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

The Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety has recommended a levy to help fund aged care on a sustainable basis, and given the federal government two radically different options for running a reformed system.

Releasing the multi-volume report on Monday, Prime Minister Scott Morrison played down the prospect of the government adopting the levy proposal, which would go against its mantra of not raising tax.

The commission’s long-awaited final report, titled Care, Dignity and Respect, with 148 recommendations, complicates the government’s already massive task in trying to overhaul what is recognised to be an ill-functioning system.

In some areas it leaves questions rather than provides answers – such as how much extra money will be needed.

In other areas, it invites difficult choices between competing options presented by the two commissioners, Tony Pagone and Lynelle Briggs. They have split on the fundamental issue of how best to administer the system, as well as on the best way to improve the present inadequate regulatory arrangements.

Aged care is a federal government responsibility and the pandemic exposed the vulnerabilities in the system, with the majority of COVID-19 deaths occurring among aged care residents.

In an immediate response to the commission report, the government announced $452 million over the forward estimates, for limited initiatives in the areas of home care, residential aged care quality and safety, improving services in residential care; workforce growth, and governance measures.

The government’s main response is due at budget time. But much work will need to be done to craft a policy.

As expected, the commission is damning about the inadequacies in the present system.

“A profound shift is required in which the people receiving care are placed at the centre of a new aged care system. In the words of one commentator, aged care does not ‘need renovations, it needs a rebuild’,” Pagone writes in his preface.

The commissioners found a “gloomy picture” of systemic problems. Many of the sector’s people and institutions “are overwhelmed, underfunded or out of their depth”.

Briggs said that at least one in three people accessing residential care or home care services “have experienced substandard care”.

The commissioners jointly call a new Aged Care Act putting older people first, entitling them to high quality and safe care based on their needs.

While both stress the need for fundamental change, Pagone argues the system should be run by an independent commission, while Briggs favours strengthening the existing system of government administration.

As Pagone writes the decision will be up to the government and, “The adoption of one model over the other will have consequences for many … of the recommendations we make.”

It would be a huge step for the government to go down the road of an independent commission.

Briggs argues that establishing a new Australian Aged Care Commission would only delay important reforms. Such an arms-length body would also “weaken the direct accountability” of ministers for the quality of care.

Her alternative “Government Leadership” model would include greater independence in certain areas such as quality regulation and pricing, but maintain a strong federal government system leadership and stewardship role.

The commissioners propose tougher regulation of the system, with Pagone saying, “The move to ritualistic regulation was a natural consequence of the Government’s desire to restrain expenditure in aged care”.

They advocate different regulation arrangements. With Briggs supporting greater independence. They “both recommend stronger accountability through the establishment of an Inspector-General of Aged Care”.

The findings on home packages contradict the government’s claims about how well it has done in this area.

Pagone writes that people have waited about seven months for the lowest level of need and about 34 months for those with the highest need.

“Something has gone badly wrong when those most in need are forced to wait the longest for care,” he observes.

On funding, Pagone set out a proposal for an Aged Care levy, which would mean “each person will contribute toward the financing of the aged care system through their working life” according to their income. They would then be able to access it when they needed it, without a means test – as happens with Medicare.

Briggs puts forward an “aged care improvement levy” on personal taxable income of 1% to fund the increasing costs of aged care.

Asked about the levy Morrison said: “We’ll consider those things. You know our government’s disposition when it comes to increased levies and taxes. It is not something we lean to.”

He recalled that when he was treasurer, “I once sought to increase the Medicare levy by 0.5% to support the National Disability Insurance Scheme and I wasn’t supported in that by the Labor Party or the Greens for that matter.

“So that’s something that I’ve seen in other contexts that the parliament hasn’t supported before. So you’d forgive me for being a little wary at this point.”

The commission recommends an extensive shakeup of workforce arrangements, including registration of personal care workers, and professionalising the workforce through changes to education, training, wages, labour conditions and career progression.

– ref. View from The Hill: royal commission confronts Morrison government with call for aged care tax levy – https://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-royal-commission-confronts-morrison-government-with-call-for-aged-care-tax-levy-156207

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

The Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety has recommended a levy to help fund aged care on a sustainable basis, and given the federal government two radically different options for running a reformed system.

Releasing the multi-volume report on Monday, Prime Minister Scott Morrison played down the prospect of the government adopting the levy proposal, which would go against its mantra of not raising tax.

The commission’s long-awaited final report, titled Care, Dignity and Respect, with 148 recommendations, complicates the government’s already massive task in trying to overhaul what is recognised to be an ill-functioning system.

In some areas it leaves questions rather than provides answers – such as how much extra money will be needed.

In other areas, it invites difficult choices between competing options presented by the two commissioners, Tony Pagone and Lynelle Briggs. They have split on the fundamental issue of how best to administer the system, as well as on the best way to improve the present inadequate regulatory arrangements.

Aged care is a federal government responsibility and the pandemic exposed the vulnerabilities in the system, with the majority of COVID-19 deaths occurring among aged care residents.

In an immediate response to the commission report, the government announced $452 million over the forward estimates, for limited initiatives in the areas of home care, residential aged care quality and safety, improving services in residential care; workforce growth, and governance measures.

The government’s main response is due at budget time. But much work will need to be done to craft a policy.

As expected, the commission is damning about the inadequacies in the present system.

“A profound shift is required in which the people receiving care are placed at the centre of a new aged care system. In the words of one commentator, aged care does not ‘need renovations, it needs a rebuild’,” Pagone writes in his preface.

The commissioners found a “gloomy picture” of systemic problems. Many of the sector’s people and institutions “are overwhelmed, underfunded or out of their depth”.

Briggs said that at least one in three people accessing residential care or home care services “have experienced substandard care”.

The commissioners jointly call a new Aged Care Act putting older people first, entitling them to high quality and safe care based on their needs.

While both stress the need for fundamental change, Pagone argues the system should be run by an independent commission, while Briggs favours strengthening the existing system of government administration.

As Pagone writes the decision will be up to the government and, “The adoption of one model over the other will have consequences for many … of the recommendations we make.”

It would be a huge step for the government to go down the road of an independent commission.

Briggs argues that establishing a new Australian Aged Care Commission would only delay important reforms. Such an arms-length body would also “weaken the direct accountability” of ministers for the quality of care.

Her alternative “Government Leadership” model would include greater independence in certain areas such as quality regulation and pricing, but maintain a strong federal government system leadership and stewardship role.

The commissioners propose tougher regulation of the system, with Pagone saying, “The move to ritualistic regulation was a natural consequence of the Government’s desire to restrain expenditure in aged care”.

They advocate different regulation arrangements. With Briggs supporting greater independence. They “both recommend stronger accountability through the establishment of an Inspector-General of Aged Care”.

The findings on home packages contradict the government’s claims about how well it has done in this area.

Pagone writes that people have waited about seven months for the lowest level of need and about 34 months for those with the highest need.

“Something has gone badly wrong when those most in need are forced to wait the longest for care,” he observes.

On funding, Pagone set out a proposal for an Aged Care levy, which would mean “each person will contribute toward the financing of the aged care system through their working life” according to their income. They would then be able to access it when they needed it, without a means test – as happens with Medicare.

Briggs puts forward an “aged care improvement levy” on personal taxable income of 1% to fund the increasing costs of aged care.

Asked about the levy Morrison said: “We’ll consider those things. You know our government’s disposition when it comes to increased levies and taxes. It is not something we lean to.”

He recalled that when he was treasurer, “I once sought to increase the Medicare levy by 0.5% to support the National Disability Insurance Scheme and I wasn’t supported in that by the Labor Party or the Greens for that matter.

“So that’s something that I’ve seen in other contexts that the parliament hasn’t supported before. So you’d forgive me for being a little wary at this point.”

The commission recommends an extensive shakeup of workforce arrangements, including registration of personal care workers, and professionalising the workforce through changes to education, training, wages, labour conditions and career progression.

– ref. Royal Commission confronts Morrison government with call for aged care tax levy – https://theconversation.com/royal-commission-confronts-morrison-government-with-call-for-aged-care-tax-levy-156207

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By William Peterson, Associate Professor, Flinders University

Review: The Boy Who Talked to Dogs, directed by Andy Packer. Slingsby and the State Theatre Company of South Australia for the Adelaide Festival.

Telling the story of a living person truthfully is difficult. Adapting the memoir of a trauma survivor for the stage is even harder. The Boy Who Talked to Dogs rises to these twin challenges with brazen theatricality, thrilling acting, rousing Irish music and shadow puppetry, connecting equally with youth and adult audiences.

Irish playwright Amy Conroy’s text draws from Martin McKenna’s 2014 memoir, the story of a boy bullied both at home and school who finds his family in a band of stray dogs. It is a tale of bravery and resilience and of finding love — but without a happy ending.

The real-life McKenna grew up in Limerick, Ireland and came to Australia in 1988. To many Australians he known as “The Dog Man” from his books, videos and ABC radio interviews.

Channelling Martin is the brilliant Irish actor Bryan Burroughs, who began rehearsals virtually from hotel quarantine. Burroughs’ physical and verbal dexterity brings to life the homeless child, and the adult bearing the scars of an abusive childhood.

Early in the play, a young Martin articulates the feelings that created strife at school and at home:

It’s like my brain won’t listen to my body and my body won’t listen to my brain and they’re screaming at each other all the time.

Such a child would likely be diagnosed with ADHD today; no adult in his world knows how to deal with him.

At school, his sadistic teacher Mr. Keeley verbally and physically abuses him and prevails on his classmates to call him “Mr. Stupid”. At home, his alcoholic father beats him, his siblings regard him as a nuisance, and his mother gives up on him.

