New Zealand’s parliamentary Speaker has offered an olive branch to Māori Party co-leader Rawiri Waititi over his refusal to wear a tie in the debating chamber yesterday.
Speaker Trevor Mallard’s office has confirmed he has encouraged the party to submit to the Standing Orders Committee asking that hei-tiki be allowed instead of a tie.
Waititi speaks to RNZ Morning Report‘s Corin Dann:
Speaker Trevor Mallard last year announced he would reconsider the requirement, saying he himself believed the tie rule to be outdated.
He ultimately ruled however that the dress standard would remain as that was the will of the majority of MPs.
On the first sitting day of 2021 today, Waititi arrived without a tie. He argued that he was wearing Māori business attire with a taonga around his neck, but Mallard said he was not convinced by that argument.
Mallard notes no party response “I am therefore going to indicate to the leader of Te Pati Māori that I will not be calling him while he is not wearing a tie and he is not to enter the house again not wearing a tie,” Mallard said.
Mallard noted the Māori Party did not respond to the review of the dress code.
Waititi made several attempts to speak in the debating chamber, despite Mallard’s order, and was ejected from the house.
‘My taonga is my tie,’ says Waititi. Video: RNZ
After being removed from the debating chamber, Waititi said not being able to wear a taonga around his neck instead of a tie was a breach of the rights of indigenous people.
“That is not part of my culture, ties, and it’s forcing the indigenous peoples into wearing what I describe as a colonial noose,” Waititi said.
When asked if he would wear a tie at Parliament tomorrow [Wednesday], Waititi said “you’ll have to wait until tomorrow”.
“Our people have worn these types of ties for generations, thousands of years. And it’s time that Parliament, which was consented by my ancestors through Te Tiriti o Waitangi, recognised our right and freedom to express our own cultural identity, in a place that’s supposed to be a place for democracy,” Waititi told Checkpoint.
‘I dressed … quite smart’ “If you see the way I was dressed it wasn’t disrespectful, it was actually I think quite smart. I own to two consultancy businesses, and also our farming business on our family farm. And I never wear a tie,” he said.
“I will wear a tie when I want to wear a tie. But I will not be forced to wear it.
“I will not be forced to be wearing anything that I shouldn’t be wearing… Why are Pākehā making Māori dress like they want us to dress?”
The enforced dress code is hypocritical and an example colonial ways that suppress tangata whenua, he said.
“Parliament should be a place where we could freely practice our democracy and represent the people that voted us in.
“The majority of the people that voted me in are not business attire people… Let’s cut the myth that everybody must wear ties. I’ve been overseas and met with corporate people all over the world. None of them wear ties, they’re open-collared suit-wearing people, because ties are now outdated.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
There is no saga at the University of the South Pacific, claims Fiji’s Attorney-General Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum.
“There is no saga, there is no crisis,” said Sayed-Khaiyum when questioned about the deportation last Thursday of the university’s vice-chancellor, Professor Pal Ahluwalia.
Speaking outside Parliament yesterday, he said he could not comment further on the issue, adding that the USP Council had released a statement on the outcome of a special general meeting last Friday.
Opposition spokeswoman on Education Ro Teimumu Kepa said the comment by Sayed-Khaiyum was not true.
“There is a crisis at the university,” she said.
“The regional university is at stake with the recent crisis happening within the institution.
The FijiFirst government, she said, should understand that USP belonged to the region.
‘We do not condone strong tactic’ “We do not condone the strong tactic that was used by government to remove the vice-chancellor.
“Their action was un-Pacific, un-regionalism and I do not know where this attitude came from.
“We are supposed to be like the big brother in the Pacific because we are the most developed.”
The USP Council has appointed Dr Giulio Masasso Tu’ikolongahau Paunga as acting VC and a subcommittee formed to look into the legality of the deportation of Prof Ahluwalia and his wife, Sandra Price, to also ascertain if Prof Ahluwalia’s contract was still valid following his deportation.
The committee will be chaired by the President of Nauru, Lionel Aingimea, aho is also university chancellor, including the council representatives of Australia, Tonga, Niue, Solomon Islands, Samoa and two senate representatives to look into the matter.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brian Oliver, Research Leader in Respiratory cellular and molecular biology at the Woolcock Institute of Medical Research and Professor, Faculty of Science, University of Technology Sydney
A nebuliser — a medical device that turns a liquid into a fine mist, typically to deliver inhaled medication — may have spread the coronavirus in Melbourne’s hotel quarantine.
Victoria’s Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton said earlier today this was the “working hypothesis” to explain why three people became infected at the airport’s Holiday Inn hotel.
How could this have happened? And what are the implications for people who use nebulisers outside hotel quarantine, such as those with asthma?
A nebuliser creates a fine mist from a liquid, usually using compressed air or oxygen, or via ultrasonic vibration. A nebuliser is different to a vaporiser, which uses heat to produce a mist.
Nebulisers are often used to deliver life-saving drugs. Patients inhale them via a mask they put over their nose and mouth. Sometimes the mist alone is sufficient to provide a treatment. For example, nebulised saline is used to treat the lung condition cystic fibrosis. Sometimes people with asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease are also treated with drugs via a nebuliser.
How could a nebuliser potentially spread COVID-19?
When we breathe in and out, the very small airways and the air sacs in our lungs open and close. This generates particles. These particles, along with water vapour, are what are commonly referred to as exhaled aerosols. Think back to breathing out on a cold day; the mist was aerosols from your lungs.
When we have a viral respiratory infection, the virus can be contained in the particles we exhale, and this is how aerosol transmission occurs. It is now widely accepted that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, can be spread via aerosols, as well as via larger droplets when we cough and sneeze.
Any activity that increases the amount of aerosols, for example singing or exercising, can increase the amount of aerosolised virus, thereby increasing the risk of transmission.
When people use a nebuliser, two things happen. The first is they often take in big breaths and exhale more forcefully than normal. This alone increases the amount of particles generated. The second is they breathe in a fine mist, not all of which is absorbed in the lung. This too is exhaled.
And when a nebuliser is used to loosen mucus in the lungs, this mucus could also be exhaled. This could be as particles or coughed out.
So whatever the mechanism, someone with COVID-19 who uses a nebuliser is at risk of inadvertently spreading the virus to others.
We know that using a nebuliser in COVID-19 patients is not a good idea, especially as many drugs can be delivered in other ways.
For example, the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care states:
Nebulisation is NOT recommended in patients with COVID-19 as it may contribute to the spread of the virus.
However, it acknowledges that in some circumstances using a nebuliser is unavoidable, for instance, in children.
Was a nebuliser responsible for the spread at the Holiday Inn?
This question is very difficult to answer definitively without making actual measurements.
For example, some so-called super spreaders are highly contagious.
However, if a COVID-positive person was using a nebuliser, and the spread of the virus was limited to those in relatively close proximity to that person, it is highly likely the nebuliser would have contributed to the spread.
In Sutton’s announcement earlier today, he said that in the case of transmission at the Holiday Inn, the theory that a nebuliser was the route of infection:
…makes sense in terms of the geography and it makes sense in terms of the exposure time.
So what does this mean for people using nebulisers?
People using a nebuliser for medical reasons should not be frightened by these developments. They should talk to their health-care provider about any concerns.
The bigger question relates to the use of nebulisers by people in hotel quarantine, which Western Australia says it will now ban.
However, it is highly likely a person using a nebuliser in hotel quarantine needs it to provide life-saving medication. So it’s not as simple as banning their use altogether. We’re more likely to see more consideration around how they are used in our quarantine hotels. For example, they might be restricted to particular areas or only used when there is no other medical alternative.
Over the past week, three returned travellers — one in New South Wales and two in Victoria — have tested positive to COVID-19 shortly after leaving hotel quarantine.
The cases in Victoria appear almost certainly to have been acquired in hotel quarantine. The individuals had quarantined at the Holiday Inn, where eight staff members and guests have been now infected. Authorities are investigating.
But genomic sequencing has now indicated the NSW case was not picked up in hotel quarantine. So it’s possible either the person was still shedding virus from an earlier infection they contracted overseas, or that they incubated the virus for longer than 14 days.
The incubation period is the time between the point at which someone is exposed to the virus and the onset of symptoms (bearing in mind of course that not everyone who tests positive to COVID-19 will develop symptoms).
Theoretically, it is possible for a person to incubate the virus for longer than 14 days. But how likely is it?
The evidence
Most people who are exposed to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, will not go on to develop an infection. Sometimes the dose is not high enough, and/or the person can mount a successful immune response to prevent the virus establishing itself in their system.
But of those who do develop an infection, the evidence suggests almost all will return a positive test within 14 days of being exposed to the virus. A review summarising data from 21 studies reported only 1% of people incubated the virus beyond two weeks.
It’s important to note this review is a preprint, so it hasn’t received the same scrutiny as other published research.
But it found the average incubation period to be 5.9 days, which aligns with peer-reviewed research indicating the incubation period for COVID-19 is within the range of five to six days.
This is similar to other coronaviruses, notably SARS and MERS. Average incubation periods of other acute respiratory viral infections vary; 1.4 days for influenza A, 0.6 days for influenza B, and 12.5 days for measles.
Different viruses have different incubation periods.Shutterstock
The ‘day 16’ test
For the small minority of people who incubate the virus beyond 14 days, this can be related to underlying conditions, especially those that weaken a person’s immune response.
Over the weekend, NSW began testing returned travellers on day 16 — that is, two days after they finish hotel quarantine. This is how the latest case in NSW was detected.
The test is not compulsory and if the person doesn’t have symptoms, they don’t need to isolate until receiving their result.
This day 16 test is designed to pick up infections that may develop after the expected maximum 14-day incubation period on which Australia’s quarantine period is based.
Other states are reported to be considering implementing this measure too. This is a good safety net because, not only could it pick up the very rare case where a person might incubate the virus for longer, it could also catch missed cases of the virus being contracted in quarantine.
Some places even have a shorter quarantine period than 14 days. The UK, for example, has just started a hotel quarantine program to try to protect against arrival of other new variants. The quarantine period is ten days.
So Australia is erring on the more cautious end of the spectrum.
Could the new variants affect the incubation period?
Most of the data we have on the incubation period for COVID-19 don’t capture the emerging variants of the virus. For example, most of the studies included in the review I mentioned above were conducted in China, and all were carried out in June 2020 or earlier.
If anything, it’s possible the new variants might have a shorter incubation period.
New variants can change the way the virus behaves.Shutterstock
The accelerated rise in case numbers we’ve seen around the world with new variants means a greater proportion of people become infected following an exposure to these new strains, as we know these new variants can be more infectious. But a shortened incubation period could also be contributing.
These new variants are more efficient at establishing infections, we’re told, with the virus better at binding to, and invading, our cells. We might therefore assume a more efficient virus wouldn’t wait 14 days before establishing an infection. It would get on the job of replicating more quickly.
Although we need more information on these new variants before we can draw any conclusions, we can be reassured Australia’s two-week quarantine period should be ample time to detect the vast majority of cases.
This may change once we see what post quarantine testing reveals over the next while, but for now the priority must be making sure any cases within hotel quarantine don’t escape into the wider community.
The “meet cute” is the moment in which two unlikely people encounter each other while going about their ordinary lives, and something extraordinary begins.
In the romantic comedy The Holiday (2006), Arthur (Eli Wallach) describes it thus to Iris (Kate Winslet):
It’s how two characters meet in a movie. Say a man and a woman both need something to sleep in, and they both go to the same men’s pyjama department. And the man says to the salesman, “I just need bottoms”. The woman says, “I just need a top”. They look at each other, and that’s the meet cute.
The meet cute is a magical moment of happenstance. The people involved aren’t looking for love (at least, not right then).
a comic situation contrived entirely for the purpose of bringing a man and a woman together, after which they can work out their destinies for the remainder of the film.
However you describe it, the meet cute is unexpected. It happens when romance is the furthest thing from the characters’ minds. But in real life, in the age of online dating, more Australians meet their partner online than through friends and work (let alone, while buying pyjamas).
So can you have a meet cute when you are looking for love? Is it possible to have a meet cute on a dating app?
