingly, the actual surface of the Moon isn’t that reflective. If the Moon and Venus were side by side and you zoomed in to look at the surface brightness of a patch on Venus and compared it with the surface brightness of a patch on the Moon, you’d see the patch on Venus is brighter. It’s more reflective because Venus has a lot of clouds that help reflect light back to Earth.

But because the Moon is closer to Earth, it looks bigger than Venus, so the total amount of light that is reflected back to us is bigger. When you look up at night, the Moon will seem much brighter than Venus.

There’s one extra reason the full moon is extra bright – and it’s called the opposition surge. When the Moon is full (or almost full), the surface we see appears to be a little bit brighter than at all other times.

While the fact that shadows are hidden is part of the puzzle, that isn’t enough to explain all of the brightening of the Moon in the day or so around full moon. The “opposition surge” is the final piece in the puzzle that makes the full moon so much brighter than the half moon. It’s something we see in all other rocky and icy objects in the Solar system, too.

2. Why is the Moon bright?

At the time of writing, we’re within 24 hours of full moon, so it looks big and bright in the sky. It looks so much bigger than everything else in the night sky because it’s near us, and so bright because it’s reflecting light from the Sun.

But the Moon is moving away from Earth at almost 4cm per year. In the olden days, it would have been even bigger and brighter. It would have been much closer to Earth if we’d been around when Earth was young. However, the Sun was a fair bit less luminous back then, so it’s hard to say exactly how bright the Moon would have been.

3. Is Easter a full Moon?

No. Easter is the first Sunday after the first full moon after the March equinox.

The March equinox is the point in the year when the Sun crosses the Equator in the sky, passing from the southern hemisphere to the northern hemisphere.

To astronomers, this is the start of the northern hemisphere’s spring; for those of us in the southern hemisphere, it marks the start of astronomical autumn. The March equinox typically falls around March 21.

The time between two consecutive full moons is roughly 29.5 days. This means the date of Easter can move around quite a lot.

Read more: Why all the super buzz about the supermoon?

4. What is the worm Moon?

This is a US thing. According to US reports, the name might refer to earthworms appearing in the soil as the weather warms in the northern hemisphere. It’s been reported this reflects detail from Native American knowledge systems.

It’s important we recognise traditional astronomy, but it’s worth noting this naming convention comes from Native American culture rather than our own Indigenous cultures.

Read more: The Moon plays an important role in Indigenous culture and helped win a battle over sea rights

5. How long does a full moon last?

Technically, the exact “moment” the Moon is fullest is the moment it is exactly opposite the Sun in the sky. That happens once every 29 days or so. It is the moment the Moon is most illuminated.

So how long does that last? In reality, it is a split second – the moment of maximum fullness is fleeting.

Either way, if you saw the full moon and thought it might be a nice night to go on a date, you probably have a couple of days left when the Moon will still look impressive and amazing in the sky.

Read more: I see the moon: introducing our nearest neighbour

– ref. Why is the Moon bright? Is Easter a full moon? How long does a full moon last? Your Moon questions answered by an astronomer – https://theconversation.com/why-is-the-moon-bright-is-easter-a-full-moon-how-long-does-a-full-moon-last-your-moon-questions-answered-by-an-astronomer-158061

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne

This week’s Newspoll, conducted March 24-27 from a sample of 1,517, gave Labor a 52-48 two party lead, unchanged from last fortnight’s Newspoll. Primary votes were 40% Coalition (up one), 38% Labor (down one), 11% Greens (up one) and 2% One Nation (down one).

While voting intentions moved slightly towards the Coalition, Scott Morrison’s ratings fell to their lowest point since the COVID crisis began. 55% were satisfied with his performance (down seven) and 40% were dissatisfied (up six), for a net approval of +15, down 13 points.

Anthony Albanese’s net approval was up one point to +2, and Morrison led as better PM by 52-32 (56-30 last fortnight). Figures are from The Poll Bludger.

The last Newspoll was taken during the final few days of the WA election campaign. It’s plausible, given Morrison’s ratings slump without any impact on voting intentions, that Labor’s federal WA vote in the last Newspoll was inflated by the state election.

While Morrison’s ratings are his worst since the pandemic began, they are still strong by historical standards. So far, Morrison has only lost people who were likely to switch to disapproving at the first major scandal. Voting intentions imply that many who approved of Morrison were not voting Coalition anyway.

This poll would not have reflected the latest scandals about LNP Bowman MP Andrew Laming, who was revealed on Saturday night to have taken an upskirting picture in 2019. But are sexual misbehaviour scandals getting as much voter opprobrium as they used to?

In last fortnight’s article I cited two recent US examples of alleged sexual misconduct. Donald Trump was elected president in November 2016 despite the release of the Access Hollywood tape a month earlier. And New York’s Democratic governor, Andrew Cuomo, is still in office despite multiple sexual harassment allegations against his female employees.

According to Morning Consult polling of New York state, Cuomo’s ratings have stabilised recently after a large drop, and he still has a +10 net approval. That’s because he has a 75% approval rating from Democratic voters.

In the FiveThirtyEight aggregate of 2016 US national polls, Hillary Clinton gained only about a point in the week after the October 7 Access Hollywood tape was released, to have a six-point lead, up from five. Trump won that election in the Electoral College despite losing the national popular vote by 2.1%.

Draft federal redistributions for Victoria and WA

As a result of population growth trends, Victoria will gain an additional House of Representatives seat before the next election, while WA loses one. On March 19, the Electoral Commission published draft boundaries for both states.

In WA, the Liberal seat of Stirling was axed, while in Victoria the seat of Hawke was created in Melbourne’s northwestern growth area. The Poll Bludger estimated Hawke will have a Labor margin of 9.8%.

There are no major knock-on effects that would shift any other seat into another party’s column based on 2019 election results. So the impact is Labor gaining a Victorian seat as the Coalition loses a WA seat. Christian Porter’s margin in Pearce has been reduced slightly from 6.7% to 5.5%.

Ignoring the defection of Craig Kelly from the Liberals, the Coalition will start the next federal election with a notional 76 of the 151 seats, down one from the 2019 results. Labor will notionally have 69 seats, up one.

Early Tasmanian election announced for May 1

On March 26, Tasmanian Liberal Premier Peter Gutwein announced the Tasmanian election would be held on May 1, about ten months before the four-year anniversary of the March 2018 election.

The Liberals expect to capitalise on a COVID boost that could fade if the election were held as expected in early 2022. The last Tasmanian poll, conducted by EMRS in February, gave the Liberals 52%, Labor 27% and the Greens 14%. Tasmania uses the Hare-Clark method of proportional representation with five electorates that each return five members.

WA election final lower house results

At the March 13 Western Australian election, Labor won 53 of the 59 lower house seats, gaining 12 seats from what was already a thumping victory in 2017. The Liberals won just two seats (down 11) and the Nationals four (down one). Labor will have almost 90% of lower house seats.

Primary votes were 59.9% Labor (up 17.7% since 2017), 21.3% Liberals (down 9.9%), 4.0% Nationals (down 1.4%), 6.9% Greens (down 2.0%) and just 1.3% One Nation (down 3.7%).

Labor’s primary vote was higher than the 59.0% the combined Nationals and Liberals won at the 1974 Queensland election. The 1941 Tasmanian election, when Labor won 62.6%, is likely the only prior occasion in Australia of a single party winning a higher vote share than WA Labor.

The Poll Bludger estimates the two party vote as 69.2-30.8 to Labor, a 13.7% swing since 2017. The upper house has yet to be finalised, but Labor will win at least 22 of the 36 seats.

Israeli, UK local, German and Dutch elections

I wrote for The Poll Bludger on March 21 about the March 23 Israeli election and the May 6 UK local elections that also include Scottish and Welsh parliamentary elections. Israel’s right-wing PM Benjamin Netanyahu failed to win a majority for a right coalition, with that coalition winning 59 of the 120 Knesset seats. UK Labour is struggling in the polls.

I wrote for my personal website on March 19 about two German state elections that the combined left parties nearly won outright. The German federal election is expected on September 26, and the incumbent conservative CDU has slumped from its COVID heights, so the combined left could win the next German election. However, the left performed dismally at the March 17 Dutch election.

– ref. Morrison’s ratings take a hit in Newspoll as Coalition notionally loses a seat in redistribution – https://theconversation.com/morrisons-ratings-take-a-hit-in-newspoll-as-coalition-notionally-loses-a-seat-in-redistribution-158048

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Christian Moro, Associate Professor of Science & Medicine, Bond University

Airborne contaminants, dirty toilet seats, mould and mildew: long before the coronavirus pandemic came around, the hygiene-focused among us knew public washrooms are grimy places.

Most adults visit the bathroom around 8-10 times a day. With an average hand-drying time of 30 seconds, we can expect between 4-5 minutes of daily dryer use per person (and more for people with an overactive bladder or similar disorders).

In an attempt to facilitate the hand washing process, are hand dryers adding to the filth by blowing contaminants around? And if so, why are they still common?

The need to dry

Drying hands is an essential part of the hand washing process. Wet hands can further the spread of microbes, since moisture facilitates their transfer from the skin to other surfaces.

Compared to shaking your hands dry after a wash, using an air dryer or paper towel greatly reduces the number of surface bacteria that remain.

Warm air dryers remove moisture from the hands through evaporation, while jet air dryers remove it by using sheer force to disperse the droplets into the air.

It’s worth remembering hand dryers don’t create microbes and there’s usually only minimal bacteria on their nozzles, too. In many cases air dryers can even be fitted with filters that help clean and remove contaminants from the air.

Put a lid on it!

Nonetheless, while dryers themselves aren’t necessarily unclean, their forced air can help circulate bacteria around the space. This is why the main focus should be on preventing bacteria from surfaces ever becoming aerosolised (entering the air) in the first place.

If a toilet’s lid is left open when it’s flushed, a fine aerosolised mist of microbes enters the air. And this cloud of faecal matter can spread over an area of up to six square metres.

Research has shown even after flushing many times, a toilet can continue to emit contaminants into the air. In other words, a person infected with a virus could be spreading these germs for several hours after visiting the bathroom.

Public washrooms can therefore act as reservoirs for especially nasty bacteria, such as those which are resistant to antibiotics.

So are paper towels the solution?

Read more: Coronavirus and handwashing: research shows proper hand drying is also vital

Problems with paper

Paper towels remove water by absorption and take contaminants with them when they’re binned. However, they can cause plumbing problems if flushed down the toilet, which require time and money to fix.

Additionally, paper towels need to be continuously purchased, restocked and disposed of as waste — all of which leads to increased costs. In a worst-case scenario towels may run out, prompting people to exit without drying their hands at all.

Granted, in a hospital setting a dryer’s forced air may move microbes onto items handled by health professionals and patients, such as phones or stethoscopes. So paper towels may be a more suitable option here.

But they still don’t provide an entirely sterile environment and can be contaminated by microbes circulating in the area.

Weighing the environmental impact

Although hand dryers do produce carbon emissions, studies have shown warm air dryers (which rely on evaporation) generate up to 70% more emissions than newer, fast jet dryers (which force out a rush of cold air).

Environmentally speaking, warm air dryers and paper towels perform roughly the same, on average.

