Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ritesh Chugh, Senior Lecturer – Information Systems and Analysis, CQUniversity Australia

If Apple and other tech companies have their way, it will only become harder to have our phones and other devices repaired by third-party businesses.

Smartphones and many other tech devices are increasingly being designed in ways that make it challenging to repair or replace individual components.

This might involve soldering the processor and flash memory to the motherboard, gluing components together unnecessarily, or using non-standard pentalobe screws which make replacements problematic.

Many submissions to an Australian “right to repair” inquiry have called on tech manufacturers to provide a fair and competitive market for repairs, and produce products that are easily repairable.

The right to repair refers to consumers’ ability to have their products repaired at a competitive price. This includes being able to choose a repairer, rather than being forced by default to use the device manufacturer’s services.

But it seems Apple doesn’t want its customers to fix their iPhones or Macbooks themselves. The company has lobbied against the right to repair in the United States and has been accused of deliberately slowing down iPhones with older batteries.

Opposition against the right to repair from tech companies is to be expected. Cornering consumers into using their service centres increases their revenue and extends their market domination.

Read more: Apple, Google and Fortnite’s stoush is a classic case of how far big tech will go to retain power

In its defence, Apple has said third-party repairers could use lower quality parts and also make devices vulnerable to hackers.

It also defended its battery warning indication as a “safety” feature, wherein it started to alert users if their phone’s replacement battery hadn’t come from a certified Apple repairer.

In the US, Apple’s independent repair provider program grants certain providers access to the parts and resources needed to fix its devices. Independent repair shops in 32 countries can now apply, but the scheme has yet to extend outside the US.

Impact on users

With the iPhone 12 — the latest iPhone offering — Apple has made it even harder for third-party repairers to fix the device, thereby increasing users’ reliance on its own services.

Apple has hiked its repair charges for iPhone 12 by more than 40%, compared with the iPhone 11. It is charging more than A$359 to fix an iPhone 12 screen outside of warranty and A$109 to replace the battery.

Historically, third-party repairers have been a cheaper option. But using a third-party repairer for an iPhone 12 could render some phone features, such as the camera, almost inoperable.

According to reports, fixing the iPhone 12’s camera requires Apple’s proprietary system configuration app, available only to the company’s own authorised technicians.

It’s not just Apple, either. Samsung’s flagship phones are also quite tricky for third-party repairers to fix.

Impact on environment

When certain parts for repairs aren’t available, manufacturers will produce new phones instead, consuming more energy and resources. In fact, manufacturing one smartphone consumes as much energy as using it for ten years.

As smartphones become harder to repair, electronic waste will grow. Apple and Samsung both cited environmental benefits when they announced they would no longer ship chargers with their phones.

Yet, they’ve turned a blind eye to the environmental damage that would arise from completely cornering the repair market.

Read more: Apple’s iPhone 12 comes without a charger: a smart waste-reduction move, or clever cash grab?

The average Australian home has 6.7 devices, including televisions, personal computers, laptops, tablets and smartphones. With diminishing opportunities for repair, the environmental burden from disposing of these devices will increase.

What is being done?

Phone giants make it tough for third-party repairers to do their job in a variety of ways. This includes constantly changing designs, adding hurdles to the repair process, and restricting access to parts, diagnostic software and repair documentation.

Meanwhile, consumers are left with broken phones and huge repair bills — and repairers are left with less business.

The fight to remove barriers to repair is gaining momentum outside Australia, too, in countries including Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States. Legislative reforms have been introduced in the European Union and Massachusetts.

France has introduced a Repairability Index requiring electrical and electronic equipment companies to inform consumers about their products’ repairability on a scale of one to ten.

This takes into account the ease of repairability, availability and price of spare parts and availability of technical repair documents.

The path moving forward

Until the push for right to repair legislative reform gathers pace globally, consumers will have little choice but to pay up to big companies to access their authorised repair services.

If they don’t, they may risk losing their warranty, ending up with a non-functional device and even infringing upon the manufacturers’ software copyrights.

Ideally, phone companies (and others) would assist users with the repair process by providing replacement parts, repair documentation and diagnostic tools to third-party repairers.

This would also help Apple and Samsung reduce their carbon footprint and achieve their environmental goals.

Although the way things are going, it’s unlikely tech companies will be able to escape their self-inflicted repair obligations. In the past, Apple CEO Jeff Williams has said:

we believe the safest and most reliable repair is one handled by a trained technician using genuine parts that have been properly engineered and rigorously tested.

But with only so much workforce available even to Apple, sharing the load with smaller repairers will help.

And for consumers’ benefit, the right to repair legislation must be taken seriously, with consistent repairability scores developed across the globe.

– ref. Screwed over: how Apple and others are making it impossible to get a cheap and easy phone repair – https://theconversation.com/screwed-over-how-apple-and-others-are-making-it-impossible-to-get-a-cheap-and-easy-phone-repair-156871

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ameena Leah Payne, eLearning Advisor, Swinburne University of Technology

“I completed high school 20 years ago and wanted a ‘little break’ before furthering my study. That ‘little break’ was extended as my family grew. Life happened, and I never quite found the right time to keep my promise to myself to go to uni – until now!”

“This is my first teaching period in uni. I’m 36 years old. I live with my wife and two very active kids. When I’m not being a chef, cleaner and taxi driver (you know the list), I’m working as a learning support officer at our local school. I haven’t written an academic essay in over 15 years!”

These are common introductions of my mature-age students. They often share their family backgrounds, nervousness, excitement and responsibilities they have to juggle as they begin their uni journey. In sharing, they “feel a sense of solidarity seeing others post about their concerns”, as one student put it.

Students in general say a critical issue in the shift to online higher education has been a lack of adequate support, interaction and engagement with academic staff and peers.

More than 430,000 students are aged 25 years and older. That’s 39.1% of the total domestic higher education enrolment, and mature-age students account for 22% of first-year undergraduates.

Mature-age, online students are identified as the most vulnerable to not completing their degree. That happens to about 43% of them compared to 30% of those aged 20 to 24 and 21% for students who enrol straight out of school.

Given the inconsistent completion outcomes for mature-age students compared to younger and on-campus students, a different approach is needed. This means universities must take account of the particular needs and circumstances of mature-age students.

“I think a lot of us can relate to the idea of struggling to keep on top of everything.”

Who are these students?

“Mature age” refers to adults who enter their course based on work experience or who have not studied recently. They are more likely to have responsibility for others and be in the paid workforce.

Growing numbers of students are entering fully online higher education. And students 25 years and older are more strongly represented in online studies than face-to-face studies.

A 2019 study of mature-age learners highlighted the following challenges of studying online:

• uncertainty in abilities leading to a “narrative of disadvantage” and a feeling of stepping into a space where they feel they do not belong

• first-year, mature-age students consider withdrawing from their studies at higher rates

• enrolment in university may be rooted in previous negative educational experiences – traditionally, the status quo in higher education has not served students at the margins.

Online teaching compounds existing weaknesses

In the shift to online, many education providers are making the same mistakes by continuing with impersonal teaching methods. Students aged 25 and over rate engagement as the least satisfactory aspect of their online courses.

Active engagement tends to drop off as the teaching period progresses. (The proxy measures of “engagement” are active presence and involved participation.)

Further, education has commonly had an emphasis on subordination. Cue the “domineering teacher” portrayed by antagonist Terence Fletcher in the 2014 film Whiplash. One-way information transmission and an expectation of passive knowledge acquisition have overshadowed relationships between teaching staff and students.

The challenge, then, is to start off in a way that develops a culture of trust, collegiality, openness and contribution.

‘It resonates!’ Recognising experiences and skills

Mature-age students are starting online higher education with a variety of aptitudes, knowledge, opinions and values. These backgrounds affect how students engage with and construe information. The online experience should encourage connection, active participation and critical thinking.

The language of education is shifting to incorporate students as “stakeholders”, “co-constructors” and “active participants”. Such terms have a powerful effect.

In 1930, psychologist and educational reformer John Dewey advocated for empowering learners by honouring their lived experiences and capabilities. Reforms of the 1960s and ‘70s began shifting education toward autonomy, allowing for reflection, independence and flexibility. More recent geopolitical movements, driven by social media, are, once again, prompting an upturn in education that emphasises discussion, openness and independent thought.

It’s essential that these themes be re-created in today’s digital learning environments.

“You made me feel like I am not alone in this. I was anxious and afraid that I won’t be able to keep up.”

Emerging from the 2019 study of mature-age students were several key recommendations:

1. understand and value the circumstances and experiences of this cohort

2. communication and personal contact are vital

3. embed timely, proactive support.

In such environments, educators must be given the time to get to know their students’ situations and experiences. They can then reach out to support them. In essence, Dewey argued for educators to meet learners where they are, wherever that may be.

“I have felt I was always able to contact you and receive helpful advice. It means a lot – especially for newcomers like me!”

These suggestions are in line with the findings and recommendations of the recent Macklin Review of post-secondary education and training in Victoria. Times of growth and uncertainty call for greater adaptability, empathy and innovation. This will feed into student retention, progression and ultimately an undergraduate qualification.

To government and institutions: online education, and of mature-age students in particular, must be approached differently. Education can only act as the great social equaliser if the growing cohort of mature-age students are engaged and supported to reach their academic goals.

To current and emerging mature-age learners: well done to you! You are seen and being heard.

– ref. ‘A lot of us can relate to struggling to keep on top of everything.’ This is what mature-age students need from online higher education – https://theconversation.com/a-lot-of-us-can-relate-to-struggling-to-keep-on-top-of-everything-this-is-what-mature-age-students-need-from-online-higher-education-155201

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

Best to avoid the media just now if you’re squeamish about seeing needles. Political and other notables are rushing to bare arms for the jab, encouraging confidence in the COVID vaccines.

Commendable example-setting of course. But just now the issue isn’t so much persuading people to take the vaccine as getting it rolled out fast enough.

The government originally set a target of 4 million people reached by the end of March (which slipped to early April). So far, the tally is a little over 100,000 shots administered.

No wonder this week Scott Morrison, acting health minister in the absence of a hospitalised Greg Hunt, was emphasising the program was sure, steady, safe and well planned, rather than speedy.

Health Department Secretary Brendan Murphy, appearing with the PM, preferred to talk about the “major target” of offering every adult a vaccine by the end of October.

On Thursday, when he fronted the Senate’s COVID committee, Murphy said supply problems had hampered the initial rollout, and could not give a time for reaching the 4 million target. He admitted “a small proportion of people” might not have had their second AstraZeneca shot by the end of October (although he insisted they’d be protected by their first shot).

Getting over the initial hurdles and hastening the rollout is one of three challenges Morrison faces right now. The others are managing the economy after JobKeeper’s imminent end, and dealing with his ministerial crises – the trickiest of the three, in political terms.

Australia is lucky that, with virtually no current community transmission of COVID-19, this slow start to the vaccination program does not present a health threat.

But it does mean the removal of remaining restrictions is likely to be held back, and the tardiness leaves Morrison open to opposition criticism for over-promising and under-delivering.

Morrison has always bracketed health and economics in dealing with COVID, and his eyes are now glued to the economy as JobKeeper, the lifeline for so many businesses and workers, finishes in late March.

On the latest figures, at the end of January about 370,000 businesses and 1 million workers were still on JobKeeper.

The post-JobKeeper period will be a reckoning point for many enterprises.

The government has acknowledged some businesses will fail. In economic terms, this is a necessary; in human terms, it will be devastating for many people.

This week Reserve Bank Governor Philip Lowe predicted that “the unemployment rate [currently 6.4%] will continue to trend lower, although this trend could be temporarily interrupted when JobKeeper comes to an end later this month”.

In its measures for the post-JobKeeper period, the government has two objectives: to maintain the pace of the recovery, which has been encouragingly strong (3.1% growth in the December quarter), and to help sectors with special problems.

This week it announced assistance of some $4.2 billion: half for the employment of apprentices and trainees, and the rest for the aviation and tourism industries (including 800,000 subsidised air tickets targeting holiday areas).

The loan scheme for small and medium-sized businesses is also being extended and expanded for enterprises coming off JobKeeper in the March quarter.

Aspects of the aviation and tourism package have been met with some scepticism, and critics argue JobKeeper should be staying for longer.

But the government can be satisfied the recovery so far is V-shaped, which last year many economists thought improbable.

It is a very different story on the political front, which is chaotic.

Morrison faces a hellish fortnight with the return of parliament on Monday.

That day, more than 85,000 women are expected to demonstrate in 38 locations around the country, including outside Parliament House.

The protests have been sparked by Morrison’s handling of the two separate allegations of rape that have consumed federal politics for weeks.

The demonstrators’ broader themes are that gendered violence must end; that women must be heard and believed; and that they must be safe – in their workplaces, homes and daily lives.

Neither Attorney-General Christian Porter nor Defence Minister Linda Reynolds will be there to see the Canberra women. He’s on mental health leave; she’s on medical leave. But the government is certain to be pummelled with questions in parliament about them both.

Morrison has yet to reveal the results of the inquiry by his departmental secretary, Phil Gaetjens, into who of his staff knew what when about Brittany Higgins’ allegation she was raped in Reynolds’ office in 2019. And Reynolds’ “lying cow” comment will no doubt get a run.

Porter remains Morrison’s most serious political problem, going to what standards should be demanded for the occupant of the position of the country’s first law officer.

There continues a chorus of calls, including from within the legal profession, for an independent inquiry to settle the question of Porter’s suitability for his position, given NSW police have closed their investigation of the allegation he raped a 16 year-old girl in 1988, which he strenuously denies.

But Morrison this week was firmly dug in behind Porter, despite his being highly damaged political goods.

Government sources insist Morrison, and other colleagues, want Porter back in his job – they are afraid of the precedent set if he leaves the ministry. This ignores the fact that, on any commonsense view, this is surely a one-off ministerial situation.

On the other hand, Morrison’s preference would probably be for Reynolds to step down, citing her health – but that decision remains in her hands.

The PM is assuming these ministerial crises will blow over soon enough.

He may accept that many people (especially women) will have strong views on the issues – the “toxic” parliamentary culture, the suitability of Porter for office, how the government handles issues affecting women. But he’d calculate these aren’t substantial vote-changers.

That may be right. On the other hand, it might be dangerous complacency.

Although Morrison has a big lead as preferred PM, the poll numbers are tight, and the government has no electoral fat for the contest that’s little more than a year away at most.

Also, for as long as the ministerial crises are front and centre, the Coalition can’t get its messages out properly.

By early May, Morrison needs to have the vaccine rollout marching at a good clip, the economic recovery coping with the end of JobKeeper, and Porter and Reynolds no longer damaging distractions.

That would give him a good run into the budget.

Not much to ask, really.

– ref. Grattan on Friday: Morrison grapples with slow vaccine rollout, end of JobKeeper and ministerial crises – https://theconversation.com/grattan-on-friday-morrison-grapples-with-slow-vaccine-rollout-end-of-jobkeeper-and-ministerial-crises-156975

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Eleanor Gordon, Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations, Monash University

Resources critical to peacebuilding and to countries vulnerable to conflict have been significantly reduced as a result of COVID-19.

In conflict zones from Ukraine to Syria, hundreds of thousands of people are “suffering in silence”. These conflicts risk becoming “forgotten crises”, and are intensifying as states and non-state armed groups utilise the pandemic and a distracted international community for their own strategic advantage.

The figures are alarming. For instance, foreign direct investment “collapsed” in 2020, according to the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), falling by 42% to an estimated US$859 billion (compared with US$1.5 trillion in 2019). Many humanitarian organisations have also recorded a dramatic drop in donations from private individuals and fundraising activities, or expect private donations will decline as the global recession hits.

Profound cuts to foreign aid are anticipated as countries continue to invest heavily in COVID-19-related activities while facing severe economic recession.

Already, several governments, including the UK, have announced major cuts to aid budgets in light of COVID-19. A decline in public support for foreign aid, typical in times of financial crisis, is also likely to encourage cuts. This in turn is likely to have a negative effect on peacebuilding, which is already underfunded.

Evidence suggests that committed foreign aid being redirected from peacebuilding programs into efforts to deal with COVID-19 is likely to have even more of an impact on the ground than a decrease in foreign aid. The UK, US, France andAustralia, for instance, have announced a reorientation of their aid commitments to medical infrastructure.