Searching for romance
Driven by new year’s resolutions, holiday break-ups, and the desire for a Valentine’s Day date, the “busy” period for dating apps in Australia spans from Christmas Day through to mid-February. Across this period in 2020, Australians sent over 52.8 million messages on dating app Bumble.
In many ways, finding a valentine is easier than ever. But dating apps aren’t conducive to stumbling into just the right person precisely when you weren’t looking for them.
In two months last year, Australians sent 52 million messages on Bumble alone.iam_os/Unsplash
They rely on a logic of active choice: you sign up to the app in pursuit of some form of coupledom. In interviews one of us, (Lisa), conducted with dating app users, many described these apps as pre-meditated and strategic.
When talking about what they might want in a relationship, many participants specifically desired a “Hollywood moment”, but felt this could never happen via a dating app.
Simultaneously, many felt meet cutes weren’t something that could ever happen to them: meet cutes were reserved for “special” people, not ordinary ones.
People seeking romance on dating apps are caught between two opposing forces: they feel apps provide the best opportunity to meet someone, but also that apps close down the possibility of a rom-com-style romance they dream of.
How fictional meet cutes adapted to online dating
In the most famous rom-com featuring online dating, You’ve Got Mail (1998), Joe (Tom Hanks) and Kathleen (Meg Ryan) don’t meet on a dating site. They meet in an over-30s chatroom and pursue a correspondence, not realising they’re business rivals in real life.
They might have met online, but neither was looking for love – and their business rivalry makes them very unlikely lovers.
More recently, Netflix’s Love, Guaranteed (2020) pairs a man suing a dating site for failing to find him love (Damon Wayans Jr) with his lawyer (Rachael Leigh Cook). They meet because of the site — but because they’re suing it, not because they matched on it.
We see similar patterns in popular romance fiction. In Christina Lauren’s My Favorite Half-Night Stand (2018), the heroine finds love via online dating — but with her best friend, who she already knew.
In Kristin Rockaway’s How to Hack a Heartbreak (2019), the heroine creates her own dating app, but her happily ever after is with the guy who sits in the next cubicle.
Some romance novels are beginning to emerge where the protagonists do meet solely because of apps, such as Alisha Rai’s The Right Swipe (2019), where the protagonists meet via an app — and then meet again in the boardroom.
Conflict or compatibility?
Meeting someone via an app might never feel exactly like the Hollywood rom-com meet cute participants in Lisa’s research were looking for — but this isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
Romance narratives are driven by conflict. There’s usually a reason the two people can’t be together, a conflict they spend the whole story overcoming.
In Notting Hill (1999), Will (Hugh Grant) and Anna (Julia Roberts) have a classic meet cute when they bump into each other and he spills his orange juice all over her. But then they have to overcome the obstacles posed by the very different lives they lead in order to be together.
On dating apps, those looking for a relationship are searching for compatibility and chemistry, not conflict — for someone they could build a connection with, not the most unlikely person possible.
In other words: finding a valentine via an app is a lot more likely than running into them on the street or getting trapped in a lift with them.
And if it doesn’t feel quite like a rom-com, it might just be because we haven’t quite worked out how to tell that kind of story yet.
Recent news about New Zealand’s declining position in international educational assessment rankings has been treated as if it is a new phenomenon requiring drastic changes to the school system.
But some suggested solutions, such as the Principals Federation’s call for greater involvement by the Ministry of Education in curriculum decisions, seem simplistic. Problems in education are more complex and relate to the relationship of schooling to society in general.
It’s worth noting that when these international large-scale assessments (e.g. PISA and TIMSS) were first deployed in the 1990s, New Zealand scored in the top five or 10 of all participating countries at year 5, year 8 and year 11. Since then scores have fallen to the middle of the pack, although slightly above average.
This is disappointing, but before we become overly concerned, a number of factors need to be considered.
Being good at tests counts
The international tests can only test those things that are readily evaluated on either paper or a screen with text. Of all the things that are valuable to our children, these tests measure a very narrow, albeit important, slice of the school curriculum.
While the international test agencies do everything they can to ensure test content is valid for every society, it is clear that routinely taking tests makes a small contribution to greater success. Practice always improves performance.
Unfortunately, by the time New Zealand children reach 15 (PISA measurement age) they will have had very little opportunity to take multiple-choice tests at school.
Many schools conduct yearly standardised tests provided by the New Zealand Council for Educational Research (NZCER) or the electronic assessment tools for teaching and learning (e-asTTle) system.
But that is very little compared to children from countries with a heavy use of testing to motivate and select students, such as China, Japan, Korea and India. Most of the world’s children get tested; New Zealand’s not so much.
Expectation and performance
Research shows that when New Zealand students take tests of little personal consequence, they tend not to try very hard. This is true of students in Nordic countries, too.
In contrast, research is showing that students in Shanghai, for example, treat a test that matters to their country’s reputation nearly as seriously as tests with individual consequences.
New Zealand’s lower scores may simply reflect lower effort on a test that doesn’t personally matter to students.
Although international rankings have declined over the past two decades, it was clear from an overview of New Zealand achievement data some 15 years ago that there was a large discrepancy between what the New Zealand curriculum expected of children and their actual performance.
This was most notable for Māori and Pasifika children and for those in lower decile schools. Despite the 2007 curriculum review, little has been done in New Zealand to close this gap before students enter secondary schooling.
Social and educational policies are linked: pupils in Finland receive lunch in their school canteen.GettyImages
Schooling and society
Families’ socio-economic resources heavily influence educational achievement. This has been established since the mid-1960s as an important causal factor in performance.
Families with good jobs, educated parents, warm and dry homes and access to reasonably priced health care produce children who do well at school. Since the 1990s, New Zealand has become a society increasingly unable to ensure such conditions for all children.
This means New Zealand is faced with a choice when looking at higher-scoring societies for possible solutions. A clear-eyed examination of those nations may give us some insight into what we could do.
Among the most successful are the high-testing regions of East Asia (Hong Kong, Singapore, China, Korea, Japan, Macau). These jurisdictions regularly test children to rank and sort them even before they enter school.
However, my own research has shown large psychological and emotional consequences for systems that rank and reward the winners. The tragedy is that creating a test-based system is relatively simple and cost-effective, but the human cost is not one I would wish on my own children and grandchildren.
The Finland model
A standout alternative to this approach is offered by Finland, which has decided that solving educational achievement problems cannot be separated from health, welfare, housing and employment policies.
The Finns expect government agencies to co-ordinate with each other to ensure the socio-economic determinants of achievement were put in place for all children, in conjunction with action taken by schools and their education ministry.
This means not blaming schools and teachers for poor student performance when that performance was a consequence of hunger, unemployment, poor health or myriad other social ills that schooling alone cannot solve.
Seeing educational outcomes as a canary in the coalmine of social well-being has meant all government policy works together to ensure educational equity.
Also, it’s perhaps startling from the perspective of New Zealand’s tradition of experience-based teacher education that all Finnish teachers require masters degrees and to be trained in evidence-based practices before being deployed as schoolteachers.
Those teachers are well paid and have became highly regarded professionals in their community.
The challenge for New Zealand is that Finland’s solution is expensive. It requires great political will and constant attention to the changing factors that undermine societal equity.
Nonetheless, Finland has shown it is possible to change educational outcomes in a coherent and meaningful way.
Australia has recently seen SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) escape several times from hotel quarantine, including in Brisbane, Perth and Melbourne.
These incidents have been particularly concerning because they involved people infected with “variants” of the virus.
But what exactly are these variants, and how concerned should we be?
What’s a variant?
Viruses can’t replicate and spread on their own. They need a host, and they need to hijack the cells of the host to replicate. When they replicate in a host, they face the challenge of duplicating their genetic material. For many viruses, this isn’t an exact process and their offspring often contain errors — meaning they’re not exact copies of the original virus.
These errors are referred to as mutations, and viruses with these mutations are called variants. Often, these mutations don’t affect the biological properties of the virus. That is, they don’t have any effect on how the virus replicates or causes disease.
Some mutations can impair the virus’s ability to replicate and/or transmit. Variants with such mutations are quickly lost from the viral population.
Occasionally, however, variants emerge with an advantageous mutation, one that means it’s better at replicating, transmitting, and/or evading our immune system. These variants have a selective advantage (in biological terms, they are “fitter” than other variants) and may rapidly become the dominant viral strain.
There’s some concern we’re seeing a growing number of variants with advantageous mutations, contributing to the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Here’s a look at the main three variants you might’ve heard about in the media.
The ‘UK variant’ — B.1.1.7
This variant was first detected in the United Kingdom towards the end of 2020. It has a large number of mutations, many of which involve the virus’ spike protein, which helps the virus invade human cells.
It has spread rapidly throughout the UK since it emerged, and to at least 70 other countries, including Australia.
The fact it has spread so rapidly, and quickly replaced other circulating variants, suggests it has some sort of selective advantage over other variants.
After examining the evidence surrounding the new variant, the UK New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (NERVTAG) concluded it “had moderate confidence” the variant is substantially more infectious than other variants.
The Queensland government sent Brisbane into a snap lockdown in early January after a cleaner working in hotel quarantine tested positive to the more infectious UK variant.Darren England/AAP
This may be the result of one of the mutations in the spike protein of the variant — a mutation called “N501Y”. One preprint manuscript, uploaded last month and yet to be peer reviewed, found N501Y is associated with increased binding of the virus to a receptor found on the surface on many of our cells, called “ACE2”. This could mean the variant is even more efficient at entering our cells.
Although initially the variant wasn’t associated with more severe COVID symptoms, more recent data have led NERVTAG to conclude there’s “a realistic possibility” that infection with the variant “is associated with an increased risk of death” compared with non B.1.1.7 viruses.
However, the group acknowledged there are limitations of the available data, and this remains an evolving situation.
Similar to the UK variant, it quickly outcompeted other SARS-CoV-2 variants in South Africa. It now accounts for more than 90% of SARS-CoV-2 samples in South Africa that undergo genetic sequencing.
Like the UK variant, it also has the N501Y mutation in the spike protein, meaning it’s more efficient at gaining access to our cells to replicate. This may help to explain its rapid spread.
It also contains several other concerning mutations. Two of these, called “E484K” and “K417N”, are bad news for our immune system. They can reduce how well our antibodies bind to the virus (though this is also based on preprint data awaiting peer review).
But there’s no evidence yet to suggest the South African variant is more deadly than the original variants.
The ‘Brazilian variant’ — P.1
This variant was first detected in Japan in a group of Brazilian travellers in January 2021.
It’s now highly prevalent in the Brazilian state of Amazonas, and has been detected in countries including South Korea and the United States.
The Brazilian variant has sparked a wave of reinfections in the state of Amazonas.Raphael Alves/EPA/AAP
Like the South African variant, the Brazilian variant has the spike protein mutations N501Y, E484K and K417N (as well as numerous other mutations).
While there’s no evidence this variant causes more severe disease, there’s concern it has facilitated a wave of reinfections in Manaus, the largest city in Amazonas, which was thought to have reached “herd immunity” in October last year.
What does this mean for vaccines?
Major vaccine developers are testing the efficacy of their vaccines against these and other variants. Generally, the currently licensed vaccines protect relatively well against the UK variant.
But recent phase 2/3 data from both Novavax and Johnson & Johnson suggest reduced protection against the South African variant. The Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine group also released data over the weekend suggesting its vaccine offers only minimal protection against mild-moderate disease caused by this variant.
However, it’s important to recognise reduced protection doesn’t mean no protection at all, and that data are still emerging.
What’s more, numerous vaccine manufacturers are now investigating whether tweaks to the vaccines can improve their performance against the emerging variants.
The take-home message is that variants will emerge, and we need to closely monitor their spread. However, there’s every indication we’ll be able to adapt our vaccine strategies to protect against these and future variants.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tanya Hill, Honorary Fellow of the University of Melbourne and Senior Curator (Astronomy), Museums Victoria
Three new spacecraft are due to arrive at Mars this month, ending their seven-month journey through space.
The first, the United Arab Emirates’ Hope Probe, should have made it to the red planet this week. It will stay in orbit and study its atmosphere for one complete Martian year (687 Earth days).
China’s Taiwen-1 mission also enters orbit this month and will begin scouting the potential landing site for its Mars rover, due to be deployed in May.
If successful, China will become the second country to land a rover on Mars.