Using recycled paper towels doesn’t seem to help much, either. This is because they can’t be recycled further, due to chemicals added to increase their absorptive properties as well as the overall energy required to manufacture them.

In the US, around six million tonnes of paper towels end up in landfill each year.

The dry debate continues

Some research has concluded paper towels make a more hygienic method for drying hands. Meanwhile, aggressive jet hand dryers seem to have shown the greatest potential for dispersing bacteria and particles over wider distances.

But there isn’t a clear winner in practise. A recent critical review concluded there wasn’t enough research weighing up both options and that until more robust studies were conducted, evidence-based public policy recommendations couldn’t be made.

This echoes both the World Health Organisation’s and Centre for Disease Control’s hesitance to offer recommendations for whether drying hands with air dryers is more or less effective than using paper towels.

Read more: The great bathroom debate: paper towel or hand dryer?

Tips for a healthy bathroom regimen

While hand dryers can circulate contaminants around a space, the aim should be to stop germs from becoming aerolised in the first place. If the contaminants aren’t in the air to begin with, their dispersion from hand dryers is less of a worry.

Health education on this front is important. Simple recommendations include:

• closing the toilet lid before flushing

• wearing a mask where recommended or required, especially for those who have respiratory tract symptoms or a cough

• coughing or clearing your throat directly into a tissue and immediately throwing it in the bin

• washing your hands regularly with soap and water and not forgetting to dry them, as wet hands are more likely to spread bugs and diseases.

In areas where infection control and prevention are paramount, such as hospitals or food production areas, measures such as increased airflow and air filters can also help.

The bottom line

Using paper towels comes with recurring costs, logistical problems and environmental considerations. Meanwhile, air dryers can further circulate vapourised bacteria.

Managers of public washrooms have much to consider when deciding which method of hand drying to provide. In some scenarios, hand dryers do present as a better option, which is why we continue to see them in public washrooms.

Regardless of what option you choose, don’t forget drying is an essential part of the hand-washing process. Both air dryers and paper towels are, by a long way, better than using nothing at all.

– ref. We know hand dryers can circulate germs through the air. Why are they still used everywhere? – https://theconversation.com/we-know-hand-dryers-can-circulate-germs-through-the-air-why-are-they-still-used-everywhere-157410

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nicole Lee, Professor at the National Drug Research Institute (Melbourne), Curtin University

Revelations of alleged sexual assault, harassment and bullying in Canberra have driven a wider debate about what some female MPs have described as a “toxic workplace culture” at parliament pouse.

Some have now floated the idea of alcohol testing politicians at work, with one saying:

We need to have at least responsible drinking. But even ministers have said to me, ‘You know what Katie, I think even a dry environment might not be a bad thing for parliament.’

Most workplaces don’t allow their workers to be drunk at work. Most don’t even allow drinking during work hours any more. So a ban on drinking while working is good policy.

But an alcohol ban or alcohol testing at parliament house does not solve the broader problem of a sexist or misogynistic workplace culture.

Although most sexual harassment and bullying is associated with alcohol use, alcohol is not the reason people harass, bully or intimidate. The fundamental problem behind those behaviours is attitudes to women.

Read more: Drug and alcohol testing at work doesn’t deter anyone, so why do it?

Alcohol testing on-site doesn’t fix cultural issues

Alcohol causes disinhibition and can lead to poor decision making. So it is a risk factor for problems. It makes bad behaviour more likely, but it doesn’t cause those issues on its own. Attitudes that lead to sexual harassment and assault are a much more complex problem to solve.

The question of whether alcohol should be allowed at work is completely separate from whether testing is a good tool to address the problem. Testing on-site doesn’t address those deeper cultural issues.

In our court system, alcohol or other drug use is generally not considered an argument for a reduced sentence. There is an association between alcohol and other drug use and crimes but it is considered a risk factor, not a cause.

Testing is often the first thing people think of when there’s a problem where alcohol or other drugs are involved. It’s simple and it’s measurable, so it is sometimes seen as an easy solution to a complex problem. However, it’s not a very effective mechanism for addressing the problems that arise around workplace alcohol and other drug use.

As colleagues and I argued in a previous Conversation article,

To be effective, a workplace policy needs to be part of a broader healthy workplace solution that considers drug and alcohol use, mental health, fatigue and other impacts on fitness for work. Extensive manager and worker consultation is essential for effective uptake and implementation.

A clear and well-defined policy includes education and training for managers and workers, and identified referral options such as an employee assistance program.

Workplaces with effective drug and alcohol policies have happier, healthier and more productive staff and reduced absenteeism and presenteeism.

There’s a place for a discussion about alcohol use at parliament house, as in any workplace. But alcohol testing on-site is just one small part of that discussion.

Alcohol and the Canberra culture

Alcohol testing at parliament house is not likely to solve the kinds of problems some female MPs have raised, such as having to contend with sexist comments and attitudes at work.

Alcohol testing at work also doesn’t stop people from drinking outside work time, where many of these incidents occur. People will still have drinks after work with workmates and attend work functions where alcohol is served.

Many of the recent allegations relate to drinking that largely took place away from parliament house, outside work hours.

And there are plenty of men and women who get drunk with friends or workmates and they aren’t perpetrators or victims of harassment or assault.

Workplace alcohol-testing is no silver bullet

There’s a growing body of evidence looking at alcohol-related interventions among people who work in male-dominated industries.

I led a systematic review of the research, published in the Journal of Men’s Health. Men are generally heavier drinkers of alcohol than women, so are at greater risk of a range of health and social problems.

However, workplace alcohol testing policies, which were examined in a number of studies, did not have a measurable impact on overall drinking rates.

Alcohol and drug testing in the workplace is not as common as many people think. It tends to be concentrated in safety-sensitive industries. Routine alcohol and drug testing is less common in workplaces that are more corporate or administrative.

Most workplaces that have workplace alcohol and drug testing, such as mining sites, do so because people are operating heavy machinery, vehicles or equipment. They’re often doing work where, if alcohol was involved, injury or death is a possibility.

Most workplaces that have testing in place also have a broader policy that ensures people are fit for work. This includes well developed systems for education at induction, clear guidelines about what happens if you test positive, training for staff and managers and counselling and treatment available if needed. Fit-for-work policies means looking carefully at issues such as stress, fatigue and anxiety.

In other words, even where there is workplace alcohol or drug testing, it’s woven into a much broader set of health and safety policies. On its own, it is no silver bullet.

Read more: View from The Hill: Morrison should appoint stand-alone minister for women and boot Andrew Laming to crossbench

– ref. Alcohol testing at parliament house would not solve the broader problem of a sexist workplace culture – https://theconversation.com/alcohol-testing-at-parliament-house-would-not-solve-the-broader-problem-of-a-sexist-workplace-culture-158049

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Divyangana Rakesh, PhD Candidate, The University of Melbourne

Growing up in a poor or disadvantaged neighbourhood can affect the way adolescents’ brains function, according to our new research. It can alter the communication between brain regions involved in planning, goal-setting and self-reflection.

These brain changes can have consequences for cognitive function and well-being. But the good news is that we also found positive home and school environments can mitigate some of these negative effects.

A “disadvantaged neighbourhood” is one in which people generally have lower levels of income, employment, and education. Growing up in these conditions can cause stress for children, and is associated with cognitive problems and mental health issues in young people.

We don’t yet know exactly how this link between neighbourhood disadvantage and poor mental outcomes works, but it is thought that social disadvantage alters the way young people’s brains develop.

The brain during childhood and adolescence

During childhood and adolescence, our brains are dynamically developing. During this phase of life, we refer to the brain as being particularly “plastic”, meaning it is susceptible to change as a result of experiences.

Exposure to negative or stressful experiences (such as neighbourhood disadvantage) may alter brain development in a way that makes some adolescents less resilient in the future. In particular, exposure to neighbourhood disadvantage may lead to “developmental miswiring” – alterations in communication between different brain regions. Such miswiring is increasingly recognised as playing an important role in mental illness.

Read more: Living with neighborhood violence may shape teens’ brains

Neighbourhood disadvantage and the brain

In our research, we studied more than 7,500 children aged 9-10 years from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study, a large long-term study of brain development and child health in the United States. This study features children from schools all over the country, with lots of diversity in race, ethnicity, education, income levels, and living environments.

Using these data, we tested whether neighbourhood disadvantage is associated with changes in the brain’s “resting functional connectivity” in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans.

Resting functional connectivity refers to the coordinated activity of different brain regions when someone is resting and thinking of nothing in particular. Even while resting, we typically see synchronised activity between brain regions that usually work together to perform tasks. That is, these brain regions are “functionally connected”.

We found that children who grew up in disadvantaged neighbourhoods had widespread alterations in functional connectivity, in brain regions considered important for learning and memory, planning, goal-setting, self-reflection, sensory processing and language. We quantified neighbourhood disadvantage using an “area deprivation index” — a composite measure of factors including income, employment and education for individuals in a given neighbourhood.

What’s more, 50% of these brain changes were associated with poor cognition and mental health in the children. This suggests that growing up in a tough neighbourhood led to changes in children’s cognitive function and mental health.

It is important to note that because the study was “cross-sectional” (that is, it included only one time point), these inferences about causation are speculative. What’s more, we don’t know what mechanism causes these changes in brain connectivity, and why some brain regions are affected but not others.

Reducing the effects of neighbourhood disadvantage

As part of the ABCD Study, children and parents also completed questionnaires about their living environment. This allowed us to look at whether positive home and school environments can offset some of the negative effects of neighbourhood disadvantage.

Crucially, we found that brain alterations were less pronounced in children who had positive home and school environments. This suggests that good parental support and positive schooling can buffer some of the negative effects of growing up in a disadvantaged neighbourhood.

Parental support comprised of things such as the parent smiling often at the child, supporting the child and making them feel better when they’re upset, discussing the child’s worries with them, and expressing their love for the child.

Positive school environments were characterised by the availability of extracurricular activities, healthy relationships between children and teachers, children feeling safe at school, teachers praising children when they did a good job, schools letting parents know when children did something well, and children having opportunities to contribute to decisions about activities and rules.

Read more: Teenage mental health: how growing brains could explain emerging disorders

The impact of the social environment on brain development during the early years is already widely recognised in early childhood learning. But the impact that parents and teachers might have on the brains of older children and adolescents has been less clear.

Our research shows that parents and teachers continue to be an important source of support for children as they move into adolescence. Although peers start to become important during this transition, parents and teachers play a role in promoting healthy brain development.

While disadvantaged neighbourhoods can negatively affect children’s brain development and well-being, this can be offset by giving children better home and school environments where they feel supported, receive positive feedback, and have opportunities to engage in different activities.

– ref. Growing up in a rough neighbourhood can shape kids’ brains, so good parenting and schooling is crucial – https://theconversation.com/growing-up-in-a-rough-neighbourhood-can-shape-kids-brains-so-good-parenting-and-schooling-is-crucial-157884

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

It has been a momentous, demanding few weeks for Australia. Amid growing revelations of sexual assaults and toxic workplaces and people taking to the streets to voice their anger and frustration, it’s possible we are finally facing a reckoning on gender relations.

But as we debate — again — how to move into a more equal future, it is also useful to look to our convict past. This has an impact on the issues we face today, and in particular, our idea of masculine norms.

