Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kerith Duncanson, Senior Research Fellow, School of Medicine and Public Health, University of Newcastle

The trend towards vegetarian and vegan diets means more people are looking for meat-free protein alternatives.

Enter seitan (pronounced say-tan), the latest food trend that’s going viral online.

Seitan can be made by washing the starch off flour, so what you are left with is mainly gluten. Wheat gluten has been used as a substitute for meat in Asian countries for centuries, particularly among Buddhists who prefer not to eat meat. George Ohsawa, Japanese advocate for the “macrobiotic” diet, coined the term seitan for wheat gluten in the early 1960s.

Seitan’s versatility and “meatiness”, combined with the need for tasty, vegan protein options have contributed to its huge increase in popularity world-wide in recent years.

It’s high in protein and iron

As well as being flavoursome and reminiscent of meat, seitan is relatively high in protein and non-haem iron compared to other vegetarian protein foods.

One serving around the size of the palm of your hand contains about 75 grams of protein, enough for most adults for a day. Gram for gram, that’s about three times as much protein as beef or lamb.

With about 5 milligrams of iron per 100 grams, seitan has as much iron as kangaroo meat or beef. But as for other plant-based foods, the non-haem iron in seitan is not as readily absorbed as the haem iron in meats.

A small serve of seitan (100 grams) contains about 14 grams of carbs, which is about the same as one slice of bread.

Seitan doesn’t contain any soy, unlike tofu or tempeh. So it’s a good option for people with a soy allergy.

You can make it at home

You can make seitan just from flour and water, but it does take about an hour from start to finished product.

To prepare seitan, combine flour with a little salt and water to form a soft dough. Then keep kneading the dough under cold running water (to remove the starch) until it becomes a very stiff and stretchy dough.

If you’re in a hurry, you can cheat by mixing commercially available “vital wheat gluten” with water.

Either way, once you’ve got the gluten dough, flavour it with spices or sauces and then pan fry or boil it.

You can serve it as a steak substitute, sliced and stir-fried, “pulled” like pork, or crumbed and made into a vegan schnitzel. Seitan meals have been known to be mistaken as meat by some fairly serious carnivores!

It might be worth taste testing ready-made seitan from a shop to check whether you like it before making it yourself, but this often contains added salt as a preservative. Make sure the sodium content is under 400 milligrams per 100 grams. It’s a good idea to limit your sodium intake, and the Heart Foundation recommends no more than 2,000 milligrams per day.

So what’s the downside?

Well, it’s definitely not suitable for people diagnosed with coeliac disease or with a known adverse reaction to the gluten proteins in wheat.

Read more: Why do people decide to go gluten- or wheat-free?

If that’s you, then tofu and legumes are suitable meat substitutes. Another sustainable, gluten-free option is Quorn, a protein-rich food made by fungi.

If you get a bloated tummy or gut pain after eating bread or pasta, but definitely don’t have coeliac disease, it would be interesting to know whether you tolerate seitan. If you do, it could be you don’t tolerate the carbohydrate part of wheat, but can tolerate gluten. A research team at the University of Newcastle, of which I am a part, is investigating whether people who report gut pain after eating wheat are sensitive to the gluten or to the fermentable carbohydrates (FODMAPs) in wheat.

For everyone else who wants to decrease or avoid meat, seitan is versatile and one of the closest in texture and flavour to meat of any vegetarian protein options — so break out the mixing bowls and get kneading.

Read more: The FODMAP diet is everywhere, but researchers warn it’s not for weight loss

– ref. What is seitan? The vegan protein alternative going viral online – https://theconversation.com/what-is-seitan-the-vegan-protein-alternative-going-viral-online-157231

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amanda Lotz, Professor of Media Studies, Queensland University of Technology

This week, actors such as Simon Baker, Bryan Brown and Marta Dusseldorp were in Canberra. Their aim was to convince parliament to introduce rules requiring streaming services such as Netflix and Disney+ to spend 20% of their local revenue on new Australian drama, documentary and children’s content.

Many of Australia’s film and television organisations see local content rules as a key way of tackling significant changes that have disrupted business norms and revenue streams. The federal government has indicated it supports quotas for some services at least.

Requirements on global services seem an easy answer — and who doesn’t want more Australian TV? — but this call ignores complex realities of how the TV business and its funding have changed.

Before exploring the key differences of 21st century television, let’s consider why pursuing content requirements on streaming services is a high risk, low reward campaign.

1. Global streamers could leave Australia

Aggressively pursuing local content expenditure or special “taxes” may lead global streamers to cease Australian operation, risking a replay of last month’s Facebook fiasco in response to the overreach of the mandatory bargaining code.

Read more: Facebook’s news blockade in Australia shows how tech giants are swallowing the web

Global streamers are precisely that: services making a business of circulating content globally, not producing it for all countries with subscribers.

Netflix, for instance, is now in roughly 60% of Australian homes. Yet those 6 million subscribers amount to less than 3% of its total subscriber base. At some point, the cost of producing content for such a small part of a service’s subscriber base becomes unfeasible from a business perspective.

2. New services might not come to Australia

Australia has consistently been one of the first markets entered by new streaming services — our low adoption of cable TV means we are hungry for more video options.

Although much attention focuses on Netflix and Disney+, several smaller global services such as Acorn, Britbox, and Discovery+ are also available here. Many of these offer a particular kind of programming, drama and mysteries in the case of Acorn, and British series for Britbox.

Creating Australian content is contrary to the business of these services. Rules requiring local content will discourage the next stage of streamers offering more specialised services from launching here, leaving Australians with less choice — VPNs notwithstanding.

3. Netflix could become more like Stan, reducing Stan’s key value proposition

A curious part of the plan for local content requirements on streamers proposed in the federal government’s media reform green paper is that Australian content requirements would apply to global streamers but not Stan.

Stan reported 2.2 million subscribers in 2020, roughly 22% of Australian households. Stan offers more Australian content than any other streamer. Last year, 7.38% of its library was Australian programs – although this is a decline on 2019 when the figure was 9%.

Offering a substantial amount of Australian content makes sense for a domestic service and distinguishes Stan from global providers. According to the government’s Media Content Consumption Survey, commissioned in November 2020, Stan is the second most subscribed service in Australia behind Netflix.

However, if global streamers are forced to make Australian content, they become more direct competitors, potentially eroding Stan’s point of difference.

Recent data from Ampere Analysis shows the percentage of Australian titles in Australia’s six most subscribed services (plus newcomer Binge). Stan leads, followed by Foxtel Now (just under 5%), Binge, Amazon Prime, Netflix and Disney+.

Unsurprisingly, Australian services have more Australian content than global ones, but less than domestic services in other countries. Most of the titles included here were originally created for television or cinemas so only account for new production activity in a few cases. Stan’s library includes 20 Australian commissions, less than 1% of its offerings.

Still, it makes no sense to exempt Stan from local content requirements. As an Australia-only service, 100% of Stan’s reason for being is to provide content for the Australian market, while for the global services, providing content for Australians is 3% or less of their business.

4. Global streamers are likely to make programs in Australia but not about Australia

Global streamers aren’t likely to make content that is very Australian. They need stories with universal legibility.

Consider the Australian titles produced to date by Netflix such as Tidelands and children’s drama The New Legends of Monkey. Was Tidelands, with its story of mythical part-human, part siren Tidelanders, one that resonated with the fabric of Australian culture?

Despite the rhetoric of Australian stories, this industry campaign is chiefly about jobs. It is about securing new sources of funding for Australian productions in response to commercial broadcasters struggling with diminished advertiser spending. Industry subsidies in the face of such change may be warranted, but effective policy solutions must deal separately with the issues of sector support and cultural policy — such as the need to tell Australian stories.

Let us be very clear, we care a lot about the future of Australian stories. We are deeply concerned with the many policy developments of the last two decades that have allowed industry priorities to subordinate the cultural goals of ensuring Australians see themselves and their lives reflected on screen.

Read more: $400 million in government funding for Hollywood, but only scraps for Australian film

But Australia needs 21st century policy solutions that reflect the contemporary media landscape.

Complex realities

Streamers aren’t broadcasters. They are paid for by subscribers, not advertisers. They do not use public spectrum, which is a basis of local content requirements on broadcasters. A more direct analogue with streamers is the video rental store, which never faced requirements to offer Australian content.

Read more: TV has changed, so must the way we support local content

Global streamers are a part of the marketplace viewers find valuable enough to pay for, but they aren’t the cause of the faltering Australian TV industry. The problem there — much like for print journalism — is that advertisers have found more effective ways to reach potential consumers.

Netflix reports that it accounts for 10% of viewing in the US, that’s far from dominance or crowding out others. The new video marketplace is complicated and offers Australians more choice — but global streamers can’t save Australian television.

– ref. How local content rules on streamers could seriously backfire – https://theconversation.com/how-local-content-rules-on-streamers-could-seriously-backfire-157233

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Marcus Carter, Senior Lecturer in Digital Cultures, SOAR Fellow., University of Sydney

When the children’s digital game Roblox launched on the New York Stock Exchange last week, the company’s share price rapidly took off. By the end of the day, it was valued at US$38 billion.

How can a game for kids be worth so much?

What is Roblox?

Roblox has been around since 2004, but it’s often overshadowed by the more popular and easily understandable game Minecraft. Bought by Microsoft in 2014 for a comparatively paltry US$2.5 billion, Minecraft players create and explore pixelated worlds and share them with friends. In Roblox, players can create and share entire games — or play any of the millions of games created by others in the community.

Some of the most popular games are My Restaurant, which lets you build and run your own restaurant, Theme Park Tycoon 2, a play on the Rollercoaster Tycoon Series, or Tower Defence Simulator, which lets you fight waves of enemies with your friends.

In 2020, Roblox had 32.6 million daily active users, playing for an average of 2.6 hours per day across PCs, gaming consoles and mobile devices. For comparison, the popular and widely discussed game Fortnite has only around 25 million active daily users.

What is the reason for this success?

Not just a game, but a game design playground

Roblox is ultimately a playground for designing games.

Using Roblox Studio, anyone can create virtual worlds and games that can then be easily released on the Roblox platform, instantly becoming available to millions of players.

This user-created content can then be played by other players. Roblox has an embedded system for making small purchases within the platform, and creators receive 30% of the revenue. In 2020, Roblox paid out US$328.7 million this way.

Some creators earn as much as US$50,000 per month. According to Roblox, there were more than 300 creators who earned over US$100,000 in 2020.

Roblox’s optimistic market valuation is based on the sheer number of creators developing on its platform: as many as 20 million a year. While most games can quickly go in and out of fashion, Roblox’s community of developers will keep pumping out fresh content. This is great for Roblox, which benefits from what games scholar Julian Kucklich calls the “precarious playbour” of the creators.

What parents need to know

So, if you have an eight-year-old at home badgering you about joining their friends online in Roblox, what do you need to know?

For children interested in programming, Roblox can be a great way to get started. With its relatively simple code editor, even kids as young as eight or nine can learn how to develop their own games, with numerous courses available for kids, parents and teachers.

However, the openness and interactivity that has made Roblox so successful means that there is a chance your child could encounter troubling content. There have been reports of sexually explicit games, and games with themes that parents might not want children exposed to.

Read more: Curious Kids: Why do adults think video games are bad?

There are also contact risks: adults can “friend” children in-game and then message them privately or on third-party apps such as Discord. And as in all online spaces, cyberbullying is also a risk.

However, Roblox has been proactive in addressing safety issues. It has joined the Australian eSafety Commissioner’s Tier 1 social media scheme, meaning the commission can more promptly remove reported content. Roblox has also employed a “Director of Digital Civility” and partnered with university researchers to work out how best to make the platform a safe space for children to play.

Roblox also has been assessed as complying with the US Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act regulations regarding privacy and collection of data. Broader changes are afoot too, with children’s rights online now officially recognised by the United Nations.

What parents can do at home

There are also things parents can do at home to create a safe online play environment. Roblox provides information on its website about how to limit chat functions and report problems. Parents should also know certain games allow trading of in-game items, including ones purchased with real money. The eSafety office has some great resources too.

Roblox and its game developers make money through in-game microtransactions, which are a common source of friction for families. These mostly optional purchases — using the in-game currency Robux — allow children to express themselves by customising their avatar or to buy items that help them progress in games.

Paying $5 to have a cool set of wings in a digital game might seem silly to parents, but it may still be important to children. The best approach is to have a conversation about what they want to spend their money on and why, and set budgets so children can learn how to balance their purchasing decisions against other options. Having controls on in-app purchases on devices is also a good idea when kids are using them for playing games.

Read more: Child’s play in the time of COVID: screen games are still ‘real’ play

It’s also important to remember that digital play is still play, and can be an important part of a healthy childhood.

Joining your children in these virtual worlds is a great way to understand the appeal of Roblox, and a neat opportunity for some quality bonding time too. Or if that’s not your (or your kids’) idea of a good time, ask questions about what they like; what happened in a recent play session; and note the huge variety in what is possible in the complex virtual world of Roblox.

– ref. Why is kids’ video game Roblox worth $38 billion and what do parents need to know? – https://theconversation.com/why-is-kids-video-game-roblox-worth-38-billion-and-what-do-parents-need-to-know-157133

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Greste, Professor of Journalism and Communications, The University of Queensland

Like dogs and cats, snakes and rats, journalists and the government are not supposed to be friends.

It is always going to be a fractious, difficult relationship. We, the voters and taxpayers, grant politicians enormous power and resources to run the government on our behalf. The media’s job is to make sure they do it responsibly and ethically.

As the American newspaper baron William Randolph Hearst reportedly once said, “news is whatever someone doesn’t want printed; all else is advertising”.

The natural order of things requires there to be a necessary tension between those two institutions. But mutual hostility isn’t necessarily always a good thing.

Why the media’s role is vital

A toothy media is particularly important when it comes to monitoring the instruments of government power.

Over the years, our state and federal governments have amassed an awesome array of tools ostensibly designed to keep us safe from those who would do us harm. There are the usual agencies, such as the Australian Federal Police, ASIO and the Australian Defence Forces.

But there are many more that work largely out of public view, with yawn-inducing names like the Office of National Intelligence (responsible for collating and assessing intelligence reports from abroad), AUSTRAC (which monitors our financial system for clues about organised crime), the Australian Signals Directorate (which eavesdrops on electronic communications), and the Australian Geospatial-Intelligence Organisation (another of our international spy agencies).

Read more: Australia has enacted 82 anti-terror laws since 2001. But tough laws alone can’t eliminate terrorism

Nobody is denying the need to give our security services the means to track and stop people like terrorists, criminals and foreign agents, but even the most disciplined agencies can abuse that power.

While there are institutional checks and balances designed to keep them under control, painful recent history tells us they don’t always work. That is why the whistle of last resort — the one most directly engaged with the public — is the media.

Recent examples of journalist arrests

In 2019, the AFP infamously raided journalists from two news organisations over their reporting of two separate stories that exposed abuses or potential abuses of power.

Dan Oakes and Sam Clark from the ABC had been covering allegations of war crimes by Australian Special Forces in Afghanistan, while News Corp’s Annika Smethurst had revealed quiet government plans to expand the ASD’s authority, allowing it to snoop on the domestic communications of ordinary Australians.

While both stories involved sensitive, classified documents, they also revealed things that every Australian ought to have been concerned about. Put simply, they were fine examples of journalists doing their jobs. (The AFP has since dropped the cases against all three journalists.)

Read more: Australian governments have long been hostile to media freedom. That’s unlikely to change any time soon

Most recently, Victorian police arrested two journalists from the Herald Sun — a reporter and a photographer — who were covering an anti-vaccination protest in Melbourne.

They were initially told they would be fined for failing to comply with the state government’s lockdown policies, but the police later apologised and confirmed they would not be. While this was not a national security issue, it is an example of the type of misunderstanding that is becoming more prevalent between the media and police.

A new working group to bridge the divide

To be clear, while there is an undeniable risk that journalists will either deliberately or inadvertently damage national security with their reporting, there are very few (if any) examples in recent Australian history.

The AFP raids and Melbourne arrests expose a critical problem — a deep and widening gulf in trust and communication between the agencies and the media that can – and clearly have – boiled over in ways that damage both institutions. In the process, it also undermines our democracy.

The raids, in particular, undermined public confidence in the integrity of the police, while sending a deeply threatening message to other journalists and whistleblowers involved in similar public interest stories.

Legislation is important. The Alliance for Journalists’ Freedom, which I helped set up and now represent as a spokesman, believes Australia needs a Media Freedom Act to entrench press freedom in law.

But we also believe another mechanism is necessary — something that creates lines of communication between the media and security agencies. The idea is to protect the media’s freedom and independence, while helping the two sides understand one another — and avoid either damaging reporting or unnecessary police action.

The best way to do that is a working group of senior news editors and officials from the security agencies. They should not be the agency heads or editors-in-chief, but their senior deputies, who have the authority to represent their organisations without getting bogged down in formalities.

By meeting and discussing issues regularly, the working group should be able to develop both trust and lines of informal communication to head off any potential problems before they erupt.

Read more: To protect press freedom, we need more public outrage – and an overhaul of our laws

Discussions without the threat of investigation

The Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security appears to agree with the AJF.