A further reduction in funding and troops for UN peacekeeping missions is also likely. This is in turn predicted to reduce the capacity of peace operations by 30-50% over the next year or two.

Read more: Buying a coronavirus vaccine for everyone on Earth, storing and shipping it, and giving it safely will all be hard and expensive

Declining funds hit aid organisations hard

A global survey of organisations engaged in peacebuilding was conducted to assess the impact of these cuts on the ground. In the survey, 62% said they or their organisation had experienced a reduction in funding for peacebuilding work. In addition, 71% said COVID-19 had, or was likely to have had, a negative impact on the financial security of their organisation. Other global surveys have had similar results.

Reduced funds will also inevitably affect employment and job security for these organisations. The survey found 74% felt their work was more precarious, while 56% knew of someone in the sector who had lost a job as a result of the pandemic.

On top of this, 75% said the focus of their work has changed. They referred to “strong signals” given by donors to “pivot” activities towards COVID-19-related issues, even if other needs were perceived to be more pressing.

Impact on conflict zones

The reduction in resources comes when they are most needed. This is because COVID-19 and its effects (economic shocks, unemployment, extreme poverty and vaccine inequalities) worsen conflict situations. These negative impacts are likely to intensify as the pandemic persists.

Following a short decline after the pandemic was declared in March 2020, conflicts in several countries increased again. This notably often takes the form of violence against civilians by state forces and militias.

Escalating insecurity has already been witnessed in several conflict zones – Syria, Colombia, Somalia, Yemen, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Afghanistan, Philippines and Myanmar – as states and non-state armed groups exploit the pandemic to their own strategic advantage.

Many of the ceasefires declared in response to the United Nations secretary-general’s call for a global ceasefire in March 2020 have fallen apart.

Read more: UK government’s foreign aid cuts put girls’ education at risk

From pivoting to preparedness

COVID-19 has exposed weaknesses in global governance, especially in terms of preparedness and threat mitigation. To address these weaknesses, countries need to invest in preparedness, be aware of the complex interconnectedness of security threats, and avoid knee-jerk reactions to singular risks that divert attention and resources away from longer-term threats.

There is also a need to communicate more effectively to the public about how aid budgets are spent. This includes stressing how aid programs benefit donor as well as recipient countries, given public opinion can be a key factor in determining whether aid budgets are reduced.

The increased risk of armed conflict, as a result of the diversion of resources and attention towards COVID-19, has global repercussions. So, too, does the difficulty in controlling COVID-19 within conflict zones and beyond their often-porous borders, until a widely accessible vaccine becomes available to the most disadvantaged people.

– ref. As the world’s attention and money are absorbed by the COVID pandemic, peacebuilding suffers – https://theconversation.com/as-the-worlds-attention-and-money-are-absorbed-by-the-covid-pandemic-peacebuilding-suffers-156577

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Shivanthan Shanthikumar, Respiratory Medicine Fellow, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute

It’s time to leave the playground but your 12-month-old daughter doesn’t want to. She gets angry, cries out loudly, breathing all the way out and then holds her breath. She turns blue around the mouth and faints.

This is understandably very scary for any parent. But the good news is these episodes, called breath-holding spells, are common, not dangerous, resolve as children get older, and don’t cause any long-term damage.

What are breath-holding spells?

Breath-holding spells affect up to one in every 22 children under six years. There are two types.

“Cyanotic” or blue spells are the type we describe above, and are usually triggered by anger or frustration.

“Pallid” or pale spells are typically triggered by pain or fear, and are less common. At the start children open their mouths, but there may not be a cry. They then hold their breath, turn pale and may faint.

In both cases the spells last less than 60 seconds. At the end of an episode when the child regains consciousness, children may return to normal, be slightly drowsy or upset.

Breath-holding spells typically start when the child is aged between six and 18 months. The spells can occur multiple times a day or very infrequently. Some 90% of children grow out of the episodes by the time they turn six.

Read more: Fight, flight or … faint? Why some people pass out when they see blood or feel pain

What causes breath-holding spells?

We don’t know exactly why some children have breath-holding spells, but we think multiple factors could play a role.

Small studies have shown children who experience cyanotic breath-holding spells have differently functioning autonomic nervous systems (the part of the nervous system which controls things like heart rate and breathing rate). They have higher resting-heart rate and blood pressure, and pupils that have an exaggerated response to light in certain conditions (these things are not dangerous for children). But it’s unclear precisely how these differences may be linked to breath-holding spells.

For children who have pallid breath-holding spells, research suggests the vagus nerve — which helps control body functions when we’re at rest — is overactive, and causes the heart to slow down.

Studies have also shown breath-holding spells are more common in children with iron deficiency, though we’re not sure why this is.

If this happens to your child, should you be worried?

Although breath-holding spells can be very scary — particularly the first time — they are not cause for concern.

Parents often have two questions. First, are they a sign there’s something wrong with my child? And second, will they cause long-term damage to my child’s brain and development? The answer to both these questions is no.

As they’re such a common problem, we know generally they’re not a sign of an underlying illness, and they don’t have long-term effects (likely because the spells are not associated with significant oxygen deprivation to the brain).

Iron deficiency anaemia, which can be associated with breath-holding spells, is very easily treated. Your child’s GP can test for this and prescribe iron supplements if needed.

Read more: ‘No, I don’t wanna… wahhhh!’ A parent’s guide to managing tantrums

What should an adult do during and after a breath-holding spell?

You should:

• stay calm and remember the spell will be over in less than 60 seconds

• remove any objects around your child which may cause injury if they faint

• if your child faints, lay them on their side.

You should not:

• try to stimulate your child to breathe by shaking them (this won’t help and may cause injury)

• put anything in the child’s mouth, including your fingers.

After a spell is over, you should:

• try to treat the child as normal; don’t punish them or reward them or make a fuss

• perform first aid to any injuries that might have occurred during fainting.

You can find good information on how to handle breath-holding spells online through resources including the Raising Children’s Network and the Royal Children’s Hospital.

Is there anything you can do to prevent breath-holding spells?

Aside from treating any iron deficiency anaemia, there are no medications for breath-holding spells. Parents can only try to prevent the spells by preventing the events that trigger them.

Ways to do this include distracting your child if they’re upset and giving them plenty of warning if their activity is going to change, such as a five-minute countdown before leaving the playground.

Of course, it won’t always be possible to stop a child from becoming frustrated or angry.

When should you see a doctor?

It’s generally a good idea to see a GP after your child’s first spell, just so they can go through what happened with you and ensure it was a breath-holding spell.

If the spells are occurring very frequently, then seeing your GP and getting tested for iron deficiency anaemia is a good idea. Other reasons to see a doctor include if the spells start at less than six months of age, or if your child displays signs of a seizure (such as shaking in their arms and legs).

Read more: Why iron is such an important part of your diet

– ref. What are breath-holding spells, the common phenomenon that causes children to faint? – https://theconversation.com/what-are-breath-holding-spells-the-common-phenomenon-that-causes-children-to-faint-131677

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Frederic Kiernan, Research fellow, The University of Melbourne

Review: Max Richter’s Sleep, directed by Natalie Johns.

Music does things. For German-born, English-raised composer Max Richter, music is a “vehicle for travelling through the world, for getting through life”. So he says in the film Max Richter’s Sleep, written and directed by Natalie Johns, which hits Australian screens today.

The film focuses on a composition by Richter which spans more than 200 movements and lasts over eight hours. During performances of this work, audience members (probably not the right term in this case) spend almost the whole concert resting or asleep in hundreds of cots and camping beds lined up where you would normally find seats.

Richter, a prodigious contemporary composer, has made music for solo albums, ballets, concert hall performances, theatre and film and television series (including The Crown, The Leftovers and Peaky Blinders). His Sleep performance-events were conceived with his collaborator and partner Yulia Mahr, a BAFTA-winning filmmaker. The film focuses primarily on an open-air concert in downtown Los Angeles, although it weaves in performance footage from other locations around the world including Berlin, the Sydney Opera House and Paris.

Audience members arrive at the concert in the evening, before being lulled into a dream-state by Richter (on the piano) and his band of musicians. They wake the next morning to find them still softly playing. The technical achievement of the composer, performers and organisers is undeniable. But as a musicologist with strong sociological leanings, my own interest lies in Richter’s treatment of audience expectations and listening behaviours, as well as his interesting perspective on the kinds of things music can do.

Read more: Review: David Byrne’s American Utopia is a film honouring the love of the live performance

Listen up and settle down

People listen to music in different ways for different reasons. We might use music to keep pace during a gym workout or while jogging. This is partly because our bodily rhythms (heart rate and breathing) can synchronise with externally heard rhythms — something psychologists call rhythmic entrainment.

We often use music to regulate our emotions and moods, to mark occasions such as weddings and birthdays, and to celebrate sporting victories from club to Olympic level, where the music acts not as decoration but as a kind of social glue.

Music listening habits also change over time. In the 18th century, opera-goers were notoriously lively, more likely facing each other than the stage, but since the 19th century these audiences have become rather more reverent. Classical music audiences still typically display “serious” listening behaviours, although companies such as Play On are upending these conventions. By inviting audiences to sleep through an entire concert, Richter and Mahr are doing the same, with interesting results.

Richter describes the composition as an “eight-hour lullaby”. It is a soothing musical remedy for the increasingly hectic pace of modern life, in which sleep is often considered an inconvenience or even a weakness.

Music is widely used nowadays as a therapeutic tool. In fact the practice of “prescribing” music for soothing, energising or mood-regulating purposes dates back at least as far as ancient Greece. Pythagoras, for example, is said to have sung and played the lyre for his disciples to induce a calm mood prior to sleep, and to shake off numbness and tiredness upon waking.

Read more: Having trouble sleeping? Here’s the science on 3 traditional bedtime remedies

Perchance to dream

For centuries, sleep was regarded as a suspension of activity — a passive state of unconsciousness. However during the 18th and 19th centuries new theories of the origin of sleep emerged, linking sleep to the build up of toxins during the day, blood flow and the paralysis of nerve cells. Many of these ideas are still being explored in current sleep science, which now highlights the active nature and generative power of sleep, as well as the potential benefits of music listening for sleep quality. Musical activities, like other creative activites, can have a positive impact on our wellbeing, as research at the University of Melbourne is showing.

Richter observes in the film that the hectic pace of modern life suits corporations more so than humans. His Sleep opus offers a “quiet protest”, a moment to withdraw and reflect, treating the sleeping mind as a valuable complement to our waking life. The film mirrors what I imagine attendance at a live performance of the work to be like.

Read more: The Portal review: can meditation change the world?

As viewers, we, along with audience members in the film, settle into our own journey. Long passages of deeply resonant music exert their visceral emotional pull, in slow rhythms and very low frequencies outside the usual range of acoustic instruments.

As the piece unfolds through the night, the musicians alternately take breaks, perhaps to eat or use the bathroom. Richter moves from the piano around the venue, to see “what the piece is doing”, before returning to the stage to continue playing.

Darkness shades much of the film visually, and commentary is provided by various audience members who are never quite introduced, as if in a dream. There are scholarly musings too, on the science of sleep and the relationship between music and mathematics.

Richter and Mahr also recount the origins of the piece and the risks, gambles and unknowns they faced as artists. As audience members rouse themselves at the conclusion of the film, their reflections reveal they were not really audience members at all, but participants in a musical study of sleep. This explored music’s capacity to soothe deeply, and, in being soothed, allowed participants to become vulnerable and open to connection with one another.

Can the film successfully replicate the live experience? Of course not. Do I now wish I could attend (and sleep through) a live performance of this piece? Absolutely.

Max Richter’s Sleep is in cinemas from today.

– ref. Max Richter’s Sleep, a filmed antidote to modern life with music to dream by – https://theconversation.com/max-richters-sleep-a-filmed-antidote-to-modern-life-with-music-to-dream-by-156491

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

Christian Porter has unequivocally denied the historic rape allegations levelled against him, and says he is determined to stay in his job as attorney-general.

Both Scott Morrison and Porter are adamant the “rule of law” in this country places the attorney-general beyond prosecution, now that the NSW police have closed the case.

Porter is the country’s first law officer and many argue that requires a stiffer test of suitability.

This week UNSW professor of law Fleur Johns joins the podcast, to discuss the legal role of the attorney-general, how allegations of this kind can affect the performance of his duties, and the validity of the “rule of law” argument.

The role of the office of the attorney-general is both one of “actual powers” and “a repository of great symbolic power,” Johns says.

This symbolic power is compromised by “serious allegations that go to the ability of a person to exercise power over another person in a way that is responsible.”

“Allegations that are made of a serious abuse of power having been conducted could erode…public trust, especially when those allegations have not had an opportunity to be tested, as is the case here.”

Johns “wholeheartedly” rejects the view an independent inquiry into the rape allegations would compromise the rule of law.

“It’s absolutely par for the course that the rule of law is delivered through a range of different procedural mechanisms.”

“The testing of these allegations…with the appropriate protections to ensure the rule of law, would actually be a way of ensuring that that ideal of the rule of law is defended and promoted.

”[It would show] that we do experience a sense of being governed by laws and legal processes and legal institutions, rather than by particular men and women who happen to be in power at any one time.“

Additional audio

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

– ref. Politics with Michelle Grattan: Fleur Johns on the rule of law – https://theconversation.com/politics-with-michelle-grattan-fleur-johns-on-the-rule-of-law-156944

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

The vast arsenal of fiscal, monetary and legal measures used by Australian governments to offset the COVID-induced economic crisis have worked well. They did not prevent a recession (popularly defined as two quarters of negative GDP growth) but things could have been much worse.

What is particularly interesting is that the expected consequences have not shown up in the official statistics for financial distress – insolvent companies entering administration and individuals declaring bankruptcy.

Indeed, a misleading impression of 2020 being one of “economic good times” could be gained from the statistics.

The big question is whether these statistics show government relief measures have averted economic pain or simply deferred it. As measures are wound down and withdrawn, will the private sector be willing and able to pick up the resulting slack?

Companies entering administration

There are, of course, “lies, damn lies, and statistics”. The figures hide what is likely to be actually happening in terms of financial distress.

Impacts on businesses and individuals have been quite varied. Some large corporations have come through in good shape, much better than might have been imagined. But the tourism, hospitality, entertainment and higher education sectors have taken significant hits and face an uncertain and drawn-out recovery.

The following graphic, using data from the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, shows the number of companies entering external administration (quarterly from 2010 to 2020).

Notable is the decline in business collapses in 2020 – the opposite of what one would expect in a time of economic stress.

A number of policy actions contributed to this.

The most obvious contributors to keeping failing businesses alive were JobKeeper payments as well as changes increasing “safe-harbour protections” to reduce the risk of prosecution for trading while insolvent. These changes also reduced the ability of creditors to speedily force a debtor company into insolvency.

Read more: Government will reform insolvency system to improve distressed small businesses’ survival chances

In many cases it is quite possible these simply put off that day to some time in 2021.

Individuals declaring bankruptcy

At the personal level, which includes owners of small unincorporated businesses, a similar pattern can be seen.

The next graph uses data from the Australian Financial Security Authority. It shows the number of individuals entering into insolvency (bankruptcy, debt agreements etc) on a quarterly basis. The latest data is for the September quarter of 2020. The number had fallen to about half of what it had been prior to 2020.

Notably, the number of personal insolvencies began falling in early 2018. There is no obvious single explanation for this trend, though good economic conditions and low interest rates are probably part of the story.

The further decline in 2020 (in contrast to expectations of an increase) is most likely due to legislative changes introduced in March 2020 and extended in September 2020. These include increasing the size of debt owed before a creditor can initiate action from A$5,000 to A$20,000, and allowing debtors six months (rather than 21 days) to respond to creditor demands. Mortgage repayment deferrals by banks also would have helped.

A difficult balancing act

What to make of these unexpected declines in official indicators of financial distress when economic conditions have surely increased the reality?

The more optimistic interpretation is that various government support measures have prevented both business and individuals sliding into insolvency.

The less optimistic interpretation is the measures have simply deferred the final outcome – with the statistics soon to show a bounce in business failures and personal insolvencies.