My research with colleagues Victoria Baranov and Ralph De Haas has used data from a unique natural experiment — convict Australia. This was a time when men far outnumbered women.

We found those early days of intensified competition between men, and the violence that stemmed from this, created behaviours — and dangerous norms about masculinity — that continue in modern Australia today.

The convict experiment

According to traditional gender norms, men should be self-reliant, assertive, competitive, violent when needed, and in control of their emotions.

In our recent research, we argued strict masculinity norms can emerge when men vastly outnumber women. This is due to competition increasing and intensifying among men because there are fewer women to partner with.

This can intensify violence, bullying, and intimidating behaviours that, once entrenched in local culture, continue to manifest themselves long after sex ratios have normalised.

We tested this hypothesis using data the convict colonisation of Australia. In just under 100 years, between 1787 and 1868, Britain transported 132,308 convict men and only 24,960 convict women to Australia. Migrants were also mostly male. So, there were far more men than women in Australia until well into the 20th century.

We used historical census data and combined them with current data on violence, sexual and domestic assault, suicide and bullying in schools. From that, we were able to see the regions with significantly more men than women back in convict times still experience problems today. This is even when we account for the influence of the total number of convicts, geographic characteristics, and present-day characteristics of these regions, including education, religion, urbanisation and income.

Health and violence

First, we looked at the impact of the convict gender imbalance on current day violence and health outcomes.

Evidence suggests men adhering to traditional masculinity norms have a stronger stigma around mental health problems and tend to avoid health services. We found areas that were more historically male have significantly higher rates of male suicide today.

Read more: What Australia’s convict past reveals about women, men, marriage and work

Our research also shows assault and sexual assault are much higher today in parts of Australia that were more male in the colonial past. We also find much higher rates of bullying among boys in schools, as reported by parents or teachers.

But it’s not just violence where we experience this hangover from the past.

Areas with more men in convict times are the same regions today with an otherwise-unexplained high share of men choosing more stereotypically male occupations (such as carpenters or metal workers, as opposed to teachers or nurses). We also found the more males outnumbered women in convict times, the less likely people were to support same-sex marriage in modern day Australia.

How does this help us today?

Our research suggests environments in which men dominate numerically — and are put in intense competition with one another — can deeply and durably shape behaviours associated with toxic masculinity.

These are characterised by violence, sexual assault, bullying in schools, opposition to sexual minority rights but also mental health problems and suicide.

While our experimental setting is unique, there’s lots we can take from this, particularly about the long-term consequences of skewed sex ratios we are currently seeing in countries such as China, India, and parts of the Middle East. But also about skewed sex ratios in other environments.

There is every reason to think any place where males dominate can create these issues. Be it in parliaments, offices, schools, or sports teams. Recent allegations out of parliament house, petitions denouncing thousands of sexual assaults by private schools boys, and continued claims of sexual assaults by NRL players prove exactly the point.

Read more: How challenging masculine stereotypes is good for men

Our results suggest it’s an issue for both genders: the masculinity norms of the past are not only damaging to future generations of women, and of sexual minorities, but are also damaging to future generations of men.

So stop telling your sons to toughen up and to be dominant at all costs. Tell them they don’t have to compete all the time. Tell them it’s OK to cry.

Pauline Grosjean also talks about toxic masculinity and convict Australia on the Seriously Social podcast by the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia.

– ref. History repeating: the surprising link between toxic masculinity and Australia’s convict past – https://theconversation.com/history-repeating-the-surprising-link-between-toxic-masculinity-and-australias-convict-past-157881

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Vanessa Bryant, Laboratory Head, Immunology Division, Walter and Eliza Hall Institute

The COVID vaccine rollout is underway in Australia, with people in phase 1b now eligible to be vaccinated.

So far, we have two vaccines available in Australia: the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, approved for people aged 16 and older, and the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, approved for those over 18. Evidence has shown both vaccines are safe and offer near-complete protection against severe COVID-19, hospitalisation and, most importantly, COVID-related death.

Both vaccines are also safe and effective at generating immune responses in the elderly. But what about another vulnerable group — people with immunodeficiencies? Many people with immunodeficiencies are included in group 1b and will now be thinking about getting their vaccine.

Although we’re still gathering data to determine whether COVID vaccines will work as well in people with immunodeficiencies as they do in the general population, they’re likely to offer at least a reasonable degree of protection. And importantly, we know they’re safe.

What are immunodeficiencies?

Immunodeficiencies are conditions that weaken the body’s ability to fight infection. People’s immune system may be compromised for many reasons, and this can be transient or lifelong.

Primary immunodeficiencies occur when some or all of a person’s immune system is missing, defective or ineffective. These are rare and often genetic diseases that may be diagnosed early in life, but can occur at any age.

Examples of primary immunodeficiencies include severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID) and common variable immunodeficiency (CVID).

Read more: What does it mean to be immunocompromised? And why does this increase your risk of coronavirus?

Secondary immunodeficiencies are acquired, and more common. They may occur as a result of other diseases (for example, via HIV infection), treatments and medications (such as chemotherapy or corticosteroids), or environmental exposure to toxins (for example, prolonged exposure to heavy metals or pesticides).

Sometimes the immune system in people with immunodeficiencies can react in exaggerated ways too, and cause autoimmune disease (such as rheumatoid arthritis or gut inflammation). So it sometimes makes more sense to describe the immune system as “dysregulated”, rather than “deficient”.

Immunodeficiencies, COVID-19 and vaccines

People with secondary immunodeficiencies are generally at higher risk of becoming infected with SARS-CoV-2 and of developing severe disease. Surprisingly, although people with primary immunodeficiency may be at greater risk of getting infections, including COVID, most are no more susceptible to developing severe COVID compared with the overall population.

This may be because the most severe COVID-19 symptoms are usually not due to gaps in immunity, but to an overactive immune response to SARS-CoV-2.

In fact, immune-suppressing steroids may be an effective treatment for severe COVID. Clinical trials looking into this are underway.

However, as vaccines work by mobilising our immune systems, for people who have a weaker immune system to begin with, vaccines may not be as effective. They may generate an incomplete or short-lived response, so people with immunodeficiencies may need additional boosters to maintain protective immunity.

Read more: What is a virus? How do they spread? How do they make us sick?

Efficacy and safety

It’s difficult to assess COVID vaccine efficacy in people with immunodeficiencies, because people with primary immunodeficiencies or cancer weren’t included in clinical trials.

A very small number of people with HIV have been included in trials of a few of the vaccines, but limited data is publicly available. So it’s too early to draw any firm conclusions on whether the vaccines will be as effective in people with HIV as for the general population.

We also don’t yet know how long immunity to COVID-19 or COVID vaccines lasts. This will be particularly important for immunodeficient people. Research is underway to determine whether they’ll need booster jabs more frequently to maintain immunity.

We do know the vaccines are safe for this group.

Neither the AstraZeneca nor the Pfizer vaccines can cause an infection, so they won’t present a problem for people with immunodeficiencies (or for elderly people, who may also have weakened immune responses).

Usually, we avoid giving “live attenuated” vaccines (vaccines that contain weakened elements of the virus) to anyone with immunodeficiency. Because of their weakened immune systems and increased susceptibility to infection, there’s a chance they could develop a full-blown infection. An example of this is the chickenpox vaccine. But no live attenuated COVID vaccines have been approved anywhere in the world.

Preliminary evidence from vaccine rollouts around the world has shown COVID vaccines are safe for immunocompromised people with cancer. Although, if you’re going through cancer treatment, you should discuss the timing of your vaccination with your specialist.

There have been no unusual safety concerns to indicate any increased risk for HIV-positive people receiving any of the COVID vaccines either.

Get the jab

Vaccination is most definitely recommended for people with immunodeficiencies, and they’re included in priority groups for vaccine rollout in Australia. Group 1b includes people with underlying medical conditions which may place them at higher risk from COVID-19, including “immunocompromising conditions”.

If you have a diagnosed immunodeficiency or autoimmune disease, you can talk to your doctor or specialist for specific advice on the timing of your COVID vaccination and your condition. There’s generally no reason to change your normal medications or therapies before receiving the vaccine.

Organisations including the Australian Society of Clinical Immunology and Allergy and the Immune Deficiency Foundation of Australia have published resources which offer guidance for people with immunodeficiencies in relation to COVID vaccination.

Read more: The second phase of Australia’s COVID vaccine rollout is underway, despite a rocky start. Here’s what you need to know

– ref. We don’t yet know how effective COVID vaccines are for people with immune deficiencies. But we know they’re safe — and worthwhile – https://theconversation.com/we-dont-yet-know-how-effective-covid-vaccines-are-for-people-with-immune-deficiencies-but-we-know-theyre-safe-and-worthwhile-155741

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lynlea Small, Casual Academic, School of Business and Creative Industries, University of the Sunshine Coast

A series of government policy reforms over recent decades aimed to increase the proportion of Australian workers with university degrees. They got that result, but what they did not expect to see was that almost one in four unemployed people would have a degree (although employees with a degree appear to have fared better during the COVID-related job losses). And more than one in four graduates can expect to be either unemployed or underemployed four months after completing their undergraduate degree. So how did that happen?

More than 30 years ago the Australian government initiated a plan that would give more Australians access to university education. The government wanted equity objectives to become a priority of higher education management planning and review. The reforms paved the way for no upfront student fee payments and income-contingent loans.

The goal of expanding university places was that, in time, Australian universities would be diverse in a way that reflected the general population. Specific under-represented groups were targeted. They included women, students with a disability, Indigenous students, students from poorer families, students from non-English-speaking backgrounds, and students from regional and remote areas.

Read more: Universities have gone from being a place of privilege to a competitive market. What will they be after coronavirus?

The success stories

The reforms, have, in part, achieved the desired outcomes. Universities today do better reflect the general population. Australia has also greatly increased the number of people graduating with higher education qualifications, as the chart below shows.

Domestic female graduates, who were one of the target groups, now consistently outnumber domestic male graduates. Students with a disability, Indigenous students, students from low socioeconomic backgrounds and students from regional and remote areas have all had significant increases in enrolments.

Read more: A degree promises a better life but social mobility has a downside too

Another success story is the large increase in working Australians who hold a university degree. From 1993 to 2013 the proportion increased from 12.4% to 27.9%. It continues to increase to this day.

In May 2019, 12,921,100 people were employed in the Australian labour market. Of those, 4,317,500 (33.4%) held a university degree. In February 2020, 13,048,200 people were in work and 35.13% held a degree. By November 2020, the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic had reduced the labour force to 12,909,000. However, 4,763,400, or 36.89%, held a degree.

So while the total number of people in work was slightly lower in November 2020 than in May 2019, degree holders fared better during the pandemic. They continued to increase both in number of employees and as a proportion of the workforce.

Read more: University students aren’t cogs in a market. They need more than a narrow focus on ‘skills’

But graduate jobs are harder to find

However, the unintended and concerning statistics that resulted from policy reforms relate to the increases in unemployed people with a university degree.

For example, in May 2019 the number of unemployed was 694,900 but the number of unemployed with a university degree was 129,900, or 18.7%. In February 2020, just before the pandemic hit Australia, there were 761,100 unemployed. Of those 22.45% held a degree. By November 2020, the percentage of unemployed with a degree had risen to 23.29%, or almost one in four.