In the wake of the AFP raids, it held an inquiry into press freedom and national security and came up with an undeveloped recommendation remarkably similar to what the AJF has been proposing:

the formulation of a mechanism to allow for journalists and media organisations, in the act of public interest journalism, to consult with the originating agency of national security classified information without the threat of investigation or prosecution.

That last phrase is key. News organisations doing their jobs will often uncover classified information. They should be allowed to discuss it with the relevant agencies, “without the threat of investigation or prosecution”, so they can flag stories to avoid exposing damaging information. Similarly, the security agencies should be allowed to raise issues of concern to them.

One of the reasons Australia’s democracy is among the safest and most prosperous in the world is because we have had a vigorous, independent free press capable of holding the system to account. If in trying to keep us safe, the security agencies end up undermining one of the key pillars of that system, national security is ultimately undermined.

The AJF’s idea for a National Working Group is designed to help maintain the integrity of Australia’s security, while protecting press freedom.

– ref. Journalists and security agencies don’t need to be friends. But can they at least talk to each other? – https://theconversation.com/journalists-and-security-agencies-dont-need-to-be-friends-but-can-they-at-least-talk-to-each-other-156751

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

The Morrison government is gifting 8,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccines to Papua New Guinea, and demanding AstraZeneca and European authorities urgently provide one million doses of Australia’s contracted supplies to help the country deal with its escalating pandemic crisis.

In an effort to prevent transmission of the virus to Australia, the government is also suspending passenger flights from PNG into Cairns from midnight for at least a fortnight.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced a raft of measures at a news conference on Wednesday morning, aimed at both supporting PNG and protecting Australians.

Charter flights from PNG are also being suspended (with limited exemptions for medevac and the like) and the passenger caps on flights from Port Moresby to Brisbane are being cut by a quarter.

Outbound travel exemptions for Australians to go to PNG will be suspended – except for critical workers – including for fly-in-fly-out workers. “You FI or you FO,” Morrison said. “If you’re there, you stay. If you’re here, you stay. We cannot risk more people going into those areas and then coming back to Australia.”

The government will boost the medical support it is providing to PNG. It will gift one million surgical masks, 200,000 P295 respirator masks, 100,000 gowns, 100,000 goggles, 100,000 pairs of gloves, 100,000 bottles of sanitiser, 20,000 face shields, and 200 non-invasive ventilators.

The 8,000 vaccine doses will be used for frontline health workers from next week.

Morrison said the doses Australia was seeking to assist this “developing country in desperate need of these vaccines” had been contracted for by Australia.

“We’ve paid for them and we want to see these vaccines come here so we can support our nearest neighbour, PNG, to deal with their urgent needs. And we’ll be seeking the support of the European Union and AstraZeneca to achieve that as soon as possible.”

A critical planning AUSMAT team of health specialists will be sent to PNG next week. They will work with PNG authorities on infection control, triage and emergency management, and public health measures. They will also prepare for further Australian assistance and deployment of a clinical team.

Vaccinations are particularly important for those in the Torres Strait Protected Zone, where people on both sides of the strait form one community. The Queensland government has already begun this rollout, and the federal government will work with the PNG government, as well as with Queensland.

Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly said the PNG situation had changed very rapidly in the last couple of weeks and there was now “a major pandemic in the community”. He said mass testing had been done at the Ok Tedi Mine and almost half the results were positive. Australia has already suspended flights from the mine.

“They are finding the same when people are being admitted into hospital in Port Moresby – half of the women who are coming in due to pregnancy are positive.”

According to the latest numbers on Tuesday, there were 82 new cases in the previous 24 hours. This brought the total official number of cases to 2,351, including 26 deaths.

Morrison said of PNG: “They’re our family. They’re our neighbours. They’re our partners. They have always stood with us and we will always stand with them.”

PNG Prime Minister James Marape said this week his country was now “in the critical red stage” of COVID-19.

“We are possibly having an infection rate about one to three or four in our country.”

He said “the status of our public health system is that what we have in our country is not adequate to sustain a full-blown outbreak, that is of pandemic nature”.

– ref. Australia sends 8,000 vaccine doses to help Papua New Guinea’s pandemic crisis – https://theconversation.com/australia-sends-8-000-vaccine-doses-to-help-papua-new-guineas-pandemic-crisis-157310

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Blundell-Wignall, Adjunct Professor, School of Economics, University of Sydney

Australia’s longest-serving finance minister Mathias Cormann has been appointed Secretary General of the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Australian Adrian Blundell-Wignall is a former senior official of the OECD, serving for nine years as deputy director and then director in the OECD Directorate for Financial and Enterprise Affairs.

He talked to Economics Editor Peter Martin about Cormann’s new role.

Peter Martin: Is the OECD Secretary General thought of as a policy change agent or more as an administrator in your view?

Adrian Blundell-Wignall: That will depend in part on the skills, energy and character of the particular Secretary General of course.

History shows that a Secretary General who can get key countries behind him to use the OECD as a vehicle for change can have a huge impact.

Recent examples include bank secrecy and the automatic exchange of information, tax reform, bribery and corruption, responsible business conduct and the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) that measures 15-year-olds’ ability to use their reading, mathematics and science knowledge and skills to meet real-life challenges in 79 countries.

And behind the scenes, the OECD has played important roles in the G20 and the Paris climate talks.

PM: Does Mathias Cormann have the skills and character needed to carry on where his predecessor of 15 years Ángel Gurría left off?

ABW: Gurría will always be a hard act to follow. I do not know Cormann personally, but his background should serve him well.

Take global tax as an example. Work on base erosion and profit shifting and taxing internet-based firms is well under way at the OECD. But it remains a challenge because countries are always tempted to serve their perceived national interests rather than the collective interest.

Read more: Mathias Cormann wants to lead the OECD. The choice will be pivotal

Legal frameworks remain problematic. Franchise-based companies (such as coffee shops and fast food outlets) have hundreds of perfectly-legal affiliates including entities based in the Cayman Islands. They still pay little tax.

There is general acceptance of the need for a framework to tax digital businesses with no tangible presence in the countries in which they make money, but we are a long way from implementation.

Major member countries are motivated to complete reforms in these areas. Garnering their support to promote workable solutions would be a huge feather in Cormann’s cap.

As finance minister Cormann was a key member of the Australian government economic team and its leader in the Senate.

In those roles he demonstrated strong leadership on corporate tax issues (despite his department not running tax administration in Australia) and impressive negotiating skills. They will serve him well in completing Gurria’s agenda.

PM: Can the OECD assist with global economic coordination following the pandemic?

ABW: The OECD does not have executive functions such as lending for crisis management or regulating financial institutions. As always, this will always limit its role. On the other hand, it can play a key supportive role developing ideas with governments using its expertise in international linkage effects and forecasting

These roles become particularly important during global crises, as was so after 2008, when the G20 really did try to work for better collective outcomes.

PM: Will Mathias Cormann play a leadership role in climate decisions?

ABW: The answer is a solid “yes”.

The OECD houses the International Energy Agency and has its own environment directorate and both groups work together in many areas.

More than that, the OECD has leadership amongst international organisations on pension issues, where risks of stranded assets and fiduciary duty issues abound. The OECD was a key player with France in the Paris COP21 climate agreement.

Since then, extreme climate outcomes have been speeding up. The Biden people will be very strong on climate targets, and support from this quarter (missing in recent years) will be a great opportunity for Cormann to expand the OECD’s role.

PM: What could the OECD become as an organisation with the right approach?

ABW: You will have noticed that the world has become increasingly aware that China has no intention of moving down the path of more accountability and openness. Instead, it has positioned itself as a strategic competitor to the West, with the stated aim of building an alternative platform for economic cooperation and development.

The Asia-Pacific region is in play as to what model is best for sustainable economic and social development. This is a challenge about “Ideas”. The OECD represents the “Idea” of democratic and accountable processes, openness and a rules-based level playing field in the global economy.

Most of its instruments that promote these objectives are sitting there looking for more political and financial support.

The OECD does best when other international organisations can’t provide the required leadership. It should not be lost on anyone that those organisations that contain China and the main Belt and Road countries may not be receptive to ideas of accountability and a rules-based global openness platform.

This is a challenge and an opportunity for the OECD.

PM: To what extent will Mathias Cormann represent Australia, and will he do as well as Gurría in serving multiple terms?

ABW: The OECD Secretary General cannot be seen to be representing the interests of his own country. Of course, the OECD will respond to Australian requests for help, just as it did for Mexico under Gurría — but always within the limits of proportionality.

Cormann will need to be looking at the big global issues. Getting countries like Brazil and some South East Asian countries into the OECD would be a great indicator of success.

– ref. Six questions about Mathias Cormann, newly appointed Secretary General of the OECD – https://theconversation.com/six-questions-about-mathias-cormann-newly-appointed-secretary-general-of-the-oecd-157305

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katrina Lee-Koo, Associate professor of International Relations, Monash University

In response to reports of surging COVID cases in Papua New Guinea, the Australian government will provide greater emergency support to deliver vaccines, increased testing capacity and clinical advice to our near neighbours.

This is part of a broader program to deliver vaccines and medical support to Australia’s partners throughout Asia and the Pacific with Fiji, Cambodia, Indonesia and the Philippines so far receiving doses.

While these are welcome efforts, more needs to be done to understand and respond to the long-term implications of this pandemic on countries in our region — particularly for girls, who have often been overlooked in crisis recovery planning.

At the heart of understanding this are the barriers and opportunities to girls’ access to education.

Prior to the pandemic, there had been significant improvements in girls’ enrolments in school in South-east Asia and the Pacific. But the pandemic threatens those gains, with more girls leaving the classroom due to caring responsibilities, financial constraints, family violence and child marriage.

A new report by Plan International shows between January and June 2020, 24,000 applications for underage marriage had been lodged with Indonesia’s district and regional courts. According to the report, this is more than two and a half times the total number for the whole of 2012.

Like rates of education, this represents a reversal in a previously positive trend, in this case of decreasing cases of child marriages.

Read more: Why raising the minimum age for marriage is not enough for Indonesia to put an end to child brides

Girls dropping out of school

UNICEF reported the last two decades saw a halving of the number of girls out of school from 30 million to 15 million. But UNESCO now estimates 1.2 million additional girls in the region could drop out of school due to the effects of COVID-19.

While the data varies from country to country, the overall picture suggests the pandemic will exacerbate existing gender inequalities and have long-term implications for girls and their communities.

Across the region girls drop out of school because their care responsibilities at home have dramatically increased as family members fall victim to the virus or return home because the pandemic has stalled migratory work.

Before the pandemic, women and girls in the Pacific in particular faced some of the highest rates of gender-based violence in the world. This has dramatically increased in 2020.

For example, in Fiji calls to the national domestic violence helpline during the lockdown period — between February and April 2020 — increased by over seven times.

UNESCAP similarly documented heightened calls to helplines in Singapore, Malaysia, India and Samoa, and increased pressures on violence shelters and women’s organisations in Indonesia, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Australia, Tonga and China. Violence at home is a major barrier to girls’ participation in education.

Prior to the pandemic, the cost of school fees was also identified as a barrier to girls’ education in the region. The economic hardship brought on by the pandemic — combined with pre-existing attitudes that devalue girls’ education — will likely see girls taken out of school permanently.

Crisis also brings about increases in child, early and forced marriage. Save the Children has estimated the pandemic will cause an additional 2.5 million child marriages worldwide, with an estimated 200,000 more girls experiencing child marriage in South Asia in 2020.

Read more: In parts of the world, bride price encourages parents to educate daughters

This increase is in response to poverty and economic hardship, crowding in homes, and as a result of sexual violence. Girls who are married and experience early pregnancy almost never return to school.

Why does this matter for pandemic recovery?

The benefits of ensuring girls’ access to education is not just for women and girls’ rights; it will be seen throughout the community.

Where girls have access to education, they are more likely to earn more, marry and have children later, make better informed decisions about their health and well-being, and are more able to exercise independent decision making.

Across the region it has been demonstrated that where there is greater gender equality and women and girls are able to access their rights, societies are stronger, more peaceful and prosperous.

Read more: Why schools become battlegrounds during conflict

Building resilient communities is essential, as COVID sits among climate change, political instability, regional forced migration and other crises that will continue to challenge the region. Women and girls will be at the forefront of addressing all of these crises.

Australia’s long-term strategy for supporting COVID recovery in the region focuses on the three pillars of health security, stability and economic recovery. While there is a commitment to “protecting the most vulnerable, especially women and girls”, this pledge has been made against the backdrop of nearly a decade of decreasing aid.

Australia’s contributions to the Global Partnership for Education — an effort to strengthen education systems in developing countries — has fallen dramatically since 2014 when it pledged US$151 million. In 2020 Australia pledged close to US$35 million, while Canada, France, Germany and the United States pledged between US$88-90 million each.

This needs to be reversed if we are to address the complex insecurities facing girls and their communities in the aftermath of COVID. Access to education for all children needs to be prioritised, with particular recognition of the unique barriers for girls.

– ref. COVID is forcing millions of girls out of school in South-east Asia and the Pacific – https://theconversation.com/covid-is-forcing-millions-of-girls-out-of-school-in-south-east-asia-and-the-pacific-157230

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Lueck, Professor of Tourism, Auckland University of Technology

International tourism has clearly been hit hard by COVID-19. But despite the desperation of the travel and airline industries, people are already questioning whether it should ever return to pre-pandemic levels.

One who thinks not is Air New Zealand’s chief environmental adviser, Sir Jonathon Porritt. Increasing the price of long-haul flights to pay for greenhouse gas emissions, he said recently, would help end “thoughtless, heedless” tourism.

Porritt was responding to the latest report from Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment Simon Upton. Titled “Not 100% – but four steps closer to sustainable tourism”, one of its four main recommendations was for the introduction of a departure tax to offset the carbon emissions from international air travel.

At the same time, the tourism minister was calling for New Zealand to concentrate on “high-value” visitors and to reduce the industry’s reliance on backpackers and freedom campers.

All of which raises a key question: what is the best way to factor in the cost of emissions while encouraging the preferred kind of tourism?

Targeting ‘high-value’ tourists not the answer

Upton proposed a distance-based departure tax, ranging from NZ$25 for an economy flight to Australia, to $155 for an economy flight to the United Kingdom.

It is estimated such a tax would raise around $400 million each year. This could then be used to fund environmental and climate change projects and infrastructure.

These proposals certainly have potential. But targeting a certain type of “high-value” traveller is unrealistic, and basing a tax solely on the distance travelled is not the best way forward.

Backpackers may spend less per day, but they commonly spend more overall because they stay longer. They also tend to spend more with local businesses, rather than on the products and services of large international corporations.

As such, backpackers can be of more value to the country than high-end, short-stay visitors. There is also evidence these lower-budget travellers are valuable word-of-mouth ambassadors who often return when they are older, booking upmarket accommodation, attractions and tours.

Tax based on length of stay

Rather than calculating a tax on distance alone, then, it would make more sense to add a length-of-stay component. This could be staggered: the longer the visit, the lower the departure tax.

Long-haul air travel produces vastly more emissions per passenger than other modes of travel such as train, bus or car. Due to Aotearoa New Zealand’s remoteness, the vast majority of international visitors (other than Australians) arrive on long-haul flights.

A much higher proportion of energy consumption and emissions is attributable to the flights to and from a destination like Aotearoa than to activity within the country. Spread across an entire holiday, the per-day consumption decreases as the length of stay increases.

Read more: NZ tourism can use the disruption of COVID-19 to drive sustainable change — and be more competitive

A staggered tax would be relatively simple to calculate. Incoming temporary visitors need to hold a return ticket; open ticket and outbound one-way ticket holders could be charged a flat fee.

Given long-haul tourists have already paid relatively high airfares, a reasonable tax shouldn’t be a burden. If they know the money is targeted at environmental and climate change initiatives, they might even welcome it. The impact on demand will likely be negligible.

Sustainable tourism for everyone

New Zealand already charges a $35 per head international conservation and tourism levy (IVL). It’s collected when a visitor applies for a visa or New Zealand Electronic Travel Authority (NZeTA).

While the IVL does not apply to permanent residents and citizens, the proposed departure tax would. It would be a shame if visitors saw those charges as gouging, so it is important a departure tax and the IVL work in tandem and are charged together in a fair and transparent way.

Read more: Pacific tourism is desperate for a vaccine and travel freedoms, but the industry must learn from this crisis

A combined IVL and departure tax, based on distance and length of stay, would create a much fairer system than charging based on distance alone.

This is especially important if we don’t want Aotearoa New Zealand to be perceived as a country for the rich only, rather than a destination that offers opportunities for all types of visitors.

But requiring those responsible for the highest per-day emissions to pay the highest price might help discourage some of the “thoughtless, heedless” tourism we have witnessed in the past.

– ref. A green tax on long-haul flights favours rich tourists. NZ needs a fairer strategy – https://theconversation.com/a-green-tax-on-long-haul-flights-favours-rich-tourists-nz-needs-a-fairer-strategy-156847

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Chris Berg, Principal Research Fellow and Co-Director, RMIT Blockchain Innovation Hub, RMIT University

Over the past few months, Twitter took down the account of the then-President of the United States and Facebook temporarily stopped users from sharing Australian media content. This begs the question: do social media platforms wield too much power?