Read more: We’re facing an insolvency tsunami. With luck, these changes will avert the worst of it

There is no point keeping “zombie” businesses alive, nor in dissuading heavily indebted individuals from taking action under insolvency arrangements that can give them a fresh start.

But finding the right balance of continuing support for recoverable cases while terminating it for others (and limiting the hardship caused by failure) is a difficult and challenging task for our economic masters.

– ref. Hard bump ahead? Drop in insolvencies and bankruptcies is a ticking time bomb – https://theconversation.com/hard-bump-ahead-drop-in-insolvencies-and-bankruptcies-is-a-ticking-time-bomb-155744

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Long, Strategic Professor in Palaeontology, Flinders University

The giant prehistoric Carcharocles megalodon (or Otodus megalodon for some researchers) was the largest predatory shark to ever swim in Earth’s seas. Scientific evidence points to megalodon having lived between 16 million and 2.6 million years ago, going extinct at the end of the Pliocene Epoch when the world’s oceans were much colder than today’s.

Over the years, several research papers have estimated meg’s size. Its teeth are shaped like large, flat triangles with serrated edges — much like the teeth of living white sharks. White sharks, along with mako sharks and the porbeagle shark all belong in the family Lamnidae and are referred to as “lamnids”.

The close similarities between meg teeth and those of living lamnid sharks are strong evidence meg was indeed an ancient kind of lamnid shark. This premise is important, as it forms the basis of how we estimate the size of this ancient giant.

Two museum exhibits recently opened public displays featuring spectacular models of megalodon: one at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in Washington DC, and the other at the Western Australian Museum Boola Bardip in Perth.

These models, while both outstanding, don’t depict entirely the same shark. So how was each one made? And what scientific approaches were used?

Read more: Giant monster Megalodon sharks lurking in our oceans: be serious!

Making the meghead

The Smithsonian’s megalodon model is a full-body reconstruction measuring 15 metres. The other, at the Museum Boola Bardip, is a beautifully crafted model of meg’s head. This was built under the direction of one of us (Mikael) and opened to the public in November.

The shape of the “meghead” is similar to a white shark’s head, but has a shorter and much rounder snout. Its colouration features “counter-shading” with a dark back and lighter belly — also similar to white sharks, but less contrasted. The greater this colour contrast, the easier it becomes for underwater predators to go unnoticed by prey.

The meghead’s jaw size was based on multiple teeth from a single ancient shark. These specimens allowed us to scale the body size to correspond with tooth size, as well as to match the widest front tooth of another megalodon found in Cape Range, Western Australia.

The rest of the meghead was then 3D modelled to fit the jaws. The end result was a head that corresponded to a creature roughly 14m in length. This would be the largest meg shark ever found in Western Australia, but not the largest overall.

Magnificent displays make for great selfies

The Smithsonian meg model was overseen by Hans Dieter-Sues, a US paleontologist who drew the shark’s outline based on a general lamnid shark body plan. This was then finessed by University of Maryland shark fossil expert Bretton Kent.

After reviewing a small scale model, the full-size model was constructed based on a complete set of meg teeth assembled by Gordon Hubble, another megalodon expert. Measuring a whopping 15m, the final model had to be assembled as modules, as it wouldn’t have made it through the museum’s doors or corridors in one piece.

This model is now suspended by cables from the Smithsonian’s walls and ceiling, positioned strategically so visitors may take selfies from a nearby balcony.

Calculating maximum size

The meghead model in Perth was based on several specific tooth specimens found locally and from overseas, painting a picture of a 14m-long predator.

However, to calculate the species’s maximum size, we first estimated the maximum jaw size possible for Meg and then scaled this up, using the same jaw size-to-body length ratio of living white sharks.

The maximum jaw size of meg can be calculated by scaling up the few known “associated dentitions” (multiple tooth specimens that were found together and came from a single shark) with the widest meg tooth ever found.

Once we did this, the size estimate we reached was between 19–20m. And this is much larger than most other recent estimates.

The megashark lineage

Scientists have discovered meg’s teeth to be part of a species continuum known as the megatooth shark lineage. This is based on the discovery of many thousands of fossilised teeth that seem to merge into new shapes over time, pointing to the evolution of new species.

The start of this lineage began in the Danian stage about 63 million years ago, when the first sharks of the genus Otodus appeared. This is why megalodon, belonging to this lineage, is now officially classified as Otodus megalodon. That said, the shark has been placed in various genera, including Carcharocles and Procarcharodon, and continues to be the subject of debate.

With an estimated body length of about 4m, the first Otodus sharks in the megatooth lineage would have been smaller than several other sharks living at the time. So how could they have evolved to become the colossus that is meg?

DePaul University professor Kenshu Shimada has suggested meg’s huge size may have had something to do with a strange trait of lamnid sharks, which is that their young eat each other in the womb.

This behaviour, called “intrauterine cannibalism”, provides a ready source of nutrition for growing fetuses and may have driven increased growth in megalodon. That said, it would have also forced mothers to feed more actively, due to increased nutrition demand from the rapidly growing young.

This wouldn’t have helped meg’s survival when global temperatures cooled down about three million years ago. The cold spell would have killed off much of meg’s food sources, eventually triggering its extinction.

In recent years, coastal limestone outcrops in Western Australia have yielded several new exciting megalodon teeth. We hope these will tell us more about the story of meg and its variations which swam through the seas of ancient Australia.

Read more: Giant ancient sharks had enormous babies that ate their siblings in the womb

– ref. Making a megalodon: the evolving science behind estimating the size of the largest ever killer shark – https://theconversation.com/making-a-megalodon-the-evolving-science-behind-estimating-the-size-of-the-largest-ever-killer-shark-155475

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adam Simpson, Senior Lecturer, University of South Australia

Myanmar’s military appears to be testing out a range of vicious tactics in the hope something will stem the protest movements that have embroiled the country since the coup in early February.

The military crossed a grim threshold last Wednesday when security forces fired live rounds at protesters across the country, resulting in what the UN said were at least 30 deaths and hundreds of critical injuries.

Then, on Saturday, security forces beat and took away Khin Maung Latt, a Muslim ward chairman for the former ruling party, the National League for Democracy (NLD). The next morning, the family recovered his tortured and mutilated body from the hospital.

That night, the father of MP Sithu Maung, who is one of only two Muslim politicians elected to represent the NLD last year, was beaten and dragged away by security forces. He has not been heard from since.

And this week, another NLD official, Zaw Myatt Linn, died in custody less than a day after being arrested.

These brutal attacks appear designed not only to terrorise the NLD, protesters and others taking part in the civil disobedience campaign, but the Muslim community, in particular.

Myanmar’s Muslim minorities have a history of persecution by the military and other nationalist groups. Brutalising Muslims now may be an attempt to bolster support within the few remaining parts of society that still back the military.

A history of self-delusion and miscalculations

There have now been more than 60 protesters killed and almost 2,000 arrested, but nothing has stopped the popular rage against the coup makers and their ill-considered plans.

Any grudging respect the military may have retained for its role in guiding the political transition over the past decade has now well and truly evaporated.

The military has a reputation for self-delusion, and it certainly miscalculated the public mood prior to launching the coup that ousted the NLD from power just weeks after it won an overwhelming majority in national elections.

The military’s commander-in-chief, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, may have convinced himself that Thailand could be a model for how to transition from the coup to semi-democratic elections. If so, he is likely to be severely disappointed.

Thailand’s military seized power in 2014, and five years later, the coup leader, Prayuth Chan-ocha, won a compromised election to retain his position as prime minister.

Read more: Taking care of business: the coup in Myanmar is partly about protecting the economic interests of the military elite

But Thai society is much more divided between liberal and nationalist monarchist movements, giving the military there a sizeable support base. In Myanmar, the military doesn’t enjoy the same popular backing, which was why its proxy party suffered a humiliating defeat in the 2020 election.

A further escalation of violence against unarmed protesters in Myanmar is likely to undermine support from the military’s few international allies, including China. It seems there are no good options left for the military to resolve this entirely self-inflicted crisis.

A fragmented but effective opposition movement

The bruising standoff between the military and opposition is now a war of attrition. No one knows for sure who will last the longest.

The opposition movement is comprised of many interlocking parts, of which the protests are not the only — or even the most important.

The civil disobedience movement, mostly made up of striking or uncooperative workers, is paralysing major parts of the economy. Large numbers of civil servants remain at their desks, but are not doing any work, bringing government activity to a halt.

The country’s largest trade unions launched an indefinite, nationwide strike this week, as well.

The loose, anarchic structure of the opposition movement — with few leaders and highly decentralised modes of organisation, funding and operations — means the military cannot easily decapitate the movement.

The military tried to silence the most symbolic leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, by placing her under arrest, but it hasn’t affected the opposition’s ability to organise or tap into public anger against the military.

Sources inside the country suggest the civil disobedience movement has been energised by Myanmar’s UN ambassador, Kyaw Moe Tun, who defied the military and declared its rule illegitimate. His courage has proved a lightning rod for the millions of angry protesters looking for inspiration and moral clarity.

These protesters now seem committed to the confrontation. The best approach may be to foment division within the military and police in the hopes of undermining Min Aung Hlaing’s authority.

Security forces haven’t rebelled in great numbers in the past, even when ordered to crack down on the Buddhist monks leading the Saffron Revolution in 2007. But after a decade of political and economic liberties, Myanmar has changed profoundly. Some in the military and police have changed along with it and might not be amenable if a major crackdown is ordered against their own citizens.

If so, there are likely to be increased defections of security forces to the opposition.

Read more: Myanmar’s coup might discourage international aid, but donors should adapt, not leave

What can the world do?

This conflict will be resolved one way or the other by the duelling groups within Myanmar. The outside world has few levers left to pull.

The UN Security Council, for one, remains largely deadlocked on the issue, with China and Russia unwilling to deliver strong statements or endorse any serious action against the military.

Read more: Myanmar coup: how China could help resolve the crisis

The US and other Western nations have implemented sanctions on members of the military and military-linked companies, but many of these were already in place in response to the violence against the Rohingya in recent years.

Australia has also suspended its cooperation with the military and directed all aid funds through non-state actors. This is a welcome measure.

If real external pressure is to be applied on the Myanmar generals, it may have to come from the ASEAN countries — specifically Singapore, one of the biggest investors in Myanmar.

Singapore’s political and commercial leaders are now facing pressure to take a stronger stand. Soon after the coup, a prominent Singaporean businessman divested from a Myanmar tobacco company, which is majority-owned by a military conglomerate.

Kirin, a giant Japanese brewer, pulled out of its joint venture with the same conglomerate.

If other companies can similarly suspend their deals with the military, it will certainly help to strangle the key sources of revenue keeping Myanmar’s top brass in power.

The bravery of the protesters on the streets needs to be matched by a clear international message that Myanmar’s coup-makers cannot expect a financial lifeline to maintain their homicidal rule.

– ref. As killings, beatings and disappearances escalate, what’s the end game in Myanmar? – https://theconversation.com/as-killings-beatings-and-disappearances-escalate-whats-the-end-game-in-myanmar-156752

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Toole, Professor of International Health, Burnet Institute

One year ago today, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 a pandemic, the first caused by a coronavirus.

As we enter year two of the pandemic, let’s remind ourselves of some sobering statistics. So far, there have been more than 117.4 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 around the world; more than 2.6 million people have died. A total of 221 countries and territories have been affected. Some 12 of the 14 countries and territories reporting no cases are small Pacific or Atlantic islands.

Whether the race to end the pandemic will be a sprint or a marathon remains to be seen, as does the extent of the gap between rich and poor contestants. However, as vaccines roll out across the world, it seems we are collectively just out of the starting blocks.

Here are the challenges we face over the next 12 months if we are to ever begin to reduce COVID-19 to a sporadic or endemic disease.

Vaccines are like walking on the Moon

Developing safe and effective vaccines in such a short time frame was a mission as ambitious, and with as many potential pitfalls, as walking on the Moon.

Miraculously, 12 months since a pandemic was declared, eight vaccines against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, have been approved by at least one country. A ninth, Novavax, is very promising. So far, more than 312 million people have been vaccinated with at least one dose.

While most high-income countries will have vaccinated their populations by early 2022, 85 poor countries will have to wait until 2023.

Read more: 3 ways to vaccinate the world and make sure everyone benefits, rich and poor

This implies the world won’t be back to normal travel, trade and supply chains until 2024 unless rich countries take actions — such as waiving vaccine patents, diversifying production of vaccines and supporting vaccine delivery — to help poor countries catch up.

The vaccines have been shown to be safe and effective in preventing symptomatic and severe COVID-19. However, we need to continue to study the vaccines after being rolled out (conducting so-called post-implementation studies) in 2021 and beyond. This is to determine how long protection lasts, whether we need booster doses, how well vaccines work in children and the impact of vaccines on viral transmission.

What should make us feel optimistic is that in countries that rolled out the vaccines early, such as the UK and Israel, there are signs the rate of new infections is in decline.

Read more: Coronavirus might become endemic – here’s how

What are the potential barriers to overcome?

One of the most salutary lessons we have learnt in the pandemic’s first year is how dangerous it is to let COVID-19 transmission go unchecked. The result is the emergence of more transmissible variants that escape our immune responses, high rates of excess mortality and a stalled economy.

Until we achieve high levels of population immunity via vaccination, in 2021 we must maintain individual and societal measures, such as masks, physical distancing, and hand hygiene; improve indoor ventilation; and strengthen outbreak responses — testing, contact tracing and isolation.

However, there are already signs of complacency and much misinformation to counter, especially for vaccine uptake. So we must continue to address both these barriers.

The outcomes of even momentary complacency are evident as global numbers of new cases once again increase after a steady two month decline. This recent uptick reflects surges in many European countries, such as Italy, and Latin American countries like Brazil and Cuba. New infections in Papua New Guinea have also risen alarmingly in the past few weeks.

Some fundamental questions also remain unanswered. We don’t know how long either natural or vaccine-induced immunity will last. However, encouraging news from the US reveals 92-98% of COVID-19 survivors had adequate immune protection six to eight months after infection. In 2021, we will continue to learn more about how long natural and vaccine-induced immunity lasts.

Read more: New research suggests immunity to COVID is better than we first thought

New variants may be the greatest threat

The longer the coronavirus circulates widely, the higher the risk of more variants of concern emerging. We are aware of B.1.1.7 (the variant first detected in the UK), B.1.351 (South Africa), and P.1 (Brazil).

But other variants have been identified. These include B.1.427, which is now the dominant, more infectious, strain in California and one identified recently in New York, named B.1.526.

Variants may transmit more readily than the original Wuhan strain of the virus and may lead to more cases. Some variants may also be resistant to vaccines, as has already been demonstrated with the B.1.351 strain. We will continue to learn more about the impact of variants on disease and vaccines in 2021 and beyond.

Read more: What’s the difference between mutations, variants and strains? A guide to COVID terminology

A year from now

Given so many unknowns, how the world will be in March 2022 would be an educated guess. However, what is increasingly clear is there will be no “mission accomplished” moment. We are at a crossroads with two end games.

In the most likely scenario, rich countries will return to their new normal. Businesses and schools will reopen and internal travel will resume. Travel corridors will be established between countries with low transmission and high vaccine coverage. This might be between Singapore and Taiwan, between Australia and Vietnam, and maybe between all four, and more countries.

Read more: Even with a vaccine, we need to adjust our mindset to playing the COVID-19 long game

In low- and middle-income countries, there may be a reduction in severe cases, freeing them to rehabilitate health services that have suffered in the past 12 months. These include maternal, newborn, and child health services, including reproductive health; tuberculosis, HIV and malaria programs; and nutrition. However, reviving these services will need rich countries to commit generous and sustained aid.

The second scenario, which sadly is unlikely to occur, is unprecedented global cooperation with a focus on science and solidarity to halt transmission everywhere.

This is a fragile moment in modern world history. But, in record time, we have developed effective tools to eventually control this pandemic. The path to a post-COVID-19 future can perhaps now be characterised as a hurdle race but one that presents severe handicaps to the world’s poorest nations. As an international community, we have the capacity to make it a level playing field.