At 13, Martin ran away from home and for three years lived with a pack of stray dogs. Wisely, the show sticks largely to these early years, resisting the temptation to tell the story of his adult life in Australia.

Challenging stories for young ears

Presented with ingenuity and skill under the direction of Andy Packer, who has a long history of staging challenging subjects that speak to youth, The Boy Who Talked to Dogs will inspire young people to have conversations about how to find the strength to carry on under seemingly impossible circumstances.

Sharing the stage with Burroughs is Victoria Falconer, welcoming us in as emcee and occasionally goading Martin and drawing out aspects of his character.

In one exchange she prevails on Martin to lighten up, noting this is “supposed to be a family show.” The audience was surveyed, she adds, and they expressed a preference for an “heroic tale of overcoming adversity.”

Martin, lacking sentimentality, states dryly: “that’s not my story.”

The show’s chief strength is presenting this harrowing story with honesty. Martin emerges strong but not unscathed. While he finds strength and resilience among his canine companions, trauma cannot be magically overcome by the power of love.

Ireland in Australia

Reflecting McKenna’s Irish heritage, the storytelling alternates with song (composer Quincy Grant and songwriter Lisa O’Neill) in this highly theatrical presentation. Seated at tables of six, lively banter and music create the feeling of an Irish pub.

Martin’s life is narrated and acted out in contained spaces — his childhood home and a ramshackle hut — designed by Wendy Todd. As the story unfolds, three additional playing areas open up like giant books. Burroughs and Falconer move freely throughout the vast space, weaving in and out of the audience.

Martin’s beloved dogs are represented as shadow puppets or as animated cut-outs, moving and leaping through space. These low-tech creations imbue the dogs with a sweet, gentle quality that reflects the intimacy of communication between humans and our canine companions.

In the program notes for the show, director Packer observes “theatre can be an empathy machine”.

“The power we have as theatre makers,” he adds, is “to amplify Martin’s voice.”

Martin’s story is difficult, even extreme. With stories of abuse and neglect acted out by Burroughs using stylised choreography and punctuated by rhythmic beats from the onstage band, the play is recommended for children over age 12.

But in presenting that story with honesty, charm, inventiveness and a spirit of play, Slingsby once again demonstrates its skill in holding up the most difficult of human experiences for scrutiny and understanding.

The Boy Who Talked to Dogs runs until March 14.

– ref. The Boy Who Talked to Dogs: a story of trauma brought to the stage with honesty and grace – https://theconversation.com/the-boy-who-talked-to-dogs-a-story-of-trauma-brought-to-the-stage-with-honesty-and-grace-156111

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bonnie McBain, Lecturer, University of Newcastle

Renewable energy capacity in Australia is expected to double, or even triple, over the next 20 years. There is one oft-overlooked question in this transition: where will it all be built?

Many renewable energy technologies need extensive land area. Wind turbines, for instance, cannot be located too close together, or they won’t work efficiently.

Some land will be in urban areas. But in the transition to 100% renewable energy, land in the regions will also be needed. This presents big challenges, and opportunities, for the farming sector.

Two important factors lie at the heart of a smooth transition. First, we must recognise that building renewable energy infrastructure in rural landscapes is a complex social undertaking. And second, we must plan to ensure renewables are built where they’ll perform best.

Bringing renewables to the regions

My research has examined how much land future energy generation will require, and the best way to locate a 100% renewable electricity sector in Australia.

A National Farmers Federation paper released last week called for a greater policy focus on renewable energy in regional Australia. It said so-called renewable energy zones should “be at the centre of any regionalisation agenda” and that this would give the technology a competitive advantage.

Hosting renewable energy infrastructure gives farmers a second income stream. This can diversify a farming business and help it withstand periods of financial pressure such as drought. An influx of new infrastructure also boosts regional economies.

But successfully integrating renewables into the agricultural landscape is not without challenges.

A wicked problem

Renewable energy enjoys widespread public support. However its development can lead to social conflicts. For example, opposition to wind wind farms, often concentrated at the local level, can be motivated by concerns about:

• perceived health impacts
• changes to the landscape
• damage to wildlife
• loss of amenity
• reduced property values
• procedural fairness.

A proposed A$2 billion wind energy development on Tasmania’s King Island shows the difficulties involved in winning community support. The project was eventually scrapped in 2014, for economic reasons.

Research showed how despite the proponents TasWind using a “best practice” mode of community engagement, the proposal caused much social conflict. For example, the holding of a vote served to further polarise the community, and locals were concerned that the community consultation process was not impartial.

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

The local context was also significant: the recent closure of an abattoir, and associated job losses, had increased the community’s stress and sense of vulnerability. This led some to frame the new proposal as an attempt by a large corporation to capitalise on the island’s misfortune.

The King Island experience has all the hallmarks of a “wicked problem” – one that is highly complex and hard to resolve. Such problems are common in policy areas such as land-use planning and environmental protection.

Wicked problems typically involve competing perspectives and interests. Often, there is no single, correct solution that works for everyone. For example at King Island, the abattoir closure did not mean all locals considered the wind energy proposal to be the answer.

When seeking to address complex policy problems, such as building renewable energy in regional areas, the best approach involves:

• collaboration between all affected parties, including people beyond the property where the infrastructure will be located
• relationship-building between all those involved, to allow each to see the other’s perspective
• shared decision-making on whether the infrastructure will be built, and where.

Competition for land is intensifying around the world, especially as the population grows. High consumption levels in the West require ever-more land for resources such as food, and land degradation is rife.

To help alleviate this pressure, renewable energy developments may need to co-exist with other land uses, such as cattle grazing around wind turbines. And in many cases, renewable energy should not be built on the most productive cropping land.

Recipe for success

A successful energy transition will require strategic, long-term planning to determine where renewable generation is best located.

Our research indicates that while many places in Australia have renewable energy potential, some are far better than others. Wind energy is usually best located near the coast, solar farms in arid inland regions and rooftop solar power in densely-populated eastern Australia.

Read more: Explainer: what is the electricity transmission system, and why does it need fixing?

Traditionally, Australia’s electricity grid infrastructure, such as high-voltage transmission lines, has been located around coal-fired generators and large population centres. Locating renewables near this infrastructure might make it cheaper to connect to the grid. But those sites may not be particularly windy or sunny.

Australia’s electricity grid should be upgraded and expanded to ensure renewables generators are located where they can perform best. Such strategic planning is just what the National Farmers Federation is asking for. Improved connectivity will also help make electricity supplies more reliable, allowing electricity to be transferred between regions if needed.

Making renewables do-able

The economic and environmental benefits of renewable energy are well known. But without social acceptance by communities hosting the infrastructure, the clean energy transition will be slowed. There is more work to be done to ensure new renewables projects better respond to the needs of regional communities.

And to ensure Australia best fulfils its renewable energy potential, electricity grid technology must be upgraded and expanded. To date, such planning has not featured prominently enough in public conversation and government policy.

If Australia can overcome these two tricky problems, it will be well on the way to ensuring more reliable electricity, the best return on investment and a low-carbon energy sector.

Read more: People need to see the benefits from local renewable energy projects, and that means jobs

– ref. Renewables need land – and lots of it. That poses tricky questions for regional Australia – https://theconversation.com/renewables-need-land-and-lots-of-it-that-poses-tricky-questions-for-regional-australia-156031

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Holly Seale, Associate professor, UNSW

Australia launched its COVID-19 vaccination campaign last week, beginning with frontline workers in hotel quarantine, health care and aged care.

But one critical question is whether the immunisation program will meet the needs of people from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds.

People from CALD backgrounds form a significant and growing share of Australia’s frontline workforce. This is especially true for aged, disability and community care, as well as hotel quarantine.

For example, 37% of Australian frontline care workers were born overseas according to 2016 statistics. Around 28% are from non‐English‐speaking backgrounds.

Others may have low health literacy skills or find it challenging to track down and understand information about COVID vaccines. Lower health literacy is associated with a reluctance to accept vaccines. Recent studies also suggest those who speak a language other than English at home are less willing to get vaccinated than those who speak English only.

It’s critical we deliver a program aligned with the needs of CALD communities to ensure high levels of public confidence in the COVID vaccine rollout.

To achieve this, in February the federal government released a plan to ensure COVID vaccine rollout information and services are accessible for CALD communities.

The plan outlines the need for clear messaging that’s inclusive, tailored and translated. It also emphasises the importance of working with community leaders and multicultural community organisations.

Our new research, published today, supports the actions outlined in the plan but also highlights areas needing more focus.

We interviewed people working in multicultural and refugee agencies, as well as stakeholders in CALD community organisations, to understand barriers around communication and engagement during the pandemic.

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

Information gaps

Our research found gaps in information available during the pandemic. For example, there have been delays in making translations available.

Many people have sought information and news from their countries of origin to fill these gaps. This information may be irrelevant to the Australian situation, or contradictory to local recommendations.

There’s a divide between governments and individuals, with some people feeling like they’ve been left behind. Issues such as an inability to navigate government websites or difficulties accessing support have contributed to this divide.

Translated COVID information hasn’t always been appropriate for people with low literacy or low health literacy levels. This stems from the original source materials in English not being suitable, or translations not being reviewed to make sure the information makes sense.

Newly arrived migrant communities are most in need, as many don’t have established networks to support them. Translated resources have mostly been developed for larger, established CALD groups rather than new and emerging communities. There’s been a lack of tailoring in how messages and information are communicated, and ethnic newspapers and media haven’t been effectively used.

Some people are worried they’ll lose their jobs if they refuse to get vaccinated. The challenge is they don’t have anyone to ask questions of, and are unable to access trustworthy material online.

One issue that was repeatedly raised was burnout experienced by community leaders and other stakeholders. These leaders are asked to repeatedly translate, turn “government speak into community speak”, spread messages and answer questions. They take on this role in addition to their normal responsibilities, with little to no financial support and often with an emotional burden.