Whatever your personal view, a variety of “decentralised” social media networks now promise to be the custodians of free-spoken, censorship-resistant and crowd-curated content, free of corporate and political interference.

But do they live up to this promise?

Read more: Trump’s Twitter tantrum may wreck the internet

Cooperatively governed platforms

In “decentralised” social media networks, control is actively shared across many servers and users, rather than a single corporate entity such as Google or Facebook.

This can make a network more resilient, as there is no central point of failure. But it also means no single arbiter is in charge of moderating content or banning problematic users.

Some of the most prominent decentralised systems use blockchain (often associated with Bitcoin currency). A blockchain system is a kind of distributed online ledger hosted and updated by thousands of computers and servers around the world.

And all of these plugged-in entities must agree on the contents of the ledger. Thus, it’s almost impossible for any single node in the network to meddle with the ledger without the updates being rejected.

Gathering ‘Steem’

One of the most famous blockchain social media networks is Steemit, a decentralised application that runs on the Steem blockchain.

Because the Steem blockchain has its own cryptocurrency, popular posters can be rewarded by readers through micropayments. Once content is posted on the Steem blockchain, it can never be removed.

Not all decentralised social media networks are built on blockchains, however. The Fediverse is an ecosystem of many servers that are independently owned, but which can communicate with one another and share data.

Mastodon is the most popular part of the Fediverse. Currently with close to three million users across more than 3,000 servers, this open-source platform is made up of a network of communities, similar to Reddit or Tumbler.

Users can create their own “instances” of Mastodon — with many separate instances forming the wider network — and share content by posting 500-character-limit “toots” (yes, toots). Each instance is privately operated and moderated, but its users can still communicate with other servers if they want to.

What do we gain?

A lot of concern around social media involves what content is being monetised and who benefits. Decentralised platforms often seek to shift the point of monetisation.

Platforms such as Steemit, Minds and DTube (another platform built on the Steem social blockchain) claim to flip this relationship by rewarding users when their content is shared.

Another purported benefit of decentralised social media is freedom of speech, as there’s no central point of censorship. In fact, many decentralised networks in recent years have been developed in response to moderation practices.

Read more: Parler: what you need to know about the ‘free speech’ Twitter alternative

But even the most pro-free-speech platforms face challenges. There are always malicious people, such as violent extremists, terrorists and child pornographers, who should not be allowed to post at will. So in practice, every decentralised network requires some sort of moderation.

Mastodon provides a set of guidelines for user conduct and has moderators within particular servers (or communities). They have the power to disable, silence or suspend user access and even to apply server-wide moderation.

As such, each server sets its own rules. However, if a server is “misbehaving”, the entire server can be put under a domain block, with varying degrees of severity. Mastodon publicly lists the moderated servers and the reason for restriction, such as spreading conspiracy theories or hate speech.

Some systems are harder to moderate. Blockchain-based social network Minds claims to base its content policy on the First Amendment of the US constitution. The platform attracted controversy for hosting neo-Nazi groups.

Users who violate a rule receive a “strike”. Where the violation relates to “not safe for work” (NSFW) content, three strikes may result in the user being tagged under a NSFW filter. If this happens, other users must opt in to view the NSFW content, for “total control” of their feed.

Minds’s content policy states NSFW content excludes posts of an illegal nature. These result in an immediate user ban and removal of the content. If a user wants to appeal a decision, the verdict comes from a randomly-selected jury of users.

Even blockchain-based social media networks have content moderation systems. For example, Peepeth has a code of conduct adapted from a speech by Vietnamese Thiền Buddhist monk and peace activist Thích Nhất Hạnh.

“Peeps” falling afoul of the code are removed from the main feed accessible from the Peepeth website. But since all content is recorded on the blockchain, it continues to be accessible to those with the technical know-how to retrieve it.

Steemit will also delete illegal or harmful content from its user-accessible feed, but the content remains on the Steem blockchain indefinitely.

Read more: Reddit tackles ‘revenge porn’ and celebrity nudes

The search for open and safe platforms continues

While some decentralised platforms may claim to offer a free for all, the reality of using them shows us some level of moderation is both inevitable and necessary for even the most censorship-resistant networks. There are a host of moral and legal obligations which are unavoidable.

Traditional platforms including Twitter and Facebook rely on the moral responsibility of a central authority. At the same time, they are the target of political and social pressure.

Decentralised platforms have had to come up with more complex, and in some ways less satisfying, moderation techniques. But despite being innovative, they don’t really resolve the tension between moderating those who wish to cause harm and maximising free speech.

Read more: Google’s and Facebook’s loud appeal to users over the news media bargaining code shows a lack of political power

– ref. Social media has huge problems with free speech and moderation. Could decentralised platforms fix this? – https://theconversation.com/social-media-has-huge-problems-with-free-speech-and-moderation-could-decentralised-platforms-fix-this-157053

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Chris Wallace, Associate Professor, 50/50 By 2030 Foundation, Faculty of Business Government & Law, University of Canberra

This week’s March 4 Justice protests saw tens of thousands of people take to the streets. It gave Australians – outraged by gendered violence connected to Parliament House and beyond – a satisfying sense of agency. It also made headlines around the world.

Now comes the hard part: how to actually get something done. Here, there are political realities to face.

Silencing the opposition

The parliamentary proceedings held immediately after the Monday protests underline this problem.

Morrison and his Minister for Women Marise Payne had already drawn the protesters’ ire by refusing to attend the Canberra rally. Morrison compounded this with a clumsy description of the protests as a “triumph for democracy” because “not far from here, such marches, even now, are being met with bullets”.

Then, during question time, the government refused to budge on the two issues which sparked the protests: its handling of the alleged rape of Brittany Higgins in the office of Defence Minister Linda Reynolds, and its staunch support for Christian Porter to continue as Attorney-General, despite the historic rape allegations against him, which he denies.

Labor leader Anthony Albanese moved to suspend standing orders, pressing the government to fully explain its response to the alleged rape of Higgins and commission an independent inquiry into Porter’s fitness for office.

Four minutes into his speech, Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton strolled to the dispatch box and declared — as Albanese was quoting from Higgins’ speech — the Labor leader had had “a fair go” and moved he “be no longer heard”.

There’s a difference between being in government and opposition. The government controls the lower house and can literally silence the other side.

Sharp criticism beyond parliament

However, the government cannot absolutely control events outside parliament, and there are signs the Coalition has taken a deeper hit than the parliamentary optics suggest.

The headlines tell part of the story. “Morrison digs in as rallies rage”, “Tidal wave of tears and rage sweeps the land” and “Thunderous roar for change rings out across the nation” are just a few examples from major newspapers on Tuesday.

Ominously for the government, some traditionally supportive commentators are sharply critical. As journalist Jennifer Hewett wrote in her influential Australian Financial Review column:

Morrison is actually trying to hold onto the shards of glass now showering deep cuts all over the government.

Conservative columnist Janet Albrechtsen commented in The Australian:

His performance to date has been woeful. Scott Morrison has an unfortunate tendency to refer up, like a bank manager looking for someone else to explain things to him, and leaving it to others to make the hard decisions.

Morrison’s strategy

Recent polls show the government is under pressure. Many in the Coalition view the 48-52% two party-preferred deficit in the latest Newspoll as a good result, though, given the range of stories running against the government, including the slow COVID-19 vaccine roll out.

The government’s position on the Higgins and Porter matters is underpinned by a few personal and political maxims to which Morrison holds fast.

The first is that stonewalling nearly always works for him. The news cycle is his friend. Stalling has worked uniformly for Morrison with one exception: his disastrous handling of the 2020 bushfire crisis. Morrison would consider it the exception that proves the rule.

Read more: View from The Hill: Christian Porter finds a target, and so does Brittany Higgins

The second is, while some voters may be turned off by the Prime Minister’s empathy bypass, Morrison believes — as is the case with government policy on asylum seekers — few LNP supporters are likely to switch parties over it. They will prioritise other issues when casting their vote.

If the government can “dirty up” the opposition on gendered violence in the workplace, Morrison will be even more confident on this score. News.com.au journalist Samantha Maiden’s report on anonymous Facebook allegations concerning wrongdoing by unnamed Labor figures hints at what may lie ahead.

The third maxim is that the Albanese opposition struggles to cut through at the best of times, and could well struggle to prosecute this issue too. This is especially so given parliament sits for just four more days between now and May 11, when the budget is handed down.

Read more: ‘What are you afraid of ScoMo?’: Australian women are angry — and the Morrison government needs to listen

The last and most significant assumption underpinning Morrison’s stance is that the protesters will give up, that Higgins will be weighed into silence by the government’s closed ranks, and Porter’s defamation case against the ABC and journalist Louise Milligan will run the historic rape allegations against him into the sand.

So while the gap between parliament and the outside world was never starker than this week, Morrison appears confident his stonewalling strategy will work. If the protests do fall away, his strategy may well succeed.

Maintaining the rage

For the protesters to get a result they must do the opposite: they must persist.

Activists will need to devise clear and telling ways to keep attention focused on their cause, in a media environment primed to move on and seek out the new. It is one thing to organise a successful day of protest. It is another to devise novel ways to keep the media engaged over time, racheting up pressure on the government to change its stance.

Labor’s task now is to position the Prime Minister’s handling of Higgins’ alleged rape, and the Attorney-General’s fitness for office, into a bigger picture of general government incompetence and specific neglect of women’s needs.

If Labor can demonstrate this incompetence and neglect are part of a bigger pattern, the government will pay a price. Women’s rage over the specific instances of gendered violence that triggered the March 4 Justice protests will have yielded a visible dividend.

And work on fixing the wider problem can energetically advance.

– ref. The women’s march was a huge success. Now comes the hard part: how to actually get something done – https://theconversation.com/the-womens-march-was-a-huge-success-now-comes-the-hard-part-how-to-actually-get-something-done-157225

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kylie Quinn, Vice-Chancellor’s Research Fellow, School of Health and Biomedical Sciences, RMIT University

The COVID vaccine rollout is now underway in Australia and around the world. It’s incredible we’ve been able to develop and produce safe and effective vaccines so quickly — but the current crop of vaccines might not protect us forever.

Fortunately, researchers are already developing and testing booster shots. So what are booster shots, and when might we need them?

First a prime, then a boost

The first time you give someone a dose of vaccine against a particular infection, it’s called a prime. You’re getting your immune response ready to roll.

Each time you give another dose against that same infection, it’s called a boost. You’re building on immunity you already have from the first dose.

Importantly, giving smaller doses in multiple shots is often better than a large dose of vaccine in a single shot. This is because our immune system builds on our immunity like bricks in a wall; each level needs to be laid before the next layer is built.

Booster shots take advantage of a phenomenon called “immunological memory”. Our immune cells essentially remember vaccines we’ve previously received, and respond much more quickly and vigorously to subsequent shots, building our immunity to levels at which we can be confident we’ll be protected.

When might I need a boost?

There are three different situations in which you might need a boost.

First, several doses of a vaccine can be given relatively quickly, one after another, to rapidly build someone’s immunity against a given infection. A good example is the whooping cough vaccine. It’s initially given at around two, four and six months of age to rapidly build immunity in infants, who are most at risk from whooping cough.

This is also the approach most COVID vaccines use. The first shot gets your immune system going but immunity is unreliable. The second shot leads to more consistent protection.

Read more: Curious Kids: how do vaccines kill viruses?

Second, we can give a booster shot if immunity drops over time, or “wanes”, to restore someone’s immunity to optimal levels. For example, we know immunity to tetanus can drop over time, so we recommend tetanus boosters every ten years.

Immunity appears to be strong three months after the Moderna vaccine and six months after the AstraZeneca vaccine, but we don’t yet have a full picture of how long immunity to COVID-19 lasts after vaccination. Scientists will continue to monitor this to determine if and when we’ll need these type of boosters for COVID.

Third, if the virus “mutates” or changes substantially over time, this can make it challenging for our immune cells to recognise the virus, effectively lowering our immunity again. A good example here is the influenza vaccine. The ‘flu virus can change a lot from year to year so, to make sure immunity remains high, we give annual boosters tailored to new strains.

On the front foot with viral variants

SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, has already undergone a number of changes. We’re still learning how this might affect the efficacy of different vaccines.

But vaccine manufacturers are already adjusting their COVID vaccines to better target new variants. Moderna, for example, has just administered the first doses of an updated vaccine to volunteers in a new clinical trial. They’re intending to find out how well it works against B.1.351, the variant first identified in South Africa.

The updated vaccines tweak the “antigen” — the molecule used by our immune cells to target a specific virus. But they can use the same basic design and manufacturing processes.

As a result, they probably won’t have to go through the full gamut of clinical testing again. Regulatory hurdles are similarly streamlined with updated ‘flu vaccines.

Rapid development of these updated vaccines will put us on the front foot in our fight against COVID-19.

Read more: Why we’ll get COVID booster vaccines quickly and how we know they’re safe

More of the same, or something a little different?

With boosting, you can end up with a higher level of immunity if you wait longer between doses. This is because our immune cells need a rest before they can respond to additional doses. We’ve seen this with the AstraZeneca vaccine where a longer delay between doses, up to 12 weeks, leads to much better protection.

It’s also possible we could generate greater immunity if we use different vaccines, one after the other, rather than repeating the same vaccine. This is called heterologous prime boosting.

We’re not sure why a mix-and-match approach can be more potent. But it’s possible combining two different vaccines — which give the same antigen target but stimulate the immune system in different ways — could better focus our immune cells’ attention on the right target.

We haven’t really taken advantage of heterologous vaccines in real-world settings yet. The first clinical heterologous vaccine was an Ebola vaccine approved in May 2020, while the Sputnik V COVID vaccine is also a heterologous vaccine.

But that could change. While there are now multiple approved COVID vaccines, vaccine rollout has been challenging. In the United Kingdom, the official policy is to use the same vaccine for both shots. But if the vaccine used for the first shot is not known or not available, people can still receive a booster with what is available.

Meanwhile, a clinical trial in the UK is evaluating the immune response when the Pfizer vaccine is followed by the AstraZeneca vaccine, and vice versa, as compared two doses of the same vaccine.

Australia will benefit from the knowledge these trials will bring, allowing us to fine-tune our boosting strategies, and maintain immunity in our population.

Read more: After a year of pain, here’s how the COVID-19 pandemic could play out in 2021 and beyond

– ref. Why do we need booster shots, and could we mix and match different COVID vaccines? – https://theconversation.com/why-do-we-need-booster-shots-and-could-we-mix-and-match-different-covid-vaccines-155951

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lesley Hughes, Professor, Department of Biological Sciences, Macquarie University

There is much at stake at the highly anticipated United Nations climate summit in Glasgow this November. There, almost 200 nations signed up to the Paris Agreement will make emissions reduction pledges as part of the international effort to avoid catastrophic climate change.

Many countries recognise the urgent task at hand. Ahead of the meeting, more than 110 governments have already pledged to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. So where is Australia in terms of global ambition?

We, some of Australia’s most senior climate change scientists and policymakers, have come together to address these and other pressing questions, informed by sound science and policy.

Our report, released today, pinpoints the emissions reduction burden Australians will bear in future decades if our Paris targets are not increased. Alarmingly, people living in the 2030s and 2040s could be forced to reduce emissions by ten times as much as people this decade, if Australia is to keep within its 2℃ “carbon budget”.

‘Manifestly inadequate’

A “carbon budget” identifies how much carbon dioxide (CO₂) the world can emit if it’s to limit global temperature rise to internationally agreed goals. Those goals include keeping warming to well below 2℃ – and preferably below 1.5℃ – this century.

National emissions reduction targets are key to staying within a carbon budget. Australia’s target, under the Paris Agreement, is a 26-28% reduction between 2005 and 2030.

In a report released in January, we showed how that target is manifestly inadequate. To remain within its 2°C carbon budget, Australia must cut emissions by 50% between 2005 and 2030, and reach net-zero emissions by 2045.

To remain inside the 1.5°C budget, we must reduce emissions by 74% between 2005 and 2030, and reach net zero emissions by 2035.

Since that report was released, the Australian government has doubled down on its 2030 target. But Prime Minister Scott Morrison appears to be inching closer to a net-zero commitment. Last month he declared his government’s goal was “to reach net-zero emissions as soon as possible, and preferably by 2050”.

Our latest report set out to determine how the burden of emissions reduction would be spread after 2030 if Australia’s 2030 target is not increased.

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

What we found

Our analysis used the methodology adopted by the Climate Change Authority. This statutory body was established by the Gillard Labor government in 2012, and was charged with providing independent expert policy advice.

In 2014, the authority identified the level of climate ambition required for Australia to do its fair share in the global effort. It recommended a 30% emissions reduction between 2000 and 2025, reaching 40-60% by 2030.

But the Abbott Coalition government ignored this advice. Instead, it pledged the far weaker target of 26-28% emissions reduction.

We wanted to determine what happens if Australia sticks to that inadequate target – and so delays substantive climate action until later decades.

To meet the weak Paris target, Australia need only reduce emissions by 1.2% each year from 2020 to 2030. If Australia persists with this target but still decides to stay inside the 2℃ carbon budget, that leaves just 1,329 million tonnes of greenhouse gases we can emit after 2030.