– ref. After a year of pain, here’s how the COVID-19 pandemic could play out in 2021 and beyond – https://theconversation.com/after-a-year-of-pain-heres-how-the-covid-19-pandemic-could-play-out-in-2021-and-beyond-156380

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Culum Brown, Professor, Macquarie University

Michael, aged 14, asks:

If the faster part of human evolution is over, and squids and octopuses continue to evolve, could there be an apocalypse where the cephalopods take over the world?

If they continue to get smarter, octopuses would be much more suited as conquerors of Earth because they could live nearly anywhere. They have abilities similar to what we would call superpowers: they can fit into any hole that fits their beak, they can camouflage, they can regenerate their lost limbs and more. If and when they eradicate humans, they would be better suited to space travel. In orbit, they could manoeuvre much more easily and fit in smaller spaces.

So if they simply started evolving a smarter brain, what stops all this from happening? Why has this not happened already? Why have so few creatures evolved an intelligent brain?

As Michael points out, octopuses are famous for their alien-like abilities, from regrowing damaged arms to changing their skin colour and texture. They use this colour-shifting power to camouflage and, interestingly, as a strange visual language to talk to other octopuses.

A little known fact is they actually belong to a category of animals (phylum) called Mollusca, which is largely made up of snails. Yep, octopuses are like souped-up snails who lost their shells and grew a rather large brain. The coolest thing about them is their intelligence, which evolved completely independently from our own.

They use tools to solve problems (like us) and they can open child-proof containers (not always like us). And just last week, research found a cuttlefish (another cephalopod, cousins of octopuses) passed an intelligence test designed for toddlers that showed they have advanced self control.

Humans no doubt have a lot more to learn about what these mysterious creatures are capable of. But what we do know can start to answer Michael’s excellent question: could octopuses one day rule the world?

(Before we go further we should state the plural of octopus is “octopuses” — not necessarily “octopi” — given the word has Greek rather than Latin routes.)

Big-brained but short-lived

Let’s first consider their nervous system. Like us, octopus have large brains compared to their body size – easily the biggest of all invertebrates (animals without a backbone) and of comparable size to many vertebrates, such as frogs.

It is, however, hard to compare brain size between marine animals and land animals, because the laws of physics differ in water and air. Animals are weightless in water but on land body shape and size is limited by gravity.

An octopus brain is made up of about 500 million brain cells (neurons). This is seven times more than a mouse and about the same as a marmoset monkey. Humans, on the other hand, have 86 billion brain cells.

Testing octopus intelligence can be a problem, because the animals frequently outsmart scientists. For example, scientists can struggle to get an octopus to solve a maze, because they often climb out and crawl over the top to reach their food reward. And that’s assuming they haven’t already escaped from their aquarium home and are crawling around the lab.

Unlike us though, octopuses don’t live for very long. The giant Pacific octopus might live up to five years, but most live for just a year and some as little as six months. They hatch from eggs fully formed and ready to go. The never see their parents and have to learn everything on their own.

So yes, octopuses have big brains and are crazy-smart. But could they take over the world if they kept evolving?

Why they evolve so slowly

Compared to other species, octopuses actually evolve really, really slowly. There are about 300 different species of octopus, which have been around for at least 300 million years. In that time, they haven’t changed much.

Modern humans, by comparison, have only existed for 200,000 years and in that time, have taken over the planet (and badly damaged it in the process).

Evolution occurs when the DNA code is gradually changed in small steps over vast amounts of time. But octopus have a unique method of actively editing their RNA molecules instead. RNA are messages sent from DNA, which tells genes what to do and when.

The ability to edit RNA means they can adapt quickly to new problems, bypassing the need for long-term changes to occur in the DNA — the standard evolutionary process most living things follow. Scientists think this rule-breaking approach may be a reason why octopuses evolve so slowly, and why they are one of the brainiest beasties in the ocean.

Read more: Octopuses can defy their genetic instructions – and it’s slowed down their evolution

But lets face it. Despite all their tricks, octopuses are still working from a snail blueprint, and there’s only so much you can do with that toolbox. They are also highly constrained by their very short life-span.

So, the first item on an evil octopus to-do list for taking over the world is to live well beyond your first birthday. Second on the list might be to develop “cumulative culture” by learning from others like humans do. We already know an octopus can learn by watching other octopuses, but as yet we don’t have evidence of culture.

Very few creatures display intelligence comparable to humans and understanding why is a long-standing scientific question. The most likely explanation is that brain tissue is extremely expensive to maintain, in terms of energy required to keep brain cells firing. So there need to be big benefits to justify the expense.

Scientists think one benefit of having a big brain is so humans can keep track of complex social relationships (octopuses, on the other hand, are soliltary) and develop culture. Nature tends to provide animals with just enough smarts to get by, and nothing more.

They might do OK in space

Its hard to imagine an octopus ever evolving to take over the land. Octopus have no hard parts other than their beak. So while they can move on land, with no bones to hold them up against gravity, they really struggle.

They also have gills which need water to pass over them to breathe. Strangely, they can also “breathe” using their skin. When resting, about 40% of their oxygen comes from the water passing over their skin rather than their gills. Trouble is that only works while the skin is wet.

Read more: Clever cuttlefish show advanced self-control, like chimps and crows

But because they live in water and octopuses are neutrally buoyant (they neither float nor sink), gravity is largely irrelevant. This means they would do rather well in space where there’s no gravity — assuming they could take water with them.

In short, octopuses are very intelligent animals and one of the smartest creatures in the ocean. But their short life span and vulnerabilities on land are serious handicaps when it comes to taking over the world.

The Conversation, for one, welcomes any new cephalopod overlords

– ref. Curious Kids: could octopuses evolve until they take over the world and travel to space? – https://theconversation.com/curious-kids-could-octopuses-evolve-until-they-take-over-the-world-and-travel-to-space-156493

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Banks, Professor of Conservation Biology, School of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Sydney

Animals, including humans, depend on accurate information to navigate the world. But we can easily succumb to deliberate misinformation or “fake news”, fooling us into making a poor choice.

The concept of fake news came to the fore during the term of former US president Donald Trump. It became so prevalent, it was named the Macquarie Dictionary’s word of the decade

In a new paper out today we show how a form of fake news can be deployed to help save vulnerable wildlife. We protected endangered shorebirds by spreading misinformation — in the form of bird smells — to deceive predators. This helped reduce the number of birds lost, without using lethal force.

To be honest, when we began working on the idea ten years ago it seemed a little crazy. But after seeing how fake news messes with the minds of both humans and animals, it now makes a lot of sense.

The problem with predators

Introduced or “alien” predators are species such as rats, cats and foxes, which have been introduced to new environments and kill local wildlife. If local species have not evolved with such predators — and so learned to evade them or ward them off — the damage can be devastating.

Alien predators have far more impact than native ones and are a major driver of extinctions. In Australia alone, cats threaten the survival of more than 120 listed species, while foxes threaten 95 species. In the South Pacific the threat is even greater.

But killing predators is a blunt and often ineffective tool. Too often, control techniques such as baiting, trapping and shooting can’t reduce predator numbers enough to protect vulnerable prey.

In other circumstances, lethal control may not be possible or socially acceptable. This might occur when the problem predator is a native species (such as foxes in the United Kingdom) or where alien predators such as feral pigs are also a food resource for local people.

That’s why it’s important to examine alternative ways to protect vulnerable species.

Read more: Australia’s threatened birds declined by 59% over the past 30 years

New Zealand’s precious shorebirds

In New Zealand, 59 bird species have become extinct since humans arrived and many more close to being lost. Introduced predators contribute substantially to this problem.

Predators such as hedgehogs, cats and ferrets were introduced to New Zealand in the 1800s. They are especially common in our study area, the braided riverbed landscapes of the Mackenzie Basin on New Zealand’s South Island. There, they eat eggs and kill endangered shorebirds such as banded dotterel, plovers, wrybill and the South Island pied oystercatcher.

The birds evolved with avian predators, and have learnt to hide from them by building camouflaged nests among pebbles on the river shores.

But this tactic does not work against introduced predators. Odours emanating from the shorebirds’ feathers and eggs attract these scent-hunting mammals, which easily find the nests.

Tricked you!

Our research set out to undermine the predators’ tactics. We worked closely with Grant Norbury and others from Manaaki Whenua Landcare Research in New Zealand.

We distributed fake news — in the form of nest-like odours — that suggested to predators the shorebirds had begun to nest, even though they were yet to arrive.

First, we distilled odours extracted from the feathers and preen glands of three bird species — chickens, quails and gulls. In this case, any bird species could be used to produce the scent. (Watch a video of the process here). The result smelled a lot like a chicken coup or aviary — unmistakable to the human nose.

Five weeks before the shorebirds arrived for their breeding season in 2016, we mixed the odours with Vaseline and smeared the concoction on hundreds of rocks over two 1,000-hectare study sites. We did this every three days, for three months.

The predators were initially attracted to the odours. But within days, after realising the scent would not lead to food, they lost interest and stopped visiting the site.

The shorebirds then arrived at Mackenzie Basin at their normal breeding time, and began building nests and laying eggs. At control sites where our “fake news” had not been deployed, the predators ate eggs and birds at the usual rate. But at sites where we put out unrewarding bird odours, the results were dramatic.

The number of nests destroyed by predators almost halved. As a result, chick production was 1.7 times higher at treated sites compared to control sites over the 25-35 days of the nesting season.

We wanted to be sure our results were not due to lower predator numbers or different behaviour in some areas. So the next year, we flipped treatments at our sites and got the same result.

Read more: Predators, prey and moonlight singing: how phases of the Moon affect native wildlife

Using fake news for good, not evil

Our modelling predicts this fake news tactic would increase plover populations by about 75% over 25 years. By comparison, an absence of intervention would lead to a population decline of more than 40%.

Our results show the profound conservation potential of fake news tactics. The approach cost no more than a traditional lethal control program and delivered comparable benefits.

We hope the work will encourage others to consider manipulating the behaviour of introduced predators when lethal control options are too difficult or ineffective.

– ref. Scientists used ‘fake news’ to stop predators killing endangered birds — and the result was remarkable – https://theconversation.com/scientists-used-fake-news-to-stop-predators-killing-endangered-birds-and-the-result-was-remarkable-152320

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Tregear, Principal Fellow, The University of Melbourne

Academic freedom has become a common topic of Australian public debate. Yet the concept is rarely examined or critiqued in detail.

That has not stopped it becoming a totemic issue for many on the political right. They consider Australian universities to be increasingly prone to doctrinaire and censorious attitudes. In particular, they point to issues of identity politics, climate change and other so-called “progressive” causes.

Read more: University free speech bill a sop to Pauline Hanson and other critics, but what difference will it make?

Prominent cases include the 2018 sacking of geophysicist Peter Ridd by James Cook University and protests against Bettina Arndt’s visit to the University of Sydney to give a controversial speech on date rape that same year. The federal Coalition government responded by commissioning the Independent Review of Freedom of Speech in Australian Higher Education Providers by former chief justice Robert French.

Open Minds: Academic Freedom and Freedom of Speech of Australia, by constitutional law experts Carolyn Evans and Adrienne Stone, is the first book-length examination of the French Review and the idea of academic freedom that lies behind it. The authors are especially well qualified to comment on both the context and specific recommendations of the review.

What is academic freedom?

Among many helpful insights, Evans and Stone point out that academic freedom is not the same thing as freedom of speech. The latter is already at least partially protected by various specific and implied rights to freedom of speech in law.

The exercise of academic freedom, however, as Geoff Sharrock has noted in The Conversation, invokes a particular kind of social relationship. It is both public-facing and aims to be an expression of a public good.

Read more: Feel free to disagree on campus … by learning to do it well

Academic discourse seeks to be both well-reasoned and true. An academic opinion is thus different to an academic merely expressing their personal views.

For instance, climate scientists do not need to “believe” in climate change. Instead they must justify any assertion they make based on rigorous standards of scientific evidence and proof.

Thus, as Evans and Stone note, universities do not provide academic staff with an untrammelled right to say what they like on any issue. Theirs is a more narrowly conceived right based on an underlying obligation to justify their public utterances through the application of disciplinary expertise and values.

The most contentious debates about academic freedom in Australia have not been about such academic concepts, however. Instead they have been more interested in trying to out a perceived underlying left-wing bias. This shows how skewed the understanding of academic freedom has become in Australia.

Read more: How a fake ‘free speech crisis’ could imperil academic freedom

The French Review found no substantial evidence of any organised attempt to limit the capacity of students to encounter alternative political ideas. Evans and Stone note:

If anything, today’s students are less radical and politicised than their predecessors.

What are the real threats?

Glyn Davis’s foreword draws attention to concerns he also expressed in a recent Conversation article. He says threats to academic freedom might arise from direct government intervention, or from the rise in tied grants from big business, or from philanthropic trusts directing teaching and research.

Read more: Special pleading: free speech and Australian universities

What has been much less self-evident, or at least less acknowledged, is the possibility that the very way Australian universities are now constituted and governed may pose an even more fundamental threat.

What, after all does “institutional autonomy” mean when universities are now so closely regulated and controlled by their senior managers and councils, and by the market forces they have unleashed to help fund their operations?

Early on, Evans and Stone assert:

[Universities] are not commercial institutions, nor are they instruments of government. They are special communities dedicated to teaching and research.

But towards the end of their book, they implicitly suggest things might not be so rosy:

Academics should not be required to support the university’s brand or to avoid embarrassing it if doing so comes at the expense of academic freedom. On the contrary, academics should be able to speak out about research, teaching and university governance even when doing so involves harsh and even disrespectful criticism.

Read more: Governing universities: tertiary experience no longer required

It is easy for academics to conclude that essentially unaccountable senior university administrators, not disciplinary professors or other disciplinary experts, have become the ultimate determiners of a particular discipline’s educational and research priorities, and thus of the true limits of academic freedom in its broadest sense.

As Ron Srigley has noted of US campuses:

Ask about virtually any problem in the university today and the solution proposed will inevitably be administrative. Why? Because we think administrators, not professors, guarantee the quality of the product and the achievement of institutional goals. But how is that possible in an academic environment in which knowledge and understanding are the true goals? Without putting too fine a point on it, it’s because they aren’t the true goals any longer.

In such a context, even an everyday event like the Australian National University’s recent announcement of a brand relaunch can start to seem much less benign. The university itself describes it as part of a “journey to foster cohesion, reduce the issue of brand fragmentation and use research to address the cognitive dissonance between how we see ourselves versus how our community and the world sees us”.

Brand managers, like most senior university managers, are generally not practising academics. Thus, they should not be expected to understand, let alone articulate or defend, academic freedom.

Read more: Unis are run like corporations but their leaders are less accountable. Here’s an easy way to fix that

One of the many ways Open Minds may prove to be of lasting value is in helping academics question the propriety of such managerial pronouncements, by framing them properly as issues of academic freedom.

This is why academic freedom is a central concern for Academics for Public Universities. We would argue this issue ultimately requires us to reexamine and revitalise the underlying public character of our universities.

That, too, is something we now need to defend.

– ref. Book review: Open Minds explores how academic freedom and the public university are at risk – https://theconversation.com/book-review-open-minds-explores-how-academic-freedom-and-the-public-university-are-at-risk-156213

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Megan Nethercote, ARC DECRA Fellow at the Centre for Urban Research, RMIT University

Australia’s emerging build-to-rent sector is growing — “booming” by some accounts with a 70% jump in value in the past year. Under this model, institutional investors develop purpose-built rental apartments to retain and operate under single ownership. In Australia, it will change how apartments are designed and developed, how we are housed and how our tenancies are managed.

With 40 projects under way, an estimated 15,000 units worth more than A$10 billion are in the pipeline. Site availability has made Melbourne popular, with over 50% of the national market. Investors are active in Sydney, Perth and Queensland too.

Read more: Build to rent could shake up real estate but won’t take off without major tax changes

Sought-after neighbourhoods are earmarked for large developments. Many have 300 or more units, most at market-rate rents.

Build-to-rent is new to our shores, but hardly uncharted territory abroad. In the UK, the sector expanded exponentially from 2013 with government support. It now accounts for one in five new homes built in England and one in four in London.