While the pandemic is largely responsible for the rise in unemployment, we also have a larger pool of eligible workers with university degrees. So it makes sense that, particularly in such challenging times, the number of unemployed with a university degree will increase.

Even so, prior to COVID-19, a large percentage of university graduates found it difficult to find full-time work. The 2019 Graduate Outcomes Survey-Longitudinal (GOS-L) showed many take time to find full-time graduate employment.

The GOS-L assessed the short-term (four months) and medium-term (three years) outcomes of graduates. It was based on a cohort analysis of graduates who responded to both the 2016 Australian Graduate Outcomes Survey and the 2019 GOS-L. Graduates included those who completed undergraduate, postgraduate coursework and postgraduate research degrees.

The table below shows the outcomes for these 42,466 graduates within four months of completing their degree in 2016 and again in 2019, three years after graduating.

Significantly, 27.4% of undergraduate graduates were unemployed or underemployed four months after completing their degree.

Read more: Universities don’t control the labour market: we shouldn’t fund them like they do

Previous research and current statistics both prove that a university qualification does not guarantee a job. The 2008 Bradley Review prediction that by 2010 the supply of individuals holding undergraduate qualifications would not meet the demand has not eventuated.

From a national point of view, the ethos is the more people who have a degree, the more highly skilled the workforce. In time the job market will get better, but it might be different for some.

In these testing times graduates need to be resilient, determined and adaptable. They will have to take advantage of any opportunities and professional networks that their universities and alumni provide.

– ref. 1 in 4 unemployed Australians has a degree. How did we get to this point? – https://theconversation.com/1-in-4-unemployed-australians-has-a-degree-how-did-we-get-to-this-point-156867

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Heather Shearer, Research Fellow, Cities Research Institute, Griffith University

Despite early forecasts of a COVID-driven slump, house prices are now surging in many parts of Australia. This is further widening the gap between the housing “haves” and “have-nots”, and we are seeing related rises in housing stress, rental insecurity and homelessness. In Australia and elsewhere a movement has emerged that supports tiny house living as an important response to the housing affordability crisis.

One of us argued in 2017:

“[Tiny houses] have significant potential to be a catalyst for infill development, either as tiny house villages, or by relaxing planning schemes to allow owners and tenants to situate well-designed tiny houses on suburban lots.”

Yet, to date, research begun in 2014 shows no appreciable increase in Australia in the proportion of people actually living in tiny houses, including the archetypal tiny houses on wheels.

Read more: So, you want to live tiny? Here’s what to consider when choosing a house, van or caravan

That’s despite the tiny house movement continuing to gain in popularity over the past decade, buoyed by Facebook, YouTube and Instagram. Google Trends indicates the level of interest shows no sign of abating. A Tiny Homes Carnival in Sydney in March 2020 attracted more than 8,000 people to see tiny houses for sale and listen to tiny house celebrities such as Bryce Langdon of Living Big in a Tiny House and Zack Griffin and John Weisbath of Tiny House Nation.

But that popularity isn’t translating into more people living in tiny houses. Data from four surveys of the tiny house community (the latest in February 2021) show the proportion of respondents living in tiny houses remains under 20% (fewer than 200 people). It hasn’t grown in the past seven years.

The surveys were posted as links to tiny house social media sites, so of course the findings cannot be extrapolated to the whole community. Nonetheless, most tiny house advocates in Australia belong to these groups.

What’s stopping people moving into tiny houses?

Some in the movement argue this is due to obstacles such as restrictive planning policies and difficulties in getting finance and secure access to land. In response, some local governments – Cairns and Byron Bay, for example – have published helpful fact sheets and guides.

However, in a recently published research paper in Housing Studies, we argue even if these obstacles were removed, we might not see a big increase in tiny house living, especially in tiny houses on wheels. We reached this conclusion based on what people who are part of the movement, including our survey respondents, said about their motivations and aspirations.

They had three main motivations:

1. having access to affordable housing

2. achieving a degree of economic freedom

3. living in a more environmentally sustainable way.

In reality, professionally built (off-the-shelf) tiny houses on wheels can cost three times more per square metre than standard houses. The most popular size for a tiny house on wheels is 7.2-by-2.4 metres, which is around 27 square metres (including loft space). That can cost upwards of A$80,000.

Of course many build their tiny houses fully or partly themselves, which can greatly reduce costs.

Read more: Life in a tiny house: what’s it like and how can it be made better?

It’s more about people’s values

We suggest that for many (but certainly not all) members of the movement, their strongest commitment is to their principles and aspirations, rather than to a particular type of dwelling. Some research indicates that tiny house dwellers live a more sustainable lifestyle even after moving to another type of dwelling.

One of the important benefits of tiny house living was the opportunity to be part of a rather ill-defined “community”. The most recent survey unpacked this concept of community. For over 90% of respondents this meant living in a defined area with other tiny house dwellers.

As one respondent said, their ideal was “to share land with a group of tinies, without caravan park zoning”. We found more generally this meant a place with shared access to facilities such as vegetable gardens, workshops, tool sheds and community areas.

So, this research casts doubt on claims that tiny houses represent a major solution to the housing affordability crisis, held back mainly by cumbersome local council regulations and a lack of tailored finance.

Read more: Interest in tiny houses is growing, so who wants them and why?

Reforms would still be welcome

This is not to say better regulation and finance would not be welcome.

Reforms could include amendments to the National Construction Code. These include ensuring tiny houses are structurally sound, energy-efficient and achieve a minimum bushfire attack level rating.

Local councils could also look more favourably on tiny houses on wheels. This would be subject to certain conditions, including the control of environmental waste and the creation of an appropriate local rates category.

Given the interest in community living, councils could also consider relaxing restrictions on multiple dwellings on larger properties. This would enable a degree of communal living, perhaps in peri-urban areas.

These changes would help many aspiring tiny house dwellers achieve their dream.

Read more: How Chinese courtyard housing can help older Australian women avoid homelessness

Highlighting questions of housing choice

Perhaps the most significant contribution the tiny house movement has made so far has been in opening up an important debate about housing choice. It has raised important questions, including:

• Are smaller but well-designed homes better than big and poorly designed ones?

• How can we support the market in providing much more diverse housing (in terms of size, tenure, price and so on)?

• Should we become more tolerant of well-designed and innovative infill developments to rectify the “missing middle” – the lack of low-rise, medium-density housing options such as townhouses and duplexes – in our cities?

• Can tiny houses help meet the housing needs of particular groups such as single older people who would like to live near each other but not necessarily under the same roof?

Read more: People want and need more housing choice. It’s about time governments stood up to deliver it

In encouraging this debate, the tiny house movement’s greatest contribution might be to remind us of economist E.F. Schumacher’s famous principle that small is beautiful and more sustainable.

– ref. Loving the idea of tiny house living, even if you don’t live in one – https://theconversation.com/loving-the-idea-of-tiny-house-living-even-if-you-dont-live-in-one-157052

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tom Crowley, Associate, Grattan Institute

Single parents with dependent children — eight out of ten of them women — were far more likely than others to lose work at the height of the pandemic and are far more likely to still be out of work now.

Even before COVID, many were in financial distress.

Single parents’ paid hours fell more than 30% in the depths of the crisis in April.

By December, even though there were no significant restrictions in place anywhere in Australia, paid hours for single parents remained 10% lower than they had been a year earlier.

This was at a time when the hours worked by couple parents had recovered quickly, and was higher than a year earlier.

Employment for single parents fell more than 10% between December 2019 and September 2020, and is still 5% lower than in December 2019.

About 50,000 single parents dropped out of the workforce altogether during the first lockdown – 11% of all single parents.

Why was the COVID recession so bad for single parents?

Many single parents had no choice but to stop working

One reason would be that the loss of formal and informal childcare and the need to manage remote learning meant many single parents had little choice but to stop working.

Also, single parents would be over-represented in the job-loss figures because they are over-represented in insecure work.

In August 2019, a quarter of single parents held casual jobs without paid leave. These jobs – many of them in COVID-vulnerable sectors such as retail and hospitality – were among the first to be lost during the lockdowns.

Many more were in casual jobs, ineligible for JobKeeper

Importantly, more than half of single parents in casual jobs had been in those particular jobs for less than a year, meaning the rules made them ineligible for JobKeeper support.

In a survey by the Melbourne Institute, only 13% of single mothers reported that they were receiving JobKeeper in late 2020, compared to 18% of mothers in couples and 33% of fathers in couples.

The outsized impact of the COVID recession on single parents is even more of a concern when we consider that they were among the most disadvantaged Australians before COVID.

Many had already been stripped of payments

In 2018, a third of single-parent families were living in poverty (compared to less than 10% of couples with dependent children). One fifth of single parents reported that they regularly skipped buying essential items.

And incomes for single parents were falling even before the crisis: between 2016 and 2018, when the national median annual income increased from $48,360 to $49,805, the median for single parents fell from $38,000 to $34,000.

Decisions by successive governments have contributed to this outcome.

Read more: The bad bits of ParentsNext just came back

From 2006, the Howard government’s Welfare to Work program pushed new single parents claiming income support onto the Newstart unemployment benefit – $87 per week less than the Single Parenting Payment – if their youngest was eight or older.

The decision pushed about 20,000 single parents on to a lower payment.

In 2013, the Gillard government pushed another 80,000 single parents onto Newstart by extending the policy to single parents who had been claiming parenting payments before 2006, almost doubling the proportion of single parents in poverty, lifting it to 59%.

After Welfare to Work came ParentsNext

Then in 2016, the Turnbull government launched ParentsNext, with the stated intention of helping single parents with children as young as six months to return to work.

It included so-called participation plans, under which parents could be stripped of payments unless they performed mandated activities – for example, taking their child to swimming lessons.

A Senate inquiry recommended it “not continue in its current form”. Instead the 2020 budget set aside $24.7 million to “streamline the successful ParentsNext program”.

Read more: COVID-19 is a disaster for mothers’ employment. And no, working from home is not the solution

The COVID crisis and a series of government decisions before that are condemning hundreds of thousands of Australian children to growing up in poverty, and exacerbates intergenerational disadvantage.

Here are three things governments could do to make a difference:

• Significantly increase in the permanent rate of JobSeeker. This would make a huge difference for unemployed single parents with children aged eight or older who thanks to earlier government decisions have to rely on JobSeeker while they make the transition to work. The Federal Government plans to increase the permanent rate of JobSeeker by $25 a week.

• Make childcare cheaper. This would help single parents get back into paid work sooner and expand opportunities for early education for their children. Cost is the major barrier for families wanting childcare. The Grattan Institute has identified a series of options to improve affordability.

• Classify single parents in the workforce as “essential workers” for the purposes of any future lockdowns. This would mean their children could continue going to school and childcare.

These changes would help single parents raising the adults of the future, who are at risk of slipping further behind.

– ref. Already badly off, single parents went dramatically backwards during COVID. They are raising our future adults – https://theconversation.com/already-badly-off-single-parents-went-dramatically-backwards-during-covid-they-are-raising-our-future-adults-157767

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gregory Moore, Doctor of Botany, The University of Melbourne

It’s official: Australians endured the coldest, wettest summer in at least five years thanks to La Niña, a climate phenomenon over the Pacific Ocean.