Keeping to this limit would be extremely challenging. If done in a straight-line trajectory, it would mean a 12.9% cut in emissions each year from 2030, until net-zero emissions were reached in 2037.

This represents an annual challenge ten times greater than what’s needed in each year this decade to meet the current 2030 goals. It would require an annual emissions reduction of 66.8 million tonnes of greenhouse gases – more than every car and light commercial vehicle on Australia’s roads emits in a year.

Second, we looked at the emissions trajectory if Australia was to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, while still keeping the inadequate 2030 Paris targets. We found people living in the 2030s and 2040s would have to reduce emissions by three times more than what’s required this decade.

Clearly, the inadequate 2030 target is the source of the problem. By requiring very little emissions reduction this decade, the Morrison government is kicking the climate can down the road for our children to pick up. It means Australia is also failing on its moral obligation to do its fair share in the global climate effort.

Australia trails the world

This sad state of affairs is not news to the rest of the world. Australia is widely viewed as an international climate laggard. In the 2020 Climate Change Performance Index, it received the lowest rating of 57 countries and the European Union. It also ranked second-worst on climate action, out of 177 countries, in the 2020 UN Sustainable Development Report.

The Glasgow climate summit, known as the 26th Conference of the Parties or COP26, seeks to hold governments to account for their climate pledges. Nations are expected to front up with ambitious short-term plans for emissions reduction.

Many nations have risen to the challenge. Countries to adopt a target of net-zero by 2050 include the United States, Japan, South Korea and the European Union. China will aim to achieve this target by 2060.

Even more importantly, some governments have ramped up their 2030 targets. For example the European Union will now reduce emissions by 55% and the United Kingdom by 68% – both on 1990 levels.

Read more: Biden’s Senate majority doesn’t just super-charge US climate action, it blazes a trail for Australia

A critical decade

The importance of COP26 cannot be overstated. Under current global pledges, an average temperature rise of 3℃ or more is distinctly possible this century. This increases the risk of abrupt and irreversible changes in the Earth’s climate system – known as tipping points – bringing disastrous consequences for both human and natural systems.

The Morrison government is failing to protect Australia from this devastating future. It’s also ignoring a major economic opportunity that should – in a rational country – bring all sides of politics together.

Over the past decade, renewable energy costs have plummeted and significant advances have been made in electric vehicles and regenerative agriculture. This opens up vast new opportunities for Australia.

These days, few in the federal Coalition would deny climate science outright. But the government’s softer form of denial – failing to grasp the need for urgent action – will have the same tragic outcome.

Read more: Against the odds, South Australia is a renewable energy powerhouse. How on Earth did they do it?

– ref. Wake up, Mr Morrison: Australia’s slack climate effort leaves our children 10 times more work to do – https://theconversation.com/wake-up-mr-morrison-australias-slack-climate-effort-leaves-our-children-10-times-more-work-to-do-157136

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ross Crates, Postdoctoral fellow, Australian National University

Just as humans learn languages, animals learn behaviours crucial for survival and reproduction from older, experienced individuals of the same species. In this way, important “cultures” such as bird songs are passed from one generation to the next.

But global biodiversity loss means many animal populations are becoming small and sparsely distributed. This jeopardises the ability of young animals to learn important behaviours.

Nowhere is this more true than in the case of regent honeyeaters. In a paper published today, we describe how a population crash to fewer than 300 has caused the species’ song culture to break down.

In healthy populations, the song of adult male honeyeaters is complex and long. But where the population is very small, the song is diminished and, in many cases, the birds have adopted the song of other species. Sadly, this makes the males less attractive to females, which may increase the chance the regent honeyeater will become extinct.

A soft, warbling song

Since 2015, we have monitored the regent honeyeater – a critically endangered, nectar-feeding songbird. The birds once roamed in huge flocks between Adelaide and Queensland’s central coast, tracking eucalyptus blossom.

As recently as the 1950s, regent honeyeaters were a common sight in suburban Melbourne and Sydney but are now extremely rare in both cities.

Extensive postwar land clearing has destroyed regent honeyeater habitat and caused the population to plummet. Most breeding activity is now restricted to the Blue Mountains and Northern Tablelands in New South Wales.

Regent honeyeaters are most vocal during the early stages of their breeding season. Before the population decline, the birds were known for their soft, warbling song produced with characteristic head-bobbing. But with few birds left in the wild, their song is changing – with potentially tragic consequences.

Finding their voice

Birdsong is one of the most well-studied examples of animal culture. Young songbirds learn to sing by listening to, repeating and refining the songs of older flockmates.

Song-learning is often completed in first year of life, after which a birds’ song is “fixed”.

Despite the increasing number of endangered bird species, there is surprisingly little research into how declines in population size and density might damage song culture in wild birds. We sought to explore whether this link existed in regent honeyeater populations.

Male regent honeyeaters sing to secure breeding territories and attract mates. We classified the songs of 146 male regent honeyeaters between 2015 and 2019. We made or obtained high-quality recordings of 47 of these in the wild, and more in captivity. This included wild birds found by the general public and reported to BirdLife Australia. We quickly chased up these public sightings to record the birds’ songs before they moved on.

We noted the location of each male and tracked its breeding success. We also recorded the songs of captive-bred regent honeyeaters that were part of a reintroduction program.

Read more: Scientists used ‘fake news’ to stop predators killing endangered birds — and the result was remarkable

Changing tunes

Our research showed the songs of remaining wild males vary remarkably across regions. For example, listen to the “proper” song of regent honeyeaters occurring in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney, where most of the remaining population occur:

You’ll notice they sound noticeably different to the small number of males hanging on 400km to the north, near Glen Innes. Although these males still sound like a regent honeyeater, their songs are slower and have a different melody:

Across the species’ entire range, we found 18 males whose songs sounded nothing like a regent honeyeater. Instead, they closely resembled those of other bird species. Five male regent honeyeaters had learned the song of the little wattlebird:

Four males had learned songs of the noisy friarbird. Others sounded like pied currawongs, eastern rosellas or little friarbirds:

There are isolated cases of individual songbirds mistakenly learning the song of a different species. But to find 12% of males singing only other species’ songs is unprecedented in wild animal populations.

We believe regent honeyeaters are now so rare in the landscape, some young males are unable to locate adult males from which to learn their song. Instead, the young males mistakenly learn the songs of different bird species they’ve associated with when developing their repertoires.

Evidence suggests this song behaviour is distinct from the mimicry common in some Australian birds. Mimicry involves a bird adding the songs of other birds to its own repertoire – and so, not losing it’s original song. But the regent honeyeaters we recorded never sang songs that resembled that of their species.

Read more: Look up! A powerful owl could be sleeping in your backyard after a night surveying kilometres of territory

Also, mimicry in other species has typically evolved because it increases breeding success. However in regent honeyeaters, we found the opposite. Even among males that sounded like a regent honeyeater, those whose songs were unusual for the local area were less likely to impress, and be paired with, a female. Females that did couple up to males with unusual songs were less likely to lay eggs.

These data suggest the loss of song culture is associated with lower breeding success, which could be exacerbating regent honeyeater population decline.

A captive-breeding program is a key component of the regent honeyeater recovery plan. However our research showed the songs of captive-bred regent honeyeaters were shorter and less complex than their wild counterparts:

This may affect the breeding success of captive-bred males once they’re released to the wild. Consequently, we’re teaching captive juveniles to sing correctly by playing them our recordings of “proper” songs from wild birds in the Blue Mountains.

The honeyeaters’ final song?

Maintaining animal cultures in both wild and captive populations is increasingly recognised as crucial to preventing extinctions. These cultures include not just song, but also other important behaviours such as migration routes and feeding strategies.

The loss of the regent honeyeater song culture may be a final warning that the species is headed for extinction. This is an aspect of species conservation we can’t ignore.

We must urgently restore and protect breeding habitats, protect nests from predators and teach captive-bred birds to sing. We must also address climate change, which threatens the species’ habitat. Otherwise, future generations may never hear the regent honeyeater’s dulcet tones in the wild.

Read more: Birds that play with others have the biggest brains – and the same may go for humans

– ref. Only the lonely: an endangered bird is forgetting its song as the species dies out – https://theconversation.com/only-the-lonely-an-endangered-bird-is-forgetting-its-song-as-the-species-dies-out-156950

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Luci Pangrazio, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Deakin University

Children, like adults, are spending more time online. At home and school pre-schoolers now use an array of apps and platforms to learn, play and be entertained. While there are reported benefits, including learning through exploration, many parents are still concerned about screen time, cybersafety and internet addiction.

An increasingly popular technical solution is parental control apps. These enable parents to monitor, filter and restrict children’s online interactions and experiences. Parental control apps that work by blocking dangerous or explicit content can be marketed as “taking the battle out of screen time” and giving parents “peace of mind”.

But such a quick fix is inadequate when addressing the complicated reasons behind screen time. Much worse though, the apps expose users to privacy and other safety issues most people aren’t aware of.

What apps do parents use?

Research by Australia’s eSafety Commission shows 4% of preschoolers’ parents use parental control apps. This increases to 7% of parents with older children and 8% of parents with teenagers. Global trends suggest these figures are bound to rise.

Parents download parental control apps onto a child’s mobile phone, laptop or tablet. Most parental control apps enable parents to monitor or restrict inappropriate online content from wherever they are. They provide parents with insights into which sites their child has visited and for how long, as well as who they have interacted with.

Qustudio, for example, claims to keep children “safer from cyber threats” by filtering inappropriate content, setting time limits on use and even monitoring text messages.

Boomerang, another popular parental control app, enables parents to set time limits per day, per app.

Why they may not be safe

Parental control apps need many permissions to access particular systems and functions on devices. 80% of parental control apps request access to location, contacts and storage.

While these permissions help the apps carry out detailed monitoring, some of them may not be necessary for the app to function as described. For instance, several apps designed to monitor children’s online activity ask for permissions such as “read calendar”, “read contacts” and “record audio” — none of which are justified in the app description or the privacy policy.

Read more: 83% of Australians want tougher privacy laws. Now’s your chance to tell the government what you want

Many are considered “dangerous permissions”, which means they are used to access information that could affect the user’s privacy and make their device more vulnerable to attack.

For example, Boomerang requests more than 91 permissions, 16 of which are considered “dangerous”. The permission “access fine location” for instance, allows the app to access the precise geographic location of the user. The “read phone state” allows the app to know your phone number, network information and status of outgoing calls.

It’s not just the apps that get that information. Many of these apps embed data hungry third-party software development kits (SDKs). SDKs are a set of software tools and programs used by developers to save them from tedious coding. However, some SDKs can make the app developers money from collecting personally identifiable information, such as name, location and contacts from children and parents.

Because third-party SDKs are developed by a company separate from the original app, they have different protocols around data sharing and privacy. Yet any permissions sought by the host app are also inherited by third-party SDKs.

The Google Play Store, which is used for Android phones, does not force developers to explain to users whether it has embedded third-party SDKs, so users cannot make an informed decision when they consent to the terms and conditions.

Read more: Children can be exposed to sexual predators online, so how can parents teach them to be safe?

Apple’s App Store is more transparent. Developers must state if their apps use third-party code and whether the information collected is used to track them or is linked to their identity or device. Apple has removed a number of parental control apps from the App Store due to their invasive features.

Many popular parental control apps in the Google Play Store have extensive security and privacy vulnerabilities due to SDKs. For example, SDKs for Google Ads, Google Firebase and Google Analytics are present in over 50% of parental control apps in the Google Play Store, while the Facebook SDK is present in 43%.

A US study focusing on whether parental control apps complied with laws to protect the personal data of children under 13 found roughly 57% of these apps were in violation of the law.

Not all parental control apps request dangerous permissions. The Safer Kid app, for example, does not request any dangerous permissions but costs US$200 per year.

Why should I worry?

Personal data has become a valuable commodity in the digital economy. Huge volumes of data are generated from our digital engagements and traded by data brokers (who collect information about users to sell to other companies and/or individuals) and tech companies.

The value is not in a singular data point, but the creation of huge datasets that can be processed to make predictions about individual behaviours. While this is a problem for all users, it is particularly problematic for children. Children are thought to be more vulnerable to online threats and persuasion than adults due to more limited digital skills and less awareness of online risks.

Read more: Kids need to learn about cybersecurity, but teachers only have so much time in the day

Data-driven advertising establishes habits and taste preferences in young children, positioning them as consumers by exploiting insecurities and using peer influence.

Parental control apps have also been targeted by attackers due to their insecurities, exposing children’s personal information.

There are better ways to reduce screen time

It is also questionable whether parental control apps are worthwhile. Research suggests issues of screen time and cybercrime are best managed through helping children self-regulate and reflect on their online behaviour.

Rather than policing time limits for screen use, parents could focus on the content, context and connections their child is making. Parents could encourage their children to talk to them about what happens online, to help make them more aware of risk and what to do about it.

Read more: Stop worrying about screen ‘time’. It’s your child’s screen experience that matters

Restrictive approaches also reduce opportunities for kids’ growth and beneficial online activity. Unsurprisingly, children report parental control apps are overly invasive, negatively impacting their relationships with parents.

Instead of a technical “quick-fix,” we need an educational response that is ethical, sustainable and builds young people’s digital agency. Children will not be under their parents’ surveillance forever, so we need to help them prepare for online challenges and risks.

– ref. Apps that help parents protect kids from cybercrime may be unsafe too – https://theconversation.com/apps-that-help-parents-protect-kids-from-cybercrime-may-be-unsafe-too-156583

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard Buning, Lecturer in Tourism, School of Business, The University of Queensland

Bike-share programs have in the past been designed and operated with residents as the main focus. These shared bikes have mainly been regarded as a way to solve the “last mile problem” – the distance between the final destination and the closest public transport stop that’s seen as too far to walk and too close to drive.

My new research published in the Journal of Sustainable Tourism challenges this position. The study findings from the Pacers Bikeshare program in the US city of Indianapolis demonstrate the incredible demand tourists can provide for bike-share programs. In turn, the community gains extra value from tourism and the overall enriched visitor experience. Visitors incurred more than twice the user fees of residents.

This all adds up to substantial revenue for the program and an economic benefit for the city. It changes the calculations about the viability and value of bike-share schemes, which provide wide economic benefits to cities.

Read more: Billions are pouring into mobility technology – will the transport revolution live up to the hype?

A COVID-driven bike boom

Share bikes and other forms of micromobility such electric scooters (e-scooters) and e-bikes have emerged as an ideal means of transport and outdoor recreation for both residents and visitors in a COVID (and post-COVID) world.

Read more: Why e-bikes can succeed where earlier bike-share schemes failed

People are working from home, travelling less and have pandemic-related safety concerns. Public transport patronage has generally declined as a result.

Amid COVID-19 lockdowns and outbreaks, communities across Australia and overseas are experiencing a cycling boom. Bike shops everywhere are overwhelmed and used bikes are hard to find. Bike-share use has risen as people look for affordable alternatives to public transport and ways to be active outdoors safely.

Bike-share programs have their time to shine, not just as transport for residents but for tourism purposes too.

Read more: Coronavirus recovery: public transport is key to avoid repeating old and unsustainable mistakes

Tourists are an important user group

This major shift in transport patterns includes tourists. We found they are a major and lucrative user group. In our study, tourists accounted for more than a third of all users of the bike-share system over more than four years.

Bike-share allows for freedom in exploring a city. Tourists use these programs to explore urban destinations in a leisurely way. They stop frequently at popular tourist attractions and at local retail outlets, restaurants and bars along the way.

This means the economic and social benefits of tourism activity can be distributed more widely throughout a community – into neighbourhoods and away from city centres and tourism hot spots – compared to cars and mass transit systems.

Further, when visitors use bike-share schemes, they get a more local, authentic and environmentally sustainable experience. The bikes allow for better access to local neighbourhoods, cultural areas, tourist sites and businesses than tour buses, ride-share operators and public transport can provide.

Read more: To bolster our fragile road and rail system we need to add a ‘micro-mobility’ network

Ensuring a COVID-safe ride

Share bikes provide a relatively contact-free and socially distanced alternative to buses, trains and ride-share cars.

Bike-share operators everywhere are responding to the increased concerns about the need for safe alternative transport. The range of strategies to ensure COVID safety include:

• increased cleaning and disinfection
• distribution of bikes at docking stations to allow for social distancing
• contact-free transactions
• promotion of public health guidelines such as wearing masks and social distancing
• even anti-viral handlebars.

Some programs have actually adapted to the shift from public tranport to bike sharing by offering essential workers and healthcare workers free or discounted memberships. In New York, as subway use has dropped, the city has constructed bike-share stations near hospitals.

The future of micromobility

Bike-share schemes offer diverse community-wide benefits for city residents throughout the world. They are a flexible, convenient, cheap, active and sustainable transport option for both residents and visitors. These schemes help cut travel times, reduce carbon emissions, increase physical activity and connect people to their community.

Micromobility options including bike-share programs will continue to gain popularity well into the future as communities look to improve urban mobility in a sustainable and active manner. The rise of e-scooters and dockless bike programs marks a transition from government-based bike-share initiatives to entrepreneurial ventures. It has fuelled rapid growth in the industry worldwide.