These two missions will join six orbiting spacecraft actively studying the red planet from above:
The oldest active probe – Mars Odyssey – has been orbiting the planet for 20 years.
The third spacecraft to reach Mars this month is NASA’s Perseverance rover, scheduled to land on February 18. It will search for signs of ancient microbial life but its mission also looks ahead, testing new technologies that may support humans visiting Mars one day.
Now NASA hopes Perseverance will land on Mars.
Laboratories on wheels
NASA has an impressive track record for landing on Mars. It has operated all eight successful missions to the Martian surface.
Just minutes after landing, Viking 1 captured the first ever photograph taken from the Martian surface.NASA/JPL
Perseverance will be the fifth rover to arrive on Mars that’s capable of venturing across the surface of another planet.
These amazing laboratories on wheels have extended our knowledge of a faraway world. Here’s what they’ve told us so far.
The first rover – Sojourner
Twenty years after Viking 1 & 2 landed stationary probes on Mars, a third spacecraft finally reached the planet, but this one could move.
On July 4, 1997, NASA’s Pathfinder literally bounced onto the Martian surface, safely enclosed in a giant set of airbags. Once stable, the lander released the Sojourner rover.
See the Sojourner probe from Pathfinder’s viewpoint.
The first rover on Mars could move at a maximum speed of 1cm a second and was about as long (63cm) as a skateboard — smaller than some of the boulders it encountered.
Sojourner explored 16 locations near the Pathfinder lander, including the volcanic rock “Yogi”. Pictures of its landing site, Ares Vallis, showed it was littered with rounded pebbles and conglomerate rocks, evidence of ancient flood plains.
The geologists – Spirit and Opportunity
A pair of upsized rovers arrived on Mars in early 2004. Spirit and Opportunity were geologists, searching for minerals within the rocks and soil, hidden clues that dry, cold Mars may once have been wet and warm.
This overhead ‘selfie’ was combined with Spirit’s largest ever panorama – it contains hundreds of individual images of Gusev Crater taken over three Martian days.NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell
Spirit landed in Gusev Crater, a 150km-wide crater created billions of years ago when an asteroid crashed into Mars.
Spirit discovered evidence of an ancient volcanic explosion, caused by hot lava meeting water. Small rocks had been thrown skyward but then fell back to Mars. Examination of the impact or “bomb sag” showed the rock had landed on wet soil.
The arrow points to a small crater or bomb sag, just 4cm across, that formed in the soaking wet ground when an ejected rock fell back to Mars.NASA/JPL-Caltech/USGS/Cornell
Even when things went wrong, Spirit made new discoveries. While dragging a broken front wheel, Spirit churned up a track of soil revealing a patch of white silica.
This mineral usually exists in hot springs or steam vents, ideal environments where life on Earth tends to flourish.
A 20cm track revealing white silica and a clue that Mars was once wet and warm.NASA/JPL/Cornell
The rover that kept on going
Opportunity arrived on Mars three weeks after Spirit. Its original three-month mission was extended to 14 years as it travelled almost 50km across the Martian terrain.
Landing in the small Eagle Crater, Opportunity went on to visit more than 100 impact craters. It also found a handful of meteorites, the first to be studied on another planet.
Outlined in yellow is Opportunity’s journey from Eagle Crater towards its final resting spot on the rim of Endeavour Crater. The blue outline of Victoria’s Phillip Island is included for scale.NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/Museums Victoria
The rover was descending into Endeavour Crater when a dust storm ended its mission. But it was along the crater’s edge that Opportunity made its biggest discoveries.
It found signs of ancient water flows and discovered the crater walls are made of clays that can only form where freshwater is available — more evidence that Mars could well have been a place for life.
The chemist – Curiosity
Curiosity landed in Gale Crater on August 6, 2012, and continues to explore the region today. During the coronavirus pandemic, scientists and engineers have been commanding the rover from their homes.
An artist’s impression of Curiosity as it descends from the top of the Martian atmosphere to softly touchdown on the planet’s surface.NASA/JPL-Caltech
In a first for space exploration, NASA’s Curiosity was lowered to the Martian surface using a “sky crane”. After a successful soft landing, the crane’s cables were cut and the spacecraft’s descent stage flew away to crash elsewhere.
Curiosity is a fully equipped chemical laboratory. It can shoot lasers at rocks and also drill into the soil to collect samples. It’s confirmed ancient Mars once had the right chemistry to support microbial life.
Curiosity also found evidence of ancient freshwater rivers and lakes. It seems that water once flowed towards a basin at Mount Sharp, a central peak that rises 5.5km from within Gale Crater.
Curiosity takes a picture of itself, working through the COVID-19 pandemic and drilling holes in a possible ancient riverbed.NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
From being on the surface of Mars, we’ve learned it was once very different to the dry, dusty planet it is today.
With flowing water, possible oceans, volcanic activity and an abundance of key ingredients necessary for life, the red planet was once much more Earth-like. What happened to make it change so dramatically?
It’s exciting to consider what the Perseverance and Taiwen-1 rovers may discover as they explore their own patch of Mars. They might even lead us to the day when humans are exploring the red planet for ourselves.
The colours in this image from Gale Crater have been adjusted to match conditions on Earth – this helps geologists interpret the rocks but it also changes the natural pink Martian sky to an Earth-like blue.NASA/JPL-Caltech
As Australian producers scramble to find markets for goods hit by Chinese import restrictions, it might look as though China is winning the diplomatic war.
But the current situation is a diplomacy fail for China as much as for Australia.
China suspended imports from six Australian beef suppliers in 2020.Rick Rycroft/AAP
This has hurt some Australian products, such as wine and barley, which have struggled to find equally lucrative markets. However, some others such as wheat have found new buyers relatively easily.
Overall, Australia’s total exports to China actually increased in December, mainly thanks to iron ore, which China needs too much to restrict.
Restrictions cut both ways
But while these import restrictions hurt Australia, they hurt China too.
In the short term, Chinese consumers miss out on products they enjoyed, such as premium Australian wine and lobsters, which are valued for celebrations.
Chinese manufacturers that used Australian goods might have to pay more or accept lower quality, such as for barley used for brewing, which hurts their productivity and economic growth.
In some sectors, there may not be enough immediate replacements for Australian products.
For example, coal shortages have led to China’s worst power blackouts for a decade. While import restrictions are not the only factor – and the Chinese government has denied any link – widespread blackouts at the same time as more than 70 coal ships are stuck offshore show how restrictions cut both ways.
Wider impact
In the medium term, other countries watch the treatment of Australia and consider how to protect themselves, so as not to suffer the same fate.
When China restricted sales of rare earth minerals to Japan in 2010, this led Japan to invest in other countries, resulting in a significant reduction in China’s market share.
While I don’t think countries will band together to resist Chinese coercion – they are more likely to help their companies capture Australia’s market share – they may try to slow the growth of economic ties with China, such as through restricting investment in some sectors.
This means Chinese investors may find overseas markets less friendly, as has happened in Australia with much of the economy now unavailable.
Unfavourable views of China
In the long term, economic coercion has an impact on China’s international reputation.
China starts to be seen as a less reliable trade partner, and trade starts to be seen not as mutual benefit, but as a potential vulnerability that China can weaponise.
In the short term, Chinese consumers and manufacturers are missing out on Australian products.Olivia Zhang/AP/AAP
Chinese citizens seem to be blissfully unaware of the damage to their country’s reputation. Recent public opinion polling found 78% believe China’s international image has improved in recent years. This is dead wrong.
Comprehensive polling by Pew Research shows China’s international reputation in advanced economies has plummeted over the past decade. China’s assertive diplomacy has been spectacularly unsuccessful as a way of winning hearts and minds.
‘Kill the chicken to warn the monkey’
Chinese thinkers who argue China should show patience and restraint in its foreign policy are not winning the argument in Beijing. National pride and strength is seen as more important than the costs.
Looking forward, China is likely to continue to mete out punishment to Australia for the demonstration effect to other countries. The Chinese have a saying “kill the chicken to warn the monkey”.
But no one should be under any illusion this situation is a good result for China.
It would have been much better for China to have a model relationship with Australia. Australia and China have no historical conflicts, no border disputes and Australia is the one with the trade surplus. If China can’t get along with Australia, who can it get along with?
The unravelling of the relationship in just five years is a terrible result for Chinese diplomacy.
This week, China will celebrate the New Year. China has controlled COVID-19 and emerged with an economy stronger than it was a year ago. China’s rhetoric advocates peaceful coexistence, mutual benefit and win-win cooperation. But when it comes to diplomacy, there is room for improvement.
In the words of ancient Chinese scholar Mencius, there are two ways of being a great power: a “big power” that aggressively pursues its interests through force and coercion, or a “great state” that attracts and gains respect by its virtuous character and consideration of others’ interests.
The “floor price” for alcohol introduced by the Northern Territory in 2018 reduced the consumption of cask wine by half, without significantly impacting sales of other types of alcohol, according to our new analysis of the policy’s effectiveness.
On October 1, 2018, the NT introduced a minimum price of A$1.30 per unit (equivalent to 10 grams of pure alcohol or one “standard drink”) on alcohol, in a bid to tackle problem drinking.
The price was chosen to target cheap wines that have historically been an issue throughout the NT, while not influencing other liquor types.
Our study, published today in The Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health, examined overall alcohol consumption as well as consumption within specific liquor categories, most importantly cask wine. Cask wine represents less than 5% of the liquor consumed in the NT, but because it offers lots of alcohol for a low price, it contributes inordinately to alcohol problems among vulnerable drinkers and disadvantaged communities.
We split our analysis into two regions: the entire NT, and the Darwin/Palmerston area. The Darwin and Palmerston analysis is particularly important, as other regions of the NT were subject to a change in levels of police intervention at the point of sale during the period examined. The impact of these changes in policing could not be fully controlled for, whereas changes in Darwin/Palmerston can be reliably attributed to the effect of the minimum alcohol price.
In the year following the introduction of the minimum unit price, there was a 48.84% reduction in cask wine consumption in Darwin and Palmerston, and a 50.57% reduction across the NT. No significant reduction in non-wine liquor consumption was found in Darwin and Palmerston or across the NT.
This suggests implementing a minimum price on alcohol can help heavy drinkers reduce their consumption, while not adversely affecting moderate or occasional drinkers.
We found no evidence to indicate heavy drinkers had moved from cask wine to other liquor types in response to the floor price. While there was an increase in spirits sales, this trend began before the introduction of the minimum price.
Members of the community had expressed fears the minimum price would negatively impact beer sales. However, full-strength beer, the most consumed liquor type in the NT, saw no significant change in response to the minimum price.
Cask wine consumption decreased by half in the year following the introduction of minimum pricing.Shutterstock
Time for a national rollout?
Considering the effectiveness with which this policy reduced consumption of cask wine in the NT, it is time for other state and federal governments to consider following suit. Internationally, minimum pricing policies have already been implemented in Scotland and Wales, and the Republic of Ireland has also passed legislation to implement a floor price at a later date.
Other potential benefits of a minimum unit price for alcohol include higher tax revenue, and various social benefits from lower alcohol consumption. Both of these could conceivably help Australia recover from the financial burden of COVID-19.
Notably, after the release of the first evaluation of the minimum unit price policy in the NT, industry group Retail Drinks Australia claimed consumption actually increased. Our latest study directly refutes this.
It will be important for policy-makers throughout Australia to discuss the merits of this policy without being unduly influenced by the alcohol industry, which depends on the profits earned from problem drinkers.
Australia is teeming with cats. While cats make great pets, and can bring owners emotional, psychological and health benefits, the animals are a scourge on native wildlife.
Cats kill a staggering 1.7 billion native animals each year, and have played a major role in most of Australia’s 34 mammal extinctions. They continue to pose an extinction threat to at least another 120 species.
The long-nosed potoroo is extremely vulnerable to cats.Shutterstock
A recent parliamentary inquiry into the problem of feral and pet cats in Australia has affirmed the issue is indeed of national significance. The final report, released last week, calls for a heightened, more effective, multi-pronged and coordinated policy, management and research response.
As ecologists, we’ve collectively spent more than 50 years researching Australia’s cat dilemma. We welcome most of the report’s recommendations, but in some areas it doesn’t go far enough, missing major opportunities to make a difference.