The federal government’s plan recognises we need to work with community leaders, but little detail has been provided about whether support, training or resources will be available.

Here’s how things could change

Beyond the need to support community leaders, we also heard from participants about ways to improve communication and vaccine delivery.

Our research team makes a number of recommendations, including the need to:

• identify other community ambassadors and provide training to build their knowledge and confidence

• employ bilingual engagement officers from local communities, to support action being taken by communities themselves. Similar engagement officers have been used to support participation in Australian Bureau of Statistics data collection. Census engagement officers work within communities telling people about the census and ensuring everyone can take part and get the help they need. Internationally, this strategy has been used to promote HIV testing and counselling by encouraging community members to talk about the issues

• invite local CALD communities to initiate and host forums in media of their choice, and to ensure government officials are available to answer questions

• develop a glossary of immunisation terms. This would enable standard terminology relevant to COVID for community organisations, community and faith-based leaders, translators and interpreters

• set up vaccination clinics in locations where communities feel safe. This could include outdoor facilities, sports clubs, community centres, faith-based locations and schools. Ensure there are transport options available

• undertake ongoing surveys to capture how CALD communities feel, think and act in relation to the Australian COVID vaccination program. Tailoring messages will only be effective when informed by the issues that communities are actually concerned about

• and support alliances between immunisation experts and those working in refugee health and multicultural services.

Participants repeatedly used the phrase “community ownership” during the interviews. It’s critical to genuinely engage communities in the development and testing of communication messages, images and videos. It’s also critical we work with different communities to identify the best ways to pass on information.

And when it comes down to it, word of mouth messages and conversations may be the most effective way to get people involved with the COVID vaccine program.

By supporting the development of community ambassadors to address misinformation and concerns about vaccine safety at a local level, the government will have the best chance of ensuring information reaches those who need it.

– ref. How can governments communicate with multicultural Australians about COVID vaccines? It’s not as simple as having a poster in their language – https://theconversation.com/how-can-governments-communicate-with-multicultural-australians-about-covid-vaccines-its-not-as-simple-as-having-a-poster-in-their-language-156097

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Vanessa Berry, Lecturer in Creative Writing, University of Sydney

Review: Playing Beatie Bow, directed by Kip Williams.

Playing Beatie Bow is the coming-of-age story of the teenage Abigail who, from her home in Sydney’s The Rocks, slips back in time to 1873. Here, she is taken in by the Tallisker/Bow family, immigrants from the Orkney Islands who run a confectionery shop. Abigail finds herself cast as the mysterious “Stranger” — the subject of a Tallisker family prophecy — which she must enact before she is able to return to her own time.

In adapting Ruth Park’s 1980 novel for the stage, Kate Mulvany carries forward Park’s detailed, loving attention to the city of Sydney and the lives that play out within it. Her adaptation thrums with heart, humour and a sense of creative legacy.

Ruth Park’s long and distinguished literary career began at the Auckland Star in the 1930s. In 1942, she moved to Sydney, the city which she would go on to capture with such verve and particularity. By the time of her death in 2010, aged 93, she was one of Australia’s most loved and successful authors.

Park’s skill in writing for young adults was to portray the emotional intensity of adolescence alongside a broader sweep of time and history, and this production takes place in almost the very location in which the story is set. The qualities of The Rocks which so captivated Park — the steep topography, the narrow terrace houses, the crooked laneways — still produce a sense of a lingering past.

Many in the audience would have travelled through these streets to arrive at the theatre. There is a clear delight in this proximity, and the opening scenes set in the present day further develop this rapport, referencing the pandemic, distractions of social media, and that inevitable Sydney topic: the excesses of the city’s real estate.

History through present eyes

Names and objects are powerful in Playing Beatie Bow. In Park’s research for the novel she compiled long lists of potential Victorian-era names, deliberating over which would best carry the distinctions of her characters.

Park was rigorous in her historical research, with a particular interest in seeking out the everyday details of nineteenth-century working class life in Sydney. The heavy 19th century garments, chamber pots, ceramic “hot-pig” water bottle and the glass jars of boiled lollies work to as veritable effect on stage as they do in the novel. These details are highlighted in David Fleischer’s spare, dynamic set design.

Mulvany’s inclusion of Aboriginal characters, language and recognition of country is a striking addition to Park’s original story.

In the present day, Abigail (Catherine Văn-Davies) visits her Gadigal neighbours, greets them “worimi”, and knows The Rocks equally as Tallawoladah.

In the 19th century, Abigail continues this connection with the Tallisker’s neighbour with whom she strikes up a friendship. Mulvany converts Park’s characters of the Chinese laundrymen to Johnny Whites (Guy Simon), an Aboriginal laundryman.

Through Whites the trauma and fracture of colonial dispossession for Aboriginal land and people is given voice.

Legacies of women

As Abigail and Beatie (Sofia Nolan) compare observations of each others’ times, Beatie expresses bemusement over the “palm-books” everyone in the future is looking down at and examining with such intensity. What book must it be, Beatie muses, maybe the Gospels?

This is Mulvany, but so absolutely in line with Park’s sensibilities I imagined her laughing along with the audience.

The cast of nine, who play 60 characters between them, revel in their portrayal of these time disjunctions, and in delivering the Tallisker’s Scots vocabulary. Mulvany takes one term in particular, spaewife, as a letimotif in the production.

In Scots, a spaewife is a fortune-teller; a woman possessing a magic enabling communication across time. The Talliskers call it The Gift and it is carried by Granny (Heather Mitchell), the family’s matriarch.

Repeated in speech and song throughout the play, this word takes on an symbolic presence. In a story so much about legacy — particularly the connections and lineages that connect women — spaewife becomes broadly symbolic of women’s power.

This power radiates through the play, in the connections between characters and generations, and in between Park and Mulvany as writers.

There is no better embodiment of this power than in Beatie, played with an electric intensity by Nolan. Her force as a character is her quick tongue and determination to live a life greater than what is prescribed for women of her time.

The character of Beatie Bow was inspired by a girl in a 1899 street photograph from The Rocks, which Park came across in the 1940s. She describes the scene in her autobiography, Fishing in the Styx (1993): how she returned again and again to look at this “sharp-faced” girl who carried a defiant expression. The girl seemed to be speaking to her through time, challenging her not to take her for less than she is.

30 years later, Park wrote Playing Beatie Bow. Now, 40 years on again, through Mulvany’s fierce and fond version for the stage, Beatie’s voice speaks to us with a renewed energy.

Playing Beatie Bow is at Sydney Theatre Company until May 1.

– ref. Playing Beatie Bow is brought to thundering life in a joyous stage production – https://theconversation.com/playing-beatie-bow-is-brought-to-thundering-life-in-a-joyous-stage-production-154647

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian R. Camilleri, Senior Lecturer in Marketing, University of Technology Sydney

You make decisions all the time. Most are small. However, some are really big: they have ramifications for years or even decades. In your final moments, you might well think back on these decisions — and some you may regret.

Part of what makes big decisions so significant is how rare they are. You don’t get an opportunity to learn from your mistakes. If you want to make big decisions you won’t regret, it’s important you learn from others who have been there before.

There is a good deal of existing research into what people regret in their lives. In my current project, I decided to approach the problem from the other end and ask people about their life’s biggest decisions.

What are life’s biggest decisions?

I have spent most of my career studying what you might call small decisions: what product to buy, which portfolio to invest in, and who to hire. But none of this research was very helpful when, a few years ago, I found myself having to make some big life decisions.

To better understand what life’s biggest decisions are, I recruited 657 Americans aged between 20 and 80 years old to tell me about the 10 biggest decisions in their lives so far.

Each decision was classified into one of nine categories and 58 subcategories. At the end of the survey, respondents ranked the 10 decisions from biggest to smallest. You can take the survey yourself here. (If you do, your answers may help develop my research further.)

The following chart shows each of the 58 decision subcategories in terms of how often it was mentioned (along the horizontal axis) and how big the decision was considered in retrospect (along the vertical axis).

In the upper right of the chart we see decisions that are both very significant and very common. Getting married and having a child stand out clearly here.

Other fairly common big life decisions include starting a new job and perusing a degree. Less common, but among the highest ranked life decisions, include ending a life – such as that of an unborn child or a dying parent – and engaging in self-harm.

Of course, the results depend on who you ask. Men in their 70s have different answers than women in their 30s. To explore this data more deeply, I’ve built a tool that allows you to filter these results down to specific types of respondents.

Read more: How to help take control of your brain and make better decisions

What are life’s biggest regrets?

Much can also be learned about how to make good life decisions by asking people what their biggest regrets are. Regret is a negative emotion you feel when reflecting on past decisions and wishing you had done something differently.

In 2012, Australian caregiver Bronnie Ware wrote a book about her experiences in palliative care. There were five regrets that dying people told her about most often:

• I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me
• I wish I hadn’t worked so hard
• I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings
• I wish I’d stayed in touch with my friends
• I wish I had let myself be happier.

This anecdotal evidence has received support from more rigorous academic research. For example, a 2011 study asked a nationally representative sample of 270 Americans to describe one significant life regret. The six most commonly reported regrets involved romance (19.3%), family (16.9%), education (14.0%), career (13.8%), finance (9.9%), and parenting (9.0%).

Although lost loves and unfulfilling relationships were the most common regrets, there was an interesting gender difference. For women, regrets about love (romance/family) were more common than regrets about work (career/education), while the reverse was true for men.

What causes regret?

Several factors increase the chances you will feel regret.

In the long run it is inaction — deciding not to pursue something — that generates more regret. This is particularly true for males, especially when it comes to romantic relationships. If only I had asked her out, we might now be happily married.