Read more: Limes not lemons: lessons from Australia’s first e-scooter sharing trial

The challenge now is for cities to keep up with this upward trend by developing the necessary physical infrastructure such as bike lanes, bike paths and so on.

Reaping the full benefits of bike-share programs and tourism depends on encouraging visitors to use these bikes. Ways to do this include developing aids to increase ease of use, such as digital cycling guides, maps, apps and companion programs with local businesses.

– ref. When 1 in 3 users are tourists, that changes the bike-share equation for cities – https://theconversation.com/when-1-in-3-users-are-tourists-that-changes-the-bike-share-equation-for-cities-152895

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle O’Shea, Senior Lecturer, School of Business, Western Sydney University

As the NRL competition ushers in its 2021 season, women waving pom poms while clad in figure hugging attire and white, knee-high boots will be missing from some games.

The Parramatta Eels are the latest and fifth team to cut their cheerleading squad, announcing in late January their 30 cheerleaders wouldn’t be employed this year. This decision also means nearly 80 junior cheer girls no longer have a home.

From a peak of 16 cheerleading teams in 2006, this year only 11 teams will still have cheerleaders on the sidelines.

In 2007, the then new owner of the South Sydney Rabbitohs, Russell Crowe, said cheerleaders made spectators “uncomfortable”. They were replaced with a marching band. In 2017, the Canberra Raiders replaced their squad with a game-day competition for local dance schools.

In 2019, the Melbourne Storm replaced cheer girls with mixed gender hip hop crews.The Brisbane Broncos rebranded their cheerleaders as a “dance squad”, and toned down their uniforms to “desexualise” performers and celebrate their athleticism.

For many teams, the cheerleaders are now positioned as brand ambassadors, involved in community outreach, attired in more modest costumes. Their remit is fundamentally changing. Cheering on the sidelines is increasingly looking like a sexist relic.

But rather than remove cheerleaders from sport fields altogether, we should celebrate their athleticism, embracing cheerleading as a sport in its own right.

It wasn’t always women who cheered

Although women are most often associated with cheerleading, it was once a male pursuit. Even as teams diversified, George W. Bush, Dwight Eisenhower, and Franklin D. Roosevelt were all cheerleaders.

Women first joined their American college cheer squads in 1923, participating in greater numbers in the 1940s as college-aged men went off to war. In this decade, cheerleading started to feature tumbling and acrobatics. Competitive cheerleading was introduced in the United States in the 1970s.

Today, both sideline and competition routines incorporate advanced tumbling, stunts and pyramid building alongside cheer and dance. The athleticism, skill and commitment is the same.

Cheerleading in Australia never reached the same mainstream popularity as in America. Female supporters banded together in the 1960s to form a cheer squad for the Carlton AFL club, but it never truly took off in the sport.

Cheerleading today has its Australian home in the NRL and the National Basketball League.

But as in America, Australian girls and women are increasingly becoming the team — not just cheering on the team from the sidelines.

Founded in 2016, Australia’s All Star Cheerleading competitions are gaining popularity and reach, now with over 60,000 registered competitors across the country, who show off their skills in complex routines featuring gymnastics, dance, pyramids and acrobatics.

In 2017, competition cheerleading was granted provisional Olympic status, putting it on the path to being an official Olympic sport as early as Paris 2024.

It’s time to rethink the cheerleader stereotype

In popular culture, cheerleaders continue to be cast as a trivial diversion to the real athletic performances on centre field. They are shown as two dimensional bimbos in pornography, and they are often portrayed as vapid and shallow in movies.

This reputation is slowly being recast, in part thanks to the popular Netflix docuseries Cheer. Following the co-ed team of a community college in Texas as they train for the national competition, the show highlights the sacrifices these athletes have made, and the high stakes for their physical health.

Cheer celebrates powerful images of the cheerleader by focusing on their athleticism, and their commitment to train, rehearse and perform to a competition level.

Cheerleading can reinforce the notion of sport as a masculine domain if the women involved are treated as a titillating sideline act. But cheer squads can also challenge gender ideals by celebrating women’s athleticism, skill and professionalism.

Cheerleading is a very physical – and potentially dangerous — activity, which requires both finesse and strength.

Don’t cancel the cheer

Rather than remove cheerleaders from the field, we should celebrate their athleticism and embrace it as a sport in its own right: moving away from the skimpy outfits and dancers, towards the physical athleticism of competition cheer.

Let’s challenge the status quo by dropping the eroticised messages that devalue cheerleaders but respect their contribution to their clubs, community and the game-day spectacle.

When cheerleaders are positioned as sexualised adornments alongside the “true” athletes playing rugby league, young boys and men are taught it is okay to treat women as objects.

When they are positioned as athletes, their physicality appreciated and respected, cheerleading can provide these women (and increasingly men) with paid work and a respected place on the sporting field.

As the football season begins, let’s not be too quick to cancel the cheer.

– ref. Cheerleaders are athletes. The NRL should pause on packing away the pom poms – https://theconversation.com/cheerleaders-are-athletes-the-nrl-should-pause-on-packing-away-the-pom-poms-156963

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

This week’s federal Newspoll, conducted March 10-13 from a sample of 1,521 people, gave Labor a 52-48% lead on a two-party preferred basis, a two-point gain for Labor since the previous Newspoll three weeks ago.

Primary votes were 39% Coalition (down three), 39% Labor (up two), 10% Greens (steady) and 3% One Nation (steady).

In addition, 62% were satisfied with Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s performance (down two) and 34% were dissatisfied, for a net approval of +28. Labor leader Anthony Albanese’s net approval jumped eight points to +1.

Morrison, meanwhile, led as better PM by 56-30%, well down from his 61-26% lead three weeks ago.

On voting intentions, this is Labor’s best showing in the poll since last February, immediately after the bushfire crisis but before the COVID-19 pandemic spread to Australia. It is Morrison’s narrowest better PM margin since April.

Before COVID, we would have expected the party of a prime minister with a +28 net approval to have a large lead on voting intentions. The relationship between voting intentions and Morrison’s net approval has clearly broken down in the past year since the pandemic began.

The Morrison government’s response to two separate rape allegations against a minister in the cabinet and a staffer in another minister’s office has also likely played a role in Labor’s improvement in the poll.

Read more: ‘What are you afraid of ScoMo?’: Australian women are angry — and the Morrison government needs to listen

The Poll Bludger reports that Newspoll aggregated its last two polls to determine if the Coalition’s slump was driven mostly by women respondents.

However, this does not appear to be the case. As compared with the Newspoll aggregate data from October to December, the Coalition’s primary vote is down two points among both men and women, while Labor’s primary vote is up three points with men and up two with women.

The Essential poll out today corroborates Newspoll in still giving Morrison strong ratings — his net approval is +33, down only slightly from +37 in February.

While Newspoll had Albanese gaining much ground on the better prime minister question, Essential has Morrison ahead by 52-26% on this measure, down only slightly from 52-24% in February.

Essential gave the federal government a 70% good to 12% poor rating on handling of COVID, up from 62-14% last fortnight. This was behind the state governments’ handling of the pandemic, with the exception of Victoria, which only garnered a 62% good rating.

Read more: Could the Morrison government’s response to sexual assault claims cost it the next election?

It appears, then, the slow roll-out of Australia’s vaccination program is not yet hurting the government’s approval ratings.

I am sceptical that the rape allegations can be a lasting driver of gains for Labor in the polls. The infamous Access Hollywood tape, in which Donald Trump spoke in vulgar terms about women, emerged about a month before the 2016 US election, yet it didn’t prevent Trump from defeating Hillary Clinton to win the presidency.

Recently, Andrew Cuomo, the Democratic governor of New York state, has been accused of sexual harassment of his female employees. But a New York Siena poll had 50% of respondents saying Cuomo should not resign immediately, while 35% said he should. Women were more favourable to Cuomo than men on this question, too.

WA election late counting

With 63% of enrolled voters counted in Saturday’s Western Australia election, the ABC is now calling 50 Labor seats, two Liberals and four Nationals, with three still in doubt. In the doubtful seats, Labor currently leads in Nedlands and Warren-Blackwood, but trails in Churchlands.

We would normally expect a decline in Labor’s primary vote as postal votes are added, as these tend to be Labor’s worst vote category. But Labor’s statewide primary vote has instead increased to 59.9% from 59.1% on election night.

Labor’s massive primary vote explains why they will win control of the upper house for the first time. Labor’s upper house vote share (60.1%) is currently slightly better than in the lower house.

On the ABC’s upper house calculators, Labor is winning 22 of its 23 seats on raw quotas, without requiring preferences.

Labor could win five of the six seats in the Eastern Metropolitan region on a massive primary vote of 67.4%, or 4.72 quotas. The most surprising result is in the Mining and Pastoral region, where the Daylight Saving party is winning a seat off just 0.2% of the vote (0.01 quotas).

This result shows that group voting tickets should be abolished and replaced by the Senate’s voter-directed preference system. With its big majority in both chambers of the state parliament, the re-elected Labor government should pursue both this reform and an end to the heavy rural malapportionment in the upper house.

– ref. Morrison still enjoys strong ratings in separate polls, indicating Labor’s gains may be short-lived – https://theconversation.com/morrison-still-enjoys-strong-ratings-in-separate-polls-indicating-labors-gains-may-be-short-lived-157129

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elizabeth Jackson, Senior Lecturer in Supply Chain Management & Logistics, Curtin University

On March 11 — exactly a year after the World Health Organization declared COVID a pandemic — Australia’s health department secretary Brendan Murphy fronted a Senate select committee to discuss potential delays to the government’s timetable for the vaccine rollout.

The federal government had initially pledged to vaccinate 4 million Australian adults by early April, and all remaining adults by October. But with each of the approved COVID vaccines requiring two shots, it was unclear whether these deadlines referred to complete vaccination, or merely a first dose.

But Murphy argued this distinction isn’t as clear-cut as it might sound, because of the complex and evolving evidence about what dose interval offers vaccine recipients the best protection.

“The original end-of-October modelling was done when we had a planned four-week dose interval with AstraZeneca,” he told the Senate committee. “Now we’re giving the second dose at a 12-week interval […] I suspect it’s unlikely we will have completed the second doses of the AstraZeneca vaccines by [October].”

What’s more, Murphy also said “the first dose is nearly as good as the second dose” in terms of conferring immunity, although it’s not clear what evidence he was relying on here.

Besides the evidently simplistic deadlines, there is also the fact that the rollout is a hugely complex logistical operation, involving manufacture, transport, storage and administration of the vaccine under very specific conditions.

Given this atypical supply chain, and the rapidly evolving evidence around the vaccines, perhaps we as a society should be respectful of this situation and guard against pushing too hard.

How it started

Australia’s COVID vaccination program began on February 21. The ABC reports 159,294 people have been vaccinated as of March 12. Modelling published by The Guardian suggests 2 million doses would need to have been given by mid-March to meet the April target.

Preliminary research also suggests Australia needs to be administering 200,000 vaccines per day, on average, to hit the October deadline.

Read more: Australia must vaccinate 200,000 adults a day to meet October target: new modelling

Almost a month into the rollout, the total number of vaccinated Australians is fewer than the number we’ll need to vaccinate each and every day. It’s fair to say we’ve not exactly hit the ground running.

How it’s going

Of course, it is reasonable to expect we might start slow and then speed up. We can assume the rate will pick up once CSL begins domestic production of the AstraZeneca vaccine, towards the end of March, with the aim of producing a million doses a week.

Notwithstanding any teething problems with the manufacture itself, there are already logistics systems in place to move and store the vaccine, and training programs for medical professionals and vaccine hubs to administer it. Domestic manufacture also has a shorter supply chain than international shipping, which helps minimise the risks.

Is Australia behind on its rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine? Yes. Will it catch up? Most likely, yes.

The risks of going too fast

There are risks in accelerating and pressuring the supply chain purely to hit an arbitrary deadline. Even with the very best planning and control, novel supply chain systems are notoriously fragile and frequently crack under excessive pressure.

We’ve seen signs of this already in various countries. The European Union has suffered delays in vaccine supplies and blocked a shipment to Australia. The US vaccine rollout has been hindered by severe winter storms, contract issues and factory fires. Some nations have paused the AstraZeneca vaccine rollout amid fears of side-effects. And the ethical debate continues about the need for wealthy nations to share their vaccine stockpiles with poorer countries.

It’s inevitable there will be mishaps along the way, but excessive haste increases the risk. Already we have seen patients accidentally given multiple doses of the vaccine by medical professions without adequate training, and doses wasted by operator error in Victoria.

Read more: How the Pfizer COVID vaccine gets from the freezer into your arm

It is understandable the public should hold the federal government to account over its promises about the timetable for the vaccine rollout. But as the federal government’s official vaccine rollout policy states, the entire operation is “complex and atypical”.

Research on situations of humanitarian disaster relief show the dangers of pressuring supply chains to overperform in time-critical, unpredictable situations. By one estimate, more than 40% of humanitarian organisations’ spending on relief is wasted due to factors such as duplication of resources and incomplete spending analysis.

Some countries are already suffering humanitarian disaster at the hands of COVID, but not Australia. We have experienced far less social and economic disruption than many other countries, and have generally weathered the COVID crisis remarkably well.

Given that fact, and the unique challenges of a successful vaccine rollout, it would definitely be wiser for the government to underpromise and over-deliver on COVID vaccines, rather than the other way around.

Read more: Can I choose what vaccine I get? What if I have allergies or side-effects? Key COVID vaccine rollout questions answered

– ref. Australia’s COVID vaccine rollout is well behind schedule — but don’t panic – https://theconversation.com/australias-covid-vaccine-rollout-is-well-behind-schedule-but-dont-panic-157048

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jarryd Bartle, Sessional Lecturer, RMIT University

Last night, Four Corners revealed a number of allegations against a self-described “BDSM master”, James Davis, recently charged with federal slavery and servitude offences by the Australian Federal Police in New South Wales.

The alleged offending occurred within the context of a polygamous BDSM lifestyle, with a number of young women allegedly pressured into sexual activity and subjected to physical violence by Davis and other men.

BDSM activities pose a number of unique challenge for police and prosecutors, who may not be aware of the distinction between consensual fun and abuse and other crimes under criminal law.

One of the authors here, Nadia Davis, has spent six years researching BDSM, consent and the criminal law, speaking with hundreds of people who engage in these activities to gain a better understanding for the community.

What is BDSM?

BDSM (which stands for “bondage submission sadomasochism”) is a broad term used to describe sexual activities involving dominance, submission and control.

BDSM activities range from rope play and spanking to piercing and nipple clamps, but all typically involve one (or more) partners taking on a more dominant role during sex, while others are more submissive.

Most BDSM activities are limited to discrete play sessions between partners, but some people engage in “full-time” or “24/7” relationships involving dominance and submission.

BDSM practices and interests are not in themselves pathological, nor is there a strong connection between engaging in BDSM practices and risks of sexual offending.

Read more: Fifty Shades of Grey and the legal limits of BDSM

A recent study in Belgium found that 46.8% of the general population had engaged in BDSM-themed activities at least once, with 12.5% doing so on a regular basis.

One Australian study from 2008 found that 1.8% of sexually active people (2.2% men and 1.3% women) had engaged in BDSM activity in the previous year. This study didn’t find any significant differences between people who took part in BDSM activities and the general population in terms of mental health.

What’s the difference between BDSM and abuse?

One of the most vehemently argued positions taken by anti-BDSM commentators is that BDSM is a replication and extension of male violence against women and other men and the broader misogynistic patriarchy in which women are oppressed.

There is certainly a more than passing similarity between BDSM and gendered violence to the casual observer.

But there are two elements in authentic BDSM practices and relationships that are simply absent in abusive relationships and sexual encounters: consent and rules. These include myriad tools to ensure the safety of participants, such as checklists and traffic light systems.

Our research reinforces that all BDSM practitioners consider consent to be absolutely fundamental. Consent is so ingrained in BDSM culture and practice that discussions before sexual play usually involve every detail of the planned session, including the exact activities that will be undertaken.

BDSM players use systems to ensure their partner is still consenting throughout the session and any transgression of this approach is taken extremely seriously as a violation of consent. Spontaneity is not prized in the BDSM world – consent is.

In BDSM, consent is not a passive acceptance of a proposition. It is very common for “dominant” players to only perform acts with “submissive” partners when that person asks for it. Dominants who push submissives or start play without explicit agreement are considered to be potentially abusive within the BDSM community.

Read more: Are you a pervert? Challenging the boundaries of sex

What does the law say?

Davis, the subject of the Four Corners story, was charged with a number of federal offences, including reducing a person to slavery, intentionally possessing a slave and causing a person to enter into or remain in servitude.

A wide range of other criminal offences could apply to BDSM activities that are abusive.

Under NSW criminal law, for example, consent requires a person to freely and voluntarily agree to sexual activity. (Other states and territories have similar laws.) The use of “slave contracts” and other fantasy objects in BDSM activities does not alter the requirements for free and voluntary agreement under the law.

Sexual consent can be withdrawn at any time. Moreover, consent in response to intimidating or coercive conduct or other threats is not real consent.

In addition, in common law jurisdictions, a person can be charged with assault or injury offences whether or not the injured person had consented to the conduct. This places “riskier” forms of BDSM, such as piercing and knife play, in a legal grey area, even when enthusiastic consent is given.