Before we knew it, autumn rolled in bringing more rain. Tragically, it led to widespread flooding across New South Wales, but elsewhere it helped to create more puddles. In our urban environments puddles are inconvenient: they can damage property and block our paths. But from a biological perspective, puddles are very important components of microhabitats and biodiversity.

We know for many animals — including birds and pets — puddles are a ready source of drinking water and provide a much-needed bath after a hot and dusty day. They’re also well known for providing water-reliant species such as mosquitoes with opportunities for breeding, and many of us may remember watching tadpoles developing in puddles as children.

But puddles make more nuanced and subtle contributions to the natural world than you may have realised. So with more rain soon to arrive, let’s explore why they’re so valuable.

Take a closer look

Puddles are a diverse lot. They can be small or large, shallow or deep, long lasting or gone in a matter of hours. If you look closely at a puddle you will often find it is not even, especially on a slope.

Puddles consist of small, naturally formed ridges (berms) and depressions (swales). The berms form from silt and organic matter like leaf litter, which act as mini dams holding back the water in the swales behind them.

Berms and swales can be hard to see, but if you look closely they’re everywhere and contribute to the retention of water, affecting the depth, spread and the very existence of the puddle.

All of this means they meet the needs of different species.

On rainy days you may have seen birds such as magpies feeding on worms that wriggle to the surface. Worm burrows can be two to three metres deep and many species might come to the surface to feed on leaf litter.

Worms emerge during and after heavy rain when water floods their burrows and soil becomes saturated. The worms won’t drown but they do need oxygen, which is low in very wet soils.

Often in drier weather, getting a worm is not as easy as you might think — not even for the legendary early bird. So when heavy rain drives worms to the surface, it’s party time for birds that feed on them, and they make the most of the opportunity.

Swales in puddles often persist for days, which allows water-dependent insects to breed. Mosquito larvae, for instance, live in water for between four and 14 days, depending on temperature (so if you’re worried about mozzies, then remember puddles have to persist for days before the pesky pests emerge).

Tadpoles take between four and 12 weeks to develop into frogs, and requires a deeper, long-lasting puddle. But these puddles are becoming rarer in urban areas, and so it’s not often you see tadpoles or frogs in our suburbs.

Why seeds love them

Puddles also provide small, but important, reservoirs where seeds of many plant species germinate. In some cases, the seeds have chemical inhibitors in them, which prevent the seeds from germinating until after a period of heavy rainfall.

Then, the inhibitors are leeched from or diluted within the seeds, allowing them to germinate. Many desert species have this adaptation, including Australian eremophilas (emu bush).

Read more: La Niña will give us a wet summer. That’s great weather for mozzies

In other cases, plants that grow all year round (annoyingly, weeds among them) need the dose of water puddles provide to kick start their very rapid growth and reproduction.

Easily germinated plants (such as tomatoes and cabbages) and ornamental flowering plants (such as hollyhocks and delphiniums) often require just a little extra water to trigger the whole germination process.

Important growing opportunities for iconic trees

Puddles also provide more subtle opportunities for wildlife. Take Australia’s iconic river red gums (Eucalyptus camaldulensis) as an example. River red gums are water-loving trees that can withstand up to nine months of inundation without getting stressed.

What’s not so well known, however, is river red gums produce chemicals that rain washes from their leaves, accumulating beneath the tree. These chemicals can inhibit the growth of plants, such as weeds, under the canopies.

This effect — where chemicals produced by one plant have an effect on other plants — is called “allelopathy”. Many wattle species produce allelopathic chemicals and so do some important food plants, such as walnuts, rice and the common pea.

River red gum allelopathic chemicals can prevent the trees’ own seedlings from growing near them. So river red gums require floods to wash the chemicals from the soil away. This mechanism allows river red gums to germinate and regenerate when the soil is wet, and in places away from the competition of mature trees.

Read more: The river red gum is an icon of the driest continent

Puddles can do the same thing, on a small scale, ensuring trees have plenty of opportunities to persist in the wild. This pattern of regeneration is important to provide a mosaic of species and trees of different ages, making up a diverse range of habitats for other wildlife.

Puddles are no piddling problem

As property developers iron the creases from our created landscapes with much less open space and more paved surfaces, puddles are becoming harder to find close to home.

Taking away puddles removes a whole range of microhabitats, jeopardising the chances of a diverse range of species to breed and persist, especially in urban areas. These days, any loss of biodiversity is worrying.

So when you’re next out and about after or during heavy rain, keep an eye out for puddles.

Remember the life that depends on them and, if you can, try not to disturb them. Perhaps capture the joy of jumping over — rather than in — them. They are not just a nuisance, but a key to a nuanced and biodiverse local community.

– ref. The secret life of puddles: their value to nature is subtle, but hugely important – https://theconversation.com/the-secret-life-of-puddles-their-value-to-nature-is-subtle-but-hugely-important-154561

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Susan Broomhall, Director, Gender and Women’s History Research Centre, Australian Catholic University

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

In 1538, a new author burst on to the literary scene in Paris. Published by Denys Janot, four new works appeared within five years by a writer known as Hélisenne de Crenne.

The first was Les Angoysses douloureuses qui procedent d’amours (The Torments of Love), a novel that depicted the disastrous consequences of an adulterous affair.

In 1539 came a collection of letters that explored women’s speech, education, friendship and legal rights among its topics.

In 1540 she published Le Songe (The Dream), a moral and didactic work in which a woman and her lover reflected upon the perils of lust.

Her last known work was a translation into French prose of the first four books of Virgil’s Aeneid (1541), dedicated to the king, Francis I.

Read more: Guide to the Classics: Virgil’s Aeneid

Hélisenne de Crenne was the pen name of Marguerite Briet, the daughter of a legal family from Abbeville. Few details of her life are certain, but we know that she obtained a legal separation from her husband, Philippe Fournel, Lord of Crenne, and moved to Paris, the centre of French literary activities and publishing. There she owned several properties. It appears that her son, Pierre, was a student there in 1548.

Hélisenne was the first living woman of the century to be printed in France and hers was the first autobiographical novel to be published in French. The publication of her works was remarkable in several ways.

Read more: Fornication, fluids and faeces: the intimate life of the French court

Speaking out

Women represented less than 1% of all identifiable published authors in 16th-century France. Female literacy and broader education was not as high as for men at the same social levels.

Women at court were producing sophisticated intellectual and creative works that circulated in manuscript. Print publication provided a more open and visible expression than manuscript circulation, but was limited to a more select few. Even women in powerful social positions acknowledged expectations that women should restrict their speech to the domestic sphere.

Most women writers provided lengthy justifications or apologies for their venture into print. Hélisenne claimed to hesitate to make “mention of immodest love, which according to the opinion of some shy women could be judged more worthy to be conserved in profound silence than to be published for a widespread audience”. Nevertheless, she pressed on.

Rather than locate herself in a line of female authors, Hélisenne identified herself in a tradition of the male canon for her authority to write. The opening phrase of her Le Songe recalled none other than Cicero as her model:

…in imitation of him, the desire arose in me to relate in detail to you a dream worthy of recording.

Read more: Hidden women of history: Enheduanna, princess, priestess and the world’s first known author

Small books to carry

Print publication offered a woman without elite networks access to a large pool of readers, and perhaps a way to reach potential patrons at court.

The dedication of her translation to Francis I and her praise of his sister, Marguerite de Navarre (another prolific author whose works appears in print over the course of the century), in her Letters suggests that Hélisenne may have hoped for their patronage.

The staggered release of her writings seems to have been planned to heighten their impact. Her publisher, Denys Janot, mainly published works in French, targetting a popular market and using on-trend Roman typeface rather than the heavy, old-fashioned Gothic script.

Most of Hélisenne’s works, like those of other female writers, were in small sizes such as octavo, duodecimo and sextodecimo. These were portable and cheap, unlike the larger-sized folio and quarto scholarly and religious works intended to be consulted in libraries as part of a long-lasting record, though her translation of Virgil’s Aeneid was produced as a folio, with extensive woodcut illustrations.

A female perspective

Hélisenne was one of the first women writers who sought publication of her work seemingly as a conscious contribution to contemporary popular literature.

Her novel, The Torments of Love, involves an unusual structure, retelling the same events from the perspective of three different narrators: Hélisenne, her lover Guénélic, and Guénélic’s best friend, Quézinstra. Each section offers new insights to the overarching narrative, and each has its own distinctive tone and style.

The work’s balancing of elements from chivalric literature and a new emotional sensibility culminates in its conclusion as a battle between Athena and Venus over the book itself.

Her translation of Aeneid was equally radical, creatively embellishing the original from a female perspective with a highly sympathetic presentation of Dido’s plight and women’s loyalty in love.

She was very proud of her publication in the city that was the intellectual and publishing centre of France, saying:

… it is an inestimable pleasure to me to think that my books are on sale in this noble Parisian city, which is inhabited by an innumerable multitude of wonderfully learned people.

Read more: Hidden women of history: Catherine Hay Thomson, the Australian undercover journalist who went inside asylums and hospitals

A commercial success

Hélisenne’s work were a commercial success, going through nine editions in a short, intense period to 1560.

Torments of Love is Hélisenne’s only work to be dedicated to female readers who she called “all honest ladies”. Elsewhere, she assumed her works would be of interest to everyone, including the king.

A later editor did not agree. Claude Colet explained in the introduction to the 1550 edition of her works that his extensive simplification of her Latinate style for young ladies was “to render the obscure words or those too much like Latin into our own familiar language, so that they will be more intelligible to you”.

The last known evidence of this groundbreaking author is in 1552 but, in her lifetime, she had achieved a remarkable series of literary firsts.

– ref. Hidden women of history: Hélisenne de Crenne, the first French novelist to tell her own story – https://theconversation.com/hidden-women-of-history-helisenne-de-crenne-the-first-french-novelist-to-tell-her-own-story-108249

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Cheryl Desha, Associate Professor, School of Engineering and Built Environment, and Director, Engagement (Industry), Griffith University

Pretty soon, many more Australians are going to be composting their food waste. The Victorian government kicks off its four-bin system from this year, and the federal government is considering a plan to turn kitchen scraps into fertiliser for farmers.

But knowing exactly what to put in your compost bin can be tricky – and views differ on whether you should add items such as meat and citrus.

Composting is fairly simple, but it’s important to get it right. Otherwise, your compost mix may be too slimy or smelly, or attract vermin.

We are experts in food resilience and sustainability, and have prepared this “dos and don’ts” guide to get you on your way.

Your own composting system

Composting is a way of doing what happens in nature, where raw organic materials are converted to soft and spongy soil-like grains. These help soil retain water and make nutrients available to plants.

In fact, compost is so valuable for your garden, it’s often referred to as “black gold”.

For those of you composting at home, here’s how to make sure the system delivers what you need for your home gardening projects.