Poor decisions produce greater regret when it is harder to justify those decisions in retrospect. I really value my friends and family so why did I leave them all behind to take up that overseas job?

Given that we are social beings, poor decisions in domains relevant to our sense of social belonging — such as romantic and family contexts — are more often regretted. Why did I break up my family by having a fling?

Regrets tend to be strongest for lost opportunities: that is, when undesirable outcomes that could have been prevented in the past can no longer be affected. I could have had a better relationship with my daughter if I had been there more often when she was growing up.

The most enduring regrets in life result from decisions that move you further from the ideal person that you want to be. I wanted to be a role model but I couldn’t put the wine bottle down.

Making big life decisions without regrets

These findings provide valuable lessons for those with big life decisions ahead, which is nearly everyone. You’re likely to have to keep making big decisions over the whole course of your life.

The most important decisions in life relate to family and friends. Spend the time getting these decisions right and then don’t let other distractions — particularly those at work — undermine these relationships.

Seize opportunities. You can apologise or change course later but you can’t time travel. Your education and experience can never be lost.

Read more: Running the risk: why experience matters when making decisions

Avoid making decisions that violate your personal values and move you away from your aspirational self. If you have good justifications for a decision now, no matter what happens, you’ll at least not regret it later.

I continue to ask people to tell me about their biggest life decisions. It’s a great way to learn about someone. Once I have collected enough stories, I hope to write a book so that we can all learn from the collective wisdom of those who have been there before.

– ref. I asked hundreds of people about their biggest life decisions. Here’s what I learned – https://theconversation.com/i-asked-hundreds-of-people-about-their-biggest-life-decisions-heres-what-i-learned-154885

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Greg Barns, Sessional Lecturer in Law, RMIT University

Australian prisoners are regularly subjected to drug and alcohol testing and strip searches.

Each state and territory has rules that allow for drug testing and strip searching in prisons, driven by a desire to maintain security. But they can be arbitrarily applied and this has implications for the human rights of prisoners.

However, high-profile Victorian prisoner Craig Minogue recently had a significant legal win in the Victorian Supreme Court.

Justice Melinda Richards found human rights considerations had not been taken into account when prison officials established rules allowing for the strip searching of prisoners when being drug tested. This will now place some limits around prison officials’ treatment of prisoners.

However, Richards did state strip searching prisoners when they have contact visits is permitted in the context of a high security prison.

Who is Craig Minogue?

Minogue is serving a life sentence at Barwon Prison for his role in the 1986 Russell Street bombing, which killed Constable Angela Taylor, the first policewoman in Australia killed on duty, and injured 21 other people.

This is not the first time Minogue has sought to challenge the conditions of imprisonment (he did a PhD in prison and bills himself as “the most prominent jailhouse lawyer” in Melbourne). But it is his most successful litigation yet.

What was this challenge about?

Minogue challenged three occasions where he had to have a random alcohol and drug test and be strip searched.

The first two instances were in September 2019 and February 2020, when Minogue was required to provide a urine sample after being strip searched. When Minogue challenged prison authorities, he was told it was a “random general test”, to which 5% prisoners are required to submit each month.

The third instance was also in February 2020, before Minogue was visited by his lawyer. He was told to submit to a strip search, which is standard procedure when prisoners receive outside visitors. He refused because he objected to the blanket nature of the policy.

The strip searching procedure is humiliating and invasive of dignity and privacy. In Victoria, the prisoner is forced take off all their clothes, and their mouth, ears, arms are inspected. The genital area is searched, and the prisoner is forced to bend over and part their buttock cheeks.

Read more: No prospect of release: Kevin Crump and the human rights implications of life imprisonment

If prisoners refuse to provide a urine sample, according to the Victorian procedures tendered in the Minogue case, they are “secured in a sterile, secure area” for three hours. The idea is that the prisoner might decide to comply in order to be released from that area.

Minogue argued his human rights under Victoria’s Charter of Human Rights were not properly considered by prison authorities, when they made the rules and directions allowing for random drug and alcohol testing and strip searching.

In particular, he argued the right to privacy and the right to be treated with dignity while deprived of liberty were not mentioned in the Corrections Victoria documents, which describe the regime for strip searching and drug and alcohol testing.

What did the judge say?

Richards found the corrections officials who had made the rules and guidelines about drug and alcohol testing had not taken into account relevant human rights.

There was no examination of the nature and extent of the ‘degrading’ impact of urine testing, and no evaluation of the effectiveness of the random testing regime. Nor was there any consideration of less restrictive means available […]

She added the testing process “is inherently demeaning”.

The arbitrary nature of drug testing was also criticised by Richards, who noted Minogue had no history of drug use. In more than 30 years in prison, he had never returned a positive result.

Richards also observed the Barwon prison authorities had not properly considered the “human rights impacts of strip searching”, and that the rule that every prisoner must be strip searched before a random drug and alcohol test “was not the result of a thorough and well-reasoned human rights analysis”.

Reasonable grounds for some strip searches

However, when it comes to strip searching prisoners before contact visits (as opposed to “box visits” where there is glass separating the prisoner from the visitors), Richards found that in the case of a maximum-security prison like Barwon, there are reasonable grounds to

strip search all prisoners … before and after any contact visit, whether personal or professional.

This is because there is a much higher potential for violence than in the general community, or in lower security prisons and contraband can be brought in during contact visits.

In other words, human rights such as the right to privacy and the right to be treated with dignity when deprived of liberty are balanced against the security rating of the prison.

What does this mean?

Minogue’s case is important because it represents a rare win for prisoners in challenging corrections regimes.

Generally speaking, the courts see prison rules as matters for governments to change. But Minogue’s case shows that human rights principles can be applied to prison practices and rules.

Whether the Victorian government will appeal the decision is not yet known and there has been no public comment from corrections officials.

Read more: Over 1,000 Australians with cognitive disability are detained indefinitely each year. This shameful practice needs to stop

In the meantime, it creates new opportunities for them to challenge whether corrections authorities are adequately considering domestic and international human rights laws in the running of their prisons.

Certainly, the use of strip searching and administration of drug and alcohol testing regimes are now vulnerable to similar challenges.

Perhaps the most important feature of Richards’ decision, however, is it reminds corrections authorities that human rights considerations must always be taken into account.

Discipline and behaviour management regimes need to make sure human rights are given more than just lip service.

– ref. A rare and significant win for prisoners — new limits around drug tests and strip searches – https://theconversation.com/a-rare-and-significant-win-for-prisoners-new-limits-around-drug-tests-and-strip-searches-155737

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ananish Chaudhuri, Professor of Behavioural and Experimental Economics, University of Auckland

When National MP Simon Bridges called Police Commissioner Andrew Coster a “wokester” recently, his intention was apparently to suggest the police are too soft on crime.

Debating the concept of “policing by consent” during a recent select committee hearing, Bridges asked Coster: “Do the police still arrest people in this country?”

One inference to be drawn from Bridges’s statements is that crime in New Zealand is increasing, possibly due to lenient policing.

To test that, we collected publicly available crime data from New Zealand Police. To measure any recent patterns we looked at data for the past six years, 2015 to 2020.

The first category we looked at is what the police call “victimisation”. This includes the total number of cases involving:

• acts intended to cause injury
• sexual assault and related offences
• abduction, harassment etc.
• robbery, extortion and related offenses
• burglary, breaking and entering and unlawful entry
• theft and related offences.

Out of the six categories, it is clear most crimes involve injury, burglary and theft. The numbers for the other three crimes are negligible.

But the pattern is clear — there is no significant increase in crime across the six years, and there is no significant increase in any of the individual components.

A potential concern with the broad victimisation measure is that it may not fully capture the specific nature of crimes. For example, it is possible some crime is concentrated in certain locations and some victims are falling prey multiple times.

Read more: Policing by consent is not ‘woke’ — it is fundamental to a democratic society

But if we look at the number of unique victims, we are now only counting each victim once, irrespective of how many times they were victimised during the 12 months in question.

According to the police, this data set can be used to understand repeat victimisation patterns.

Once again the pattern is clear — there is no evidence of any significant increase in the number of unique victims over the past six years.

Victims, of course, are only one part of the story. We can also look at the number of unique offenders.

Here we see a steady decline in the number of offenders. Again, one could look at multiple ways of measuring this, but the evidence presented above does not suggest a massive increase in offending.

Read more: The Christchurch commission’s call to improve social cohesion is its hardest — and most important — recommendation

In the next two figures we drill down a little further and look at two separate and specific types of crimes.

Figure 4 looks at illicit drug offences. This is important because the general data on victimisation does not include so-called victimless crimes (such as drug possession).

Here, there is evidence of an increase, albeit a modest one: roughly 13%, from 8,772 in 2015 to 9,924 in 2020. It is possible this is due to either increased drug offences or to increased prosecutions.

Finally, in Figure 5 we look at a category that tends to involve small numbers but receives great attention in political debates: prohibited and regulated weapons and explosives offences.

Again we see a modest increase of about 14%, from 3,747 in 2015 to 4,281 in 2020.

Objectively, it seems hard to make the case that crime in New Zealand has increased dramatically over the past six years. In fact, some categories of crime may have actually declined.

But even if crime levels are relatively static, are they still too high?

If we look at the first victimisation measure only, there were a total of 239,519 cases in 2020 from a population of five million. That is approximately five out of every 100 people.

That may not appear to be a very high number, but some of these crimes will be more serious than others. The ideal trend, of course, would be declining numbers to the point of no measurable crime at all.

Unlikely, perhaps, but something Simon Bridges and Andrew Coster might agree on, at least.