In the US, the built-to-rent sector is relatively mature. It makes up almost two-thirds of the rental stock in many of the largest cities. Heavyweight corporate landlords operate as many as 400,000 units each.

In Australia, we need more data and more informed public debate to guide tax, design, planning and tenancy reforms to secure the best possible urban and social outcomes from the build-to-rent expansion.

The build-to-rent promise

Build-to-rent presents an enticing vision. For households, it promises several things:

• flexible long-term tenancies

• client-centric onsite management

• hotel-style amenities and services

• allowances for pets and personalisation, such as painting and decorating.

For cities, the model promises high-amenity, well-located, purpose-built rental apartments that cater to diverse and changing housing needs.

Proponents hail build-to-rent as a win-win. It’s seen as a salve for various housing woes, including concerns about housing supply, affordability, the private rental sector (including insecure tenancies and inexpert property and tenancy management) and apartment quality.

Read more: Dealing with apartment defects: a how-to guide for strata owners and buyers

Since the COVID-19 downturn, the model has been hailed as an economic lifeline too: good for the construction sector, good for jobs.

Rise of a new asset class

For build-to-rent investors, the rental revenue returns appear relatively modest. Under current market conditions, however, secure margins and “lower (but) for longer” investment prospects appeal.

Advocates continue to push for tax reforms. They point to a growing “weight of capital” awaiting more enticing returns. But many international build-to-rent behemoths, superannuation/pension funds, private equity firms and real estate investment trusts are entering our private rental sector regardless.

Institutional investors’ entry into our rental sector contributes to a broader paradigm shift in urban housing systems dubbed the financialisation of (rental) housing.

Read more: Explainer: the financialisation of housing and what can be done about it

States have endorsed build-to-rent, improving its viability with land tax concessions, exemption from foreign investor surcharges, privileged planning pathways and pilot projects (e.g. in Queensland). The federal government’s position has been more ambiguous.

Crucially, the rise of build-to-rent sets in motion two important structural shifts

1. institutionalising the private rental sector

2. diversifying residential development models.

Historically, small-portfolio “mum and dad” landlords have owned and managed our rental stock. They are motivated by many of the same benefits (such as tax concessions and capital gains) and exposed to the same risks as owner-occupiers.

So we’ve had a high degree of integration between the private rental and owner-occupier sectors: few dwellings were purpose-built for renting and most homes were readily interchangeable between sectors.

Build to rent disrupts this integration. It replaces the fragmented ownership of apartment buildings under strata title laws with a single institutional owner.

Build to rent also diverges from familiar speculative build-to-sell development geared towards short-term profits. Its longer-term investment horizons give developers a new incentive to minimise a building’s running costs and to create apartments that appeal to and retain tenants.

Read more: Quality of life in high-density apartments varies. Here are 6 ways to improve it

So will it deliver?

Will build to rent provide high-quality, high-amenity, professionally managed rental homes? And at what scale, for how long, and at what costs to whom?

In the longer term, will this model disrupt the socio-political twinning of home ownership and home?

Read more: Ideas of home and ownership in Australia might explain the neglect of renters’ rights

Could build to rent be a catalyst for more progressive tenancy reforms, leading towards tenure neutrality/equality where ownership isn’t seen as automatically superior to renting?

These questions matter. One in three Australian households now rent their housing. Some argue we’re headed for a “post-ownership” society in which most people rent their homes.

Private rental was once a route to ownership. Now it’s a destination. Ownership has been delayed, become unattainable or been “traded off” for flexibility and being able to live in desirable locations.

Tenants are also more diverse. There are more lower-income and higher-income earners and more families than ever before.

Renters endure short leases on often poorly maintained properties owned by a cottage industry of “mum and dad” landlords. Social housing options are few and far between in a sector that has been marginalised and residualised. More renters, uncapped rents, weak tenant protections and stagnating wages make for a toxic mix of housing stress and financial risk.

Read more: ‘Build to rent’ could be the missing piece of the affordable housing puzzle

Reasons to proceed with caution

We don’t have robust evidence to answer these questions, but limited evidence suggests caution is well advised.

In Australia, build-to-rent properties look set to attract rents of about 10-15% more than comparable non-BTR housing, just as they have in London. Without government subsidies, market-rate BTR will not provide more affordable housing.

Overseas, these rental premiums, alongside planning leniency (which reduced the affordable housing required of these developments), have been blamed for poor outcomes, such as residents being priced out of neighbourhoods they could once afford.

In Ireland, permissive planning concessions enable build-to-rent developers to circumvent design standards. This has raised concerns that build-to-rent may deliver smaller, less diverse and lower-amenity housing (less storage, for example) than standard build-to-sell development.

In New South Wales, BTR developments cannot be subdivided for 15 years (without clawback of land tax concessions). This ensures buildings remain in use as rental stock for that period. But what will happen after that?

Read more: Why NSW is skewing its tax system toward build-to-rent apartments and away from mum and pop landlords

– ref. Build-to-rent surge will change apartment living for Australians, but for better or worse? – https://theconversation.com/build-to-rent-surge-will-change-apartment-living-for-australians-but-for-better-or-worse-154839

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

The vast arsenal of fiscal, monetary and legal measures used by Australian governments to offset the COVID-induced economic crisis have worked well. They did not prevent a recession (defined technically as two quarters of negative GDP growth) but things could have been much worse.

What is particularly interesting is that the expected consequences have not shown up in the official statistics for financial distress – insolvent companies entering administration and individuals declaring bankruptcy.

Indeed, a misleading impression of 2020 being one of “economic good times” could be gained from the statistics.

The big question is whether these statistics show government relief measures have averted economic pain or simply deferred it. As measures are wound down and withdrawn, will the private sector be willing and able to pick up the resulting slack?

Companies entering administration

There are, of course, “lies, damn lies, and statistics”. The figures hide what is likely to be actually happening in terms of financial distress.

Impacts on businesses and individuals have been quite varied. Some large corporations have come through in good shape, much better than might have been imagined. But the tourism, hospitality, entertainment and higher education sectors have taken significant hits and face an uncertain and drawn-out recovery.

The following graphic, using data from the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, shows the number of companies entering external administration (quarterly from 2010 to 2020).

Notable is the decline in business collapses in 2020 – the opposite of what one would expect in a time of economic stress.

A number of policy actions contributed to this.

The most obvious contributors to keeping failing businesses alive were JobKeeper payments as well as changes increasing “safe-harbour protections” to reduce the risk of prosecution for trading while insolvent. These changes also reduced the ability of creditors to speedily force a debtor company into insolvency.

Read more: Government will reform insolvency system to improve distressed small businesses’ survival chances

In many cases it is quite possible these simply put off that day to some time in 2021.

Individuals declaring bankruptcy

At the personal level, which includes owners of small unincorporated businesses, a similar pattern can be seen.

The next graph uses data from the Australian Financial Security Authority. It shows the number of individuals entering into insolvency (bankruptcy, debt agreements etc) on a quarterly basis. The latest data is for the September quarter of 2020. The number had fallen to about half of what it had been prior to 2020.

Notably, the number of personal insolvencies began falling in early 2018. There is no obvious single explanation for this trend, though good economic conditions and low interest rates are probably part of the story.

The further decline in 2020 (in contrast to expectations of an increase) is most likely due to legislative changes introduced in March 2020 and extended in September 2020. These include increasing the size of debt owed before a creditor can initiate action from A$5,000 to A$20,000, and allowing debtors six months (rather than 21 days) to respond to creditor demands. Mortgage repayment deferrals by banks also would have helped.

A difficult balancing act

What to make of these unexpected declines in official indicators of financial distress when economic conditions have surely increased the reality?

The more optimistic interpretation is that various government support measures have prevented both business and individuals sliding into insolvency.

The less optimistic interpretation is the measures have simply deferred the final outcome – with the statistics soon to show a bounce in business failures and personal insolvencies.

Read more: We’re facing an insolvency tsunami. With luck, these changes will avert the worst of it

There is no point keeping “zombie” businesses alive, nor in dissuading heavily indebted individuals from taking action under insolvency arrangements that can give them a fresh start.

But finding the right balance of continuing support for recoverable cases while terminating it for others (and limiting the hardship caused by failure) is a difficult and challenging task for our economic masters.

– ref. Hard bump ahead? Decline in insolvencies and bankruptcies is a ticking time bomb – https://theconversation.com/hard-bump-ahead-decline-in-insolvencies-and-bankruptcies-is-a-ticking-time-bomb-155744

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Limb, Lecturer in Urban and Regional Planning, Queensland University of Technology

Among the many explanations put forward for soaring home prices, one we hear repeatedly is zoning — the regulations that govern the purposes for which land can be used, including how densely people can be housed in different locations.

The real estate industry says if only we relaxed the zoning rules and allowed more houses and apartments to be built on each block, housing would be cheaper, maybe A$355,000 per unit cheaper if the Reserve Bank is right.

It’s a story as grounded in simplicity as it is (on the part of developers) in self-interest.

The simple story is that zoning regulations restrict development, restricted development means restricted supply of houses and apartments, and restricted supply means higher prices. Scrap the planning laws, the argument goes, and property developers will shower the market with housing, driving down prices.

So effective is the mantra it has become part of the official story in Britain and the United States, and to some extent here.

What’s missing is evidence.

Studies which point the finger at the planning system almost universally fail to quantify the extent of housing permitted by planning regulations and how it has changed over time.

Rarely have changes in zoning been examined

Analysis by Australia’s Reserve Bank for example, treats zoning rules as though they exist in stasis; an ever-present yet spatially-varied regulation measured by whatever price remains once structure and land values are subtracted.

Our new research fills the gap by measuring changes in zoning at the level of individual properties in greater Brisbane.

We examined 20 years of changes to zoning, housing supply and prices across more than 25,000 sites in 19 major centres subject to repeated zoning changes designed to encourage urban infill.

The centres had within them a wide variety of land use types (detached dwellings, medium-density dwellings, commercial and retail use, etc.) and housing densities. We reviewed and mapped historic and current rules to determine how the zoned capacity changed on each site.

We combined this with data on the changes in land use on each site, changes to the actual supply of dwellings, and property prices.

If the semi-official story was true, we would have expected increases in zoned capacity to lead to falling prices.

Our results show no such thing. Locations with increased zoned capacity for housing saw increased (not reduced) property prices. Across the selected sites, houses increased in value by a factor of three and apartments by 2.3 over the two decades studied, as they did elsewhere in Australia.

Weaker zoning, not weaker prices

During this time, the zoned capacity for housing at these locations doubled. But there was no rush to take up the increase in capacity.

The vast majority of sites (94%) were not developed within five years of the zoning changes.

Even after 20 years, 71% of the extra capacity remained unexploited.

We found evidence for an alternative story: that planning regulations permit development, but it is the market price that determines if and where development occurs.

Higher sales prices make development more feasible.

Under this story, developers select their sites, build, and sell in strong markets and wait or avoid selling when markets are weak.

This partly explains why locations with highest initial property prices were the most likely to be developed.

Like all good stories, the semi-official one contains an element of truth. If the planning system failed to allow for enough growth, it would almost certainly drive up prices.

Rarely is supply a problem

To avoid this, planning authorities go to great lengths to ensure there is enough zoned capacity to cater for projected growth.

This is one reason why we don’t have a housing supply problem. Deregulating the planning system won’t change that, but nor will it ease price pressure.

What it will do is reduce the environmental and other benefits zoning provides, while continuing to allow developers to sell properties at times of their choosing.

What is driving up house prices now has little to do with zoning, and it is happening worldwide.

Read more: When houses earn more than jobs: how we lost control of Australian house prices and how to get it back

Throughout the globe we have seen increases in easy access to cheap credit and tax regimes that encourage speculative property investment.

Unlike planning regulations, which vary hugely by location, these macroeconomic factors are common. They help explain why the housing affordability crisis transcends national boundaries.

It is the liberalisation of finance and the treatment of housing as an investment product that got us into this mess. Further liberalisation of planning regulations is unlikely to get us out.

– ref. Zoning isn’t to blame for Australia’s soaring house prices – https://theconversation.com/zoning-isnt-to-blame-for-australias-soaring-house-prices-154482

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kwadwo Adusei-Asante, Senior Lecturer, Edith Cowan University

Review: Black Brass, written and performed by Mararo Wangai; directed by Matt Edgerton. Performing Lines WA for Perth Festival.

The scene opens into a messy music studio, used bottles and pizza boxes littered everywhere. A young man of sub-Saharan African descent appears, exhausted, entering the room late at night.

As the young janitor starts cleaning, he is distracted by the music playing in the background. Suddenly, the security alarm goes off: he has forgotten the code and immediately calls his manager to request assistance.

Over the phone, we hear his manager reprimand him, but he sounds more interested in petting his dog than providing the code and protecting the welfare of the cleaner.

Black Brass is a captivating theatrical piece written and performed by Mararo Wangai as the janitor named Sleeper, and accompanied by musician Mahamudo Selimaneat. The show is well executed in all areas: the oratory prowess of Wangai as Sleeper, the transitions, lighting, music and innovative rotating stage were superb.

But behind the artistic brilliance, Black Brass is a story of the harsh realities faced by many African-Australians.

Hyphenated identities

Black Brass is the story of people with hyphenated identities: the Black Africans who juggle and struggle with who they are.

They live here, they were schooled here, they work here, they are “Australians” — but feel they don’t belong here, in a country that constantly asks “where are you really from?”

Australia’s Immigration Restriction Act 1901 ushered in the White Australia Policy, prohibiting the permanent settlement of Asians, Black Africans and other coloured races in the country.

The abolition of this racist policy in the 1970s by the Whitlam government opened the doors for non-white, non-European immigrants, but neo-White Australian Policies — such as citizenship tests — are still with us, effectively determining who comes to Australia and who does not.

Only 5.1% of Australia’s population were born in sub-Saharan Africa (including White Africans). Clearly, not many Black Africans live in Australia — but, as portrayed in Black Brass, many Black Africans who live here have many troubles.

Blackness in Australia is too often seen as not only inferior, but burdensome. Still, when Wangai interviewed people from Perth’s Zimbabwean, Sudanese, South African, Central Congo, Mauritius, Nigerian, Congolese and Kenyan communities to develop his script, he focused on the theme of resilience.

Brilliance

As Sleeper finally gets his boss to provide the code, we hear police sirens. Sleeper would be all too familiar with police brutality against black bodies and operations that target Black Africans.

The play shows how he subconsciously begins to plan for his arrest and a defence against potential incarceration — or even being shot dead (though he is unarmed).

Then, Sleeper sighs with relief. The police are not coming to where he is, after all: a white-man’s music studio late at night.

Sleeper laments his underemployment in the country he now calls home. He doesn’t like his job, it demeans him; but he needs to make ends meet for himself and his extended family in Africa, who depend on him financially.

This is the resilience of the Black African. Sleeper’s extraordinary retentive memory and excellent command over the English language are a testament to his brilliance.

Sleeper lives in a country where skin colour matters more than what a person can offer. It’s a country that so often reduces Black Africans who hold masters and doctoral qualifications earned in Australia to taxi drivers, cleaners, security wardens and menial job workers.

Not all Black Africans are underemployed in Australia, but sadly many gainfully employed Black Africans pay the “black tax”: an unspoken requirement to do more to keep their jobs, or move up the corporate ladder, than their non-black colleagues.

Read more: A degree doesn’t count for South Sudanese job seekers

Highly qualified Africans in Australia remain underemployed. Perhaps, suggests Black Brass, bosses are more interested in their pets.

The other reality of this performance is that Sleeper misses Africa. He misses his parents and family. He misses his fiancée, who has stayed in Africa when her visa for Australia was refused. Part of him would like to go back to where he came from and start afresh. But it is not a simple decision.

The corruption, the abuse of power by the political elite, the lack of opportunities in his home country scare Sleeper. He feels trapped in a world where almost everyone — including blacks — hate blacks.

But, on stage, he finds solace in the soulful music of Mahamudo. Although their colonial past has eroded their ability to communicate in the same language, they find a common ground in African music.

Meanwhile, Sleeper has to keep cleaning up the mess in the white man’s studio. We don’t know this job will ever end.