Dos:

• use a couple of bottomless bins so when one is full you can start on the other, in a shady spot

• have a good mix of “browns” (two parts) and “greens” (one part). Combine brown materials (hay, straw, sawdust, woodchips, leaves, weeds that have not gone to seed) with food scraps and other materials (fruit and vegetable peels and rinds, tea bags, coffee grounds, eggshells), and some types of animal manure (chicken, cow, horse)

• let the temperature climb. Heat in the centre of your compost pile is a good sign, as the microbes are breaking down what you’ve put in. As the compost matures it cools, creating a great environment for worms and other microbes to finish off the process

• make sure your coffee grounds and tea bags can break down, so remove the bag before you add it to the compost pile. Moist tea leaves can help your pile break down faster. Citrus fruit (lemons, oranges), spicy peppers, onion and garlic are fine, just don’t add them to your worm farm; the worms will suffer under the acidic conditions produced when these items break down

• get creative with natural “brown” materials – as long as there is no plastic mixed in, throw it in. This includes anything from cereal boxes to cotton balls, wine corks, fireplace ashes, and even human hair and pet fur.

Read more: We’ve had a taste of disrupted food supplies – here are 5 ways we can avoid a repeat

Don’ts:

• don’t let your compost bin be a feast for local rodents such as rats. Bury the base slightly into the ground, lining the bin with wire mesh and keeping it covered. Avoid adding meat scraps, cooking fats and oils, milk products and bones, which will attract vermin

• don’t let your compost get stinky or slimy – that means it’s too wet. Slimy compost means you need to add more “brown” materials. You can also speed things along by having a dig through the heap every week or so, or adding extra bits and pieces at various stages (chook poo, crushed rock and lime) to help it all happen faster

• don’t let nasty chemicals and germs get into your compost. This includes things like treated wood waste, pet waste (if they take medication or eat meat) and sick plants. Home compost bins are limited in what they can process. It is a good idea to wear gloves as an extra safety measure.

Council compost collection

Local councils are increasingly offering food waste collection programs, sometimes along with garden green waste. In such cases, these materials are processed at large scale composting sites

In Victoria, a four-bin waste and recycling system will be rolled out in partnership with councils. Most households will be using this system by 2030.

Gold Coast City Council City recently diverted 553 tonnes of food waste from landfill during a one-year trial. The program helps address home composting space challenges for the region’s many apartment and high-rise dwellers.

If your council offers food waste collection, make sure you follow their particular “dos and don’ts” advice. Depending where you live, it may differ slightly to ours.

Read more: Fertile ground: what you need to know about soil to keep your garden healthy

To bag, or not to bag?

Working out how to bag up your food scraps – whether for your home bin or council collection – can be confusing. Check your local instructions for kerbside collection to make sure your food waste is bagged in the right way.

You can try putting “home compostable” bags in your own compost bin, experimenting with your bin temperature to achieve the best outcome. Compostable plastic“ is designed to break down back into nutrients, but most still need managed, high-heat conditions to activate this process.

Don’t be tricked by “degradable” bags – these are likely to be made of plastic and just break into millions of tiny pieces. Also, as others have written, some “biodegradable” plastics made of plant-based materials might not be better for the environment, and they can take just as long to degrade as traditional plastics.

The benefits of composting

Making compost at home doesn’t just lighten our rubbish bin and help our gardens. It also helps tackle climate change.

Each year in Australia, food waste rotting in landfill creates methane equivalent to around 6.8 million tonnes of carbon dioxide. If global food waste were a country, it would be the third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world, behind the United States and China.

So clearly, there are many great reasons to compost. And by following a few simple rules, you too can create your own “black gold”.

– ref. What can go in the compost bin? Tips to help your garden and keep away the pests – https://theconversation.com/what-can-go-in-the-compost-bin-tips-to-help-your-garden-and-keep-away-the-pests-156342

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

Scott Morrison’s approval has taken a sizeable hit in a Newspoll showing Labor maintaining its 52-48% two-party lead.

As Morrison prepares to unveil his cabinet reshuffle the poll, published in Monday’s Australian, found his satisfaction rating fell from 62% to 55% in two weeks.

The fortnight was dominated by shocking revelations of lewd behaviour among staffers on the Coalition side, a botched attempted “reset” on gender issues when Morrison lashed out at a news conference, and a scandal around a Liberal backbencher.

In the poll, taken March 24-27, Morrison’s dissatisfaction rating jumped from 34% to 40%.

The “better PM” gap also narrowed – Morrison now leads Anthony Albanese 52% (down 4 points) to 32% (up 2 points). This the narrowest margin since March last year. In February Morrison had a 35-point margin.

The Coalition’s primary vote rose a point to 40% while Labor’s fell a point to 38%.

The Australian reports that it is the first time in more than a year that Morrison’s approval ratings haven’t been in the 60s. His net satisfaction is plus 15.

Albanese’s satisfaction increased one point. He has a net satisfaction of plus 2.

The reshuffle is set to move Christian Porter out of the attorney-general’s portfolio and Linda Reynolds out of defence, but keep both in cabinet.

The government is now confronting a major row over Queensland Liberal MP Andrew Laming who trolled two local women on Facebook and took an inappropriate photo of another woman.

Laming announced at the weekend he would not seek to run at the next election but he remains in the Liberal National Party. He is now on leave but has indicated he aims to be back for the budget session, after he has had counselling on “empathy and appropriate communications”.

Albanese said Laming was not a fit and proper person to be in parliament and should go. He said there were various measures available to the Labor Party to take against him when parliament resumed.

Morrison will be anxious to see a woman preselected for Laming’s seat of Bowman.

As the government’s crisis continues Liberal women are increasingly speaking out, with Victorian federal backbenchers Sarah Henderson and Katie Allen suggesting on the ABC’s Insiders that parliamentarians should be subject to drug and alcohol testing.

– ref. Morrison takes big personal hit in Newspoll after missteps on women’s issue – https://theconversation.com/morrison-takes-big-personal-hit-in-newspoll-after-missteps-on-womens-issue-158033

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rodney Tiffen, Emeritus Professor, Department of Government and International Relations, University of Sydney

Review: Stop Girl, directed by Anne-Louise Sarks, Belvoir.

Stop Girl is a loosely autobiographical play by ABC journalist Sally Sara exploring her emotional traumas seeking to readjust to life in Sydney after years reporting from war-torn Afghanistan.

The play begins in Kabul with Suzie (Sheridan Harbridge) highly competent and confident, knowing how to operate in that dangerous and chaotic city, a productive and skillful reporter.

Her motto is “don’t connect”: to treat life there as a story, to practise professional detachment rather than get personally involved in the country’s human suffering.

The play then switches to her psychological unravelling in Sydney, haunted by memories, unable to relax or enjoy life. Having covered a bombing in a supermarket in Kabul, she feels unable to enter her local Woolworths. She copes less and less well, descending into a deep and potentially suicidal depression, failing to cope at work, and feeling alienated from the people around her.

While her key to functioning in Afghanistan was “don’t connect”, her inability to connect in Sydney is central to her suffering. Her “solution” is to seek escape, unsuccessfully applying for a posting to Paris, and, more desperately, planning to return to Kabul as a freelance.

Her childhood friend and loyal supporter Bec (Amber McMahon) has taken a different route. She also works with the ABC but is not consumed by her work, enjoys married life and is deeply involved with her three children. A tragedy for Bec was the stillbirth of her son, which occurred while Suzie was busily reporting from the Congo.

Suzie’s cameraman in Afghanistan, Atal (Mansoor Noor), came to Australia after receiving threats because of his work with the ABC, and is now applying for asylum.

Growing up in a country at war, he is rejoicing in the affluence, freedom and safety of Sydney, enjoying it all — except the Potts Point dogs. His optimism is a counterpoint to Suzie’s pessimism, and as such he has some of the strongest lines in the play.

Both Bec and Atal provide a contrast with Suzie with their strong anchoring in family and other immediate relationships.

The third character is Suzie’s widowed mother, Marg (Toni Scanlan), loving and well-meaning but in the early parts of the play having very limited insight into Suzie’s aspirations and torments. Later, the reconnection between the two of them helps Suzie’s recovery, to help her realise that whatever her achievements abroad they cannot be an escape from the challenges of living at home.

The trauma of reporting on trauma

It was brave of Sara to write such a revealing play. Taken simply, it offers a very good night in the theatre – well-crafted, always moving forward, skillfully staged, its serious themes leavened by many funny moments.

Its larger value lies in opening up the issue of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

It was only in 1980 the American psychiatric bible, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, first included the term. Before then, there were terms like “shell shock” and “battle fatigue”, which not only underestimated its duration and severity but also betrayed a lingering prejudice that all that was required was an act of will to overcome it.

PTSD has been frequently diagnosed among returned combatants after the Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan wars. One can only imagine the countless numbers of servicemen returning from World Wars I and II who spent years suffering from undiagnosed depression.

Read more: Vietnam and Iraq: lessons to be learned about mental health and war

Moreover, it is not only direct participants who are affected, and not only military conflict, but also other disasters and crimes that may precipitate it.

Within journalism, there has been increasing recognition of the emotional toll reporting on traumatic events may have. The Dart Center, dating back to the 1990s, is devoted both to helping journalists report trauma more sensitively, and to lend support to journalists reporting such events.

Crafting a new image

Among the many recurring traumas Suzie brought home with her, the one which haunts her the most was from a hospital in Kandahar, filming a boy called Abdul in agony, critically injured by a landmine. When she returned the next day, he was still alive, but soon after she left, he suffered a massive brain haemorrhage and died.

She feels she deserted him, and failed to keep a central tenet of war reporting: honour the dead.

The emotional impact of powerlessness – an inability to affect a great injustice or alleviate suffering before one’s eyes – is the special trauma of the observer, of the journalist. An old stereotype was of the macho foreign correspondent, of an Ernest Hemingway figure who treated other people’s suffering as grist for their mill, and went on, emotionally unscathed, from one escapade to the next.

Sara’s play is a strong and eloquent antidote to this outdated image.

Stop Girl plays at Belvoir, Sydney, until April 25.

– ref. Sally Sara’s first play, Stop Girl, is a bold exploration of war trauma and journalism – https://theconversation.com/sally-saras-first-play-stop-girl-is-a-bold-exploration-of-war-trauma-and-journalism-156841

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Bell, Professor of Ports and Maritime Logistics, University of Sydney

In the early hours of March 23, the container ship Ever Given was blown off course by high winds on its way through the Suez Canal. At 400 metres long, the Ever Given is longer than the canal is wide, and the ship became wedged firmly in both banks, completely blocking traffic.

Dredgers, excavators and tug boats are working frantically to free the ship, but the operation may take weeks, according to the head of one of the rescue teams. About 10% of the world’s maritime trade passes through the canal, which allows ships to shorten the trip between Europe or the American east coast and Asia by thousands of kilometres, saving a week or more of travel time.

Around 50 ships a day pass through the canal under normal circumstances, split almost equally between dry bulk carriers, container carriers (like the Ever Given) and tankers. As the blockage continues, some shipping lines are considering diverting ships around Africa rather than wait for it to clear.

Coming on top of the COVID-19 pandemic, this event has highlighted the fragility of global supply chains – and is likely to accelerate changes in the world economy that were already under way.

Good news for oil tankers

The blockage is disrupting important energy trades, but probably not dramatically as there are alternative routes and sources should the blockage last a long time.

About 600,000 barrels of crude oil are shipped from the Middle East to Europe and the United States via the Suez Canal every day, while about 850,000 barrels a day are shipped from the Atlantic Basin to Asia also via the Suez Canal. While the SUMED pipeline, which runs parallel to the Suez Canal, will enable some crude to continue to flow between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, European and North American refiners will want to replace Middle East oil with oil from sources that don’t usually pass through the canal. Similarly, Asian refiners will want to replace North Sea crude oil.