Night curfews aren’t good enough
The report recommends Australia’s 3.8 million pet cats be subject to night-time curfews. This measure would benefit native nocturnal mammals, but won’t save birds and reptiles, which are primarily active during the day.
Other strategies for improving pet cat management proposed in the report include pet cat registration, subsidised programs for early age desexing, public education campaigns to promote responsible pet cat ownership, and improving the consistency of rules and legislation nationally.
Indoor cats live longer than cats allowed to roam.Jaana Dielenberg
The report is also unambiguously opposed to “trap-neuter-release” programs, in which un-owned cats in urban areas are desexed and then released. We agree with this finding, as these programs aren’t effective at reducing the population of stray cats, nor preventing those cats from killing wildlife and spreading disease.
We need more wildlife havens
One of the inquiry’s flagship recommendations is a national conservation project dubbed “Project Noah”. This would involve an ambitious expansion of Australia’s existing network of reserves free from introduced predators, both on islands and in mainland fenced areas. The reserves provide havens — or a fleet of “arks” — for vulnerable native wildlife.
This measure is vital. 2019 research found Australia has more than 65 native mammal species and subspecies that can’t persist, or struggle to persist, in places with even very low numbers of cats or foxes. This includes the bilby, numbat, quokka, dibbler and black-footed rock wallaby.
Boodies used to occur across two-thirds of Australia, but now only exist within havens.McGregor/Arid Recovery
Australia already has more than 125 havens, 100 of which are islands. These have prevented 13 mammal species from going extinct, such as boodies and greater stick-nest rats. In total, these havens have protected populations of 40 mammal species susceptible to cats and foxes.
This is a good start, but we need more investment in havens to prevent extinctions. More than 25 species are highly sensitive to cat and fox predation, but aren’t yet protected in the haven network. This includes the central rock-rat, which is more likely than not to become extinct within 20 years without new action.
What’s more, some species, such as the long-nosed potoroo, exist in just one haven. To avoid issues such as inbreeding and to ensure disasters like a fire at any single haven don’t take out an entire species, each species should be represented across several havens, in reasonable population sizes.
The report didn’t specify how the havens network should be expanded. But 2019 research found to get each species needing protection into at least three havens, Australia requires at least 35 new, strategically located islands or mainland fenced areas.
The predator proof fence at the Australian Wildlife Conservancy’s Newhaven Sanctuary, one of the largest cat- and fox-free havens on mainland Australia.Australian Wildlife Conservancy
What about the rest of the country?
Havens cover less than 1% of Australia. So what we do in the other 99% of the landscape — including across conservation reserves like national parks — is vital.
Yet the parliamentary inquiry report lacks clear recommendations to expand cat control more broadly, including at important conservation sites such as in Kakadu National Park.
The impact of roaming pet cats on Australian wildlife.
The report reaffirms the need to cull feral cats, and to set new targets for culling, without specifying what those targets are. We agree some culling is important, especially at sites with very vulnerable threatened wildlife.
But in many parts of Australia, broad-scale habitat management is a more cost-effective way to reduce cat harm. This involves making habitat less suitable for cats and more suitable for native wildlife, for example, by reducing rabbit numbers, fire frequency and grazing by feral herbivores such as cattle and horses.
Research has shown fewer rabbits leads to fewer cats. Rabbits are a favoured prey of many cats, so they boost feral cat numbers, which then also hunt native wildlife.
And cats gravitate to areas with less vegetation because it’s easier to catch prey. These areas include those with frequent fires, or where feral herbivores have reduced vegetation through grazing and trampling.
Better habitat with more vegetation gives native animals places to hide from predators, and more food and shelter. It’s a bit like giving the last little pig a house of bricks instead of trying to fist-fight the wolf.
Feral horses, such as these in Kakadu National Park, eat and damage vegetation making conditions more favourable for cats to hunt.Jaana Dielenberg
A major step forward
Over the past two decades, Australia has slowly woken up to the damage cats cause to nature. This has led to more research, management and policy to address the problem.
Some state governments, environment groups and scientists have worked hard to develop feral cat control options, and the 2015 Australian Threatened Species Strategy did much to focus national attention and resourcing to the issue.
The parliamentary inquiry is a major step forward, and many recommendations are sound. But overall, its recommendations call for incremental improvement.
Australia’s laws clearly fail to provide a safety net for wildlife. The cat issue is part of a larger problem with how we manage habitat, biodiversity and threats to nature – and fixing that requires wholesale change.
Students across Australia have started the new school year using pencils, pens and keyboards to learn to write.
In workplaces, machines are also learning to write, so effectively that within a few years they may write better than humans.
Sometimes they already do, as apps like Grammarly demonstrate. Certainly, much everyday writing humans now do may soon be done by machines with artificial intelligence (AI).
The predictive text commonly used by phone and email software is a form of AI writing that countless humans use every day.
According to an industry research organisation Gartner, AI and related technology will automate production of 30% of all content found on the internet by 2022.
Some prose, poetry, reports, newsletters, opinion articles, reviews, slogans and scripts are already being written by artificial intelligence.
This means our children should no longer be taught just formulaic writing. Instead, writing education should encompass skills that go beyond the capacities of artificial intelligence.
Back to basics, or further away from them?
After 2019 PISA results (Programme for International Student Assessment) showed Australian students sliding backwards in numeracy and literacy, then Education Minister Dan Tehan called for schools to go back to basics. But computers already have the basics mastered.
In some schools, students write essays with sentences fulfilling specified functions, in specified orders, in specified numbers and arrangements of paragraphs. These can then be marked by computers to demonstrate progress.
This template writing is exactly the kind of standardised practice robot writers can do.
Are you scared yet, human?
In 2019, the New Yorker magazine did an experiment to see if IT company OpenAI’s natural language generator GPT-2 could write an entire article in the magazine’s distinctive style. This attempt had limited success, with the generator making many errors.
But by 2020, GPT-3, the new version of the machine, trained on even more data, wrote an article for The Guardian newspaper with the headline “A robot wrote this entire article. Are you scared yet, human?”
Robots may have a voice, but they have no soul.Shutterstock
This latest much improved generator has implications for the future of journalism, as the Elon Musk-funded OpenAI invests ever more in research and development.
Robots have voice but no soul
Back at school, teachers experience pressure to teach writing for student success in narrowly defined writing tests.
But instead, the prospect of human obsolescence or “technological unemployment” needs to drive urgent curriculum developments based on what humans are learning AI cannot do — especially in relation to creativity and compassion.
Creativity and co-creativity (with machines) should be fostered. Machines are trained on a finite amount of data, to predict and replicate, not to innovate in meaningful and deliberate ways.
Purposeful writing
AI cannot yet plan and does not have a purpose. Students need to hone skills in purposeful writing that achieves their communication goals.
Unfortunately, the NAPLAN regime has hampered teaching writing as a process that involves planning and editing. This is because it favours time-limited exam-style writing for no audience.
Students need to practise writing in which they are invested, that they care about and that they hope will effect change in the world as well as in their genuine, known readers. This is what machines cannot do.
AI is not yet as complex as the human brain. Humans detect humour and satire. They know words can have multiple and subtle meanings. Humans are capable of perception and insight; they can make advanced evaluative judgements about good and bad writing.
There are calls for humans to become expert in sophisticated forms of writing and in editing writing created by robots as vital future skills.
Robots have no morality
Nor does AI have a moral compass. It does not care. OpenAI’s managers originally refused to release GPT-3, ostensibly because they were concerned about the generator being used to create fake material, such as reviews of products or election-related commentary.
AI writing bots have no conscience and may need to be eliminated by humans, as with Microsoft’s racist Twitter prototype, Tay.
Critical, compassionate and nuanced assessment of what AI produces, management and monitoring of content, and decision-making and empathy with readers are all part of the “writing” roles of a democratic future.
Skills for the future
As early as 2011, the Institute for the Future identified social intelligence (“the ability to connect to others in a deep and direct way”), novel and adaptive thinking, cross-cultural competency, transdisciplinarity, virtual collaboration and a design mindset as essential skills for the future workforce.
In 2017, a report by The Foundation for Young Australians found complex problem-solving skills, judgement, creativity and social intelligence would be vital for students’ futures.
This is in stark contrast to parroting irrelevant grammar terms such as “subordinate clauses” and “nominalisations”, being able to spell “quixotic” and “acaulescent” (words my daughter learnt by rote in primary school recently) or writing to a formula.
Teaching and assessment of writing need to catch up to the real world.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Laura Rademaker, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Research Centre for Deep History, Australian National University
The Australian film High Ground, set mostly at a mission in Arnhem Land in the 1930s, blends stories (and languages) from Indigenous Nations across the region.
It is a fictionalised story, inspired, says director Stephen Maxwell Johnson, by “true history”. At times, the film resembles a shoot-em-up Western. But it gets a lot right.
High Ground was written by Chris Anastassiades and co-produced by Witiyana Marika, (a founding member of Yothu Yindi), who appears in a supporting role as Grandfather Dharrpa and was the film’s senior cultural advisor. It tells of a police massacre of Aboriginal people and the repercussions that follow.
Massacres at the hands of police and settlers were tragically common through northern Australia. The opening scene, depicting a massacre beside a waterhole in 1919, echoes the 1911 Gan Gan Massacre in which mounted police killed more than 30 Yolngu people in a “punishment expedition”.
The mission
In the film, a young boy, Gutjuk, who survives the massacre of his family, is taken to a mission. The Roper River Mission (now Ngukurr), established in 1908 and run by the Church Missionary Society, really did take in Aboriginal children who had either lost kin, or been forcibly removed from their families.
By the 1920s, there were so many children at Roper River that the society established a new mission just for them on Groote Eylandt. Another mission opened at Oenpelli (now Gunbalanya) in 1925, the subject of our recent book.
Parts of High Ground were shot in the vicinity of Oenpelli, which likely inspired the mission in the film.
Jacob Junior Nayinggul as Gutjuk, who survives a massacre.Maxo, Bunya Productions, Savage Films
The real station
Before it was a mission, Oenpelli was a cattle station and buffalo shooters’ camp run by a man named Paddy Cahill. In the film, a young woman, Gulwirri, who fights to defend her people, has worked as a “house girl” on a station and speaks of the violence she experienced.
Cahill had a reputation for brutality. He wrote of chaining Aboriginal people by the neck. The community remembers how he used to shoot people’s dogs, and his son was known to give workers a “hiding”. There are rumours, too, that Paddy was involved in a massacre.
Gurrhwek Mangiru (left) with baby Albert Balmana, and unidentified woman and baby (right), Oenpelli, c.1925.Northern Territory Archives Service
Provoked by his behaviour, traditional owners instigated a plot to take out Cahill and his household. In 1917, strychnine was mixed into the family’s butter, killing their dog, and making Paddy’s wife Maria and two Aboriginal housemaids, Marealmark and Topsy seriously ill. Punishment for those Cahill suspected to be responsible was swift and violent.
In High Ground, the police officers’ earlier experience as soldiers fuels their bloody tactics. After Cahill left Oenpelli in 1922, caretaker Don Campbell managed the station until missionaries arrived. Campbell, too, was a returned serviceman, described as violent. Incoming missionary, Rev Alf Dyer wrote:
There are plenty [of Aboriginal people] about. Mr. Campbell said he had about 300 last Christmas. His policy has been to hunt them, because of the cattle killing; as you read between the lines you will see plenty of problems for the Superintendent of Oenpelli — we will have an uphill fight.
The real missionaries
In High Ground, the mission is run by a young brother and sister team. The latter, Claire, speaks the local language.
The original missionaries at Oenpelli were an older, socially awkward couple with prior experience: Alf and Mary Dyer.
Alf and Mary Dyer, c.1930, Northern Territory Archives Service.
Some have questioned whether a missionary woman would have learned language in the 1930s. But the character of Claire resembles the real figure of Nell Harris, who arrived at Oenpelli in 1933, aged 29.
Thanks to her Aboriginal teachers, Harris quickly began learning Kunwinkju and, together with local women Hannah Mangiru and Rachel Maralngurra, translated the Gospel of Mark.