– ref. ‘Where are you really from?’ The harsh realities of Afro-Aussie life are brought to stage in Black Brass – https://theconversation.com/where-are-you-really-from-the-harsh-realities-of-afro-aussie-life-are-brought-to-stage-in-black-brass-156110

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

Nearly 800,000 half-price air tickets for travel to and from holiday areas will be provided under a $1.2 billion program to support aviation and tourism, to be announced by the Morrison government on Thursday.

The measures are designed to assist these industries, still hard hit by the effects of the pandemic, after JobKeeper finishes late this month.

The cheap fares will run from April 1 to July 31.

The loan guarantee scheme that operates for small and medium sized businesses is also being expanded and extended for enterprises that leave JobKeeper in the March quarter.

While this is an economy-wide measure, the government says those eligible will be especially in the tourism sector.

Thirteen regions have been designated initially for the cheap flights – the Gold Coast, Cairns, the Whitsundays and Mackay region (Proserpine and Hamilton Island), the Sunshine Coast, Lasseter and Alice Springs, Launceston, Devonport and Burnie, Broome, Avalon, Merimbula, and Kangaroo Island.

The number of tickets will be demand driven, as will the places the flights depart from, but it is estimated there will be about 46,000 discounted fares a week over 17 weeks. A return ticket counts as two discounted fares, the government said.

Under the loan initiative, the maximum size of eligible loans will be increased from the present $1 million to $5 million. The maximum eligible turnover will also be expanded, from $50 million to $250 million.

Maximum loan terms will go from five years to 10 years, and lenders will be allowed to offer borrowers a repayment holiday of up to two years.

Eligible businesses will also be able to use the scheme to refinance their existing loans, so benefitting from the program’s more concessional interest rates.

The government says more than 350,000 businesses which are on JobKeeper are expected to be eligible under the expanded scheme, for which loans will be available from the start of next month and must be approved by the end of December.

For international aviation, there will be support from April until the end of October, when international flights are expected to resumer. The assistance across both airlines will help them maintain their core international capability, keeping 8600 people in work as well as planes flight-ready.

Among the assistance for aviation, several existing support measures are being extended until the end of September, including waivers for air services fees and security charges.

There are also extensions for the business events grants program, the assistance for zoos and aquariums, and the grants to help travel agents.

More than 600,000 people are employed by the tourism sector with domestic tourism worth $100 billion to the economy.

Tourism has suffered severely from the closed international border and from the state border closures and restrictions.

Scott Morrison described the package as “our ticket to recovery … to get Australians travelling and supporting tourism operators, businesses, travel agents and airlines who continue to do it tough through COVID-19, while our international borders remain closed.

“This package will take more tourists to our hotels and cafes, taking tours and exploring our backyard”.

– ref. Morrison government to subsidise holidaymakers in $1.2 billion tourism and aviation package – https://theconversation.com/morrison-government-to-subsidise-holidaymakers-in-1-2-billion-tourism-and-aviation-package-156875

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Aili Langford, Bpharm (Hons), PhD Candidate School of Pharmacy, Faculty of Medicine and Health, University of Sydney

Chronic pain affects about 3.4 million Australians. Internationally, almost one-third of people with chronic non-cancer pain take opioids to manage their condition.

In Australia, opioids are among the most frequently used medicines. The most commonly prescribed opioids in Australia include codeine, tramadol, oxycodone, morphine, methadone and fentanyl.

In June 2020, the federal government made several changes to regulations that govern the prescription and supply of opioids, significantly impacting people living with chronic pain.

The new regulations certainly have merit, given there’s been a sharp increase in deaths and hospitalisations from prescription opioid misuse in Australia over recent years.

However, changes to medication regulations alone are a one-dimensional strategy to reduce opioid use. Other strategies are needed to support patients, including better patient education and providing patients with other pain management options.

Our research, published last year, shows a “one-size-fits-all” approach to reducing opioid use isn’t favoured by prescribers or patients. Instead, patients should have access to individualised and coordinated care.

The new regulations

Australia’s drug regulator, the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), says opioids should only be used for the short-term management of severe pain (for example, after surgery) and only when other pain medicines are not suitable or effective, for example in cases where patients can’t tolerate non-steroidal anti-inflammatories such as ibuprofen.

The new regulations say opioids should no longer be prescribed for chronic non-cancer pain, except in “exceptional circumstances”.

Other changes include reduced opioid pack sizes and fewer repeat prescriptions, meaning patients may need to see their doctor more often for ongoing supplies.

For patients using opioids for a period of 12 months or longer, a second prescriber must assess and approve ongoing opioid supply.

Strong opioids such as morphine and fentanyl can only be used in patients with cancer, in palliative care, or after a trial of lower-strength opioids.

States across Australia are currently in the process of introducing national real-time prescription monitoring. Health-care professionals who are prescribing or dispensing medicines will be able see a patient’s prescription history.

Read more: Smaller pack sizes from today: could new opioid restrictions stop leftover medicines causing harm?

Why were the changes made?

Opioid-related deaths increased by 62% between 2007 and 2016. Prescription opioids are responsible for more deaths than illicit opioids such as heroin.

Evidence suggests long-term opioid use (greater than three months) for chronic non-cancer pain offers limited benefit. Instead, research suggests pain and physical functioning often improve when opioids are tapered or deprescribed, particularly combined with other treatments such as cognitive and physical therapy. Tapering refers to slowly reducing the amount of the drug taken over time, with the aim of eventually stopping it altogether.

The TGA said regulatory changes were made to reduce the harms of prescription opioids and “ensure the safe and effective prescribing and use of opioids while maintaining access for patients who need them”.

Many patients may be left without options

The full impact of these regulatory changes isn’t known yet. In clinical practice, it’s hard for both health-care professionals and patients to accept and respond to these changes.

Although the new rules may reduce harms from prescription opioids, they may make it harder for chronic pain patients to access medicines.

Opioids are often prescribed when patients are unable to use other medicines, or when they’re not effective.

Other strategies to manage pain, such as seeing a physiotherapist or psychologist, are often expensive and there can be long wait times to see pain specialists.

Reduced access to opioids may mean patients are left without pain management options.

Read more: Thinking of taking opioids for low back pain? Here’s what you need to know

Prescribers can still give opioids to patients with chronic non-cancer pain, if they think the benefits of continuing the medication will outweigh the risks. However, there were initial concerns from doctors on how to implement these changes.

Many researchers have longstanding concerns opioids may be stopped without gaining consent from patients.

In the United States, abrupt and forced opioid tapering has caused significant issues. These include increased or uncontrolled pain, acute opioid withdrawal, use of illicit opioids, depression and suicide.

Alternatively, evidence suggests shared decision making between health-care professionals and patients may improve communication, patient satisfaction and the success of opioid tapering.

If opioids are to be discontinued for certain patients, it must be done safely.

We shouldn’t use a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach

Health-care professionals must consider ways in which patients can access appropriate and affordable pain management.

Access to non-opioid pain management can be limited for many people, particularly non-drug treatments such as physiotherapy, psychology or multidisciplinary pain management. Challenges include high out-of-pocket costs, lack of availability particularly in rural and remote locations, and long waiting lists.

With the new regulations, each prescriber will need to make a decision about the harms and benefits of ongoing opioid use for individual patients.

If opioids are to be stopped for a patient, clinical practice guidelines recommend to wean gradually to prevent withdrawal symptoms.

Despite efforts to inform Australian health-care professionals on the changes, many still feel they need more guidance on how to successfully deprescribe opioids.

There are resources available for both health-care professionals and patients to assist with opioid tapering. Australian clinical practice guidelines on opioid deprescribing are under development and are due to be published in 2022.

– ref. Opioid script changes mean well, but have left some people in chronic pain – https://theconversation.com/opioid-script-changes-mean-well-but-have-left-some-people-in-chronic-pain-156753

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By George Variyan, Lecturer, Monash University

Recent allegations of sexual misconduct at parties involving private-school students have exposed the toxic culture in many schools.

The ex-schoolgirl who launched the online petition that led to the revelations, Chanel Contos, told the ABC schools needed to address:

locker room talk […] and throw-away comments because I really think they lay the foundation of the rape culture.

Contos also pointed to all-boys schools where she said objectifying women was normalised. The interview came after a prefect at an all-boys school wrote an opinion piece talking about the need to shift the way boys see women. He wrote:

[…] there have been times when I’ve heard about disgusting behaviour and not done anything about it, times when I’ve tolerated boys referring to women in derogatory ways […] times when I’ve stood by.

I interviewed 32 teachers in three elite private boys’ schools, in two capital cities. I conducted this yet-to-be-published study between 2015 and 2017 just before the #MeToo movement really took off.

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

At the time, I wanted to understand the teachers’ moral purpose and their ability to seek and make change in the privileged schools they taught. I was unprepared for the accounts of sexual harassment and sexism female teachers relayed.

How boys behaved

One young teacher described a troubling account that had her almost leaving the profession:

I had year 9, year 10 boys, being very sexually explicit to me […] making nasty rumours up, being quite, very sexual, very, very sexual. Telling me I’m wearing hooker shoes and I look like a hooker to claiming that they saw me on the weekend doing particular things with particular people.

I also heard stories of up-skirting (taking a sexually intrusive photograph up someone’s skirt without their permission), boys participating in sexually explicit discussions about their teachers on social media, and propositioning them. I observed inappropriate personal questions and teasing with sexual innuendo in classroom interactions.

Read more: We can see the gender bias of all-boys’ schools by the books they study in English

One teacher reported a harrowing experience of a boy stalking her, saying:

[…] he had hundreds of pictures of me […] he was filming me and stuff […] I told people and they didn’t believe me.

For victims of sexual harassment disbelief is the first great silencer. But denial and victim-blaming are also factors.

One administrator suggested gender simply didn’t matter, and she wasn’t alone in this sentiment. For her, it was the case that “naive women teachers have a harder time, if they’re not quite firm”.

This mentality among some school leaders may point to why one teacher said she was “worried that people might view us as having done something wrong”.

Another teacher told me:

[…] even if I do take it further […] like what’s the point? Nothing’s really seriously going to be done about it.

But this same teacher excused the behaviour as that of “just boys”, who were “silly” and “trying it on”.

Another female school leader, who complained about sexism herself, participated in this type of victim blaming. She said:

I’m having problems with some of my staff, they’re lovely, lovely girls […] they dress very feminine, and the boys are just ga-ga […] it causes havoc.

Excusing such behaviour is a form of internalising. This is when women’s learnt behaviour may be intrinsically sexist towards themselves and other women. It is crucial to understanding how insidious such logic can be.

It comes from peers too

Some female teachers told me of the everyday sexism of their male colleagues:

I experience sexism and discrimination every time I do speak up […] from day one I knew that I was in a place where women didn’t have equality.

Parents also played a part. A school leader told me the fathers:

don’t like being told what to do by a female […] a male member of staff wouldn’t get that treatment whereas as a female they do and it’s disgusting […] how do you educate the parent body?

It may be that elite private schools, with high fees and high expectations struggle to speak back to their clientele. Studies have suggested when a scandal arises in such a school and puts its reputation at risk, this can seriously jeopardise their market share and viability.

As one teacher put it: “they are the client, they’re the ones who you need to please”.

Teachers also talked about their school heads who “don’t want any surprises” and are “worried about parents ringing up”. One of my participants said:

we are basically told […] keep the parents at the gate […] don’t let them go for you, because they will, they will attack you.

Of course, I am not claiming all boys in elite private schools harass their teachers, or indeed all teachers are harassed. There are more progressive elite boys’ schools and my sample of interviewees was limited. There were differences too, in teachers’ experiences both across and between schools I studied.

Still, the evidence of sexual harassment and enabling social mechanisms at all three sites in my study calls on school leaders to look deeply at their practices.

Read more: Elite boys’ schools like St Kevin’s were set up to breed hyper-masculinity, which can easily turn toxic

Unpicking and reforming these mechanisms of gender oppression, which include silence and disbelief, will be crucial if we want to have meaningful change.

Some schools have taken good steps since the petition came about. These include schools hosting sessions about consent and principals acknowledging the need to change the culture.

But it is clear that more courage, and moral leadership, will be required to shift entrenched attitudes and behaviours.

– ref. ‘He had hundreds of pictures of me’: tales of sexism from female teachers in elite boys’ schools – https://theconversation.com/he-had-hundreds-of-pictures-of-me-tales-of-sexism-from-female-teachers-in-elite-boys-schools-156748

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Leah Mercer, Associate Professor of Theatre Arts, Curtin University

Review: Whistleblower, directed by Arielle Gray, Wyatt Nixon-Lloyd and Tim Watts. The Last Great Hunt for Perth Festival.

Whistleblower is a cross between a choose-your-own-adventure book and an escape-room experience with a dash of the improv TV-show Thank God You’re Here. The protagonist is chosen from the audience and the audience are part of the creation.

Given COVID restrictions, it is a feat to have pulled off interactive theatre of this magnitude, but the cast began by assuring us that, while what we were about to watch was theatrically risky, they’d taken every precaution to ensure it was virally safe.

An old-school video game vibe to the design belies the sophisticated technical manoeuvres that make the show so slick. With the onstage technicians dressed in white lab coats, a bank of computer monitors and a visible sound desk, watching the wheels keeping the show in motion is part of its appeal.

For the chosen performer, it is an exercise in trust as they hand themselves over to the ensemble cast of 11. Other audience members become involved, but the weight of the show rests on the shoulders of this one former audience member, who is told only their character’s name before they begin.

Everything else, they find out along the way, as they move through a series of locations trying to work out who they are, why they’re there and who to trust.

Multiple cameras project the live action onto screens; pre-recorded segments provide close-ups of what’s happening; Rachel Claudio’s looping, electronic soundtrack responds to the changing action.

Yet often it is the low-fi elements — relying on the central character’s ability to operate a combination lock briefcase, or their presence of mind and memory under pressure — that become the source of the drama.

An experience above a story

Whistleblower is set in a fictional town resembling a cheesy, 1970s Australian TV show, in a time before the internet brought everything to our fingertips in an instant. The audience member at its heart must choose between acting for the greater good or privileging their personal freedom.

It would be unforgivable for me to blow the whistle on the plot, since future audiences depend on there being no spoilers.

But Whistleblower is not about the plot. It is about the experience of watching real people deal with what is thrown at them, make choices and manage the consequences of those choices. The thrill of the risk is what makes it so engaging.

The awkward moments have a compelling, car-crash quality. We watch the protagonist miss seemingly obvious clues, and careen towards narrative disaster. Equally, moments when the penny drops, when they — with their hand over their mouth in shock — experience genuine “a-ha” moments, were legitimately felt. We truly celebrated their victories.

Witnessing these authentic responses (albeit expertly manufactured by the ensemble) is a big part of the production’s success. Watching the delight of the cast as their chosen performer makes an unexpected choice or achieves a long-sought victory is another part of the work’s appeal.

Given that they’re onstage in front of an audience, the production does a brilliant job of isolating the performer via an ingenious combination of sensory deprivation and overload, deepening their immersion in this fictional world.

The art of community

Much of the show is about the audience-member-turned-actor relying on their own wits. This is intensified by their disconnect from the electronic devices we all rely on: setting the story in a time before the internet and mobile phones truly makes the past seem like a foreign country.

The Gen Z performer selected on the night I attended at first seemed overwhelmed by her isolated disconnection.

Quite early, she dropped her persona and tried to call her real-life boyfriend through the old-fashioned, push button telephone prop: the real world and the fictional world in which she was temporarily residing momentarily collided and she lost her bearings.

Watching her rally and forge a path forward became an integral part of her story.

The takeaways from this production will be different for each performance, but I found the greatest pleasure in being part of the audience: a community instinctively on the protagonist’s side.

We wanted her to do well, even when we were frustrated by her choices. Her vulnerability awoke our compassion. Recognising we all make mistakes meant it was joyously cathartic every time she had a lightbulb moment and self-corrected: making a choice that would move her forward rather than keep them stuck.

We not only forgave her for stumbling, we celebrated her for persevering.