Interest is growing in shipping crude oil around the Cape of Good Hope, which adds seven to ten days to the shipping time from the Middle East to Europe and North America, increasing the demand for ultra large crude carriers.

While the rerouting of crude oil is unlikely to have much effect on oil prices generally, as inventory levels are currently high, this comes at an opportune moment for crude oil tanker owners, as the charter rates for such ships have been rock bottom due to the depressed global demand for oil and the aftereffects of pandemic lockdowns. Owners of tankers carrying refined oil or LNG can expect a similar increase in demand for their ships and therefore charter rates.

A reminder of supply chain fragility

For commodities such as oil, LNG, coal and iron ore, there is a world demand and a world supply which must balance. However, one source can often be substituted by another. This means the blockage of the Suez Canal will affect the spot price of commodities locally and the charter rates for the ships that carry them, but the trade will continue.

It’s a different story for products carried by container ships like the Ever Given. These products tend to be highly differentiated and more difficult to substitute. The blockage of the Suez Canal will undoubtedly cause shortages of specific products around the world, either because they don’t arrive at their destinations on time or because manufacturers run short of key inputs or components.

Shortages will remind manufacturers of the fragility of global supply chains, and they may look at how to reduce their dependency on specific sources, particularly those that are distant and rely on container shipping.

Global supply chains are already shrinking

Advances in technology associated with digitisation and automation are making manufacturers less dependent on large skilled workforces found only in certain parts of the world. Production is becoming more mobile and therefore able to locate closer to the markets served.

More mobile production, along with the continued miniaturisation of some products (for example, flat screen TVs becoming ever flatter) and the advancing digitisation of things like books and manuals, is gradually shrinking global supply chains and reducing freight-kilometres, measured in terms of value or volume. Major disruptions such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the blockage of the Suez Canal can only hasten this development.

Read more: Suez Canal container ship accident is a worst-case scenario for global trade

This trend predates the pandemic and the current blockage. It can be seen in a number called the world seaborne trade-to-GDP multiplier, which measures how much of the world’s economic activity depends on shipping.

After the global financial crisis of 2008-09, this number fell below 1% on average. This tells us that a 1% increase in world GDP now leads to a less than 1% increase in world seaborne trade.

Who will pay the price?

The cost of the disruption caused by the blockage of the Suez Canal will weigh heavily with the insurers of the Ever Given. The ship is owned by Japanese firm Shoei Kisen Kaisha and chartered to the Taiwanese line Evergreen. The hull and machinery are insured on the Japanese marine insurance market, but at the moment damage to the ship appears to be minimal.

The major costs are loss of earnings by the Suez Canal Authority while the canal is closed to traffic, and losses incurred by the owners of the cargo in the many ships held up by the blockage. Depending on how long the blockage lasts, these may lead to huge insurance claims. Third party claims are covered by the London P&I Club, which is reinsured by the International Group of P&I Clubs.

In the long term, however, the blockage may be a good thing. If it offers a further nudge to shorten supply chains, the benefits to the global economy and environment will surely outweigh the cost to the insurers.

Read more: What will freight and supply chains look like 20 years from now? Experts ponder the scenarios

– ref. After the Ever Given: what the ship wedged in the Suez Canal means for global trade – https://theconversation.com/after-the-ever-given-what-the-ship-wedged-in-the-suez-canal-means-for-global-trade-157865

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

Michelle Grattan discusses the week in politics with University of Canberra Assistant Professor Caroline Fisher.

This week the pair discuss the latest in a growing list of allegations concerning sexual misconduct in Parliament House, and Scott Morrison’s response – a mea culpa, the possibility of quotas for women in the Liberal party, and a botched press conference. Also discussed is the likelihood of a cabinet reshuffle in light of the separate crisis’ involving Christian Porter and Linda Reynolds.

– ref. VIDEO: Michelle Grattan on Scott Morrison’s response to the culture of Parliament House – https://theconversation.com/video-michelle-grattan-on-scott-morrisons-response-to-the-culture-of-parliament-house-157969

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Cheryl Desha, Associate Professor, School of Engineering and Built Environment, and Director, Engagement (Industry), Griffith University

Pretty soon, many more Australians are going to be composting their food waste. The Victorian government kicks off its four-bin system from this year, and the federal government is considering a plan to turn kitchen scraps into fertiliser for farmers.

But knowing exactly what to put in your compost bin can be tricky – and views differ on whether you should add items such as meat and citrus.

Composting is fairly simple, but it’s important to get it right. Otherwise, your compost mix may be too slimy or smelly, or attract vermin.

We are experts in food resilience and sustainability, and have prepared this “dos and don’ts” guide to get you on your way.

Your own composting system

Composting is a way of doing what happens in nature, where raw organic materials are converted to soft and spongy soil-like grains. These help soil retain water and make nutrients available to plants.

In fact, compost is so valuable for your garden, it’s often referred to as “black gold”.

For those of you composting at home, here’s how to make sure the system delivers what you need for your home gardening projects.

Dos:

• use a couple of bottomless bins so when one is full you can start on the other, in a shady spot

• have a good mix of “browns” (two parts) and “greens” (one part). Combine brown materials (hay, straw, sawdust, woodchips, leaves, weeds that have not gone to seed) with food scraps and other materials (fruit and vegetable peels and rinds, tea bags, coffee grounds, eggshells), and some types of animal manure (chicken, cow, horse)

• let the temperature climb. Heat in the centre of your compost pile is a good sign, as the microbes are breaking down what you’ve put in. As the compost matures it cools, creating a great environment for worms and other microbes to finish off the process

• make sure your coffee grounds and tea bags can break down, so remove the bag before you add it to the compost pile. Moist tea leaves can help your pile break down faster. Citrus fruit (lemons, oranges), spicy peppers, onion and garlic are fine, just don’t add them to your worm farm; the worms will suffer under the acidic conditions produced when these items break down

• get creative with natural “brown” materials – as long as there is no plastic mixed in, throw it in. This includes anything from cereal boxes to cotton balls, wine corks, fireplace ashes, and even human hair and pet fur.

Read more: We’ve had a taste of disrupted food supplies – here are 5 ways we can avoid a repeat

Don’ts:

• don’t let your compost bin be a feast for local rodents such as rats. Bury the base slightly into the ground, lining the bin with wire mesh and keeping it covered. Avoid adding meat scraps, cooking fats and oils, milk products and bones, which will attract vermin

• don’t let your compost get stinky or slimy – that means it’s too wet. Slimy compost means you need to add more “brown” materials. You can also speed things along by having a dig through the heap every week or so, or adding extra bits and pieces at various stages (chook poo, crushed rock and lime) to help it all happen faster

• don’t let nasty chemicals and germs get into your compost. This includes things like treated wood waste, pet waste (if they take medication or eat meat) and sick plants. Home compost bins are limited in what they can process. It is a good idea to wear gloves as an extra safety measure.

Council compost collection

Local councils are increasingly offering food waste collection programs, sometimes along with garden green waste. In such cases, these materials are processed at large scale composting sites

In Victoria, a four-bin waste and recycling system will be rolled out in partnership with councils. Most households will be using this system by 2030.

Gold Coast City Council City recently diverted 553 tonnes of food waste from landfill during a one-year trial. The program helps address home composting space challenges for the region’s many apartment and high-rise dwellers.

If your council offers food waste collection, make sure you follow their particular “dos and don’ts” advice. Depending where you live, it may differ slightly to ours.

Read more: Fertile ground: what you need to know about soil to keep your garden healthy

To bag, or not to bag?

Working out how to bag up your food scraps – whether for your home bin or council collection – can be confusing. Check your local instructions for kerbside collection to make sure your food waste is bagged in the right way.

You can try putting “home compostable” bags in your own compost bin, experimenting with your bin temperature to achieve the best outcome. Compostable plastic“ is designed to break down back into nutrients, but most still need managed, high-heat conditions to activate this process.

Don’t be tricked by “degradable” bags – these are likely to be made of plastic and just break into millions of tiny pieces. Also, as others have written, some “biodegradable” plastics made of plant-based materials might not be better for the environment, and they can take just as long to degrade as traditional plastics.

The benefits of composting

Making compost at home doesn’t just lighten our rubbish bin and help our gardens. It also helps tackle climate change.

Each year in Australia, food waste rotting in landfill creates methane equivalent to around 6.8 million tonnes of carbon dioxide. If global food waste were a country, it would be the third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world, behind the United States and China.

So clearly, there are many great reasons to compost. And by following a few simple rules, you too can create your own “black gold”.

– ref. What can go in the compost bin? Some tips to help your garden and keep away the pests – https://theconversation.com/what-can-go-in-the-compost-bin-some-tips-to-help-your-garden-and-keep-away-the-pests-156342

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Karen Becker, Professor of Management, University of the Sunshine Coast

Since the beginning of the Afghanistan War in 2001, 41 Australian military personnel have been killed in combat, while more than 600 veterans have killed themselves.

This week the House of Representatives affirmed a resolution from the Senate calling on the Morrison government to establish a royal commission into the suicide rate among both current and former military personnel.

Calling a royal commission would certainly signal this is an issue of national concern, but whether it can achieve what previous inquiries have not is a real question.

Veteran suicides (and associated mental health issues) have been investigated by the Australian Defence Force, Department of Defence and Department of Veteran Affairs, as well as a Senate select committee, the Productivity Commission and the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. Yet the suicide rate among veterans appears to be rising.

The complexity of the problem is hinted at by the big difference between rates for those serving and veterans. As the resolution passed by parliament notes, the rate among serving military is less than half that of the general population, while among veterans it is now nearly double.

There are obvious causes, such as the trauma of past battlefield experiences. But there are more nuanced drivers, to do with the very nature of military life, a culture developed over hundreds (indeed thousands) of years to create effective fighting forces, and the difficulties many experience in leaving this life.

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

Anxious, misunderstood, alone

The challenge of transitioning from military to civilian life is highlighted by our research involving interviews with 31 men and women who had recently left military service.

They came from all three services (navy, army, air force). Twenty-five were men, six women. Their ages ranged from 25 to 56, with their length of service ranging from five to 37 years (16 years was the average).

Mental health was not our focus. In fact, we chose subjects without significant physical or psychological impairment due to their service. But almost every one told us about the culture shock of leaving military life, finding a new job and working in the civilian world.

They spoke of feeling anxious and frustrated; of not understanding others’ motives and behaviours, and of feeling misunderstood; of struggling to translate their military service to civilian jobs; of being cut off from their previous support networks; and of feeling, at times, very alone.

If this is the experience even of healthy, well-adjusted veterans, it seems hardly surprising those with mental health issues could be pushed to breaking point.

It’s not just another job

For those not personally connected to the military or a veteran, it can be easy to underestimate just how different military life is, and much of a culture shock leaving that life can be. It’s not just like changing jobs.

Most join the military straight out of school. They enter a highly regimented world where almost every aspect of their life is tightly controlled. Their training is designed to encourage thinking and acting alike. It emphasises values such as loyalty, courage, commitment to the collective good, and discipline. Military effectiveness relies on these attributes.

As the suicide statistics suggest, those who make it through basic training can adapt well to the life. The challenge comes when it is time to leave this culture behind.