Outside the Church at Oenpelli, c.1930.Northern Territory Archives Service
The real Gutjuk
In the film, Gutjuk (played as an adult by Jacob Junior Nayinggul), grows up at the mission. He uses this affiliation to work for the interests of his kin in defending themselves against the police, who come looking for his uncle, Baywara, a warrior and survivor of the 1919 massacre.
Nipper Marakarra Gumurdul standing behind seated man. Frank ‘Naluwud’ Girrabul on crutches.Northern Territory Archives Service
This reminds us of a real historical figure, Narlim. Narlim was eldest son of senior traditional owner of the land at Oenpelli — Nipper Marakarra. Narlim was born in 1909, making him around the same age as the fictional Gutjuk.
Narlim grew up at the mission because, after working for Cahill, Nipper saw strategic value in an alliance with missionaries. He also wanted his children to learn to read and speak English. This alliance was a way to ensure continued life on Country and to maintain sovereignty as traditional owners.
But, as in the film, missionary cooperation with police was disastrous for Narlim. When a policeman visited in the late 1930s, he found Narlim had an infectious disease. The policeman handcuffed Narlim, intending to chain him with a group of others to be sent to Darwin.
The missionaries said the chains were unnecessary as Narlim “would behave”, but they did not save him. Narlim was exiled from the mission and his country under police escort, baby daughter on one shoulder and spears on the other, never to return.
His daughter, Peggy eventually came home and became a strong community leader.
The real ‘punishment’ and ‘peace’ expeditions
In 1932, Yolngu warriors killed a party of Japanese pearlers trespassing on their country. Constable Albert McColl was sent in; he too was speared. So police proposed a “punishment expedition”, not unlike those depicted in High Ground.
After a humanitarian outcry, the society proposed a “peace expedition” instead. The expedition went unarmed to the Yolngu warriors. Unlike events depicted in the film, three were convinced to come to Darwin for trial. The men were found guilty but eventually released. Yet one, Dhakiyarr, disappeared after his release. The open secret in Darwin was that Dhakiyarr was drowned in the harbour in an extra-judicial police killing.
The film gets right the ambiguous missionary relationship to violence. Missions were meant to be a refuge from inter-tribal and settler violence. Missionaries understood their humanitarian and evangelistic work as seeking to atone for the bloodshed of colonisation.
An attempt at negotiation on the mission in High Ground. Claire and her brother are on the right, Grandfather Dharrpa seated on the left.Maxo, Bunya Productions, Savage Films
But they also relied upon and enabled the ongoing violence of settler authorities. As “Aboriginal Protectors” missionaries functioned as local sheriffs and carried guns. Missionaries would send Aboriginal people for trial in Darwin, or else implement their own punishments.
As portrayed in the film, missionaries joined expeditions to capture supposed lawbreakers. Alf Dyer, for instance, led the so-called “peace expedition” to convince Yolngu men to face trial in white courts.
The historical record
High Ground also shows how self-conscious white authorities were creating a historical record.
The chief of police, played by Jack Thompson, seems to be always directing a photographer to take portraits. These images were good for fund raising, for impressing officials. They do not reflect the full story of the community. But they do give us a glimpse of the complex relationships in Arnhem Land in the 1930s.
Group of girls at the Oenpelli Mission c.1930, Northern Territory Archives Service.Northern Territory Archive Services
High Ground, of course, is a highly dramatised piece of art. But, as the filmmakers have said, it’s closer to uncomfortable historical truths than we might expect. By showcasing such stories, the film will hopefully encourage broader reflection on Australia’s violent history, and its enduring legacies.
Anthony Albanese will risk a backlash from employers when he releases an industrial relations policy promising a Labor government would substantially increase the legal rights and protections for Australians in insecure work.
Wednesday’s policy unveiling will ensure industrial relations is a major political battleground in coming months, with the opposition already declaring it will vote against the government’s workplace legislation now before parliament.
In his speech, issued ahead of its delivery in Brisbane, Albanese pledges Labor would legislate to make “job security” a key objective of the Fair Work Act, and to give “gig” economy workers more protection and benefits, in pay and conditions.
The policy promises “a crack down on cowboy labour hire firms”, to guarantee workers placed through them received the same pay as directly-employed workers performing the same job.
While Labor anticipates aspects of the policy will be unpopular with employers, it argues the IR settings are skewed unfairly against workers in insecure jobs.
Albanese accuses the government of using the pandemic “as a cover to cut pay and make work even less secure”.
Labor would scrap the Australian Building and Construction Commission – the so-called cop-on-the-beat in the construction industry which has been a political football for years.
It would also do away with the Registered Organisations Commission, which Albanese describes as discredited and politicised.
Albanese says that changing the Fair Work Act would require the Fair Work Commission “to bring a sharp focus to jobs security when making decisions”.
Also, Labor would “legislate to ensure more Australian workers have access to employee protections and entitlements currently denied to them by the narrow, outdated definition of an ‘employee’”.
The powers of the Fair Work Commission would be extended “to include employee-like forms of work”, so it could make orders for minimum standards for those in the gig economy.
“Labor will ensure that the independent umpire has the capacity to inquire into all forms of work and determine what rights and obligations should apply.”
Albanese promises a national approach on the portability of entitlements. A Labor government would work with states and territories, unions and industry “to develop portable entitlements for annual leave, sick leave and long service leave” for those in insecure work.
It would legislate for a “fair test” to determine the definition of a casual worker.
A limit would be put on the number of consecutive fixed term contracts an employer could offer for the same role.
While acknowledging a valid place for such contracts, Albanese says “what’s not right is when employees are put on an endless treadmill of fixed-term contracts by employers who want to avoid giving them permanent status”.
The limits for the same role would be 24 months or no more than two consecutive contracts, whichever came first.
“Once that limit is reached, the employer will be required to offer a permanent position – either part time or full time.”
Labor would “call time” on the “relentless outsourcing” in the public service. And more secure employment would be provided in the public service “where temporary forms of work are being used inappropriately”.
Government procurement policy would be used to uphold Labor’s work values “by supporting bids from companies and organisations that are themselves providers of good, secure jobs”.
Albanese says there has been a “creeping expansion of insecure work. Indeed, fewer Australians can access the basic entitlements and protections earlier generations took for granted.
“Nearly a third of Australian workers are in arrangements with unpredictable, fluctuating pay and hours. They endure few or no protections such as sick and holiday leave, or superannuation benefits.”
The opposition leader invokes the spirit of the Hawke and Keating governments’ approach to industrial relations.
“The best governments in our history have understood the need for a compact between capital and labour to advance their mutual interests.
“The Labor governments of Bob Hawke and Paul Keating are a prime example. Collaboration between workers, employers and the government of the day delivered genuine enterprise bargaining and the conditions that created 30 years of continuous economic growth.”
Albanese says a government he led would “always respect the central importance of successful businesses as job creators”.
He accuses Scott Morrison of being “all smirk and mirrors” on industrial relations, saying the Prime Minister wanted to scrap the Better Off Overall Test while hoping “people won’t notice it’s a plan to leave workers worse off”.
The government’s legislation contains “the worst workplace changes” since John Howard’s WorkChoices, Albanese says.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Charles Livingstone, Associate Professor, School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Monash University
After months of hearings, characterised by spectacular admissions including threats of violence, the report of the Bergin Inquiry into the probity of Crown Sydney Gaming, a subsidiary of Crown Resorts Limited, has been tabled in the NSW parliament.
Crown Resorts runs the Crown casinos in Melbourne and Perth.
The Inquiry found that Crown Sydney Gaming was “not a suitable person” to operate the Sydney casino.
It also found the parent, Crown Resorts Limited, was “not suitable to be a close associate of the licensee”.
The serious corporate failures relate to
Crown’s operations in China and the arrests of the employees in October 2016 with “numerous failures to escalate indicators of real risks to the staff”
the infiltration and exploitation of Crown’s Melbourne and Perth operations by “criminal elements, probably including international criminal organisations”
the probability of money laundering in the accounts of two Crown subsidiaries “and in the casino premises with hundreds of thousands of dollars brought into the casino in cooler bags and shopping bags and exchanged for chips and plaques”
Crown’s failures to ensure it only had commercial associations with Junket operators of good repute
Other matters relate to “the structures in place that have contributed to the corporate failures” including:
the existence and operation of a Controlling Shareholder Protocol
Crown’s relationship with James Packer and his company Consolidated Press Holdings
Crown’s risk management structures and their resourcing.
The report says it is clear each director understood as at 2019 that Crown had given an undertaking to the NSW Government and the Authority that it would not allow the late organised crime figure Stanley Ho to acquire a direct, indirect or beneficial interest in Crown.
Undertakings not honoured
Jams Packer, giving evidence via videolink.
Yet it found the late Mr Ho’s associated entity had an interest in Melco Resorts & Entertainment to whom Packer agreed to sell his company’s Crown shareholding and “thereby obtained an indirect interest in Crown”.
Speaking ahead of the tabling of the report, NSW Treasurer Victor Dominello said that at the heart of the inquiry was concern over organised crime, money laundering, and gambling.
Commissioner Bergin also recommended that a new Independent Casino Commission with the powers of a standing Royal Commission be given sole authority over licensing and disciplinary issues.
Tabling the report in parliament, and invoking parliamentary privilege, is reportedly intended to circumvent the possibility of defamation action by directors and executives of Crown arising from the report.
No confidence in directors
Commissioner Bergin concluded the Independent Liquor & Gaming Authority
would be justified in concluding that it cannot have any confidence in dealing with Mr Barton as a director of the Licensee or Crown
Ken Barton is the chief executive of Crown Resorts Limited.
Another director, Michael Johnston,
should not have been involved in any managerial role with Crown nor on any board Committees particularly relating to corporate governance or risk management
He should “conclude his tour of duty as soon as possible”.
In regards to another director, former AFL chief executive Andrew Demetriou, the report found
The Authority would be justified in lacking confidence in placing reliance upon Mr Demetriou in the future
It concluded that
in the circumstances of the findings against Mr Barton, Mr Johnston and Mr Demetriou, the Authority would be justified in entertaining very serious doubts that Crown could be converted into a suitable person under the Casino Control Act whilst they remain as directors
Another director, Harold Mitchell, should
further reflect on the need to refresh the Crown board and take steps to expedite that process
Remote management by Packer
The report describes a confused culture within Crown, with some directors and executives more loyal to Mr Packer, who is no longer a director, than the company itself.
The stewardship of long-time Packer associate John Alexander, chairman and chief executive between February 2017 and January 2020, led “to disastrous consequences”.
This included processes that exposed its directors to conflicts of interest and remote management by Mr Packer and a failure to protect Crown’s casino licensees from the infiltration of criminal elements through, at the very least, its lack of robust junket approval processes and a lack of proper oversight and monitoring of risks to money laundering in its subsidiaries’ bank accounts.
Bergin suggests the NSW Casino Control Act be amended to prevent any person from holding more than 10% of any licensee or holding company.
The Independent Liquor & Gaming Authority will consider the report and determine its own path forward.
It’s hard to see how Crown, as currently structured, can open the Sydney casino in the near future.
The report raises obvious questions for the Victorian and Western Australian regulators.
To date there has been little to suggest that Victoria’s Commission for Gambling and Liquor Regulation has the wherewithal to take on Crown.
That has to change. As Greens spokesperson on gambling Senator Rachel Siewert said on reading the report, “we need to know what’s going on in Perth and Melbourne”.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elena Collinson, Senior Project and Research Officer, Australia-China Relations Institute, University of Technology Sydney
Australia-China relations, which have been spiralling downward for some time, continue to sink. The latest blow comes in the form of the formal arrest of Australian journalist and former business anchor for Chinese state media outlet China Global Television Network (CGTN), Cheng Lei.
Cheng was first detained by Chinese state authorities on August 13 last year.
Chinese officials have offered scant explanation for her arrest, with the Australian government simply stating it had been advised Cheng had been arrested “on suspicion of illegally supplying state secrets overseas”.
Foreign Minister Marise Payne told ABC radio that Australia was currently “not privy to [the] evidence” supporting Beijing’s move. She said Australia was “seeking further advice in relation to the charges”.
The arrest is itself not tantamount to a formal charge, but is indicative of Beijing’s intent to plough ahead with a full-scale criminal investigation into the matter. Should a formal charge be laid, the prospect of acquittal is slim.