– ref. Despite claims NZ’s policing is too ‘woke’, crime rates are largely static — and even declining – https://theconversation.com/despite-claims-nzs-policing-is-too-woke-crime-rates-are-largely-static-and-even-declining-156103

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katie Attwell, Senior Lecturer, University of Western Australia

As Australia’s COVID-19 vaccine roll-out commences, all eyes are on the government’s communication strategy — particularly with some studies finding vaccine hesitancy is on the rise in the country.

Our new study arrives at an opportune time. We analysed the public communication strategies that two countries — Australia and France — previously used to promote childhood immunisation. We sought to gauge what they did right and where they fell short.

Communication campaigns are one of several tools governments can use to encourage vaccine uptake. Governments can also provide free and accessible vaccines to the public, provide incentives for health professionals to advocate for vaccines, or impose consequences for people who do not vaccinate.

Read more: Why telling stories could be a more powerful way of convincing some people to take a COVID vaccine than just the facts

In recent years, both Australia and France introduced new measures to induce more children to get vaccinated. Australia introduced its “No Jab, No Pay” policy in 2016, removing financial entitlements for families who had previously been able to register an objection to vaccinating.

France added eight new vaccines to the three that were already mandatory for schools and childcare in 2017.

With these new vaccine policies, both countries finally found the political will to invest in substantial promotion campaigns to address vaccine hesitancy and concerns.

How did the Australian and French campaigns compare?

Australia’s “Get the Facts” campaign has run for four years. The centrepiece is a regularly updated website, but it also includes brochures and TV advertisements.

France’s “Vaccine Info Service” is more static and consists almost entirely of a website, although the country’s ministry of health also paid influencers to attend a special expert presentation on vaccines, hoping they would extol the benefits of vaccination to their followers.

The two countries’ websites could not be more different.

Despite its name, Australia’s “Get the Facts” campaign has been criticised for not including enough facts. It focuses on immunisation more generally, rather than explaining the benefits of vaccinating for specific diseases. Parents who have more questions are referred to a separate resource. This feels like a “less is more” approach to public communication.

The site also relies heavily on emotion, featuring powerful testimonies from bereaved parents who lost their children to preventable diseases.

Through a process we call “manufacturing consent”, the site encourages support for Australia’s mandatory childhood vaccination policy by focusing on the societal benefits of herd immunity. Immunisation is so important, it implies, we should all have to do it.

France’s “Vaccine Info Service” has the opposite problem to Australia’s campaign: too many facts!

The site contains everything a person could possibly want to know about vaccines, ingredients, side effects and the science behind immunisations. It also focuses heavily on individual diseases and the vaccines that prevent them. The tone is very scientific, making it inaccessible to a broad segment of the population.

The campaign also seeks to “manufacture consent” for France’s vaccine mandates, but follows a very different path from Australia. It explains the exhaustive bureaucratic processes the government followed to develop the policy, including a citizen consultation.

The information about the decision-making behind the policy is laudable. However, the cost is accessibility.

Different approaches toward ethnic communities

When we compared the two communication approaches, we also found distinct cultural differences.

In France, it is frowned upon to talk about ethnicity. Epidemiologists there had trouble tracking which demographic groups were disproportionately affected by COVID because the government takes a “colour-blind” approach to this kind of data collection.

Such data is also lacking about minorities’ vaccination beliefs and practices. Accordingly, the French website speaks about the benefits of vaccines to everybody — and nobody in particular.

In Australia, scholars and bureaucrats understand that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders and other cultural minorities may face barriers to immunisation.

The “Get the Facts” video features testimonials by Aboriginal sportspeople and parents and includes imagery of a multicultural Australia. Materials are also available in a range of languages.

How did ‘Get the Facts’ inform Australia’s current COVID campaign?

Each phase of Australia’s “Get The Facts” campaign has been evaluated by external companies. The government has applied lessons from these evaluations to subsequent phases of the campaign, including new testimonials about other deadly diseases and efforts to reach different cultural groups.

It will be interesting to see how these lessons are applied to the current communication strategies for the COVID vaccine roll-out.

Like “Get the Facts”, the government’s COVID communications campaign has been developed by external marketing and public relations agencies.

So far, the television advertising appears to lack cultural diversity. Such lack of diversity has been criticised in online immunisation information for refugees and migrant communities and more general COVID messaging in the past.

Fact sheets speak to particular groups, such as people with disabilities and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. These follow the same format we found in the “Get the Facts” campaign — simple language and lots of “white space”. This is not surprising, as the Commonwealth follows a specific style guide for all public communications.

There are no resources comprehensively addressing vaccine hesitancy, but there is information about the ingredients in vaccines, side effects and monitoring. There is also specific information regarding COVID vaccines for pregnant women or those who are breastfeeding.

Read more: The government is spending almost A$24m to convince us to accept a COVID vaccine. But will its new campaign actually work?

How much information is enough? Too much?

Making comparisons between “Get the Facts” and the new COVID communication campaign is somewhat difficult due to the different environments in which the vaccine policies have been introduced.

Australia’s childhood vaccination rates were already high before the “No Jab, No Pay” policy and “Get the Facts” campaign. By comparison, studies show a nontrivial minority of Australians are hesitant about the new COVID vaccines.

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

Australians may need more facts, persuasion or encouragement to get a COVID vaccine — or simply to see others flourishing after vaccination. Our qualitative research project seeks to better understand how West Australians, in particular, feel about the vaccines and what kind of communication they need from governments to feel secure about them.

One of the biggest remaining questions from our research is how much information the public needs in order to trust the system that provides vaccines. And how much is too much?

Australia’s previous vaccine communication strategies suggest that excess information is not likely to be a risk. However, more detailed and targeted communications and some French-style transparency may help our diverse population choose a COVID vaccine over the alternative of non-vaccination.

– ref. Just the facts, or more detail? To battle vaccine hesitancy, the messaging has to be just right – https://theconversation.com/just-the-facts-or-more-detail-to-battle-vaccine-hesitancy-the-messaging-has-to-be-just-right-155953

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

As of February 25, a total of 221.7 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine had been administered around the world. Well over one-third of these doses were in just two countries — the United States and the United Kingdom.

A study in mid-November analysed commitments to buy 7.48 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines. Just over half will go to the 14% of the world’s population who live in high-income countries.

It’s estimated most high-income countries will achieve widespread vaccination coverage by the end of 2021. Most middle-income countries will not achieve this until mid- to late 2022, while the world’s poorest countries, including almost every country in Africa and some in our own Asia-Pacific region, will have to wait until 2023.

This inequality is clearly a moral outrage. But it is also a surefire way to perpetuate the pandemic’s devastating health, social and economic impacts on the whole world.

Why everyone benefits from vaccine equity

There are many reasons why rich countries should do all they can to ensure global vaccine equity — in which COVID-19 vaccines are distributed fairly to different populations, including people of different means and backgrounds.

First, there is the moral argument. Given the vaccines already exist, every day that goes on results in deaths we could have prevented.

Second, the longer it takes to eradicate the virus globally, the more it will mutate, possibly reducing the effectiveness of the vaccines. That would affect us all.

Third, as long as the virus is here, trade flows and global supply chains will be severely disrupted. Avoiding this is also in our own interests if we want to see foreign tourists and students return to our shores.

Read more: Why ‘vaccine nationalism’ could doom plan for global access to a COVID-19 vaccine

A recent study found high-income countries may bear 13-49% of global losses — which could be up to US$9 trillion — arising from an inequitable distribution of vaccines in 2021.

Finally, a prolonged pandemic might result in even more poverty, destabilising the already fragile livelihoods of millions of poor people in low- and middle-income countries. This, in turn, could result in conflict, undermining global political stability, which would affect us all.

Here are three ways to ensure global vaccine equity.

1. The COVAX facility — but there are issues

A number of large middle-income countries have begun to roll out their vaccination programs, including India, Brazil, Mexico, Chile, Egypt, South Africa and Indonesia. Only a few African countries have begun their vaccination programs, of which just one, Zimbabwe, is a low-income country.

Read more: How Chile became an unlikely winner in the COVID-19 vaccine race

Some middle-income countries and most low-income countries will be relying on the World Health Organization (WHO)-led COVAX facility, to which Australia contributes funding. This aims to administer two billion doses of vaccine, starting with health-care workers, in poorer countries by the end of 2021.

However, COVAX doses will cover only up to 20% of the population of each country. And COVAX supplies may be slow to arrive, especially if delays in the production and delivery to richer countries push back delivery dates for poorer ones.

For instance, Ghana, the first of 92 countries to receive vaccines through this initiative, only received its 600,000 doses last week.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the WHO, has said that rich countries’ approaches to manufacturers to secure more vaccine doses are undermining COVAX’s effort to achieve its goal of purchasing two billion doses of vaccines to administer during 2021.

2. Countries can produce their own vaccines

Low- and middle-income countries can also produce COVID-19 vaccines themselves, an option taken by nations including India, Thailand, Vietnam and Cuba.

The Serum Institute of India is one of the world’s largest manufacturers of vaccines and has a licence to produce the AstraZeneca vaccine, which the WHO has approved for emergency use.

The company recently announced it would manufacture vaccines for India before doses earmarked for the rest of the world, a move that may delay vaccine shipments to dozens of countries and hamper the firm’s plans to share its vaccine supply. India is also developing its own vaccine, from Bharat Biotech, which has been approved in India.

Cuba has four vaccines under development. The most promising in early trials is Soberana 2, which will start phase three clinical trials shortly. If successful, Cuba’s Finlay Institute plans to produce up to 100 million doses by the end of 2021.

In Thailand, two vaccines are under development by Chulalongkorn and Mahidol universities. Both are about to start human trials.

In Vietnam, Nanogen Pharmaceutical has received government go-ahead to start clinical trials of its vaccine Nanocovax. The company can produce two million doses a year but plans to increase that to 30 million doses in the next six months.