Read more: We need a new definition of pornography – with consent at the centre

BDSM practitioners, however, are often failed by the criminal justice system. Those who report non-consensual play to police are often met with derision and a refusal to investigate, including victim-blaming and slut-shaming.

Domestic and family violence can exist in all forms of relationships, including BDSM relationships. So it’s crucial for everyone who engages in BDSM activity to be aware of the distinction between harmless kink and violence, and take consent seriously.

What is also important to remember is that BDSM is not domestic violence in itself. If all players are enthusiastic and consenting, then it can be a perfectly healthy form of sexual expression.

If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, contact 1800 RESPECT through their toll-free national counselling hotline or online. You can also call Lifeline on 13 11 14 or the Red Cross Support for Trafficked People Program on 03 9345 1800.

– ref. When does BDSM cross the line into abuse and slavery? – https://theconversation.com/when-does-bdsm-cross-the-line-into-abuse-and-slavery-157224

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

There’s something the energy minister said when they announced the early closure of Victoria’s second-biggest coal-fired power station last week that was less than complete.

Yallourn, in the Latrobe Valley, provides up to 20% of Victoria’s power. It has been operating for 47 years. Since late 2017 at least one of its four units has broken down 50 times. Its workforce doubles for three to four months most years to deal with the breakdowns. It pumps out 3% of Australia’s carbon emissions.

On Wednesday Energy Australia gave seven years notice of its intention to close it in mid-2028, four years earlier than previously announced, a possibility for which regulators had been preparing.

In what might have been a rhetorical flourish, Energy Minister Angus Taylor warned of “price spikes every night when the sun goes down”.

Then he drew attention to what had happened when two other coal-fired power stations closed down — Victoria’s Hazelwood and South Australia’s Northern (South Australia’s last-remaining coal-fired generator).

He said “wholesale prices skyrocketed by 85%”.

And there he finished, without going on to detail what really mattered. South Australia and Victoria now have the lowest wholesale power in the National Electricity Market — that’s right, the lowest.

Coal-fired plants close, then prices fall

Before Northern closed, South Australia had Australia’s highest price.

Five years after the closure of Northern in 2016, and four years after the closure of Hazelwood in 2017, South Australia and Victorian have wholesale prices one-third lower than those in NSW and two-fifths lower than those in Queensland.

Something happened after the closure (largely as a result of the closure) that forced prices down.

South Australia became a renewables powerhouse.

The Australian National University’s Hugh Saddler points out that renewable-sourced power — wind and grid-scale solar and rooftop solar — now accounts for 75% of South Australia’s needs, and at times for all its needs.

Much of it is produced near Port Augusta, where the Northern and Playford coal-fired power stations used to be, because that’s where the transmission lines begin.

Being even cheaper than the power produced by the old brown-coal-fired power stations, there is at times so much it that it sends prices negative, meaning generators get paid to turn off in order to avoid putting more power into the system than users can take out.

It’s one of the reasons coal-fired plants are closing: they are hard to turn off. They are just as hard to turn on, and pretty hard to turn up.

Coal can’t respond quickly

There are times (when the wind doesn’t blow and there’s not much sun, such as last Friday in South Australia) when prices can get extraordinarily high.

But coal-fired plants, especially brown-coal-fired plants such as Victoria’s Hazelwood and Yallourn and Victoria’s two remaining big plants, Loy Yang A and B, are unable to quickly ramp up to take advantage of them.

Although “dispatchable” in the technical meaning of the term used by the minister, coal-fired stations can’t fill gaps quickly.

Read more: The death of coal-fired power is inevitable — yet the government still has no plan to help its workforce

Batteries can respond instantly to a loss of power from other sources (although not for very long), hydro can respond in 30 to 70 seconds, gas peaking plants can respond within minutes.

But coal can barely move. As with nuclear power, coal-fired power needs to be either on (in which case it can only slowly ramp up) or off, in which case turning it on from a standing start would be way too slow.

What was a feature is now a bug

That’s why coal-fired generators operate 24-7, to provide so-called base-load, because they can’t really do anything else.

Brown coal generators are the least dispatchable. Brown coal is about 60% water. To make it ignite and keep boiling off the water takes sustained ultra-high temperatures. Units at Yallourn have to keep burning coal at high output (however low or negative the prices) or turn off.

In the days when the other sources of power could be turned on and off at will, this wasn’t so much of a problem.

Hydro or gas could be turned on in the morning when we turned on our lights and heaters and factories got down to business, and coal-fired power could be slowly ramped up.

At night, when there was less demand for coal-fired power, some could be created by offering cheap off-peak water heating.

But those days are gone. Nationwide, wind and solar including rooftop solar supplies 20% of our needs. It turns on and off at will.

Wind often blows strongly at night. What was a feature of coal — its ability to provide steady power rather than fill gaps – has become a bug.

Gas and batteries can fill gaps coal can’t

It’s as if our power system has become a jigsaw with the immovable pieces provided by the wind and the sun. It’s our job to fill in the gaps.

To some extent, as the prime minister says, gas will be a transition fuel, able to fill gaps in a way that coal cannot. But gas has become expensive, and batteries are being installed everywhere.

Energy Australia plans to replace its Yallourn power station with Australia’s first four-hour utility-scale battery with a capacity of 350 megawatts, more than any battery operating in the world today. South Australia is planning an even bigger one, up to 900 megawatts.

Read more: Huge ‘battery warehouses’ could be the energy stores of the future

Australia’s Future Fund and AGL Energy are investing $2.7 billion in wind farms in NSW and Queensland which will fill gaps in a different way — their output peaks at different times to wind farms in South Australia and Victoria.

Filling the gaps won’t be easy, and had we not gone down this road there might still have been a role for coal, but the further we go down it the less coal can help.

As cheap as coal-fired power is, it is being forced out of the system by sources of power that are cheaper and more dispatchable. We can’t turn back.

– ref. Electricity has become a jigsaw. Coal is unable to provide the missing pieces – https://theconversation.com/electricity-has-become-a-jigsaw-coal-is-unable-to-provide-the-missing-pieces-157139

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Asher Warren, Lecturer, University of Tasmania

Since its launch in 2001, the biennial Ten Days On The Island has aimed to be a festival for the whole of Tasmania, bringing in international artists and putting local artists on the world stage.

This year, as in 2019, the festival’s program — and the titular “ten days” — are spread across three weekends. With travel bans and conservative limits on theatre capacities, the program is thinner than usual, making the stretch across the state an even greater challenge.

Artistic director Lindy Hume proposes a Romantic, rather than Gothic Tasmania, placing Jess Bonde’s photographic re-imagining of Caspar David Friedrich’s 1818 oil painting The Wanderer Above a Sea of Fog as the festival’s central image.

Bonde’s singular figure surveying an uninhabited landscape captures both the loneliness of isolation, and the accomplishment of getting on top of the curve.

The individualism of Romanticism, however, glosses over our collective action to hold back this pandemic, and the communities and institutions we have drawn on for support.

The festival itself is one such institution, calling on communities across the state to flesh out the 2021 program with workshops, talks and a range of projects.

Works by community

One of the few works that will travel the whole state is the charming There is No “I” in Island, led by filmmakers Rebecca Thomson and Catherine Pettman. The series of short films animate local experiences of lockdown.

The films explore an eclectic range of visual styles, but all are deeply engaging, drawing us in to the astonishing candour, humour, and down-to-earth dagginess of the respondents.

It meets the generosity of its participants with respect, weaving experiences of isolation into a resonant whole.

MAPATAZI is a glittering, blistering onslaught of rock: an electric guitar orchestra of 21 local women of all skill levels taking over the back room of the Launceston Men’s Workers Club in a joyously shambolic affair with an infectious sense of fun.

In the 2019 festival, Shorewell Presents … in Burnie took the form of a lavish outdoor dinner, a gesture of generosity exclusively for locals: community art projects are not always about public outcomes.

This year, a series of glossy billboards have been erected around Burnie Community House and the adjacent shopping centre as Shorewell Presents… Gallery of Hopes and Dreams. The billboards display phases chosen by consensus — “We have each other”; “Be kind to yourself”; “Go with the flow” — accompanied by cute comic black cockatoos on eye catching pastel backgrounds.

Our guide, local resident Bluey, was part of the group who developed the phrases, and speaks proudly of them. It has clearly been a meaningful project for him.

But the billboards read like motivational posters: clean and relentlessly optimistic. The phrases don’t communicate hopes or dreams. They focus on the now, describing tactics (“Let’s smile”) for surviving day to day. The dissonance between the framing, the community input and the outcome suggest this project has not quite met its intention.

While Sydney-based Urban Theatre Projects have a long and strong history of community engaged projects, this felt under-resourced and the language of empowerment eerily neo-liberal. But it did, thankfully, highlight the incredible work of Burnie Community House.

The centrepiece of the festival, If These Halls Could Talk, produced events for ten regional community halls across the state.

Produced in regional New South Wales in 2015, in the original vision, each project told the unique story of each hall. Here, the halls I visit are presenting events, rather than being the focus of the art themselves.

In Rowella, I watch Tasdance’s Where do We Start, a series of short duets between dancers and musicians developed from discussions that began over Zoom. The process has produced a vibrant quintet of performances, full of a raw urgency.

The standout is a collaboration between harpist Emily Sanzaro and dancer Jenni Large, transforming the harp from instrument into a third dancing body moving around the space. The exploratory resonance of voices and strings across the three bodies summons tenderness and strength, encapsulating a sensual and defiant resilience responding to more than just the pandemic.

An uncertain recovery

Ten Days is much cherished by Tasmanians, and since the arrival of MONA’s festivals, has served as an important cultural counterpoint. The 2019 festival ambitiously targeted a greater regional focus, and from this, a sense of optimism.

Read more: Births, deaths and rituals: a revamped Ten Days on the Island explores Tasmania’s past and present

This year, the festival seems overburdened by the task of reaching the whole island, and spread too thin over the first two weekends.

There was a sense of things coming together at the last minute – from the late announcement of various workshops and talks, to the hand drawn sign on the street in Burnie and the letters lost in the post that were supposed to be part of an otherwise charming wilderness walk in A Weekend Poetical.

While these community works show how the arts might lead our recovery from the pandemic, they also show the lingering aftereffects: this recovery is going to take some time.

– ref. Ten Days on the Island: blistering rock, raw urgency, tenderness and dagginess in a festival spread too thin – https://theconversation.com/ten-days-on-the-island-blistering-rock-raw-urgency-tenderness-and-dagginess-in-a-festival-spread-too-thin-154831

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Howard, Research Scientist, Data61

Imagine running on a cement footpath, and then suddenly through dry sand. Just to keep upright, you would have to slow down and change the way you run. In the same way, a walking robot would have to change its gait to handle different surfaces.

Generally, we humans and most robots can only change how we run. But what if we could also change the shape of our bodies to run as fast and safely as possible on any surface?

We would like to rely on robots for difficult and dangerous tasks, from inspecting failed nuclear reactors to space exploration. For these tasks, a static body could limit the robot’s adaptability. A shape-shifting body could make the difference between success and failure in these unexpected environments. Even better, a shape-shifting robot could learn the best body shape for different environments and adapt to new environments as it encounters them.

In collaboration with the University of Oslo, we have successfully tested this idea with a four-legged robot that adapts its body to walk on new surfaces as it sees them, performing better than a static-body robot. Our research is published in Nature Machine Intelligence.

A shape-shifting quadruped

DyRET, the Dynamic Robot for Embodied Testing, or “the animal” in the Norwegian of its creator, Tønnes Nygaard, was designed to explore the idea of a shape-shifting robot. Each of DyRET’s four legs has two telescopic sections, so that it can change the length of its thigh or shin bones. The adjustments are made by motors built into the legs and the lengths can be changed automatically while the robot is operating.

The motors can change the height of DyRET by around 20%, from 60cm to 73cm tall. That 13cm makes a dramatic difference to the robot’s walk. With short legs, DyRET is stable but slow, with a low centre of gravity. In its tallest mode, DyRET is more unstable while it walks but its stride is much longer, allowing it to travel faster and to step over obstacles.

DyRET also has sensors to keep track of what it’s walking on. Each of DyRET’s feet has a force sensor that can feel how hard the ground is. A 3D camera points at the ground between DyRET’s front legs to estimate how rough the ground is.

Learning to adapt

When DyRET is walking, it continuously senses the environment through its feet and 3D camera. When the robot detects a change in ground conditions, it can change to the best leg length. But how does the robot know what body shape works best?

We explored two ways for DyRET to learn the best leg configuration for different situations: a controlled environment, indoors with known surfaces, and a real-world test outside.

In our controlled tests, DyRET walked inside boxes about 5 metres long containing different walking surfaces: sand, gravel, and hard fibre-cement sheeting. The robot walked on each material in each of 25 different leg configurations to record the efficiency of its movement. Given this data, we tested the robot’s ability to automatically sense a change in the walking surface within the boxes, and to choose the best body shape.

While our controlled experiments showed DyRET could adapt its body successfully to surfaces it had walked on before, the real world is a much more variable and unpredictable place. We showed this method could be extended to unseen terrain by estimating the best body-shape for any surface that the robot encounters.

Read more: How do robots ‘see’ the world?

In our outdoor experiments, DyRET used a machine learning model, seeded with knowledge about the best leg configuration for a given combination of terrain hardness and roughness taken from the controlled tests. As the robot walks, it continuously predicts the best body shape for the terrain as it encounters it, while updating its model with measurements of how well it can walk. In our experiments, DyRET’s predictions improve as it walks, allowing it to quickly generate efficient movements, even for terrain it hasn’t seen before.

Are shape-shifting robots the future?

DyRET explores the idea of “embodied cognition” in a robot: that is, that a robot’s hardware body can be used to solve problems in collaboration with its software brain by tightly linking them to the environment. Instead of DyRET’s body being a constraint on its movement, it is itself an adaptive way of solving problems in challenging environments.

This is incredibly beneficial, especially when we can’t predict the exact environmental conditions beforehand, which makes picking a single “good” robot shape very challenging. Instead, these robots would adapt to a wide variety of environmental conditions through shape-change.

Our proof of concept has powerful implications for the future of robotic design, unlocking currently impossible environments that are very challenging and variable. Future shape-shifting robots might be used on the sea floor, or for long-term missions in space.

Read more: We’re teaching robots to evolve autonomously – so they can adapt to life alone on distant planets 

– ref. Shape-shifting robots in the wild: the DyRET robot can rearrange its body to walk in new environments – https://theconversation.com/shape-shifting-robots-in-the-wild-the-dyret-robot-can-rearrange-its-body-to-walk-in-new-environments-157130

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nigel William Crawford, Associate Professor, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute

Ireland and the Netherlands have temporarily paused their rollouts of the AstraZeneca COVID vaccine, due to concerns about blood clots.

The move follows reports from Norway over the weekend, where three health-care workers who had received the vaccine were treated for blood clots. Austria last week also reported two cases of serious adverse events related to blood clots after immunisation with this vaccine.

Norway, Denmark, Iceland and one region of Italy have all also temporarily halted their AstraZeneca immunisation programs while they investigate.

While these responses have come from individual countries, the European Medicines Agency said last week there’s “no indication” recent reports of blood clots following vaccination were caused by the AstraZeneca vaccine. The drug maker itself said a review of 17 million people vaccinated in the United Kingdom and the European Union found no evidence of increased risk of blood clots.

So far, data from the phase 3 clinical trials and real-world rollouts suggest blood clots and other “thromboembolic” events occur no more frequently in people vaccinated with the AstraZeneca shot than they do in the general population. Thromboembolic events include blood clots, pulmonary embolisms and deep vein thrombosis.

As vaccine safety experts, we agree it’s very important to investigate these safety concerns thoroughly.

But we would urge extreme caution in pausing rollouts while investigations are underway, because once a vaccine rollout is paused, it can sometimes dent vaccine confidence so much that it struggles to recover, as seen in Japan with the Human Papillomavirus vaccine.

We agree Australia should continue its rollout while these investigations are taking place.

What are ‘background rates’?

Across huge populations, we expect there to be a small percentage of people who will at some point in their lives have a thromboembolic event. We call this a “background rate”. Unfortunately, about 17,000 Australians suffer a thromboembolic event each year.

So when vaccinating many millions of people, we expect a very small number of them to develop a blood clot that coincidentally occurs not long after they’ve received a vaccine. This doesn’t mean it was caused by the vaccine.

An adverse event after vaccination that could be worthy of investigation may happen within the days or weeks following an immunisation, up to around six weeks after vaccination.

Data from AstraZeneca’s clinical trials, involving 24,000 people, found four of these thromboembolic events occurred in people given the vaccine, and eight occurred in the placebo group who didn’t receive the COVID vaccine.

Following vaccination with the AstraZeneca shot, these events did not occur at a rate higher than the expected “background rate”.

As of March 10, there have been 30 thromboembolic events reported from almost five million people given COVID vaccines in the European Economic Area.

In the UK, more than 11 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine have been administered, and the rate of blood clots has not been greater than the natural rate expected to occur.