A challenge mounted through China’s courts would also likely yield an unhappy outcome. While China’s courts, on paper, are bound to “follow legal provisions to independently exercise the power of adjudication”, the very nature of China’s domestic system means there is no institutional guarantee for this.
This was made explicit in 2017, when China’s Chief Justice Zhou Qiang said:
[China’s courts] must firmly resist the western idea of ‘constitutional democracy’, ‘separation of powers’ and ‘judicial independence’. These are erroneous western notions that threaten the leadership of the ruling Communist Party and defame the Chinese socialist path on the rule of law.
As Colin Hawes, associate professor of law at University of Technology Sydney points out:
In criminal cases, despite recent reforms to protect accused defendants, the system is heavily weighted in favour of the prosecution.
It would be difficult to argue that the detention and formal arrest of Cheng Lei is divorced from the tensions that have crept into nearly every aspect of the Australia-China relationship.
Asked in August last year whether he thought “Cheng Lei is a pawn in a worsening relationship between China and Australia”, then-Trade Minister Simon Birmingham replied it would not be particularly helpful “to try and draw that link”.
However, the timing of Cheng’s arrest and the seeming parallels of her case with those of fellow Australian citizen Yang Hengjun and Canadian citizens Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, seem to point to an alarming trend of Beijing using individuals to communicate political dissatisfaction.
Even allowing for circumstances in which there may be substantive merit to the case brought against Cheng, it is evident Beijing has secured another card in its political game with Australia.
It would not be beyond the realm of possibility that Beijing would seize on this particular matter to exert pressure on Australia with respect to decisions that are contrary to Chinese state interests. For example, it could be used to try to force concessions, or simply dissuade Australia from future unfavourable actions.
While the Australian government has pledged to continue to advocate for Cheng – and rightly so – there are limits to what it can do. But continuing, at the very least, to press strongly for basic standards of justice, procedural fairness and humane treatment to be met in accordance with international norms is paramount.
There’s something odd about those television and internet advertisements telling us we are getting more super.
The money seems to come from nowhere.
“Pretty soon,” explains the woman getting onto an escalator, “the amount of super paid on top of our wages will go up”.
Fair enough, but the increases in compulsory super contributions will come out of the same bucket as wages – so-called on-costs which employers use to pay wage cheques, workers compensation, payroll tax, employees pay-as-you-go tax, and employees super contributions, which is also known as the “super guarantee”.
The ad is a bit like those promising buyers of mobile phones the “free gift” of an accessory. It has to be paid for somehow, and it’s usually out of the purchase price.
Paul Keating, prime minister when compulsory super was introduced in 1992, put it this way in a reflection on the history of modern superannuation in 2007
the cost of superannuation was never borne by employers. It was absorbed into the overall wage cost
Last year’s retirement income review examined every study that had ever been conducted on the topic and concluded that the “weight of evidence suggests the majority of increases in the super guarantee come at the expense of growth in wages”.
A more informative advertisement would have referred to super “paid on top of our wages, at the expense of our wages”.
The ads are funded by Industry Super, which represents the big funds that want to manage the extra super. There’s no reason for them to tell the whole story.
They’re the start of a campaign to get the government to actually deliver the five legislated increases of 0.5% of salary starting in July that are scheduled to take compulsory super from 9.5% of salary to 12% over five years, and they are about to get more aggressive.
An extra half a percent of salary into super each year for five years culminating in an extra 2.5% would be a big ask at any time, but in the present circumstances it is worth considering how a COVID-affected employer might respond.
That employer has choices. It could shave each of the next five annual wage increases so that it won’t end up paying out more than it would have.
Or it could eat into profits (which is difficult if it is barely surviving), or attempt to put up prices (which is also difficult at the moment) or it could shave its wage bill by letting go of staff.
In normal circumstances the first is the most likely, although in the circumstances we are in, and given the scale of the increases proposed, economists don’t rule out some of the last – letting go of staff.
The less employers expand employment or the less they increase wages, the less will be spent on their products, giving them even less money for wages. Household saving is already at unprecedented highs.
Most of us save enough, some too much
These downsides mightn’t be worth having if we don’t need the extra super, but the November retirement income review found that – to the surprise of some – we don’t need more.
High earners have always saved enough for retirement, originally outside of super and now inside of it, making very large extra contributions on top of what’s compulsory in order to take advantage of the tax benefits.
Low earners earn so little while working that the cocktail of super, the pension and private savings gives them about as much or more per year in retirement as they got while working, albeit partly funded at the expense of wages while they are working.
The review found that if the increases in compulsory super proceed as planned, the bottom one third of retirees will get more than they got while working.
International benchmarks suggest most non-renters need only 65-75% of what they got while working, because they face far fewer of the costs they faced in their working lives including paying off a home, saving for retirement, raising and educating children, and commuting.
If the legislated increases in compulsory super go ahead, an astounding two-thirds of Australian retirees will get more than that benchmark. They will have been enriched in retirement at the expense of their living standard while working.
So where does the target of 12% salary locked away in super come from? You might be forgiven for thinking it was adopted after an independent review, and you’d be partly right.
It wasn’t linked to the review, and the hubbub over the mining tax announced at the same time meant that few people noticed.
The best thing to do would be to abandon the 12% target. It’s neither something we need nor something that would help us at the moment.
But if the super lobby makes that hard, I’ve another idea. It’s to allow the increase to proceed – an extra 0.5% of salary from each employer per year, amounting to 2.5% of salary after five years – but to give workers the option of having it directed instead to their wage account. For an employer, it’ll make no difference which account it goes to.
For Australians short of income at the time they need it, and an economy needing wages and spending, it might make a difference.
Mercury is a nasty toxin that harms humans and ecosystems. Most human exposure comes from eating contaminated fish and other seafood. But how does mercury enter the Australian environment in the first place?
Our recent research dug into official data and past research to answer this question.
In some rare good news for the environment, it turns out one Australian industry – gold production – has brought mercury emissions down to almost zero. But more can be done about mercury emitted from coal-fired power stations.
Australia is one of the few developed countries yet to ratify the United Nations’ Minamata Convention on Mercury, which aims to reduce mercury in the environment. But once we deal with emissions from coal burning, we’ll be closer than ever to addressing the problem.
Humans are exposed to mercury via seafood.Shutterstock
Where does mercury pollution come from?
Mercury is a heavy metal that cycles between the atmosphere, ocean and land. It occurs naturally but can be toxic to humans and wildlife.
Most human-caused mercury emissions come from the burning of fossil fuels and the mining and production of gold and other metals.
What’s more, items such as light bulbs and thermometers dumped in landfill can release mercury 30-50 years later.
Once in the air, mercury can float around for months, crossing oceans and continents to end up back on the ground, far from where it was emitted.
It’s eventually taken up by soils, water and plants, then slowly released back to the atmosphere.
Coal plants are a major source of mercury emissions.Julian Smith/AAP
A success story
Estimates vary on the exact amount of mercury that Australian activities release to the air. Studies we reviewed put the figure at anywhere between 8 and 30 tonnes each year.
Our analysis shows the figure is likely at the low end of that range – largely due to a single success story.
In 2006, a gold production facility in Kalgoorlie was thought to cause half of Australia’s industrial mercury emissions. The massive operation includes the Fimiston Open Pit, or “Super Pit”, purportedly so large it can be seen from space.
Gold ore naturally contains mercury. To extract the gold, the ore is typically roasted at temperatures of up to 600℃. During this process, the mercury escapes into the atmosphere. Most mercury pollution from Australia’s gold industry came from a single roaster at the Kalgoorlie site.
But over one decade, mercury emissions from the operation dropped from more than 8 tonnes to just 250 kilograms. This was largely due to a technology upgrade in 2015, when the roaster was replaced by a grinding process.
This success means coal-fired power plants are now Australia’s largest controllable source of mercury emissions. They emit between two and four tonnes of mercury every year (along with other air pollutants).
Mercury emissions from two related gold processing facilities in Kalgoorlie, based on data reported to Australia’s National Pollutant Inventory (http://www.npi.gov.au/).Fisher and Nelson, 2020
Other sources of mercury emissions
Other natural and human activities release mercury into the air. They include:
Our research found most estimates of bushfire emissions fall between 4 and 40 tonnes each year. But this work relied on measurements from overseas. Newmeasurements from Australian ecosystems suggests past estimates are probably too high – possibly due to lower mercury concentrations in some Australian vegetation.
Soils and unburnt vegtation: Only one study has calculated the mercury released from Australian soils and unburnt vegetation, which it put at a whopping 74 to 222 tonnes per year.
When that research was published in 2012, there were no Australian data to test the model behind these numbers. We still don’t have many measurements, but most datawe do have show Australian soils and vegetation take up about as much mercury as they release.
The one exception is “enriched” soils, which contain more mercury than other soils. This is because they are located over natural mineral belts and at former mining sites. At one location in northern New South Wales, enriched soils emitted more than 100 times as much mercury as nearby unenriched soils.
Mercury from elsewhere: Mercury released by other countries can travel to Australia in the air. The levels are tough to quantify, but we are currently using models to produce an estimate.
Australian atmospheric mercury sources and sinks, in tonnes per year. Current best estimates are shown in black; range from the literature shown in grey. Question marks indicate insufficient data exist to make an informed best estimate. Images courtesy of Tracey Saxby, Kim Kraeer, Lucy Van Essen-Fishman, Diane Kleine via University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science.Fisher and Nelson, 2020
The federal government recently banned mercury-containing pesticides used in sugar cane farming. With gold production also taken care of, reducing mercury emissions from power plants is the logical next step.
It’s also time for Australia to formally commit to the Minamata Convention. Once we ratify the deal, we’ll be bound to control mercury emissions under international law – and that’s good for humans and wildlife everywhere.
Replacing cars that run on fossil fuels with electric cars will be important in meeting climate goals – road transport produces more than 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions. But there are obstacles to wider uptake, particularly in Australia.
Too much of the debate about these vehicles revolves around abstract, technical calculations and assumptions about cost and benefit. Tariffs, taxes and incentives are important in shaping decisions, but the user experience is often overlooked. To better understand this we took a Tesla on a road trip from Sydney through some regional towns in New South Wales.
We soon found “range anxiety” is real. That’s the worry that the battery will run out of power before reaching the destination or a charging point. It’s often cited as the most important reason for reluctance to buy an electric vehicle.
Even as prices come down and hire and share options become more widespread, range anxiety about electric vehicles is hindering their wider uptake. We found it can largely be overcome through a range of strategies readily available now.
Lessons from our road trip
The first is simply to accumulate driving experience with a particular vehicle. Teslas promise a far simpler machine with fewer moving parts, but also incredibly sophisticated sensing and computational technology to help control your trip. This means you need to get a feel for the algorithms that calculate route and range.
These algorithms are black boxes – their calculations are invisible to users, only appearing as outputs like range calculations. On our trip, range forecasts were surprisingly inaccurate for crossing the Great Dividing Range, for example.
If drivers of electric cars have to worry about making it to the next charging station that’s a big deterrent for many buyers.Morgan Sette/AAP
Second, we found it very helpful to connect with other electric vehicle users and share experiences of driving. Just like any new technology, forming a community of users is a good way to gain an understanding of the vehicle’s uses and limits. Owner associations and lively online groups such as Electric Vehicles for Australia make finding fellow enthusiasts easy.
This connection can also help with the third strategy. It involves developing an understanding of how companies like Tesla control their vehicles and issue “over the air” software updates. If these specify different parameters for acceptable battery charge, that can change the vehicle’s range.
Long driving distances call for better planning and co-ordination of a nationwide charging network.alexfan32/Shutterstock
Understanding what is involved for users is also crucial to the environmental benefits of electric vehicles. Their sustainability isn’t just a function of taxes and technologies. The practices of people driving electric cars matter too.
You learn with experience what efficient driving requires of you. You can also work out how your charging patterns could match solar generation at home, for those lucky enough to have rooftop PV panels.
These vehicles can deliver significant environmental benefits. They produce zero tailpipe emissions, reducing both local air pollution and global greenhouse gas emissions.
Regenerative braking also reduces brake particulate emissions. That’s because the electric motor operating in reverse can slow the car while recharging its battery.