One of our subjects likened it to “peeling an onion”. It starts with losing the uniform and expectations of presentation. But it eventually requires changing some deeply held beliefs, values and behaviours that may not fit in civilian life. They work at a rapid pace, focus on a clear and shared mission, don’t stop till the job is done and always put the team first. These are not necessarily things they find in a civilian workplace.

Losing comrades

Making this change is more complex and stressful than most imagine. In the words of one veteran, who served in the navy for five years:

“I’ve had to learn how to wind back, because warship mentality does not work in a civilian workplace.”

Many mentioned a sense of a loss of identity – military work wasn’t what they did, it was who they were. As another who served in the navy for 26 years, explained:

“All your friends are in uniform […] Something’s lost. It’s like you’re not in the club.”

Even participants who found jobs in organisations with explicit programs to support veterans still reported feeling stress and unease as they adapted to civilian work.

Five veterans we spoke to mentioned, unprompted, that they knew veterans who had killed themselves and understood how those individuals had reached that point.

So if the struggle is real for those in our study who had made it into employment, imagine what it is like for those who struggle to find work or those have been diagnosed with a mental illness trying to cope with integration into a world that is foreign to them and who are unlikely to easily find a new path into employment.

We are not advocating for any particular mechanism to inquire into veteran suicide. But we are adamant there must be an increased focus on the struggle veterans face when transitioning to a civilian world.

– ref. For many military veterans, leaving the force is the biggest battle – https://theconversation.com/for-many-military-veterans-leaving-the-force-is-the-biggest-battle-157774

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rick Sarre, Emeritus Professor of Law and Criminal Justice, University of South Australia

Criminology is the study of individual and social factors associated with crime and the people who perpetrate it. One of the discipline’s well-established truths is that men commit violent and sexual offences at far higher rates than women.

Men are also the most likely victims of physical violence across the board, but women are far more likely than men to be victims of sexual, familial and domestic violence.

Rates of imprisonment give us tangible evidence of this gender imbalance.

Across Australia, only about 8% of prisoners are women. While prison population figures provide only a very rough guide to criminal behaviour, we can safely assert that men perpetrate the vast majority of criminal conduct, and certainly violent conduct.

What does the research tell us about the patterns behind this alarming fact?

In the early days of criminological enquiry, much attention was given to the Y chromosome – the determinant of male sex organs. This line of research, referred to broadly as biological positivism, gave rise to explanations that “men can’t help themselves”. Fortunately, these theorists hold very little sway in criminological circles today.

Read more: ‘Cultural misogyny’ and why men’s aggression to women is so often expressed through sex

More contemporary attention is given to factors associated with the societies in which we live.

Social learning theory posits that men are more likely than women to associate with antisocial peers.

Other scholars are interested in the way in which key life experiences influence the propensity to commit crime. Known as developmental and life course criminology, it suggests the causes of crime are a result of a linking of individual characteristics, such as impulsiveness, with a person’s environmental factors such as their family, schooling, religion, neighbourhood and the way they were parented, including any exposure to neglect and maltreatment. Renowned criminologist David Farrington has suggested these factors play out differently for males and females.

Into the sociological frame, too, comes strain theory, which proposes that difficult circumstances or life stresses can produce anger and frustration that may lead to violence. The gender divide is explained by the evidence that men are likely to react violently to such strains. Women, according to this theory, are more likely to internalise their responses.

Edgework theory pursues the idea that men are more likely than women to engage in risk-taking behaviour, even to the edge of acceptable conduct. Men in the criminal justice system are best described, on this view, as “risky thrill-seekers” while women caught up in the same system are more likely to be described as “at risk”.

The science of psychology, too, plays an important role here. Psychological studies suggest gender role identification − internalised characteristics culturally regarded as appropriate behaviour for men and women − rather than gender itself is crucial to the experience of anger, its expression and control.

How are these gender divides created and shaped? Criminologists such as Ngaire Naffine have offered the view that there has always been an entrenched belief in the “natural” order of things, which associates masculinity with dominance and status. In this view, individuals construct their beliefs according to their class, ethnicity and sexuality, but the result is always a reinforcement of dominant patterns of masculinity. One can observe these patterns in competition for status, bravado among peers, the drive for power and control, shamelessness, and a lack of concern for others.

Women, by contrast, are less likely to display these traits because society (including the criminal justice system) has positioned them as needing greater protection, with consequent patronising benevolence.

In summary, men disproportionately exhibit far more anti-social behaviour than women. When it comes to sexual crimes, men are far more likely to commit them, and women are far more likely to be the victims. The easy cultural dismissal that “boys will be boys” simply doesn’t stand up to scrutiny and is actively doing damage.

So how best can we respond to the problem of violence perpetrated by men?

Law reform is necessary to ensure the practice of law is in line with prevailing social norms and priorities. This has certainly not always been the case. For example, until the 1970s there was no such thing, legally, as rape in marriage. Even in the first iteration of reform to the law, a prosecution could only proceed if there was evidence of actual bodily harm to the victim.

Read more: Where do we go from here with the allegations about Christian Porter?

There have been other pleasing law reforms too. Today, in many jurisdictions, police provide victim assistance services, prosecution counsel are trained in handling traumatised clients, limits have been placed on cross-examination practices, and directions to juries do not carry the same cautions regarding corroborative evidence that were standard a decade ago.

Legal change is necessary, but it is not enough. For the most part, the law comes in only after the damage has been done.

Of greater importance in the drive for change is the value that societies must place on teaching all men to respect and value the worth of all people, regardless of gender, race, or creed. When that is socially learned, and flawed expectations of masculinity are put to one side, men will be less likely to engage in risky behaviours and internalise gendered expectations. They will also be more likely to draw on pro-social coping mechanisms when under stress, and more likely to reject the notion that masculinity must identify with power, control, shamelessness and independence.

Creating conditions beyond individual responses is important too. Mass movements and marches like the ones witnessed this month have provided great impetus to the social and political conditions required for positive change.

– ref. Men are more likely to commit violent crimes. Why is this so and how do we change it? – https://theconversation.com/men-are-more-likely-to-commit-violent-crimes-why-is-this-so-and-how-do-we-change-it-157331

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ran Porat, Affiliate Researcher, The Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation, Monash University

At the end of another round of elections, the fourth in just two years, Israel still cannot break away from debilitating political stalemate.

This means there will now be weeks of daunting coalition negotiations between parties chained to pre-election promises not to share a government with a particular party or prime minister – specifically, Israel’s longest-serving leader, Binyamin (Bibi) Netanyahu.

Depressingly for Israelis, election number five is lurking in the shadows before the end of 2021.

The pro- and no-Bibi camps

This campaign seemed like another referendum on Netanyahu. Currently on trial for corruption, the PM has been facing months of mass demonstrations against him.

With his back to the wall, Netanyahu was able to sustain his popularity within his base by personally taking credit for Israel’s world-leading coronavirus vaccine rollout, as well as the diplomatic achievement of forging ties with several Arab and Muslim states in the “Abraham Accords”.

The coalition of right-wing and religious parties supporting the PM has captured 52 seats of the Knesset’s (parliament) 120 seats in this week’s election, short of the 61 seats needed to form a government.

With 30 seats, Netanyahu’s Likud party retains its status as the biggest in Israel. Problematically, a small but essential element of this bloc is the extreme-right racist party Otzma Yehudit (“Jewish power”) and the anti-LGBTQI faction Noam.

Naftali Bennett, the leader of the national religious party Yamina (“Rightwards”), refused to commit to support or reject Netanyahu. However, he effectively tied himself to the PM when he promised not to join a government headed by the centrist politician Yair Lapid, who leads the anti-Bibi bloc.

The anti-Netanyahu camp secured 57 seats — not enough to dethrone the PM. Moreover, no single party leader is considered a possible challenger to Netanyahu, and the parties in this group profoundly advocate contradictory policies.

This bloc includes the second-largest party in the Knesset, Yesh Atid (“There is a future”), led by Lapid, with 17 seats. There are myriad other parties on the political right, left and centre in this group, each with between six and eight seats apiece.

Read more: Stark choice for Israel as voters head to polls for fourth time in two years

Israeli Arabs’ political power

The biggest story of the election is the paradoxical shift in the political power of Israeli Arabs, who may become the grain of rice that could tip the scales.

On the one hand, internal divisions and a low voter turnout among Arab Israelis resulted in fewer seats being won by Arab-led parties in the Knesset. The main culprit for this downturn is the leader of the Islamic conservative United Arab List Ra’am party, Mansour Abbas, who gambled on running independently from the Joint List of Arab parties. As a result, the Joint List shrank to six seats, from 15.

Indirect Arab representation came in the form of Zionist parties such as Labor and Meretz, who introduced Arab candidates in their lists in hope of capturing Arab voters.

More dramatically, the Ra’am party, which captured four seats, transformed almost overnight the political status of Arabs in Israel from unwanted to a coveted partner, wooed by both blocs.

Read more: Israel election: why is Palestine no longer an important campaign issue?

The party is now potentially a “kingmaker” that can determine the nature of Israel’s next government. Its agenda is focused on issues important to Arab Israelis, such as crime, violence and funding shortages, instead of, for example, the Palestinian question.

Abbas said he is open to joining a Zionist government or at least supporting it from the outside, even with Netanyahu as PM, if his demands for legal changes and extra funding for Arab municipalities are met.

However, Abbas seems closer to the anti-Bibi bloc, as Ra’am and the extreme-right Otzma Yehudit mutually disqualify each other as coalition partners.

No change in international policy

Domestically, Israelis want a government that will address mounting social tensions, for example, between secular and ultra-orthodox Jews, exacerbated over the disregard among some of the latter for the government’s coronavirus guidelines.

Internationally, many yearn for a stable government in Jerusalem after two years of uncertainty. US President Joe Biden may prefer someone other than Netanyahu, given the animosity between President Barack Obama and Netanyahu when Biden was vice president.

Yet, the special alliance between the US and Israel remains strong, despite any personal antagonism.

The Palestinians expressed indifference after the election and little hope for a change in Israel’s policy towards them.

They are facing their own parliamentary and presidential elections this year, which could affect the reign of 86-year-old Mahmoud Abbas, the longtime president. These elections may embolden or empower Abbas’ main opposition, Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip and is considered a terrorist organisation by Israel and many Western countries.

Read more: Is it too soon to herald the ‘dawn of a new Middle East’? It all depends what the Saudis do next

The outcome of another key Middle Eastern election, Iran’s vote in June, seems predetermined. The next Iranian president will likely be a hardline ideologue affiliated with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. Tehran’s drive to acquire nuclear weapons will continue to dominate the dynamics of the region.

Given all this, the aggressive Israeli policy set by Netanyahu of promising not to allow Iranian nuclear weapons and curbing their influence across the Middle East will continue, no matter who is the leader in Jerusalem.

Such a position vis-à-vis Tehran will also be positively welcomed by the Persian Gulf kingdoms, led by Iran’s arch-nemesis, Saudi Arabia. This will likely contribute to the tacit and open ties these countries have been forging with Israel.

– ref. Israel elections: Netanyahu may hold on to power, but political paralysis will remain – https://theconversation.com/israel-elections-netanyahu-may-hold-on-to-power-but-political-paralysis-will-remain-157585