3. Rich countries can donate spare vaccines

Rich countries can donate vaccines to poorer countries. France’s President Emmanuel Macron said richer countries should send up to 5% of their current vaccine supplies to poorer nations. There is little evidence other countries have followed France’s lead.

However, Russia and China have provided their own vaccines – Sputnik V and Sinopharm, respectively – to a number of low-income countries in Africa, the Middle East and Latin America.

Read more: Vaccine diplomacy: how some countries are using COVID to enhance their soft power

What could Australia do?

Australia has agreements to purchase enough vaccines (Pfizer, AstraZeneca and Novavax) to inoculate its population many times over.

In addition to its pledge to COVAX, Australia could contribute to vaccine equity in our region in two ways.

First, once CSL ramps up domestic production of the AstraZeneca vaccine, we could provide a portion of doses to our close neighbours, including Pacific nations and Indonesia.

Once the Therapeutic Goods Administration approves the Novavax vaccine, which is likely to occur by the middle of the year, we could share our order of 51 million doses with poor countries in the Asia-Pacific region.

These doses could be provided either free or at heavily discounted prices. Deliveries should be made directly from the manufacturer rather than sending “leftovers” from Australia, which could lead to expired vaccines ending up in neighbouring countries.

Read more: COVID vaccines: rich countries have bought more than they need – here’s how they could be redistributed

In a nutshell

This is no time for short-sighted vaccine nationalism. Encouragingly, Australia has signalled its intention to support the region.

But the projected two-year delay between vaccinating the world’s rich and the poor is both morally unacceptable and the biggest impediment to the world’s health and economic recovery.

– ref. 3 ways to vaccinate the world and make sure everyone benefits, rich and poor – https://theconversation.com/3-ways-to-vaccinate-the-world-and-make-sure-everyone-benefits-rich-and-poor-155943

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

Picture this: you’re in your backyard gardening when you get that strange, ominous feeling of being watched. You find a grey oval-shaped ball about the size of a thumb, filled with bones and fur — a pellet, or “owl vomit”.

You look up and see the bright “surprised” eyes of a powerful owl staring back at you, with half a possum in its talons.

This may be becoming a familiar story for many Australians. We strapped tracking devices to 20 powerful owls in Melbourne for our new research, and learned these apex predators are increasingly choosing to sleep in urban areas, from backyard trees to city parks.

These respite areas are critical for species to survive in challenging urban environments because, just like for humans, rest is an essential behaviour to conserve energy for the day (or night) ahead.

Our research highlights the importance of trees on both public and private land for wild animals. Without an understanding of where urban wildlife rests, we risk damaging these urban habitats with encroaching development.

One owl, one year, 300 possums

Powerful owls are Australia’s largest, measuring 65 centimetres from head to tail and weighing a hefty 1.6 kilograms. They’re found in Australia’s eastern states, except for Tasmania.

These owls have traditionally been thought to live only in large old-growth forested areas. However, Victoria has lost over 65% of forest cover since European settlement, and because of this habitat loss, the owls are listed as threatened in Victoria.

Their remaining habitat is extremely fragmented. This means we’re finding owls in interesting places — from dry, open woodland to our major east coast cities. This is likely due to the high numbers of prey, such as possums, that thrive alongside exotic garden trees and house roofs.

Read more: Don’t disturb the cockatoos on your lawn, they’re probably doing all your weeding for free

Powerful owls usually eat one possum per night, or 250-300 possums per year — mostly common ringtail and brushtail possums in Melbourne. They’re often seen holding prey at their roosting spots, where they’ll finish eating in the evening for breakfast.

This has ecosystem-wide benefits, as powerful owls can help keep overabundant possums in check. Too many possums can strip away vegetation, causing it to die back, which stops other wildlife from nesting or finding shelter.

Tracking their nocturnal haunts

But powerful owls are extremely elusive. With low populations, locating owls and researching their requirements is very difficult.

So, to help narrow down the general areas where powerful owls live in Melbourne, we used species distribution models and sought help from land management agencies and citizen scientists.

Over five years, we deployed GPS devices on 20 Melburnian owls to find how they use urban environments. These devices automatically record where the owls move at night and rest during the day.

We learned they fly, on average, 4.4 kilometers per night through golf courses, farms, reserves and backyards looking for dinner and defending their territory. One owl along the Mornington Peninsula travelled 47 km over two nights (possibly in search of a mate). Another urban owl called several golf courses in the Melbourne suburb of Alphington home.

Choosing where to sleep

After their nightly adventures, the owls usually return to a number of regular roosting (resting) spots, sometimes on the exact same branch. The powerful owl chooses roosts that protect them against being mobbed by aggressive daytime birds, such as the noisy miner and pied currawong.

We found the owls used 32 different tree species to roost in: 23 were native, and nine were exotic, including pine and willow trees. This shows powerful owls can adapt to use a range of species to fit their roosting requirements, such as thick foliage to hide in during the day.

Owls will generally roost in damp, dark areas during summer, and in open roosts in full or dappled sunlight during winter to help regulate their body temperature.

Read more: Urban owls are losing their homes. So we’re 3D printing them new ones

Our research also shows rivers in urban environments are just as important as trees for roosting habitat.

Rivers are naturally home to a diverse range of wildlife. Using trees near rivers to rest in may be a strategic decision to reduce time and energy when travelling at night to find other resources, such as prey, mates and nests.

Rivers that constantly flow, such as the Yarra River, are a particular favourite for the owls.

The urban roost risk

These resting habitats, however, are under constant pressure by urban expansion and agriculture. Suitable roosting habitat is either removed, or degraded in quality and converted to housing, roads, grass cover or bare soil.

We found potentially suitable roosting habitat in Melbourne is extremely fragmented, covering just 10% of the landscape because owls are very selective about where they sleep.

Although there might be the odd suitable patch (or tree) to roost in urban environments, what’s often lacking is natural connectivity between patches. While owls are nocturnal, they still need places to rest in the night before they settle down in another spot to sleep for the day.

Supplementing habitat with more trees on private property and enhancing the quality of habitat along river systems may encourage owls to roost in other areas of Melbourne.

Powerful owls don’t discriminate between private land and reserves for roosting. So conserving and enhancing resting habitats on public and private land will enable urban wildlife to persist alongside expanding and intensifying urbanisation.

So what can you do to help?

If you want powerful owls to roost in your backyard, visit your local indigenous nursery and ask about trees local to your area.

Several favourite roost trees in Melbourne include many Eucalyptus species and wattles. If you don’t have the space for a large tree, they will also roost in the shorter, dense Kunzea and swamp paperbark (Melaleuca ericifolia).

Planting them will provide additional habitat and, if you are lucky, your neighbourhood owls may even decide to settle in for the day and have a snooze.

Read more: Hard to spot, but worth looking out for: 8 surprising tawny frogmouth facts

– ref. Look up! A powerful owl could be sleeping in your backyard after a night surveying kilometres of territory – https://theconversation.com/look-up-a-powerful-owl-could-be-sleeping-in-your-backyard-after-a-night-surveying-kilometres-of-territory-155479

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Abu Barkat ullah, Associate Professor of Cyber Security, University of Canberra

Cyber criminals are very persistent and the daily numbers of cyber attacks show no sign of decreasing. The latest reported attack on an Australian university has disrupted the start of the semester at RMIT. The suspected phishing attack – luring the recipient of an email or other communication into inadvertently giving the attacker access to the IT system – highlights the need for cyber hygiene training for all staff.

The flexible working practices and roll-out of a remote workforce culture during the COVID-19 pandemic have been a challenge for cyber security at even the most prepared organisations. The spike in cyber attacks on organisations that have had to adapt quickly to the new normal just adds to the uncertainty and fears created by the pandemic.

Read more: ‘Click for urgent coronavirus update’: how working from home may be exposing us to cybercrime

Academics have access to a vast range of sensitive information. It includes student profiles, academic records, research data and other intellectual property. If computer systems or even authentication data such as login details are compromised, it’s just a matter of time before cyber criminals exploit all that private information in several ways.

Universities put themselves at risk

Despite this threat, almost half of Australia’s top 20 institutions in the QS World University Rankings 2020 appear to have had no protection in place against hackers trying to trick people to take over their computer systems. An analysis by cyber security firm Proofpoint found only two universities were actively blocking fraudulent emails from reaching students, alumni and faculty staff.

Cyber attacks can jeopardise the reputation of students and academics as well the institution itself. In addition to individual hackers, state-based actors are out to win the intellectual property war.

The latest Notifiable Data Breaches Report from the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) shows data breaches resulting from human error accounted for 38% of notifications in the second half of 2020. That’s 18% more than in the past. Education is one of the top five sectors for data breaches.

This highlights how important it is that universities provide cyber safety training for all academics working in areas other than cyber security, IT or the like.

Read more: 19 years of personal data was stolen from ANU. It could show up on the dark web

3 ways staff and students can protect themselves

1. Use multi-factor authentication

Universities are making greater use than ever before of learning management platforms such as BlackBoard, Canvas, Moodle and so on to deliver online content. During their design, cyber security was not high on the agenda. However, most learning management systems (LMS) have the option of multi-factor authentication (MFA).

This typically requires a combination pin and secret questions. These days face detection and fingerprints are also used. For example, Canvas offers two options: SMS (text) or an authenticator app to support MFA.

This adds an extra layer of security. But, in reality, few students or academics use this option consistently.

This improves cyber criminals’ chances of penetrating their accounts with simple brute-force approaches, such as logically guessing credentials, or using social engineering, such as phishing, spear phishing and baiting, to induce someone to “open the door” to an attacker. Readily available hacking tools and facilities (e.g. nmap, Netsparker etc) make their job even easier.