Electric vehicles won’t cure all ills
Switching from internal combustion to electric cars won’t address all the problems of our current car-based system. Some, such as road congestion, could get worse.
Congestion and the costs of providing and maintaining roads, parking and associated infrastructure will still create enormous social, economic and environmental burdens. Electric vehicles need to be part of a much wider transformation – especially in urban areas where other transport options are available.
Longer distances and lower densities make walking, cycling and public transport more challenging in rural and regional areas. Better support for electric vehicles, particularly chargers, could make a significant difference here.
These vehicles can help rural and regional areas in other ways too. Many holiday towns rely on tourist incomes but their electricity supply is at the mercy of long thin power lines that run through bushland. Electric vehicles could potentially help with this problem: when parked they can feed power back into the grid.
Improving rural and regional charging networks can benefit those areas as well as the drivers of electric vehicles.Shutterstock
Regional economic planning that supports visits by electric vehicle drivers can reduce the need to invest in energy generation or battery systems. There are huge opportunities to integrate electricity planning and the (re)building of bushfire-affected towns, which a trial in Mallacoota will explore.
Pooled together, the batteries of an all-electric national vehicle fleet could provide power equivalent to that of five Snowy 2.0s. This would boost energy security and flexibility.
In the US, President Joe Biden has announced electric vehicles will replace the entire federal fleet of 645,000 vehicles. An extra 500,000 public charging stations are to be built within a decade.
In Australia, the policy landscape is more [contested]. It’s time we caught up here.
There is a quiet movement among settler colonials in Australia and the US to critically examine their family histories as a way of re-examining the impact of centuries of dispossession and slavery of Indigenous peoples.
Critical family histories enable a shift from celebratory tropes of benign settlement to deep considerations of legitimacy. The myth of great white men and women, bravely opening new worlds and taming the wilderness, including the “savage” Indigenes, is now being challenged by a search for the truth.
As Diane Kenaston, an American pastor and genealogist, explains in her book Genealogy and Anti-Racism: A Resource for White People, genealogy has long been entwined with white supremacy. And family history research has been the preserve of white privilege.
But, she writes, critical family history can also “change the narratives within our own families”.
Our ancestors were works in progress, just as we are. They, like us, sometimes participated in oppressive systems and sometimes resisted them. [We need to] engage this complex legacy.
Education activist Christine Sleeterfirst adopted the use of critical family history in this way. While researching teaching methods for the multicultural classroom, she discovered that intersections of race, class, culture, gender and other forms of difference and power had shaped her own family history.
In her research, Sleeter found
a history and legacy of not only European American immigration, but also of Appalachia, of slave ownership, of African Americans passing as white and leaving family behind, and of Jim Crow.
Her awareness led to a sense of responsibility and debt. In 2017, she returned to the Ute people US$250,000, which she had inherited from the sale of a homestead on land stolen from the Ute people in Colorado in 1881.
Sleeter (second from right) returning money to the Ute tribe in 2017.Author provided, Author provided
Founding fathers as ancestors
In Australia, David Denborough, a writer and academic, thought there would be nothing of interest in the stories of his ancestors.
Working alongside Aboriginal people, documenting their stories of dispossession and survival, he was challenged by Jane Lester, a Yangkunytjatjara/Antikirinya woman, to find his ancestors.
Denborough is determined to tell the truth as part of his healing journey and his close relationship with Aboriginal people. He has realised
there is no sense in moral superiority towards my ancestry because colonial violence in this country has not ended; no place for hopelessness because First Nations resistance has never wavered; and, no time for paralysing shame because invitations to partnerships are still being offered by Aboriginal people … and [there is] so much to be done.
White deaths at black hands, black deaths at white hands
James Brown was 16 years old and shepherding alone on a remote sheep run near present-day Quorn, South Australia, in 1852. He was found tragically clubbed to death and mutilated in unknown circumstances.
An unwritten rule of the frontier was that attacks on white people, no matter the circumstances, were followed by vigilante violence. Men, women and children were often massacred in retribution.
Seventeen men, including Brown’s brothers and two Aboriginal trackers, rode out. They reported killing four Aboriginal men. Tellingly, though, two of the 15 men would not swear this on the Bible.
Mike Brown, a descendent of this family who took over land in the Flinders Ranges area, knew very little of the Aboriginal history of Australia. After hearing Reg Blow, a Gureng Gureng elder, speak about the true history of the criminal takeover of Aboriginal lands, Brown was inspired to research his own family history.
Wanting to investigate the Aboriginal stories of the 1852 massacre, he found a lifetime friend in Ken McKenzie, a prominent Andyamuthna elder, from whom he received “the dignity of forgiveness”.
Brown is now working with others on a documentary, Beyond Sorry, to reveal the full story of the massacre. He told me,
It’s how we discover who we really are as a people and our relationship to this land […] we need to be released from the illusion we live under that affects our attitudes to ‘others’, to be free.
In NSW, playwright Clare Britton was also shocked to discover the story of brutally murdered relatives in her family history.
The pregnant Elizabeth O’Brien and her infant son Poggy were clubbed to death by the Aboriginal “bushrangers” Jimmy and Joe Governor in 1900. With the help of descendents of the Governor family and Aboriginal elders, Britton’s theatre company produced a play based on this story, Posts in a Paddock. The title refers to all that remained of the O’Brien household when she visited, a stark memorial to the family tragedy.
The hunt for the Governor bushrangers in 1900: a posse of mounted police, Aboriginal trackers and district volunteers.Wikimedia Commons
Britton explained that elder Aunty Rhonda Dixon Grovenor introduced the concept of dadirri “deep listening” to the ensemble. They sat with their Aboriginal collaborators and each other’s families. And listened to each other. She said,
so many Indigenous people were killed, separated from their families and taken away from their homes and you can’t read about that in the same way because those stories were not recorded. [These murders] were thoroughly documented because my family and the other victims were white.
The understandings I formed then have changed me.
Giving back
In the US, artist Anne Mavor was inspired to learn about her ancestors after attending a public meeting where a local Indigenous person challenged the white audience to critically examine their histories.
Mavor put together an exhibition, I Am My White Ancestors: Claiming the Legacy of Oppression, comprised of 12 pieces of art depicting her ancestors. They include royal figures, a slave owner, warriors, farmers and a pilgrim — all with Mavor’s face. The life-size portraits make whiteness visible and accountable.
Mavor told me she seeks
to inspire white viewers … to claim both positive and negative aspects of their own family histories to contribute to the end of racism.
She says white people don’t get a pass by ignoring the oppression of their ancestors. They need to ask: What is the legacy of this oppression and how does this affect me now?
This is just one of many projects designed to give back to Indigenous peoples. In Seattle, residents can pay rent to the city’s first inhabitants, the Duwamish people, who have long been rejected by the US government for federal recognition as a Native American tribe.
The Coalition of Anti-Racist Whites has developed the “Real Rent” program as a means of restitution, but also to educate the broader public about the plight of the Duwamish.
Land hand-backs are happening in Australia, too. Tom and Jane Teniswood have returned half of their 220-acre property in Tasmania to the local Aboriginal community. The Teniswoods advocate individual action over government reconciliation efforts, saying
reconciliation is great but it is so much talk, so many documents and so little action. This is just a symbol of action.
It is easy to agree with them. While government leadership in truth-telling is vital, we will see more of these acts of profound generosity and genuine reconciliation from settler colonials.
The Teniswoods’ gift was touted as the first private land return in the state.Author provided, Author provided (No reuse)
In the spirit of Makaratta
Settler colonials are beginning to understand the true impacts of the criminal takeover of Indigenous lands. They are seeking to right the balance and achieve a spiritual resolution.
This is the Aboriginal way of approaching history, in order to move forward after a conflict. A common process across the continent, it is called Makaratta by the yolngu people of Arnhemland. In the same way, a critical approach to family histories involves a great deal of communication between settler colonials and Indigenous peoples. It enables the forging of new relationships.
It is histories such as these that will change people through deep understanding and empathy. They also present an opportunity to truly and indelibly change the nature of our society and leave a meaningful legacy for our children.
Papua New Guinea’s Police Commissioner David Manning has promised that the full force of the law and all resources at the Constabulary’s disposal will be used against policemen who flout the law and help criminals.
“We had two threats issued against police detectives,” he said.
“Criminals and policemen are involved.
“I will not stand for this and whether you are a criminal or a policeman who decides to engage or attack policemen, you will be dealt with equally under lawful means.
“If you want to be a criminal or align yourself with individuals or entities and challenge the police, then you have no place in the police force and I will ensure your speedy exit … straight into prison.”
Commissioner Manning said reports of policemen continuously being deployed to provide protection for logging camps or private businesses with the full knowledge and authority of their superiors would be investigated and dealt with.
Policemen ‘denying rights to justice’ “In these instances, police resources, including firearms, are being used by these policemen to protect the interest of a few, thereby denying the rights of the majority to seek justice,” he said.
“The police force will undergo beneficial change, and those currently opposing these changes for their own reasons will be weeded out.
“The majority of policemen and women perform their duties with professionalism and dedication, yet we and the country are being let down by these few members.
“The proposed changes in the disciplinary proceedings will allow for a swifter and more effective process that protects all parties concerned whilst enhancing greater accountability and appropriate penalties being dealt out.
“In the near future, legislative amendments will be made to criminalise certain offences that have caused the discipline and performance of the police force to deteriorate.
“If we are to deliver to the people of PNG a police force that they deserve and provide a policing service that adds value to their lives, we must undergo these reforms and remove impediments now.”
Asia Pacific Report republishes The National articles with permission.
There are signs Fiji’s deportation of the University of the South Pacific (USP) vice-chancellor was engineered to avoid his contract being given better security.
Professor Pal Ahluwalia told RNZ Dateline Pacific that on Wednesday last week the USP chancellor, Nauru President Lionel Aingimea, had alerted the university’s governing body, the USP Council, to veiled threats in Fiji news media.
Professor Ahluwalia said this resulted in Aingimea advising council members, including Fijian representatives, that in their next meeting they would amend the vice-chancellor’s contract to afford better security.
Professor Pal Ahluwalia told RNZ Dateline Pacific that on Wednesday last week the USP chancellor, Nauru President Lionel Aingimea, had alerted the university’s governing body, the USP Council, to veiled threats in Fiji news media.
Professor Ahluwalia said this resulted in Aingimea advising council members, including Fijian representatives, that in their next meeting they would amend the vice-chancellor’s contract to afford better security.
However, the vice-chancellor said his work permit was rescinded on the same day (Wednesday) and he was deported on Thursday before the council could meet on Friday, following the notice in the media.
“What had appeared in the Fiji Sun in the Whispers column to say that ‘Watch this space: A school where big students study, its leader will be removed from the country.’ So he took the step to say to council we need to amend the vice-chancellor’s contract.”
An ‘illegal act’ by Fiji Professor Ahluwalia said the way in which his contract was frustrated was an illegal act.
The USP is a regional institution, said Professor Ahluwalia, owned by 12 Pacific countries and “the decisions of the University Council, which has representatives from all the countries, needs to be respected” which is inconsistent with the way Fiji acted in his arrest and deportation, he added.
The council said in a statement that it was not consulted.
Professor Ahluwalia said he had received a lot of support from the entire region and that he would welcome any action from the USP Council that would allow the university to move forward, including a rumoured move of headquarters to another country.
“I believe I was selected to do the job and it’s obvious that the community – staff and students – strongly endorse what I am doing. So it’s my belief that if I need to move to Samoa to run this university, we’ll make it work,” he said.
“I will abide by whatever decision the University Council makes.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
The Chinese government has formally charged Australian journalist Cheng Lei with “illegally supplying state secrets overseas”, almost half a year after she was first detained, reports ABC News.
Lei has been held since August last year under a form of detention that allows Chinese police to imprison and question a suspect for up to six months without access to lawyers.
Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne said Chinese authorities advised Australia late last week that they had formally charged Lei, meaning an official investigation into her conduct would now begin.
“We have consistently raised concerns [about Cheng Lei] regularly at the most senior levels,” Payne said.
“We have made a number of consular visits to her as part of our bilateral consular agreement – the most recent of those was on the 27th of January – and we continue to seek assurances of her being treated appropriately, humanely and in accordance with international standards, and that will continue to be the case.”