– ref. Part escape room, part choose-your-own adventure, the whodunit Whistleblower has the audience at its heart – https://theconversation.com/part-escape-room-part-choose-your-own-adventure-the-whodunit-whistleblower-has-the-audience-at-its-heart-154271

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

The Australian government has secured close to 54 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, as well as 20 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

This is more than enough coronavirus vaccines for the entire population — and then some. But with vaccine hesitancy on the rise in Australia, questions remain over what methods the government will use to persuade enough people to get the jab.

According to a recent study, only three out of five Australians said they are willing to receive the vaccine. However, at least four out of five are needed to ensure herd immunity.

In order to create a sense of urgency among Australians and build trust and confidence in the vaccine, the government may need to look beyond its own public communications campaign to the power of influencers.

After all, if people won’t listen to the government, they might just roll up their sleeves if a celebrity is doing the same.

Read more: Just the facts, or more detail? To battle vaccine hesitancy, the messaging has to be just right

The power of celebrity

The power of celebrity has been harnessed in vaccination campaigns many times in the past.

Most famously, Elvis Presley was enlisted to receive his polio vaccine on live television in 1956 as a way of encouraging take-up among teenagers. A group called Teens Against Polio then began its own outreach campaign, which included dances only for the vaccinated. The effort was hugely successful in boosting vaccination rates.

Mothers were another group that were adopting a “wait and see” approach to the polio vaccine. Then, in 1957, Queen Elizabeth announced she had vaccinated her children Prince Charles and Princess Anne, disregarding her usual commitment to keeping her family private.

Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip also received their COVID-19 vaccines last month in a bid to counter vaccine hesitancy. The queen had a message for those still on the fence: “they ought to think about other people other than themselves”.

Many other celebrities have also gone public with their COVID vaccines, from Joan Collins to Willie Nelson to Samuel L. Jackson. Politicians, too, have sought to lead by example by receiving their jabs on live television.

Celebrity status over science

But does celebrity endorsement always work with public health campaigns, and if so, why?

Research has shown that celebrity endorsements can trigger biological, psychological and social responses in people that make them more trusting of what celebrities say and do, including their endorsement of health information.

It works because the celebrities’ characteristics are transferred to the endorsed products. The most effective celebrity advocates are those viewed as credible — a perception linked to their perceived “success” in life.

People aspire to be like the celebrities they look up to, causing them to behave like them, too. It helps if the celebrities’ advice matches their existing beliefs — an example of confirmation bias.

Neuroscience research supports these explanations, finding that celebrity endorsements activate regions in the brain involved in making positive associations, building trust and encoding memories.

Read more: COVID vaccine: celebrity endorsements work – even if people don’t like it

Why vetting of influencers is important

There is ample evidence, especially in the social media age, of the power of celebrity endorsements on health issues beyond vaccines.

Kylie Minogue’s public breast cancer diagnosis and treatment, for instance, sparked a 40% rise in breast cancer screenings. And when Magic Johnson announced he was HIV-positive in the early 1990s, a national AIDS hotline reported over 28,000 calls from people wanting more information on HIV/AIDS.

Sometimes, the celebrity effect can backfire. Tennis star Novak Djokovic, for instance, was criticised by epidemiologists for making public statements against the COVID vaccination, due to his significant influence in Serbia. Recently, Djokovic has softened his comments, claiming he’s not against vaccines but doesn’t want to be forced to take one.

Celebrity-led health campaigns, if not conducted properly, can also have negative consequences.

The federal government received considerable backlash in 2018 for using taxpayer money to hire Instagram influencers to promote its “girls make your move” campaign. It was discovered some of the influencers had made racist remarks or were being paid to promote alcohol brands.

For this reason, careful vetting of the celebrity or influencer is fundamentally important. Their social media reach is swift and significant, which can either amplify the message or blow up into a scandal.

Rational arguments and data aren’t enough

But can those who are unsure about COVID vaccines be successfully persuaded? It’s a pertinent and timely question.

Research suggests those who are vehemently dug into their position are unlikely to be persuaded. Those chanting “my body, my choice” at rallies ahead of the vaccine roll-out are likely to be difficult to persuade.

Read more: Yeh, nah, maybe. When it comes to accepting the COVID vaccine, it’s Australia’s fence-sitters we should pay attention to

It’s the malleable middle, those who are merely hesitant about vaccines, the government needs to target with its messages. This is where celebrity or influencer endorsements may help.

For a message to be effective, the use of rational arguments and data alone are not enough. We are persuaded by both the way the message is presented and the messenger (and the desirable attributes we perceive that person to have).

Providing vaccine information on its own might not be enough if it falls on deaf ears.

– ref. From Elvis to Dolly, celebrity endorsements might be the key to countering vaccine hesitancy – https://theconversation.com/from-elvis-to-dolly-celebrity-endorsements-might-be-the-key-to-countering-vaccine-hesitancy-152893

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Roger Patulny, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Wollongong

A recent nationally representative survey has shown Australians are willing and able to pull the plug on social media.

But it turns out the generation you were born in, as well as your level of education, will likely have a bearing on whether you do. This is important, as recent events have set the precedent for tech giants to pull or change content at any time.

Short-lived as it was, Facebook’s removal of Australian news raised interesting questions about our dependence on social media and whether we can do without it.

Read more: Google is leading a vast, covert human experiment. You may be one of the guinea pigs

Growing frustration with platforms

Facebook’s actions (coupled with Google’s earlier threat to pull its Search function from Australia) prompted widespread criticism.

Twitter users got #deletefacebook trending, while news columns called on Australians to consider distancing themselves from the platform. But it’s difficult to know exactly how many did.

The Australian Survey of Social Attitudes (AUSSA) is one of few studies uniquely placed to provide a balanced view on Australians’ social media use.

The randomised, nationally representative sample of the Australian population captures those who have never used social media, those who have curbed their use and those who have never stopped or reduced their use.

Results from the 2019–20 survey show many Australians have either cut back on social media, or quit it altogether. Half the respondents had reduced their use at some point.

Reasons for disconnecting

People disconnect from social media for various reasons. These include concerns over privacy, an “always on” digital culture, pressure from being on display to the public and pressure from comparing oneself to others.

Others hold practical concerns such as wasting time, being too busy to use social media, losing interest or being bored. The majority (52%) of AUSSA respondents cited “boredom” and “time wasting” as the main reasons for limiting social media use.

Considering this, Facebook’s threat to become news-free may have constituted self-sabotage; it would have made the platform a blander, less informative and more disposable space.

Read more: If Facebook really pulls news from its Australian sites, we’ll have a much less compelling product

Australians registered other concerns too, but in lower numbers. For instance, 18% cited frustration with online personas (such as excessive social comparisons and inauthenticity) as their main reason for disconnecting, while 15% cited privacy concerns.

Meanwhile, 14% of respondents had never used social media and 36% continued to use it consistently.

Breakdown by education

Past research has raised concerns over “internet addiction”, which refers to becoming so embedded in social media it becomes difficult to exit.

And the AUSSA survey reveals some of us seem more likely (and possibly more able) than others to disconnect from digital life.

Education was an important predictor of social media use and disconnection. Of those who hadn’t completed high school, 45% had reduced their social media use.

This rose to 51% among those with a high-school or post-school certificate — and to 56% among degree holders.

The link between higher education and social media use speaks to a certain “privilege of disconnection”, whereby the choice to disengage is easier for those with certain resources.

For example, when tertiary-educated people give up social media, they may be better placed to replace the networks and information lost with other sources of connection and capital.

Generational gaps

There were also notable differences in social media use between generations, although usage generally increased as generations became younger.

Of the Silent Generation (currently 76-93 years old), 40% had never used social media. This dropped to 0% among Gen Z (9-24 years old).

At 62%, Gen X (41-56 years old) led the way in social media reduction and disconnection. They were significantly more likely to have used and disconnected than baby boomers (57-75 years old).

But the rates of reduction and disconnection among millennials (25-40 years old) decreased, before increasing again for Gen Z. Millennials were also much more likely than Gen X to have never reduced their social media use at any point.

The relatively lower disconnection rate and higher usage rate among millennials is perhaps concerning.

This group may simply not have found a good reason to disconnect. However, since millennials were raised with social media strongly integrated into their teenage and adult lives, it may harder for them to kick the habit when needed.

The slight increase in disconnection among Gen Z is telling here, as it suggests the generation to follow may have developed a little more critical awareness of the downsides of making social media omnipresent in one’s life.

Managing a challenging relationship

The survey findings suggest social media use is indeed ubiquitous among young people.

But they also suggest claims of a widespread rise in “internet addiction” are excessive, since the majority of respondents from Gen X onward had either reduced or halted their social media use.

This is good news. Tech platforms at times have shown an ethically questionable willingness to sacrifice our privacy and agency for personal gain, with both Facebook and Google guilty of covertly experimenting on users in the past.

These survey findings suggest we have some agency of our own. Tech giants can’t rely on user loyalty, or inertia and certainly not addiction.

Users may happily switch platforms — or switch off altogether — if they continue to be treated like bargaining chips in business deals. Big tech, take note.

– ref. New evidence shows half of Australians have ditched social media at some point, but millennials lag behind – https://theconversation.com/new-evidence-shows-half-of-australians-have-ditched-social-media-at-some-point-but-millennials-lag-behind-156128

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Daniel Yeoh, Paediatrician and Infectious Diseases Physician, The University of Melbourne

Winter typically brings a surge in respiratory viral infections, when we see many children running around with runny noses and phlegmy coughs.

But the 2020 Australian winter was very different. Public health measures in place to control the spread of COVID-19 saw a major shift in the typical seasonal pattern of other respiratory viruses.

This has perhaps been most notable with respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), a very common cause of hospitalisation in young children over winter months in many parts of the world, including Australia.

But following an abnormal winter that saw a significant drop in rates of RSV — we found there were 98% fewer winter cases in Western Australian children — paediatric hospitals around Australia have seen unexpectedly large numbers of children presenting with RSV over summer.

So, what is RSV, and why are these changing trends important?

A winter lurgy

RSV typically circulates during winter in temperate climates, much like influenza.

It’s the major cause of lung infections in children, commonly causing bronchiolitis. Symptoms of RSV include a runny nose, cough, reduced feeding and fever. Complications include wheezing and difficulty breathing, which can develop into pneumonia.

Severe cases occasionally lead to death, predominantly in very young infants.

Almost all children have had an RSV infection by age two, but infants in their first year of life are more likely to experience severe infections requiring hospitalisation, because their airways are smaller. Babies have also not built up immunity to RSV from previous years (we call this being RSV-naïve).

RSV is spread through respiratory secretions, when an infected person sneezes or coughs. In this way it’s similar to COVID-19. But in contrast to the coronavirus, children are more vulnerable to RSV infection than adults. As a result, RSV is readily spread among children, especially at daycare, kindergarten and school.

Read more: Is it really the flu? The other viruses making you ill in winter

How is RSV treated?

Most children will recover without needing specialist care in hospital, and children with mild infection can be treated with rest at home.

However, many children, particularly young infants, those born prematurely, and children with underlying health issues, are admitted to paediatric wards with severe RSV every year.

Treatment for RSV is focused on helping children with their breathing (for example, giving them oxygen) and feeding (for example, administering fluids through a drip).

There’s no licensed vaccine for RSV, but the World Health Organization considers this a priority, and a number of vaccines are currently in development.

What happened to RSV in 2020?

The stay-at-home orders across Australia from late March 2020, and the implementation of quarantine for international arrivals, coincided with the start of the usual RSV and influenza season in Australia.

With these measures in place, RSV and influenza cases dropped dramatically and remained very low throughout winter.

In Western Australia, despite a relaxation of COVID-related restrictions, including schools reopening from May 2020, there was still a dramatic reduction in RSV cases through winter. This suggests border closures were important in reducing transmission from arriving overseas travellers.

RSV cases remained low until late spring, when a large surge was observed in New South Wales and WA.

The speed and magnitude of this increase was greater than the usual winter peak of RSV.

More recently, other states including Victoria and Queensland have seen a similar unseasonal rise in RSV cases.

Read more: Why do kids tend to have milder COVID? This new study gives us a clue

It’s likely reductions in COVID-19 restrictions have opened the door for increased RSV spread. Reduced immunity to RSV may also have contributed through both an increase in number of RSV-naïve children and possibly waning RSV immunity in older children related to the delayed season.

Studies seeking to understand exactly why we’ve seen a rise in RSV cases are ongoing.

Why might the Australian surge be important elsewhere?

Australia’s experience may carry important lessons for Northern Hemisphere countries, including the United States and the United Kingdom, which saw similar reductions in RSV cases during their winter.

Relaxing of COVID restrictions, which is beginning in many Northern Hemisphere countries now, may provide an opportunity for rapid spread of RSV. Our experience should serve as a warning for paediatric hospitals in the Northern Hemisphere to ensure adequate staffing and available resources to meet the possible increased need.

Our RSV experience may also be applicable to influenza, which still remains at very low levels globally. Reduced immunity to influenza due to the skipped 2020 season may result in a very severe season when influenza returns. Seasonal influenza vaccines could be particularly important in 2021 to protect against a possible large resurgence.

Let’s hold on to our good COVID habits

The COVID-19 pandemic has shown us the spread of respiratory viruses can be reduced by physical distancing and increased hygiene measures.

While we are (hopefully) unlikely to see prolonged stay-at-home orders again in Australia, ongoing basic measures including hand washing, cough etiquette and keeping snotty children at home can all help reduce the spread of RSV and influenza moving forward.

As we approach the 2021 Australian winter, by doing these simple things, as well as getting our flu vaccines, we can all help protect children, including those most vulnerable, from these important respiratory viruses.

Read more: Kids are more vulnerable to the flu – here’s what to look out for this winter

– ref. RSV is a common winter illness in children. Why did it see a summer surge in Australia this year? – https://theconversation.com/rsv-is-a-common-winter-illness-in-children-why-did-it-see-a-summer-surge-in-australia-this-year-156492

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sukhmani Khorana, Senior Research Fellow, Western Sydney University

The organised environmental movement is largely a white, middle-class space. But our research shows migrants care for nature in other ways – including living sustainably in their everyday lives.

This is most obvious on the domestic front. From repurposing goods to keeping vegetable gardens and being careful with electricity use, migrants are highly likely to practise sustainable living – sometimes without even realising it.

In the debate about environmental issues, migrants are often blamed for making the problem worse, such as by adding to congestion. It’s important to break this circuit and recognise migrants’ positive contribution to environmental protection.

Migrants can successfully be harnessed to help with environmental causes. Doing this will require both learning from migrants, and helping them feel welcome in the green movement.

Busting migrant myths

Our qualitative pilot study sought to provide an in-depth picture of young first- and second-generation Australian migrants who care about the environment.

Research shows ethnic minorities are often under-represented in the urban environmental movement.

This can lead to suggestions migrants do not actively care for the environment – either due to apathy, or because they are preoccupied with climbing social and economic ladders in their new country.

But my research found first- and second-generation migrants in Australia care for the environment in particular ways, largely focused on the domestic front.

Read more: 4 assumptions about gender that distort how we think about climate change (and 3 ways to do better)

What we found

My research team interviewed eight first-generation migrants and nine second- generation migrants in Sydney, aged between 18 and 40 years. The group comprised seven women and ten men, roughly half of whom were parents.

We found the participants actively and consciously carried out environmental care practices, mostly in the domestic sphere. From a young age, first- and second-generation participants continued austerity and waste-consciousness inherited from their parents. These included:

• recycling and repurposing consumable items
• careful water and electricity use
• home vegetable gardens and composting
• ethical purchase and consumption.

Some second-generation migrants said their parents were “accidentally” environmentally friendly. For example, some parents who had experienced financial hardship were frugal with money and goods. Others from an agricultural background remained connected to the land through gardening.

As one second-generation participant from Vietnam observed:

Migrants are often the most environmentally conscious people I know. They’re not purposefully being conscious, but they know about the scarcity of resources and its ingrained into them so it’s part of their lifestyle.

The participant learned sustainable practices from her mother who didn’t have a lot of money. The family’s clothes and homewares came from second-hand stores. Car travel was kept to a minimum and her mother planted many vegetables in her backyard.

Read more: ‘Biodegradable’ plastic will soon be banned in Australia. That’s a big win for the environment

Outside the home

Second-generation migrants were much more likely to make the environmentally-motivated choice to become vegan and/or vegetarian. Of the 17 interview participants, five were vegan or vegetarian; all but one were second-generation migrants.