2. Use a VPN

Working from home is the new normal now. Using home wi-fi to access university accounts creates opportunity for the cyber criminals.

Few people change their home router password from the factory default password. This means it’s easier to hack into home wi-fi networks.

To avoid such incidents, it is always better to use virtual private networks (VPN). The VPN uses “virtual” secured connections routed through the internet from the organisation’s private network or a third-party VPN service to the remote site or person.

Most universities, if not all, have the option of using a VPN. It’s a highly recommended safeguard against cyber attacks.

3. Get training in cyber hygiene

Academics deal with such sensitive and, for the criminal, exquisite data and resources that they should complete courses (micro-credentials) on cyber-safe teaching or cyber hygiene. This should be required to be compliant for teaching in the digital era.

Yet, currently, there are no such mandatory short courses on cyber hygiene for academic staff.

Read more: Universities are a juicy prize for cyber criminals. Here are 5 ways to improve their defences

Costs of security breaches can be huge

The sensitive credentials of students and staff that hackers can obtain include names, residential addresses, dates of birth, phone numbers, email addresses, emergency contact details, tax file numbers, banking details and other payroll information. Hackers can use any combination of these details to launch successful social engineering attacks that manipulate the victims. And it’s not only the initial victims; cyber criminals also target victims’ friends and families.

If learning management systems are compromised, that can lead to multiple worst-case scenarios. One example is tampering with grades recorded on the LMS. Cyber criminals are offering such services on the dark web and there are plenty of websites selling assignments.

Read more: How Australian universities can get better at cyber security

Neglecting the cyber security of online platforms used by hundreds of thousands of students and academics across Australia presents an open invitation to cyber criminals. Cyber criminals find the lack of concern for cyber security in the education sector highly alluring.

And hackers can make a lot of money from successful ransomware attacks on students’ and academics’ computers.

Academic staff might feel they have no option but to pay the ransom to avoid all the legal and privacy-related issues. Students will do anything to regain access to their computer where they probably have stored countless hours of work.

To avoid being put in this position, it is essential for academics and students to complete courses in cyber hygiene. Such courses and regular compliance checks should be mandatory. It is better to be safe than sorry!

– ref. RMIT attack underlines need to train all uni staff in cyber safety – https://theconversation.com/rmit-attack-underlines-need-to-train-all-uni-staff-in-cyber-safety-151845

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Saul Karnovsky, Lecturer & Bachelor of Education (Secondary) Course Coordinator, Curtin University

Australian universities enrol thousands of people to become teachers. Some who choose to study education are motivated by a desire to make a difference to the lives of young people, while others are looking for job security and intellectual fulfilment.

A course in education encompasses a broad range of cognitive and technical skills aligned to professional teacher standards. Yet, what is largely missing from a teaching degree is what to do with emotions as a teacher.

Despite all the theory, training and practical experience, research shows teachers’ professional lives can be highly demanding, pressured, stressful and at times, emotionally exhausting.

In doctoral research, I followed pre-service teachers throughout their course. I found there exists an invisible rule book that defines what teachers can and cannot do with their emotions.

Emotional labour is hard work

Our teachers recently started the school year. Many are likely facing a range of emotional challenges including working with difficult students and communities, managing increasing administrative control over their work and standardisation reforms. All these can result in substantial mental health issues.

One Australian study found increasing numbers of teachers suffer from persistent anxiety and depression. Up to 50% burn out or simply leave in the first five years of their career.

Early studies are showing the COVID-19 lockdowns of 2020 are further exacerbating the stresses facing Australian teachers.

Read more: ‘Exhausted beyond measure’: what teachers are saying about COVID-19 and the disruption to education

Because teaching is emotionally demanding, teachers experience what is known as “emotional labour”. This is when teachers have to manage, suppress or feign their emotions as part of the work. Like other forms of labour, doing so can become exhausting.

Understanding these facts is a fundamental part of learning to become a teacher. I’ve come to know this through years of researching teacher emotions, specifically focused on those learning to teach.

Putting on a mask

I spoke with and collected questionnaires from almost one hundred education students in a large Western Australian university. I wanted to find out how someone who wants to become a teacher learnt what they should or should not be doing with their emotions in secondary schools.

I found pre-service teachers learnt about the rules for emotional behaviour from expectations and assumptions about teacher’s work, which was confirmed when they began training in school placements.

From interviews, focus groups, dairy entries and questionnaires, I have summarised some of the unwritten rules these teaching students spoke of:

Don’t ever cry in front of students, because if you do, they will see you as weak and eat you alive.

Don’t lose your temper, shout or get angry, because if you do, students will lose respect for you.

Don’t show your emotional vulnerability, especially not to other teachers, because if you do, they might think you are not right for the job.

Many pre-service teachers explained they worked at “hiding” or “suppressing” their vulnerable emotions from students and other teachers.

Some said they put on a “mask”, “a brave face” or “façade” to show they were “professional” and could “control” their emotions.

One participant experienced “intense frustration” during school placement in trying to manage and engage a group of behaviourally difficult students, which led to her feeling “emotionally overwhelmed”.

She hid these emotions from her supervising teacher, telling me she did not want to “appear weak”. So she held back her tears because she would “hate” being the “little woman that cries at work, who gets upset”.

This shows there exists a demand for teachers to behave in ways they believe to be acceptable. All these pre-service teachers have learnt to keep a hold of their “inappropriate” emotions in front of other teachers or risk being perceived as incompetent and unprofessional.

Let’s talk about it

Navigating the emotional rules of learning to teach is a significant aspect of becoming a teacher, yet it goes largely unrecognised in an initial teacher education course.

Such labour in teaching can have personal costs and lead to emotional exhaustion, depression and anxiety.

Read more: Teachers are more depressed and anxious than the average Australian

If we are to ensure thousands of newly enrolled teachers are to thrive in their courses and careers, we must make the invisible emotional rules of the profession seen and heard.

I believe if pre-service teachers can come together with teacher educators to explore these emotional rules, they could build resilience to confront the many emotional challenges of modern teaching.

– ref. Teachers are expected to put on a brave face and ignore their emotions. We need to talk about it – https://theconversation.com/teachers-are-expected-to-put-on-a-brave-face-and-ignore-their-emotions-we-need-to-talk-about-it-153642

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Catherine Speck, Professorial Fellow (Honorary), The University of Melbourne

Review: Clarice Beckett — The Present Moment, Art Gallery of South Australia

Featuring the artist’s luscious and distinctive soft focus, the Art Gallery of South Australia’s newly opened Clarice Beckett exhibition, curated by Tracey Lock, presents her paintings as a sensorium — with colour, music and video to enhance the experience.

Each room in the gallery’s exhibition space is dedicated to her paintings of specific times of the day, from sunrise, to early morning, then midday and sunset, concluding with the nocturnes. She was fascinated with temporal change. The exhibition is very much an experiential journey. Viewers enter through an elliptical portal to an immersive rounded space filled with magnified projections of her paintings, and music from Simone Slattery’s specially commissioned soundscape.

Beckett was musical too. The transcendence to another realm has begun. The mood changes with each room in the exhibition.

A sad loss but precious works remain

The poignant Clarice Beckett story is known by many. She died from pneumonia in 1935 at 48 years of age, and left behind a large cache of work. It was stored for a number of years in an open-side shed in rural Victoria, only to be discovered in the late 1960s, in a poor state of repair, by art historian Rosalind Hollinrake. She salvaged a mere 369 paintings — 1,600 were beyond repair.

Hollinrake guided the artist’s rediscovery at a time when numerous women artists were reinserted into the canon. The impetus for this exhibition is the generous donation by Alastair Hunter of a large collection of Beckett’s work previously held by Hollinrake.

Beckett lived in Beaumaris from 1919 with her ageing parents, and she was a familiar figure painting en plein air, meaning: in the open air.

The artist would walk miles to nearby beaches or districts to paint, fascinated with observing and portraying the changing mood and movement of the day. She was known to rise at 4am and walk to a nearby beach to watch the dawn rise as portrayed in Silent approach (circa 1924), in which shapes are just beginning to emerge with the coming morning light. Minimal figuration leaves painterly space for contemplation of a higher realm.

Read more: How our art museums finally opened their eyes to Australian women artists

Mysticism meets science

Theosophy — a belief in divine wisdom via mysticism — was a major influence on her approach to painting. Like others around the world, Beckett came under the popular esoteric movement’s spell in the early years of the 20th century. She owned a well-thumbed copy of Madame Blavatsky’s seminal occult text The Voice of Silence, attended spiritualist meetings and moved in artistic circles where post-dinner seances were often held.

But Beckett also took on board painter Max Meldrum’s quasi-scientific ideas about rational analytic observation of subtle visual patterns of tones and accents. She studied with him for nine months, although it is widely accepted she surpassed him with her brilliant tonal landscapes. This is the hybrid intellectual and artistic milieu she moved in, supplemented by an interest in Eastern philosophy and Freud.

For Beckett, painting was as much about performing her spiritual beliefs as it was about portraying that which was observable. Her friends in the Melbourne Society of Women Painters and Sculptors, to which she belonged, recall she loved talking about theories behind her work.

What emerges in the exhibition is her finely honed and daring visual language. In some a compositional tension emerges between horizontal and vertical forms as in Wet night, Brighton (1930). That tension marks a point of transcendence.

Read more: Friday essay: the Melbourne bookshop that ignited Australian modernism

In others her economy and discipline in imagery is awe-inspiring as in Passing trams (circa 1931), in which the mist enveloping the trams is relieved by the merest gesture of colour; while her sheer versatility as an artist emerges in her busy yet spacious beach scenes in full sun, Sandringham Beach (circa 1933) and Sunny morning (1933).