Australia will need to detect whether rates of clots are the same or greater than expected following COVID vaccines. To do so, our vaccine safety surveillance service in Victoria, called SAEFVIC, has determined local background rates of these (and other) potential adverse events, though this isn’t yet published data. Other jurisdictions throughout Australia have done the same, in collaboration with the TGA. As the COVID vaccine rollout continues, we will monitor if the number of these events in Australia remains within the expected “background rate”.

Taking vaccine safety concerns seriously

Given the data, we don’t think it’s necessary to stop or pause COVID vaccine rollouts in the meantime. Halting vaccine rollouts can dramatically dent public confidence in the vaccine, and the World Health Organization recommends caution as the vaccine safety assessments continue.

Of course, this doesn’t mean we should ignore the recent reports of blood clots in people given the vaccine. We should thoroughly investigate them as a matter of priority, which is what’s occurring in these European countries.

In fact it’s important to consider all adverse events as potentially possible, so none are dismissed.

It’s also important for both the regulators and investigators to consider whether vaccine technology is potentially related to any safety concerns. The AstraZeneca vaccine is what’s known as a “viral vector” vaccine, which uses a different technology to the mRNA vaccines like Pfizer and Moderna’s shots. The United States hasn’t seen an increase in thromboembolic events while using the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines in its rollout. But safety surveillance is ongoing, which will also soon include data on the Janssen COVID vaccine.

Read more: How do we know the COVID vaccine won’t have long-term side-effects?

In Australia, we have robust vaccine safety systems including active surveillance via “AusVaxSafety” which asks vaccinated individuals for reports via SMS of vaccine side-effects. Adverse events can also be reported directly to state vaccine safety services or to the TGA.

The TGA said last week it hasn’t received any reports of blood clots following use of the AstraZeneca vaccine in Australia since the first dose was administered on March 5, but close monitoring will continue.

– ref. Data suggest no increased risk of blood clots from the AstraZeneca vaccine. Australia shouldn’t pause its rollout – https://theconversation.com/data-suggest-no-increased-risk-of-blood-clots-from-the-astrazeneca-vaccine-australia-shouldnt-pause-its-rollout-157137

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Will Cornwell, Associate Professor in Ecology and Evolution, UNSW

Around one year ago, Australia’s Black Summer bushfire season ended, leaving more than 8 million hectares across south-east Australia a mix of charcoal, ash and smoke. An estimated three billion animals were killed or displaced, not including invertebrates.

The impact of the fires on biodiversity was too vast for professional scientists alone to collect data. So in the face of this massive challenge, we set up a community (citizen) science project through the iNaturalist website to help paint a more complete picture of which species are bouncing back — and which are not.

Almost 400 community scientists living near or travelling across the firegrounds have recorded their observations of flora and fauna in the aftermath, from finding fresh wombat droppings in blackened forests, to hearing the croaks of healthy tree frogs in a dam choked with debris and ash.

Each observation is a story of survival against the odds, or of tragedy. Here are five we consider particularly remarkable.

Greater gliders after Australia’s largest ever fire

The Gospers Mountain fire in New South Wales was the biggest forest fire in Australian history, razing an area seven times the size of Singapore. This meant there nothing in history scientists could draw from to predict the animals’ response.

So it came as a huge surprise when a community scientist observed greater gliders deep within the heart of the Gospers Mountain firegrounds in Wollemi National Park, far from unburned habitat. Greater gliders are listed as “vulnerable” under national environment law. They’re nocturnal and live in hollow-bearing trees.

How gliders survived the fire is still unknown. Could they have hidden in deep hollows of trees where the temperature is relatively cooler while the fire front passed? And what would they have eaten afterwards? Greater gliders usually feed on young leaves and flowers, but these foods are very rare in the post-fire environment.

Finding these gliders shows how there’s still so much to learn about the resilience of species in the face of even the most devastating fires, especially as bushfires are forecast to become more frequent.

Rare pink flowers burnishing the firegrounds

The giant scale of the 2019-20 fires means post-fire flowering is on display in grand and gorgeous fashion. This is a feature of many native plant species which need fire to stimulate growth.

Excitingly, community scientists recorded a long-dormant species, the pink flannel flower (Actinotus forsythii), that’s now turning vast areas of the Blue Mountains pink.

Pink flannel flowers are not considered threatened, but they are very rarely seen.

Individuals of this species spend most of their life as a seed in the soil. Seeds require a chemical found in bushfire smoke, and the right seasonal temperatures, to germinate.

Rediscovering the midge orchid

Much of Australia’s amazing biodiversity is extremely local. Some species, particularly plants, exist only in a single valley or ridge. The Black Summer fires destroyed the entire range of 100 Australian plant species, incinerating the above-ground parts of every individual. How well a species regenerates after fire determines whether it recovers, or is rendered extinct.

One of these is a species of midge orchid, which grows in a small area of Gibraltar Range National Park, NSW.

All of the midge orchid’s known sites are thought to have burned in late 2019. The species fate was unknown until two separate community scientists photographed it at five sites in January 2021, showing its recovery.

Like many of Australia’s terrestrial orchids, this species has an underground tuber (storage organ) which may have helped part of it avoid the flames’ lethal heat.

Read more: After last summer’s fires, the bell tolls for Australia’s endangered mountain bells

Don’t forget about insects

Despite their incredible diversity and tremendous value to society, insects tend to be the forgotten victims of bushfires and other environmental disasters.

Many trillions of invertebrates would have been killed in the fires of last summer. A common sight during and after the bushfire season was a deposit of dead insects washed ashore. Some died from the flames and heat, while others died having drowned trying to escape.

One dead insect deposit — one of hundreds that washed up near Bermagui, NSW on Christmas Eve — included a range of species that have critical interactions with other organisms.

This includes orchid dupe wasps (Lissopimpla excelsa), the only known pollinator of the orchid genus Cryptostylis. Transverse ladybirds (Coccinella transversalis), an important predator of agricultural pests such as aphids, also washed up. As did metallic shield bugs (Scutiphora pedicellata), spectacular iridescent jewel bugs that come in green and blue hues.

The unlikely survival of the Kaputar slug

Creatures such as kangaroos or birds have a chance to flee bushfires, but smaller, less mobile species such as native slugs and snails have a much tougher time of surviving.

The 2019-2020 bushfire season significantly threatened the brilliantly coloured Mount Kaputar pink slug, found only on the slopes of Mount Kaputar, NSW. When fires ripped through the national park in October and November 2019, conservationists feared the slug may have been entirely wiped out.

Read more: Photos from the field: zooming in on Australia’s hidden world of exquisite mites, snails and beetles

But park ranger surveys in January 2020 found at least 60 individuals managed to survive, likely by sheltering in damp rock crevices. Community scientists have spotted more individuals since then, such as the one pictured here found in September 2020.

But the slug isn’t out of the woods yet, and more monitoring is required to ensure the population is not declining.

Continuing this work

While community scientists have been documenting amazing stories of recovery all across Australia, there are still many species which haven’t been observed since the fires. Many more have been observed only at a single site.

The Snowy River westringia (Westringia cremnophila), for instance, is a rare flowering shrub found on cliffs in Snowy River National Park, Victoria. No one has reported observing it since the fire.

So far these community scientist observations have contributed to one scientific paper, and three more documenting the ability for species to recover post-fire are in process.

Recovery from Black Summer is likely to take decades, and preparing a body of scientific data on post-fire recovery is vital to inform conservation efforts after this and future fires. We need more observations to continue this important work.

Read more: Summer bushfires: how are the plant and animal survivors 6 months on? We mapped their recovery

– ref. 5 remarkable stories of flora and fauna in the aftermath of Australia’s horror bushfire season – https://theconversation.com/5-remarkable-stories-of-flora-and-fauna-in-the-aftermath-of-australias-horror-bushfire-season-155749

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Craig Jeffrey, Professor of Geography, The University of Melbourne

The COVID-19 pandemic led to food insecurity among students making headlines in Australia and the United States. But even before the pandemic, increasing numbers of students were reporting they sometimes went without food. Rising tuition and living costs combined with declining state support for students and privatised food outlets on campuses have increased students’ food insecurity in places as diverse as the US, Malaysia and Nigeria.

Student food insecurity is a particular problem in Australia. The reasons include the high proportion of international students, lack of cheap subsidised food on many university campuses, and low awareness of the issue.

Read more: ‘No one would even know if I had died in my room’: coronavirus leaves international students in dire straits

In the early 2010s, research in Queensland suggested one in four students (25%) suffered from food insecurity. More recent studies suggest the proportion could be over 40%.

The problem nevertheless remains largely hidden, a “faceless” and “silent” issue. When it does come up in conversation, it is often normalised – with jokes about “starving students”, for example.

What did students say about it?

We are concerned about the silence on this issue. We have been working to understand food insecurity among University of Melbourne students.

Most studies on university student food insecurity have been quantitative. We chose a more qualitative, interview-based approach. This involved co-producing the research with students.

We recruited four students as co-researchers who themselves had experienced food insecurity. These four students interviewed an additional 40 students who had experienced food insecurity. They were given supermarket vouchers in exchange for their time.

Our project showed many students at the university are experiencing food insecurity. The problem is worst among international students.

Some students said they had to skip meals. More commonly, students reported a lack of money, time and information meant having to compromise the diversity and nutritional quality of their diets. When asked about food insecurity, one student exclaimed: “God, I miss fruit!” Another said: “You can’t live on instant noodles for three years”.

Several students said they were vegetarians “by necessity rather than choice”. Some referred to intermittent fasting as a strategy. Others mentioned they lost weight after enrolling at university.

In many cases, COVID-19 added to the problem.

However, some students said it had actually become easier to get food because of the food relief measures and increased Centrelink payments during the pandemic. Students particularly praised the voucher scheme for international students to obtain food from Queen Victoria Market. Some students also voiced appreciation for the university’s free cooked meals, a program developed during the pandemic.

Food insecurity has many knock-on effects. Our research pointed to close relationships between food insecurity and physical and/or mental ill health, poor performance in studies, and difficulties navigating social relationships on campus. Shame associated with food insecurity was an especially notable issue.

Read more: Hunger in the lucky country – charities step in where government fails

One of our goals was to show that students aren’t passive in response to food insecurity. They are active agents who seek to resolve the problem on multiple levels.

Our interviews richly illustrated students’ capacity to “hustle” for food on campus. For example, they sought out events that provided food. Some told of “surfing” the campus in search of barbecues providing free sausages.

Students also told us how their experience of food insecurity had led them to reflect on the politics of food more broadly. They talked about their right to move away from being victims of food insecurity to being citizen agents, with rights to shape the conditions of production, distribution and consumption of food.

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

The sense of care and responsibility that students felt for each other was clear. Especially evident was a sense of obligation among domestic students to help international students.

Time for a more ambitious approach?

In North America, universities and governments have often acknowledged and addressed food insecurity. However, universities have tended to concentrate on providing emergency assistance – setting up food pantries, for example.

This approach has at at least two drawbacks. It risks stigmatising students and doesn’t provide access to fresh food, since most pantries contain only non-perishable items. A notable exception is the CalFresh program at the University of California.

There are some promising examples in Australia of thinking creatively about food security in particular, and food more generally, such as Second Bite and the Nourish Network. Universities have been especially active during the pandemic in developing new schemes.

Students have also been active. They have, for example, helped develop food co-operatives, free breakfasts, food banks and initiatives such as the student-run Fair Food Challenge aimed at improving campus food systems.

The COVID-19 pandemic provides an opportunity to think more ambitiously about how to counter hunger on campus. Our research suggests students are keen to build on existing efforts in at least four ways:

1. think creatively about how universities might draw on the excellent work done in the mental health area as a way of destigmatising food insecurity

2. reflect on whether university policy of inviting large numbers of private providers to occupy food spaces on campuses might be balanced with initiatives to provide nutritious subsidised food, perhaps revisiting the traditional idea of the university canteen

3. universities could do more to reduce food waste

4. since many universities have agriculture departments and diverse landholdings they might try to link students’ consumption with ethically produced, local and nutritious food on university farms.

Students can and must be central to all these changes.

Read more: What a simulated Mars mission taught me about food waste

We would like to acknowledge the assistance of Rafaela Anja, Louisa Ellis, Sara Guest, Sophie Lamond, Aasha Sriram, Mia Zentari and Eugenia Zoubtchenko in carrying out the research upon which this article is based and preparing this article.

– ref. ‘God, I miss fruit!’ 40% of students at Australian universities may be going without food – https://theconversation.com/god-i-miss-fruit-40-of-students-at-australian-universities-may-be-going-without-food-156584

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

The 2020 pandemic and bushfire crises exposed longstanding weakness in our labour market and the child-care, aged care and disability care systems.

They are two sides of the same coin.

To”‘build back better”, work, care and family policies must support decent work and high quality care.

An evaluation of the impact of the crisis by the Work and Family Policy Roundtable finds that in addition to disproportionately harming female workers, precarious employment, low wages and the absence of rights such as paid sick and carers’ leave, harm the quality of care.

Many formal care services for the aged, children, and people with disability, already strained, collapsed under the pressure of the pandemic.

This has been documented by the Royal Commission into aged care quality and safety, and the Royal Commission into violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation of people with disability.

Read more: 50% of Australians are prepared to pay more tax to improve aged care workers’ pay, survey shows

Closed schools and working from home added to the care crisis as massive amounts of care were channelled into domestic homes, exacerbating inequalities in the distribution of paid and unpaid work and raising concerns about shadow pandemics of domestic violence, mental illness and substance abuse.

The Roundtable was established in 2005 as a research network of what are now 33 academics from 17 institutions with expertise in work, care and family policy.

We propose a four-part program to fix our broken work and care systems.

1. Protection for workers

A robust floor of universal worker rights across all sectors that provides:

• a right to paid leave for all workers

• paid time for training

• an effective right to equal remuneration

• a cap on long working hours that is enforced

Over and above this floor, workers need genuine industry bargaining to address industry-specific issues relating to notice of shifts, minimum engagements and sufficient guaranteed hours.

2. Infrastructure for care

The infrastructure for a more inclusive, accessible, resilient, and caring society should include

• universal free high-quality early childhood education and care with robust and transparent quality standards that are publicly audited and enforced

• high quality, adequately and securely resourced aged care and disability services

• business models and governance arrangements for all care service providers that are transparent and fit for purpose

• providers that are fully accountable for the expenditure of public money and the provision of high-quality accessible services

• accessible and responsive respite, end of life and palliative care and other services to support unpaid carers

• the extension of paid “care leave” to all workers, including at least nine months paid parental leave incorporating three months dedicated leave for each parent

• workplace flexibility that works for women and other worker-carers that gives workers voice, control, predictability and security

3. A sustainable workforce

The federal government is effectively the lead employer for contracted out care services and must act to redress low wages, casualised conditions, underemployment and fragmented working time schedules.

• industry awards must be revitalised to recognise and remunerate the skills frontline workers currently use and provide clear career paths with meaningful wage increases as workers progress.

• the government must commit to policy and funding arrangements that end structural gender pay inequity in frontline care jobs.

4. Useful data

In Australia there is very little data on or publicly-available analysis of decisions that affect workers with caring responsibilities. We suggest

• all government and private sector data that tracks workforce characteristics be able to be disaggregated by gender together with characteristics such as Indigenous status, birthplace and visa status, age, disability, sexual orientation and forms of employment and care responsibilities

• the Bureau of Statistics publish hourly wage rates that includes managerial as well as non-managerial employees to identify the gender pay gap for different groups of women

• the Parliamentary Budget Office publish an overall gender analysis of government policies and programs

• all new policies and programs, including those put in place to ameliorate the impact of COVID-19, be subjected to a rigorous gender-impact evaluation

This agenda would help deliver prosperity, equality, and a better life for all.

– ref. In 2020 our workforce and our caring system broke. They are the same thing – https://theconversation.com/in-2020-our-workforce-and-our-caring-system-broke-they-are-the-same-thing-152191

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Benedict Sheehy, Associate professor, University of Canberra

From psychological thrillers to true crime stories, people who depart from social norms can be deeply fascinating. Psychopaths most of all.

Working with or for a psychopath, however, is less fun.

The research generally agrees about 1% of the population is psychopathic. This means they fail to develop the normal range of emotions, lack empathy for others and are more disposed to antisocial and uninhibited behaviour.

Among prisoners, the percentage with psychopathic traits has been estimated at 15% to 20%. But psychopaths are also disproportionately represented in corporate culture. Among the higher echelons of large organisations, the psychopathy rate is an estimated 3.5%. Some estimates for chief executives go way higher.

Only in recent decades has the research on psychopathy started reflecting the enormity of the social and economic cost of non-criminal corporate psychopaths. My research (with Clive Boddy and Brendon Murphy) suggests corporate psychopaths cost the economy billions of dollars not only through fraud and other crimes but through the personal and organisational damage they leave behind as they climb the corporate ladder.

Read more: What is a psychopath?

Worming their way in

Psychopaths typically lack empathy and remorse. They are self-centred, manipulative, unemotional, deceitful, insincere and self-aggrandising.

But they are also fearless and confident, which helps them present as potentially resourceful employees and gain employment.