The second-generation migrants were slightly, but not significantly, more engaged with outward forms of environmental activism such as attending protests and marches.

Second-generation migrants said the first generation often eschewed public activism. Reasons for this included language barriers, alternative priorities that come with navigating a foreign country and fears of racism.

Second-generation migrants born in Australia were better equipped to overcome these barriers and felt more comfortable participating in the political sphere. However this group was still ambivalent about, or didn’t prioritise, organised environmental protection.

Read more: ‘Everyone else does it, so I can too’: how the false consensus effect drives environmental damage

Participants – particularly parents – cited the recent Black Summer bushfires as a traumatic reminder of climate change. The tragedy motivated them to practice environmental care such as water conservation.

Just two interviewees, both women, were involved in environmental groups. The others preferred to donate money to environmental causes or sign petitions, usually due to a lack of time.

Other participants sought to influence their family and peers through conversation, work initiatives or buying “green” products. Only three reported being engaged with environmental initiatives of their local councils.

As one first-generation migrant said:

In my council meetings, I’m one of the few migrants … They’re not confident yet about how much information they know and how much they’re missing out on. Even if they want to raise their voice they’re hesitant and worried that they’re saying something wrong.

Next steps

Migrants are already highly engaged with environmentally friendly behaviour at home. The next step is to help them engage with environmental issues more broadly. We suggest the following measures:

• train first-generation migrants to confidently get involved with local council sustainability measures. Councils should also raise awareness of environmental care programs and provide migrants with volunteering opportunities

• raise awareness in the broader community about how migrants can be part of the solution to environmental problems through their daily domestic practices

• use interactive digital tools to engage time-poor migrants

• leverage second-generation migrants to both pass on, and change, their parents’ environmental practices

• identify “community champions” to act as agents of change in migrant communities.

Our findings suggest migrants are interested in finding new ways to protect the environment. The green movement must help migrants achieve this, by making environmental initiatives safe, welcoming and accessible to them.

The author would like to acknowledge Claudia Sirdah and Nukte Ogun, who helped compile the research upon which this article is based.

– ref. From veggie gardening to op-shopping, migrants are the quiet environmentalists – https://theconversation.com/from-veggie-gardening-to-op-shopping-migrants-are-the-quiet-environmentalists-155473

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Shelly Makleff, Research Fellow, Global and Women’s Health, Monash University

More than 30,000 people have signed a petition, launched by ex-Sydney school girl Chanel Contos, demanding for consent to be at the forefront of sexual education in schools. The text in the petition states:

Those who have signed this petition have done so because they are sad and angry that they did not receive an adequate education regarding what amounts to sexual assault and what to do when it happens.

The petition encouraged a growing number of harrowing testimonies from young women throughout Australia about their experiences of sexual assault at parties.

School principals, particularly in all-boys schools, have responded by acknowledging the need for a cultural shift. Some schools have gathered students for sessions about consent, others addressed the topic in the classroom, some have asked parents to engage their children in discussions about sexual consent and social norms.

But studies show one-off conversations or education sessions about consent and rape are unlikely to influence long-term change. Interventions need to systematically and gradually address the harmful social norms that underpin a host of interrelated issues including rape culture, intimate partner violence and homophobic bullying.

I evaluated a sexuality education program in Mexico City. My evaluation highlighted a number of factors that can help shift harmful beliefs and behaviours related to gender, sexuality and relationships.

Engaging students in discussions

Evidence from around the globe suggests that to transform the harmful gender norms that contribute to violence and sexual assault, programs should promote critical reflections about gender, relationships and sexuality. Evidence also shows such reflection takes time.

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

A community-based organisation providing sexual and reproductive health services throughout Mexico adapted their sexuality course in 2016. It was a 20 hour course, delivered weekly over one semester to 185 students in one school. Each group of 20 participants aged 14 to 17 had one facilitator.

The facilitators in the course were young people (under 30 years of age). They were trained as professional health educators, and to facilitate activities that promote critical reflection among students about entrenched beliefs and social norms.

Such conversations can be about things like the nature of love and behaviours that are good and bad in a relationship.

In the program, students engaged in debates about romantic jealousy, and whether it was a sign of love. One student told me:

they told us […] about what is love and what is not love. I told my boyfriend, “they told us that jealousy is bad”, and he replied, “that’s right, because it means a lack of trust”, and in this way, we sometimes talked about the course.

Vignettes that were relevant to the students’ lived experiences stimulated debates about gender roles and social norms. For example, student said:

One of the things my classmate said stayed with me. He said that the man has to work and the woman should stay in the house. It made me, like, think. I think that a woman doesn’t need to always be at home […] as if it were a prison. I think you need to give freedom to both people in a relationship.

These group conversations can be challenging. They may also be upsetting to participants, and could even provoke verbal harassment or violence.

One facilitator described bullying and violence during some sessions of the course.

The group started to verbally attack each other, and it was one corner of the room against the other.

This means facilitators need training not only on the concepts of gender, sexuality and relationships, but also on how best to directly address comments that may reinforce harmful gender norms or other types of violence in the classroom and use those as teaching moments to highlight the consequences of harmful social norms.

Was the program successful?

I saw the students become more comfortable talking about relationships and sexuality as the course progressed. One young man said:

before the course, it made us a bit embarrassed to talk about sexual and reproductive health. But afterwards we understood, with the course, that it was, like, very natural to talk about it. It’s like any other thing, and so I now feel fine talking about it.

As a result of the program, some students said they directly addressed negative behaviours in their own relationships. And some even left controlling relationships.

One student said:

You know the information they told us about relationships? I was thinking about that, and then I decided to talk to my girlfriend about her controlling behaviour.

The students also developed trust in the course facilitators over time. One young man said:

As time passed, they gave me confidence that if at any moment I need something I can ask them for help, it won’t be a problem.

The facilitators made referrals to health care, provided advice and support, and in one case accompanied a participant to obtain care.

What needs to happen in Australia

In Australia, the quality and extent of implementation of sexual education is often left up to individual teachers or schools. But many teachers called on to deliver sexuality education feel unprepared to go beyond factual biological instruction.

A government mandate — as seen in a handful of countries such as the United Kingdom, Germany and the Netherlands — is needed to ensure high quality sexuality education is delivered to all young people in Australia.

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

But even when mandated, implementation at a national scale is challenging. To effectively deliver such programs, resources should be put towards developing a large cohort of health educators who are trained and supported to deliver quality sexual education.

A nation-wide program could be implemented through a partnership between national and state governments and community-based organisations already experienced with sexuality education.

Parents can get involved too

As shown in the quotes above, the young people in the Mexico City course discussed topics from their sexuality course with peers, partners and parents.

This suggests that, even if parents feel unprepared to educate their children about sexual health, sexuality education can provide a bridge to open and reflective conversations. These can be a two-way exchange so parents need not serve as the educator, and can themselves benefit along with their children.

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

My research on prevention programming, as well as reviews of school-based interventions more broadly, reinforces the centrality of schools, both as settings in which violence is perpetrated, and as a site for its prevention.

Schools are often heteronormative institutions and can perpetuate toxic masculinity and rape culture. Investing in good quality sexual education can prevent the “upstream” effects we are seeing now in the testimonials about sexual assault in schools and in the national parliament.

– ref. Young people are hungry for good sex education. I found a program in Mexico that gets it right – https://theconversation.com/young-people-are-hungry-for-good-sex-education-i-found-a-program-in-mexico-that-gets-it-right-156742

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Diane Brand, Dean of Creative Arts & Industry, University of Auckland

Every good race needs an avid audience of dedicated fans to spur the competitors along and the 36th America’s Cup, which starts today, is no exception.

But current protocols are a far cry from the event’s rarefied and remote origins in Britain. For most of the cup’s history, the race was sailed on offshore courses away from the viewing public, under the auspices of elite yacht clubs.

Times have changed. Team New Zealand CEO Grant Dalton specifically sited the opportunity of racing in the enclosed waters of Auckland’s Waitematā Harbour as a way to maximise the public’s ability to view the event from land.

This has been the way Aucklanders have watched regattas since the early colonial days when two of New Zealand’s favourite diversions, gambling and sailing, collided.

Read more: Why we should release New Zealand’s strangled rivers to lessen the impact of future floods

The Waitematā provides a series of perfect outdoor arenas for both local regattas and the courses set by the America’s Cup Race Committee.

And the new AC75 class chosen for the current America’s Cup are purpose built — large foiling yachts that sail like rockets, adding scale, acceleration and vivid visual spectacle to the drama of match racing.

A race offshore, out of sight

Founded in Britain in 1851, the America’s Cup quickly became dominated by the New York Yacht Club. The US held the cup for 128 years until it was won by Australia in 1983.

A win by New Zealand in 1995 firmly embedded Southern Hemisphere locations in the race circuit. And it was there that real public engagement began. Syndicate bases became visible or accessible, first in Fremantle in 1986 and then in San Diego in 1995.

In Auckland’s Viaduct Harbour, the cup facilities were integrated into a new mixed-use urban extension of the city for the 2000 and 2003 challenges. But the racing was still well away from public view in the Hauraki Gulf.

Then-Team New Zealand boss Sir Peter Blake’s vision for the 2000 America’s Cup was to have a venue where the syndicate bases were integrated into a vibrant waterfront neighbourhood.

Auckland was ripe for this kind of development. The result was the establishment of the city’s first waterfront precinct and the unlocking of urban coastal space from its 19th century industrial origins.

From London to Buenos Aires and beyond, industrialised waterfronts had undergone revitalisation for several decades. The America’s Cup helped Auckland join the trend.

The construction of the Viaduct Harbour provided an opportunity for high-quality public space to evolve at the centre of Auckland. The new precinct and its flagship event added valuable waterfront real estate and boosted the city economy.

The development became a benchmark for future urban design initiatives in the city, such as the Wynyard Quarter and Tank Farm, with the former now housing the America’s Cup race village.

Valencia in Spain tried the same formula but struggled to maintain an accessible public space in the wake of international terrorism and aggressive security measures.

The idea behind all these developments was to engage a wider audience for these largely elitist events. The trouble was, the public in the cup village settings only witnessed the yachts leave and return to base — albeit in style and with fanfare.

Broadcasting races with computer graphic enhancements on outdoor and home screens significantly enhanced the global audience for sailing. But the racing itself was remote.

An urban maritime arena

The spectator environment changed for the San Francisco challenge in 2013 where the natural environment allowed race viewing within the land-captured waterways of the Bay Area.

This created the perfect observation platform and the experience was replicated on the Great Sound in Bermuda in 2017.

It was a logical move for the New Zealand organisers to configure the race courses to allow people to line the coastal promontories, or to watch from vessels anchored on the race-course boundaries as the new nautical flying machines cut up and down the harbour at astronomical speeds.

With a choice of inshore and offshore courses, it has also been possible to avoid public gatherings during COVID-19 lockdowns by opting for the more remote course. This happened in the latter stages of the Prada Cup challenger series in February when Auckland was at alert level 2.

The spectacle works because of the large scale (26.5 metre masts) and airborne demeanour of these semi-flying machines, which reach speeds of more then 50 knots (90+kmh) as they foil around the course.

By comparison, the average sailing speed for a pleasure yacht is 6-12 knots (11-22kmh).

Read more: Freedom camping needs new regulations and foreign tourists aren’t the only villains

The AC75 yachts can be easily seen from an elevated vantage point, against a backdrop of wind-ruffled water, as they tack and gybe up and down a course.

On the waterfront

The America’s Cup challenges have been key to Auckland reclaiming its waterfront for public use and exploiting its natural coastal setting for spectator advantage.

An urban harbour arena such as the Waitematā is the perfect venue, as it maximises sport, spectacle, super-scaled and super-funded vessels, land enclosure, security, public participation and controversy.

The race village has become the onshore site for entertainment and celebration. It is a formula future organisers would do well to emulate if they can capitalise on the right urban infrastructure and captivating landscapes.

– ref. How the America’s Cup was transformed from a remote race to a spectator event on Auckland’s harbour – https://theconversation.com/how-the-americas-cup-was-transformed-from-a-remote-race-to-a-spectator-event-on-aucklands-harbour-155954

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

Health Minister Greg Hunt was admitted to hospital on Tuesday with “a suspected infection”.

In a statement on Tuesday evening his office said “he is being kept overnight for observation and is being administered antibiotics and fluid.” It said Hunt “is expected to make a full recovery.”

The condition of Hunt – who together with former prime minister Julia Gillard received the AstraZeneca vaccine at the weekend – “is not considered to be related to the vaccine,” the statement said.

But his hospitalisation is unhelpful when political figures are seeking to promote confidence by getting their shots early.

The announcement about Hunt came hours after Victorian Premier Danial Andrews was admitted to intensive care following a fall on slippery stairs, which resulted in several broken ribs and vertebrae damage.

It is not known when Hunt will be back at work.

Meanwhile pressure continued on Scott Morrison over Attorney-General Christian Porter, who is on mental health leave after being accused of historical rape, which he strongly denies.

Morrison told reporters he had spoken to Porter but he had not said when he would be returning to work.

The Prime Minister confirmed Porter won’t be there when parliament meets next week. “But he’ll give me further updates as we go through the course of this week,” he said.

As Morrison tries to switch attention to the economy, with announcements this week of post-JobKeeper measures, he continues to be dogged by the issues around Porter and Defence Minister Linda Reynolds.

Parliament on Monday heads into its final fortnight before the budget session, with the House of Representatives meeting for two weeks and the Senate for one week followed by Senate estimates hearings.

Reynolds, on medical leave, will miss both weeks. If Porter also misses the whole fortnight, the first time the two ministers would be subjected to parliamentary questioning would be budget week in May. Their return could be a distraction for the government, which would want all attention on the budget.

Morrison, who has spoken to Reynolds’ doctor, said on Tuesday her health issues – she has an underlying heart condition – were “quite serious”.

Reynolds became unwell when she was under fire over her former staffer Brittany Higgins’ allegation she was raped in 2019 by a colleague in Reynolds’ office and was not given enough support.

Morrison, who criticised Reynolds for not telling him of the incident, has not yet released the results of an inquiry by his departmental secretary, Phil Gaetjens, into who in his own office knew of the matter.

The Prime Minister was questioned again on Tuesday about his failure to read the dossier containing the allegations against Porter. He said the formal documents had been provided to his office on a Friday afternoon, when he was in Sydney.

“And so those documents were immediately provided to the Federal Police. So I was not in the same place as those documents.”

Morrison continues to resist calls for an independent inquiry into the allegation against Porter, and said he had not spoken to the Solicitor-General about the allegation “because there is not a separate legal process that applies to the Attorney-General or anyone else”.

On the economic front, in an address to the Australian Financial Review’s business summit, Morrison said Australia was “leading the world out of the global pandemic and the global recession it caused”.

But he expressed frustration that, despite unemployment still being high, many jobs can’t be filled, in the absence of workers coming from abroad.

“Despite targeted measures to incentivise Australian JobSeeker recipients to relocate to where the jobs are – $6,000 to move there and take those jobs – unemployed Australians are simply and regrettably not filling these jobs,” he said.

“Right now there are 54,000 jobs going in regional Australia.

“And every day we hear the stories of employers, especially in regional areas, unable to fill positions.”

In response, the government was strengthening the mutual obligation requirements for those getting JobSeeker.

“We must also re-look at the role the temporary visa holders play in meeting our economy’s workforce requirements, where Australians do not fill these jobs.

“Of course we want Australians to fill these jobs.

But “we need to see that, rather than taking Australians’ jobs, we need to instead appreciate how filling critical workforce shortages with temporary visa holders can actually create jobs elsewhere in the economy and, in particular, sustain growth and services in our regional economies”. That way, Australians got a net benefit, Morrison said.

“This issue will not go away when the pandemic ends. It’s a thorny issue for us to deal with and we must.”

– ref. Health Minister Greg Hunt goes to hospital with infection but says don’t blame the jab – https://theconversation.com/health-minister-greg-hunt-goes-to-hospital-with-infection-but-says-dont-blame-the-jab-156763