In magical paintings such as Across the Yarra (circa 1931), a study in transience, the moonlight bleeds through the hazy evening mist and merges with glimmering lights reflected from the city onto the river. Its filtered grey light, close tonal range and soft edges prompt contemplation of a higher plane. In yet another painting the day’s heat coming off the surface of the land is palpable in Summer fields (1926), seen at sunset.

An artist without a studio

A curatorial coup is achieved with the installation of a domestic kitchen in the exhibition space. Her father had declined her request for a studio to work in. He suggested she use the kitchen table instead.

While most of her paintings were completed outdoors, she did paint still life and portraits, and finish off larger en plein air works at home. This work was indeed done on the kitchen table, which is so tellingly included in the exhibition, surrounded by her still life paintings including Marigolds (1925).

Read more: Why weren’t there any great women artists? In gratitude to Linda Nochlin

The exhibition ends on a high note with “the shed”. Artist Peter Drew’s filmic time-lapse sequence of a shed, any shed, is emblematic of the Clarice Beckett legend. It is symbolic of the fragility of one’s archive, and a memorial to Beckett whose legacy was almost lost.

Clarice Beckett: The Present Moment is an immersive curatorial gesture which takes viewers through the cycles of the day she portrayed. More than that, it causes viewers to stop, contemplate each painting, to experience the void, and to enter another realm.

Clarice Beckett: The Present Moment is on show at the Art Gallery of South Australia until May 16 2021.

– ref. Clarice Beckett exhibition is a sensory appreciation of her magical moments in time – https://theconversation.com/clarice-beckett-exhibition-is-a-sensory-appreciation-of-her-magical-moments-in-time-153720

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

Scott Morrison has received a great deal of criticism over the government’s handling of then Liberal staffer Brittany Higgins’ allegation she was raped by a colleague in a minister’s office.

Now, if it’s possible, he faces an even worse situation, following the airing of an historical claim made by a woman – who last year took her own life – that she was allegedly raped by a man who is presently a member of the federal cabinet.

In an anonymous letter to Morrison, friends of the woman called for him to order an investigation.

The letter – also sent to Labor’s Senate leader Penny Wong and Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young – was reported by Four Corners late on Friday.

The allegation relates back to 1988, years before the man entered parliament, when the woman was a teenager.

The call for action by Morrison draws on written and audio material left by the the woman, who also spoke to police. The letter included a statement written by her.

The ABC reported that on the eve of her death, the woman told police she didn’t want to go ahead with the investigation. After she died, the NSW police suspended their investigation.

Many people have been aware of the allegation for some time. Malcolm Turnbull has said the woman wrote to him and his wife Lucy in 2019. Labor’s Penny Wong said she heard of the allegation from the woman “when I ran into her in Adelaide in November 2019”. Both Turnbull and Wong encouraged her engagement with the police.

The story has been in the Parliament House rumour mill for months.

While such an allegation is obviously a matter for police – and Morrison has sent it there – that route faces a block because the alleged victim is dead.

But the suggestion that Morrison should order an investigation is fraught. The difficulties of such an inquiry are obvious, given the nature of the alleged crime and the fact the alleged victim has died.

The letter refers to a parliamentary investigation, but that would likely divide along party lines, and hardly be seen as independent. If there were some other form of inquiry, how would it operate and what would be its powers and processes?

Moreover, there is something troubling about having the government try to deal with a matter that so obviously should rest with the legal system.

Those urging an inquiry point to the handling by the High Court (and the government) of allegations of sexual harassment against former judge Dyson Heydon. In his case, however, there were women who could be questioned.

So Morrison is left with a minister subject to a most serious allegation – who must be accorded the presumption of innocence – but without a satisfactory path to a resolution.

The matter is unlikely to go away, especially given the present debate about the treatment of women.

Anthony Albanese danced around the issue on Sunday. He told the ABC the Prime Minister appointed the cabinet and he “must confirm to himself … that it’s appropriate for [the minister in question] to stay in his current position”.

Absolutely. But how this translates into a course of action, if the man denies the claim and there is no appropriate way of testing it, is unclear.

Morrison is certainly not asking the minister to stand down. The Prime Minister’s Office points to the statement of ministerial standards which says “ministers will be required to stand aside if charged with any criminal offence1”.

That line can be held while the minister’s name is not public. But one would think it is probably only a matter of time before the name is canvassed in a parliament under privilege.

If that happens, the situation would move into uncharted waters. But also probably towards an outcome.

As Denis Muller, from Melbourne University’s Centre for Advancing Journalism, says, this is “a situation best left to play itself out through the political process, because there’s nothing a prime ministerial-generated inquiry would yield that the political process will not eventually yield”.

Meanwhile on another front, the government has been dealt a blow with Liberal MP Nicolle Flint, who holds the highly marginal seat of Boothby in South Australia, announcing she will not contest the next election.

Flint, on the right of the party, has been relentlessly and personally targeted, with sexist attacks and the repeated defacement of her electorate office.

She has said of her experiences in the 2019 election, “This was a campaign to destroy me personally, a concerted attack to destroy me mentally”.

In a statement Morrison said, “The public attention from being a parliamentarian does sometimes attract unacceptable behaviour, and I have admired Nicolle’s efforts to stand against the bullying and nastiness of particular groups and individuals”.

With the debate of the last fortnight centred on the “toxic” culture in Parliament House, some of Flint’s experiences are a reminder that the toxicity stretches much more broadly than what goes on within the “Canberra bubble”.

Toxicity is infecting our politics and political discourse and behaviour generally. In particular, social media has boosted exponentially the amount of bile and enabled it to be disseminated far and fast. And even sections of the mainstream media have become forums for abuse and disrespect.

– ref. View from The Hill: No satisfactory way to resolve historical rape allegation against minister – https://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-no-satisfactory-way-to-resolve-historical-rape-allegation-against-minister-156182

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Plank, Professor in Applied Mathematics, University of Canterbury

As expected, genome sequencing has now confirmed the new community COVID-19 case in Auckland is linked to the Papatoetoe cluster, and is the more infectious B.1.1.7 variant.

When the first cases in this cluster were reported on Feburary 14 Auckland moved to level 3 for just three days. This time, it’s seven days, with the rest of New Zealand at level 2 for the same period.

Since Auckland came out of level 3 on February 18, six additional community cases in two families had been reported until Saturday. So why did this latest case trigger a stronger response from the government?

‘Case M’ was infectious and active

There were two key factors contributing to the longer level 3 decision. First, the new case — “case M” — has likely been infectious since February 21, almost a whole week before their test came back.

During this time they visited a number of busy locations in South Auckland, including some high-risk settings like the gym. This is different from other cases at the tail of this cluster, which were all picked up within a day or two of developing symptoms.

There was a much lower risk that those cases had passed the virus on before going into quarantine.

Read more: Why more contagious variants are emerging now, more than a year into the COVID-19 pandemic

The second factor was the lack of an established link between the new case and the existing Papatoetoe High School cluster. We now know there is a genomic link as well as a plausible epidemiological link — that is, public health officials have identified how the two families may have come into contact.

On Saturday night, however, a link to the school was much less certain because the student in the family tested negative three times and did not have any symptoms.

The B.1.1.7 variant changes things

The news on Sunday is more encouraging, but officials will need to confirm there is a clear person-to-person epidemiological link. If not, there could be still be missing links in the chain of transmission from the cluster to the new case.

These could date all the way back to early February, meaning they have had up to three weeks to potentially start outbreaks of their own. Until this link is confirmed we will need widespread testing in the Auckland region to rule out the possibility of a large undetected outbreak.

Read more: It’s still too soon for NZ to relax COVID-19 border restrictions for travellers from low-risk countries

We have known since the beginning of the outbreak that we are dealing with the more infectious B.1.1.7 variant first identified in the UK. This variant is estimated to be 43 – 82% more transmissible than the original virus. That may not sound like much but, like interest on credit card debt, the difference compounds over time and quickly grows.

For example, left unchecked, an outbreak of the B.1.1.7 variant could cause around 200 cases after just three weeks, compared to around 40 cases with the original virus. This makes it all the more important to “go hard and go early” when dealing with an outbreak of this variant.

Was the previous alert relaxed too soon?

When the outbreak was first detected, there was a possible link to the border via the LSG Sky Chefs workplace, so there was a reasonable chance the outbreak was still small and relatively well contained.

This time, because we know the virus has been in the community for at least three weeks, there is the potential for a lot more undetected cases. A week will give our testing and contact tracing systems the time they need to track down additional cases and shut off chains of transmission.

If we are lucky, there won’t be too many additional cases to find. But we should be prepared for the possibility of a larger outbreak.

Read more: No more acting like ‘stunned mullets’ — bigger, better, faster responses needed to meet future bio-threats

People will ask whether the government was wrong to relax level 3 restrictions in the first place. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but with the information available at the time, it would have been difficult to justify a two-week lockdown with only a handful of cases in just three families.

We have become used to our contact tracing systems being able to manage small outbreaks like this. But managing a cluster of B.1.1.7 cases within a school environment has proved very challenging. We learn more about this virus every time we encounter it.

Be aware of different symptoms

The most important thing now is for everyone to follow the rules in their part of the country, and for anyone with symptoms to stay at home and arrange a test.

As Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield has pointed out, B.1.1.7 symptoms can be different and include muscle aches and fatigue as well as respiratory symptoms like a cough or sore throat.

Moving Auckland to alert level 3 and the rest of the country to alert level 2 puts us in the best position to get on top of this outbreak as quickly as possible. As frustrating as it is, it is the right move to keep Auckland and New Zealand safe.

– ref. Widespread testing in Auckland now key to ruling out possible undetected COVID-19 outbreak – https://theconversation.com/widespread-testing-in-auckland-now-key-to-ruling-out-possible-undetected-covid-19-outbreak-156181