Read more: Pathological power: the danger of governments led by narcissists and psychopaths

A classic example is “Chainsaw Al” Dunlap, who in the early 1990s was celebrated as a hard-nosed but effective corporate “streamliner”, turning around company fortunes by retrenching staff. Dunlap has been identified as holding strong psychopathic traits. It turned out, though, that his success had more to do with his willingness to commit fraud than his lack of compassion.

In reality, it’s hard to conceive of any situation where an organisation would benefit from recruiting someone with psychopathic tendencies. Once in position, their combination of traits will often lead them to engage in unethical and exploitative behaviour, disregarding the norms that allow people to work together harmoniously.

In his 2017 book A Climate of Fear: Stone Cold Psychopaths at Work, Clive Boddy describes how corporate psychopaths:

• use organisational restructures to weaken potential threats
• bully colleagues into obedience
• spread rumours to undermine competitors
• deploy “upward impression management techniques” to project competence
• justify poor behaviour as “hard decisions that had to be made”.

Read more: The preferred jobs of serial killers and psychopaths

What the law says

Being a psychopath isn’t illegal. The only area where the law intervenes on the basis of a psychological diagnosis is when mental illness is seen to endanger the safety of the subject or others. Psychopathy is a personality disorder, not a mental illness. There’s no legal remedy for psychopathic behaviours that don’t rise to the level of a firing offence – such as fraud, theft or sexual harassment.

In some cases, it may be possible to minimise the damage a psychopath can do through taking a harder line on behavioural standards. Bullying and harassment are overt warning signs of other behaviour toxic to the work culture. A record of such behaviour should be a strike against having power over other employees.

Truth is the best defence

The first and main line of defence against corporate psychopaths has to be prevention.

There’s no surefire way to avoid recruiting a psychopath but key to reducing the risk is “sceptical due diligence” – checking the claims a job applicant makes.

Psychopaths have a natural advantage in any superficial recruitment process due their lower inhibition against claiming qualifications, experience and competencies they don’t have, and for taking credit for work they didn’t do.

It therefore pays to verify a candidate’s claimed qualifications, to scrutinise all their verbal and written claims, and test them on their honesty, truthfulness and capacity to give credit where it is due. They might have a glowing reference from a past manager, but what about other colleagues? Someone in a junior role to the recruit under consideration is more likely than a past manager to have seen the person’s true character.

Asking the hard questions prior to hiring arguably becomes more important the more senior the role. In a range of contexts we are increasingly recognising the consequences of failing to take complaints seriously. Smoke doesn’t necessarily mean fire, but when an individual is found responsible for one fire, it is likely they have started others.

Read more: Narcissists and psychopaths: how some societies ensure these dangerous people never wield power

The corporate psychopath is a fascinating but dangerous character. As we come to appreciate how much damage they can do, it’s not a character you should want to study close up.

– ref. Bullies, thieves and chiefs: the hidden cost of psychopaths at work – https://theconversation.com/bullies-thieves-and-chiefs-the-hidden-cost-of-psychopaths-at-work-149152

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elizabeth Little, PhD Candidate, Deakin University

Sexual consent and young people have been in the news lately, from an online petition detailing thousands of high schoolers’ recollections of sexual assault and rape to calls for better school-based education.

What young people read is another important form of sexual education. Young adult (YA) fiction has a unique role to play in representing sexual relationships, but a number of popular YA fantasy novels send confusing and potentially harmful messages about sex and consent. Often, these are not addressed, such as when Shalia in the Reign the Earth series (2018-2020) is forced to consummate her marriage.

‘I didn’t feel love, or lust, or heat. I felt frightened … panicked beneath him.’

Rather than echo the “bodice ripper” content of some adult fantasy novels (where sex usually begins with domination), books for young readers can be an opportunity to unpack what consent is and isn’t.

Read more: Teen summer reads: how to escape to another world after a year stuck in this one

Characters young people relate to

Research shows young people use YA fiction as a source of sex education. Teens turn to novels to learn through the actions of characters they relate to. They identify with what is happening on the page and learn without having to seek advice or information from adults or peers.

Studies have also shown representations of sexual intimacy provide a behavioural script for young readers. These scripts are then put to use during their own sexual encounters. In one study, researchers heard from girls who used episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer to learn new “date moves”.

Because sex is a natural area of interest for readers, realist YA fiction engages with questions of sexual consent in clear ways. YA fantasy — the genre that includes the Twilight series and The Hunger Games — can omit some important aspects of this.

Psychologists have characterised schoolgirl Bella’s relationship with vampire Edward in Twilight as a template for violence and abuse, concerned fans may model real-life relationships on the narrative. Jealous Edward isolates Bella from her friends, family and potential love rivals, even sabotaging her car to prevent her escape from him.

Fantasy fiction is often set in a different time or place, but it still reflects contemporary concerns.

In many of these novels, the female character’s ability to say “yes” is denied to her. In Shelby Mahurin’s Serpent and Dove (2019), the female protagonist is forced into marriage. Brigid Kemmerer’s A Curse So Dark and Lonely (2019) gains inspiration from Beauty and the Beast, with the female protagonist captured and unable to consent to her relationship. Neither novel discusses how consent is compromised.

Read more: Friday essay: why YA gothic fiction is booming – and girl monsters are on the rise

‘Too shy to say the words’

In Holly Black’s The Cruel Prince series (2018-2019), Prince Cardan physically and emotionally abuses orphan girl Jude during their relationship. Her consent to intimacy is mired in domestic violence.

When they do have sex, she does not verbally consent. Jude is “too shy to say the words” and just “kisses him instead”. This example of sexual consent contradicts models of positive consent as an “enthusiastic yes” or the viral video many young people are shown depicting consent as similar to offering someone a cup of tea.

Sarah J. Maas’ popular series, A Court Of Thorns and Roses (2015-2021) begins with a romantic relationship between Feyre and Tamlin in a magical kingdom. The series has sold over six million copies.

Yet, in the first book, a serious violation of consent occurs. When Tamlin attempts to kiss Feyre, she tells him to “let go”, but instead he embeds his claws in a wall behind her head. When she pushes him away, he “grabs [her] hands and bites [her] neck”.

Feyre’s reaction to Tamlin is confusing as well. While she tells him to stop, she also describes her feelings of sexual arousal. She “couldn’t escape” from Tamlin but “wasn’t entirely sure [she] wanted to”. To Feyre’s fury, the next morning Tamlin says he “can’t be held accountable” for her bruises. But by the next paragraph all is forgiven.

The descriptions of physical pleasure also suggest verbal consent in not the only thing in play. Is she saying no, when she really means yes?

Read more: Relationships and sex education is now mandatory in English schools – Australia should do the same

Explicit consent

Of course, some YA fantasy texts address consent explicitly. Tracy Deonn’s Legendborn (2020) features clear conversations of consent. When Nick asks if he can kiss Bree, she responds “Oh”. He then clarifies “Oh, ‘no’, or oh, ‘yes’?”.

Some books have questionable consent but call it out on the page. In Jodi McAlister’s Valentine series, male faerie Finn uses his powers to enter Pearl’s dreams and lead her into sexual fantasies. When she realises what he’s done, she orders him “out of [her] head”, and they discuss his inappropriate behaviour.

Ambiguous scenes in YA fantasy can provide an opportunity for parents, teachers and young people to discuss consent and sexual intimacy. How are the characters consenting to intimacy? Is there an aspect of consent missing? What would be a better way for these characters to gain consent from each other? Care should be taken not to glorify taking advantage of these ambiguities in an intimate setting.

Classrooms can also be a place to confront the taboos of sexuality by analysing sexual interactions and unpacking how consent is given. Equipping teachers to facilitate conversations around trust, sex and consent could further the conversation.

Read more: Let’s make it mandatory to teach respectful relationships in every Australian school

– ref. ‘I couldn’t escape. I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to’: confusing messages about consent in young adult fantasy fiction – https://theconversation.com/i-couldnt-escape-i-wasnt-entirely-sure-i-wanted-to-confusing-messages-about-consent-in-young-adult-fantasy-fiction-156961

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

Christian Porter on Monday gave notice that he’s determined to stage a fightback, however damaged his ministerial career might appear at the moment.

The Attorney-General launched a defamation action against the ABC and journalist Louise Milligan over the article that initially reported an allegation of historical rape by a cabinet minister had gone to the police.

Porter on Monday also put a date on his return to work – March 31. That means he doesn’t have to face parliament until the budget session, but indicates he has no intention of quitting the frontbench, which seemed one option for him after this crisis broke.

Porter strongly denies the rape accusation but previously asked, rhetorically: how could he disprove something that didn’t happen? Now he’s turning the line on its head – he’s challenging the ABC to run a defence of truth, proving it did happen.

Whatever the outcome, this is shaping as a case for the history books, with a star cast – the nation’s first law officer, Australia’s public broadcaster, lawyers from the cream of the profession.

The defamation action may ease pressure on Scott Morrison over the calls for an independent inquiry to determine whether Porter is a fit and proper person for his position. The case, under civil law, will be its own sort of inquiry.

Read more: Why defamation suits in Australia are so ubiquitous — and difficult to defend for media organisations

Porter, a Crown prosecutor in a former life, is making a calculated tactical decision that attack is the best form of defence.

For the ABC, there’ll be wider implications – and more at stake – than just the case itself. The broadcaster is a punching bag for its critics in the Coalition and the right wing commentators, who attack it as politically biased. Milligan was at the centre of reporting allegations against Cardinal George Pell, whose convictions were quashed by the High Court.

The word from Morrison’s office has been he’s wanted Porter to stay, rather than step down to clear away a political problem.

Morrison will hope, with the legal action afoot, the political heat around Porter will cool somewhat.

We’ll soon see whether this is heroically optimistic. But what’s absolutely clear is that the two separate and very different rape allegations dominating federal politics have unleashed a push by women to be heard that had been waiting to erupt.

The March4Justice protests show the organised anger of women is a potent force – what’s yet to be tested is its longer term strength. And Morrison’s reaction indicates he’s ill-equipped to deal with a political challenge that has become a social bushfire.

Monday’s marches were nationwide but in Canberra the day belonged to Brittany Higgins, the young former Liberal staffer whose claim she was raped by a colleague in Linda Reynolds’ ministerial office was a catalyst for exposing parliament house’s dark side.

Higgins put Morrison directly in her sights in an emotional but controlled speech, accusing him of playing a double game.

“I watched as the Prime Minister of Australia publicly apologised to me through the media, while privately his team actively discredited and undermined my love ones,” she told the thousands of assembled women.

And she took aim more generally, declaring the women were there because “we fundamentally recognise the system is broken, the glass ceiling is still in place, and there are significant failings in the power structures within our institutions. We are here because it is unfathomable that we are still having to fight this same stale, tired fight.”

To an extraordinary extent, and in a testament to the importance of individuals at particular times, Higgins and Porter’s deceased accuser have become the conduits for women’s grievances – grievances extending far beyond the alleged circumstances of those two women.

Morrison cast his response to March4Justice in what might be characterised as narrowly conventional terms. In a statement to parliament, he spoke about what had been, and was being, done to tackle the scourge of violence against women. He also went to the issues in parliament house.

But he has not shown himself able to relate effectively to the emotional intensity that has gripped many women as they seek to raise their voice. It is, one suspects, beyond his ken.

Read more: ‘What are you afraid of ScoMo?’: Australian women are angry — and the Morrison government needs to listen

Morrison’s refusal to meet the women on their own ground brought to mind John Howard’s unwillingness to join the 2000 march for reconciliation across Sydney Harbour Bridge. He misjudged in not sending his Minister for Women, Marise Payne, to mingle with the marchers.

The PM had offered to meet a delegation in his office. But the organisers played the power game, and declined.

Anthony Albanese understood better than Morrison. “We had, today, women gather around Australia with a few very clear and unambiguous messages – hear us roar,” he told parliament.

But earlier the Labor leader struggled when peppered by reporters with questions about a private Facebook group (revealed by Sam Maiden on news.com) where Labor present and former staff have listed allegations of sexual misconduct by male staffers and MPs.

Albanese could only stress the party had a process to deal with complaints, and say women should come forward. It was difficult to look into anonymous suggestions, he said.

It’s easy to say the last few weeks mark some sort of political “moment” – measured perhaps by the Coalition’s knock in Newspoll, which saw Labor move ahead on the two-party vote.

It’s much harder to predict where that “moment” will lead in electoral terms. Right now, Morrison can’t know either. But Monday must have told him the government’s perennial “women problem” has suddenly become broader, deeper and more dangerous.

Read more: View from The Hill: Labor surges to 52-48% Newspoll lead, as women’s voices set to roar across the country

– ref. View from The Hill: Christian Porter finds a target, and so does Brittany Higgins – https://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-christian-porter-finds-a-target-and-so-does-brittany-higgins-157172

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brendan Clift, Graduate researcher, The University of Melbourne

Attorney-General Christian Porter is suing the ABC for defamation and claiming aggravated damages.

Porter is claiming that an article published last month included false allegations against him in relation to a historical rape. A statement from his lawyer says although Porter was not named, the article made allegations against a senior cabinet minister “and the attorney-general was easily identifiable to many Australians”.

So, how does defamation law work, what is its impact on the media, and why has Australia been labelled the defamation capital of the world?

What is considered defamatory?

Defamation can be defined as a false statement about a person to their discredit. The legal action has three elements for the complainant to prove: publication, identification, and defamatory meaning. Significantly, the falseness of the published material is presumed.

A statement has defamatory meaning if it would lead an ordinary, reasonable reader to think less of the complainant, or if it would cause the complainant to be shunned or subjected to more than trivial ridicule.

Publication is broadly defined, including any communication to someone other than the complainant, whether written or spoken.

And identification requires reference to the complainant, which could be indirect if the ordinary, reasonable reader is able to read between the lines — as Porter is claiming in his case.

Read more: View from The Hill: Despite his denial, Christian Porter will struggle with the ‘Caesar’s wife’ test

A news organisation might carefully avoid naming a person, as the ABC did, but it could still be liable if a reader would have known who that person was. Porter was named in social media chatter around the ABC’s story – whether that sort of speculation constitutes identification is questionable, but not inconceivable.

Where a complainant’s identity is confirmed after publication — as Porter’s was when he fronted the media two weeks ago — identification becomes straightforward for later downloads of the story. Each download is treated as a separate potential defamation under the law. At the time of writing, the ABC’s report was still on its site.

The elements of defamation are encapsulated in the expression cherished by news editors:

journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed.

This reflects the reality that the media is exposed to defamation risk daily — and the risk is serious.

A complainant can sue any person involved with the story’s production, such as journalist Louise Milligan in the ABC’s case. Add the fact the complainant doesn’t need to prove any harm was actually done — and aggravated damages awards are uncapped — and it’s easy to see why defamation inspires fear among media organisations.

What defences can media organisations use?

The defences to defamation are notoriously difficult to establish.

While the complainant need not prove the material is false, the defendant can escape liability by showing that it’s true. In the Porter case, this means the ABC would need to prove matters from more than 30 years ago raised in a letter by a woman who is now deceased.

Moreover, the defendant must prove the truth of the “defamatory stings” — the discrediting imputations that an ordinary, reasonable reader would take from the published material, regardless of whether those were the intended meanings.

Read more: Social media and defamation law pose threats to free speech, and it’s time for reform

Even proving the truth of ordinary, factual reporting can be challenging in cases where journalists’ sources, such as whistleblowers, have legitimate reasons to preserve their anonymity.

These difficulties might be ameliorated if Australia had a “reportage” defence, like that of the United Kingdom. This defence excuses the media for reporting defamatory statements by third parties on matters of public interest, provided the media has merely reported the statement without adopting it.

Australia does have a “reasonable publication” defence, but its requirements have proven near-impossible for media organisations to satisfy in court.

For example, the defence is probably a non-starter in cases where a news organisation reports unproven criminal allegations and the person of interest, being unnamed, is given no right of reply in the story.

Reforming defamation

Changes to Australia’s defamation law are in the works. Some will help potential defendants, such as a new threshold of serious harm and tighter time limits for bringing actions.

Other reforms will require a wait-and-see approach, like the new public interest defence, which aims to rebalance defamation law in favour of public interest reporting but retains elements of the old reasonable publication defence.

This leaves room for courts to maintain a tough stance on what is regarded as “reasonable” media conduct when it comes to defamation. That stance recently saw NSW courts hold three Australian media companies liable for comments that were posted on their Facebook pages about a former youth detention detainee.

Read more: Australia’s ‘outdated’ defamation laws are changing – but there’s no ‘revolution’ yet

More meaningful reform might have established stronger public interest and reportage defences, or required complainants to prove that the material published about them was false – or even that the publisher knew it to be false but published it anyway.

Defamation cases involving public figures in the United States require proof that the publisher knew the material to be false, which is why US politicians almost never sue for defamation.

In Australia, by contrast, politicians do sue – and successfully. They often opt for the Federal Court where, compared with the state courts, they are likely to have their matter heard by a judge alone, rather than having to convince a jury of the merits of their case.

Citizens and institutions seeking to hold those in power to account are too often being silenced by our current defamation laws. In a strong democracy like Australia, we can — and must — do better.

– ref. Why defamation suits in Australia are so ubiquitous — and difficult to defend for media organisations – https://theconversation.com/why-defamation-suits-in-australia-are-so-ubiquitous-and-difficult-to-defend-for-media-organisations-157143