Lei was working as a high profile anchor for China’s state-run English language news service CGTN.
Payne said the charges against Lei were “broad” and she expected the investigation to continue for months.
When asked if the Australian government believed the allegations against Lei were baseless, she said Australia was “seeking further advice in relation to the charges”.
Lei has two young children living with her family in Melbourne.
Last year, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said Lei was “suspected of carrying out criminal activities endangering China’s national security”, but did not provide any further details.
In September, the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (RSF) media freedom watchdog and other press freedom groups urged the release of Cheng Lei, who had been detained incommunicado and without charge since 14 August 2020.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ. Pacific Media Watch collaborates with Reporters Without Borders.
The Speaker of Fiji’s Parliament has rejected calls from the opposition to debate the controversial deportation of the University of the South Pacific’s vice-chancellor, Professor Pal Ahluwalia.
Ratu Epeli Nailatikau ruled that an oral question from National Federation Party (NFP) leader Professor Biman Prasad, a former USP economics academic, and an adjournment motion from Sodelpa leader Ratu Naiqama Lalabalavu were not urgent.
The deportation of the regional 12-nation body’s vice-chancellor has led to widespread regional criticism of Fiji’s government and urgent calls for action.
However, Speaker Ratu Epeli said Dr Prasad’s question did not relate to a matter of public importance and did not qualify as urgent.
Further, the adjournment motion was disallowed under standing orders.
“I have considered the nature of the adjournment motion and ruled that the matters raised in the adjournment motion are not something that requires the immediate attention of Parliament or the government,” Ratu Epeli said.
USP Council looks at deportation issues The USP Council released a statement at the weekend saying it was not consulted over Professor Pal Ahluwalia’s deportation.
The council stated that it had not dismissed Professor Ahluwalia and expressed disappointment that it was not advised, as his employer, of the decision by Fiji’s government to deport him.
The council has established a subcommittee, chaired by the President of Nauru, Lionel Angimea, including the council representatives of Australia, Tonga, Niue, Solomon Islands, Samoa and two Senate representatives to look into matters surrounding the deportation.
The meeting on Friday also discussed the possibility of a vice-chancellor being based in and operating out of another country apart from Fiji.
Dr Giulio Masasso Tu’ikolongahau Paunga has been appointed acting vice-chancellor of USP in the meantime.
The sub-committee has been tasked to bring recommendations to the council as soon as possible. The next meeting is on February 16.
Dame Meg ‘disheartened’ The incoming Secretary-General of the Pacific Islands Forum, Henry Puna, of the Cook Islands, said he would not be speaking about the removal of the vice-chancellor until after a communique from the regional grouping was released.
However, the outgoing Secretary-General, Dame Meg-Taylor, of Papua New Guinea, issued a statement.
“As the permanent chair of the Council of Regional Organisations in the Pacific and a member of the USP Council, I am disheartened by the ongoing and recent events at the university culminating in the deportation [last week] of vice-chancellor and president, Professor Pal Ahluwalia.
“I am confident that fellow council members will continue to uphold good governance and follow due process to ensure the immediate restoration of strong leadership of the university,” Dame Meg said.
Outgoing PIF Secretary-General Dame Meg Taylor … “disheartened” by the expulsion of the vice-chancellor. Image: RNZ/PIFSec
Meanwhile, the chairman of the Forum, Tuvalu Prime Minister Kausea Natano urged the university council to find a resolution to the situation.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
We all know the queen can’t refuse assent to a bill just because she doesn’t like it. But can she secretly get a law changed, in her personal interest, before it is even introduced into parliament?
There is a myth the queen never involves herself in political matters. In public view, all she does is act on ministerial advice, signing her name or initials where required.
But she has always done more than this. She exercises extensive soft power by influencing government policy and bills before they are introduced to parliament. Her power is exercised behind closed doors, and is more potent because of it.
There is a myth the queen does not get involved in politics.Ben Stansall/AP/AAP
Due to secrecy laws, it is extremely hard to find documentary evidence of the queen’s exercise of influence. In the United Kingdom, government documents that “relate to” communications with the sovereign or the next two persons in line to the throne, as well as palace officials acting on their behalf, are subject to an absolute exemption from release under freedom of information or by government archives.
This exemption lasts until at least five years after the death of the relevant member of the royal family – meaning we cannot access British government documents about the queen’s political role, including in relation to Australia.
New documents discovered
But The Guardian has managed to expose a chink in this armour of secrecy.
In the UK’s National Archives, it discovered documents from 1973 showing the queen’s personal solicitor lobbied public servants to change a proposed law so that it would not allow companies, or the public, to learn of the queen’s shareholdings in Britain.
The gambit succeeded, and the draft bill was changed to suit the queen’s wishes.
Perhaps these documents escaped the secrecy embargo because they involved communications with a private solicitor, rather than palace officials. Or perhaps the eyes of the person vetting the file glazed over due to the boring nature of the bill and missed the reference to the queen.
Either way, it is a rare insight into what goes on behind the scenes.
Queen’s consent
The procedure involved is known as “queen’s consent”. This is different from “royal assent,” which occurs after a bill has been passed by both houses of parliament. “Queen’s consent” happens at a much earlier stage, usually well before a bill is introduced to parliament.
Queen’s consent is required where a bill would affect the governmental powers formally vested in the queen (such as powers to enter into treaties, declare war, dissolve parliament or grant mercy), matters directly affecting the monarchy (such as succession to the Crown, royal marriages and royal titles), and the property and revenue interests of the queen and her heir held by the Duchy of Lancaster and the Duchy of Cornwall.
Curiously, it also seems to extend to bills affecting the privately held property and financial interests of the queen, although there does not appear to be a clear rationale for this.
Any proposed bill that would affect these royal interests must be sent to the queen and her private solicitors at least two weeks before its parliamentary introduction. The solicitors then advise on the potential impact of the bill before the queen grants her consent.
A bill cannot proceed through parliament without such consent. This became an issue during the battle over Brexit.
Acting on ministerial advice … and influencing that advice
The palace has consistently stated the queen acts on ministerial advice in granting or refusing queen’s consent. While this may be so, there would be no point in her paying for advice from her personal solicitors, unless she intended to exercise her soft power to persuade the government to make changes to a bill when it suited her to do so.
‘Queen’s consent’ is a process that occurs before a bill is introduced to parliament.Alastair Grant/AP/AAP
One would imagine this would ordinarily happen through a quiet word during the queen’s weekly audience with the prime minister. No records are kept of such meetings, which remain strictly confidential. Any instructions to make changes to a proposed bill would come from the prime minister before it was introduced to parliament and could not be traced back to the queen.
The documents uncovered by The Guardian, however, show an alternative, more direct exercise of power. In 1973, the queen’s personal solicitor met with public servants to ask them to change a proposed companies bill to ensure the queen’s shareholdings were not exposed.
What is interesting is that public servants agreed to the meeting and tried to work out ways to accommodate the queen’s wishes before even seeking ministerial approval. There seemed to be an expectation that public servants should meet her wishes. Moreover, there seemed to be no shock or surprise her solicitors should intervene in this way.
Differing understandings of the queen’s role
In 2014, a British parliamentary committee concluded it had
no evidence to suggest that legislation is ever altered as part of the consent process.
This goes to show how effective the secrecy provisions have been in keeping the public and backbench politicians in the dark about how the constitutional system actually works. Yet ministers seem to know better.
In 2012, then British Attorney-General, Dominic Grieve, issued a certificate denying access to letters by Prince Charles that lobbied ministers. Grieve asserted lobbying ministers and “urging views upon them” formed part of Prince Charles’s preparation for kingship as he “would have a right (and indeed arguably a duty) to make [such representations] as Monarch”.
If this is so, the queen plays a far more politically active role than is publicly known in the UK or Australia.
Relevance to Australia and New Zealand
While the queen has little involvement anymore in Australian affairs, occasionally legislation is passed that will affect her. In such cases, the palace insists consent must first be granted, even though there is no formal parliamentary procedure, as in the UK.
One example was the 1986 passage of the Australia Acts, which were identical British and Australian Acts that cut off residual constitutional links between the UK and Australia.
One of the sections provided for the queen to be advised directly by state premiers in relation to state matters. The queen objected. Her private secretary expressed the concern that she might be subject to “outlandish advice”.
In order to secure the queen’s consent to the introduction of the bill, extensive negotiations were undertaken. Amendments were made to the form of the section, and a convention on how it would operate was agreed. Even then, the queen only gave consent after all Australian governments insisted upon it.
A New Zealand example concerned a proposed change in 1973 to the queen’s royal style and titles with respect to New Zealand. The government wanted the queen to assent in person to the legislation when she visited New Zealand. Her private secretary replied by telex:
As far as I can discover The Queen has not yet been asked to give her approval to New Zealand Style and Titles Bill. It is … something that she would welcome in principle but her approval must be sought both to introduction of Bill and exact wording of proposed new Style and Title.
The queen’s magic
In practice, the queen’s role in relation to her realms, such as Australia and New Zealand, largely now involves the appointment and removal of the governor-general and other ceremonial or symbolic acts. In performing these, she acts on ministerial advice.
But she maintains a degree of control through a system that requires “informal” advice be given first, with formal advice only being given once the informal advice is approved.
The queen’s influence is exercised subtly and out of public view.Andy Rain/EPA/AAP
This means the queen can always say she has not rejected the formal advice of her ministers in the realms, even though she may have rejected informal advice or at least negotiated changes to it before it is formally given.
As with queen’s consent, the power of influence is exercised at an early stage, in confidence, so that no formal or public act of refusal is ever seen.
Like the best of magicians, the queen’s magic is keeping the real action out of public view, while maintaining the appearance of doing nothing. These latest documents, like the recently released Kerr-palace letters, indicate there is much behind the scenes that has not yet been revealed.
Australia’s efforts to end a diplomatic deep freeze with China may not be getting anywhere fast on the surface, but there are nonetheless some signs of a potential thaw.
China’s announcement it was “actively studying” joining a region-wide trade pact that involves Australia and ten other Asia-Pacific trading nations should be exploited by Canberra in its efforts to open lines of communication with Beijing.
Beijing has said it wants to engage CPTPP members on technical issues.
Australia would have nothing to lose by encouraging China to explore opportunities provided by a trade agreement from which China was excluded when the TPP was concluded in 2016.
That was five years ago, before Donald Trump wilfully upended useful initiatives undertaken by his predecessor. The TPP was one of these.
The new Biden administration in the US has indicated it will study the possibility of returning to the CPTPP. However, given domestic pressures from both left and right over threats to American jobs posed by free trade initiatives, it is hard to envisage the administration moving quickly.
In the meantime, Canberra should not await Washington’s imprimatur to engage China on an expansion of the CPTPP, if that is possible.
It is conceivable Beijing is saying it wants to engage as a device to further unsettle the US and its allies in Asia. But there are also reasons to believe it would suit China to join the CPTPP club.
These reasons would include Beijing’s desire to counter fallout from a difficult 2020 for itself diplomatically on issues like the origins of the coronavirus.
President Xi Jinping indicated late last year that China would actively consider participating in the CPTPP. This was days after China signed on to the world’s largest trade pact, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP).
RCEP countries account for about 30% of global GDP, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) 28% and the EU 15%. CPTPP countries represent 13%. These are approximate numbers.
At this point it might be useful to define differences between the CPTPP and the RCEP. These are part of an “alphabet soup” of regional trading initiatives, including an omnibus Free Trade Agreement of Asia-Pacific (FTAAP) that China has promoted over the years.
The FTAAP has been relegated to the back-burner for the time being.
The essential difference between the massive RCEP and the smaller CPTPP is that the latter aims for the virtual elimination of tariffs (up to 99%) among its signatories. The RCEP, on the other hand, imposes less stringent standards on its participants on tariffs, and on labor and environmental standards.
CPTPP signatories include Australia, Canada, Brunei, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore, Vietnam, Mexico, Chile and Peru. As originally envisaged, the TPP, with America’s participation, would have constituted the world’s biggest trade pact. It would have accounted for 40% of global GDP.
RCEP signatories include all ten Association of South East Nations (ASEAN) – Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam – plus Australia, China, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea.
India dropped out citing concerns about the trade pact’s impact on certain sectors of its economy, principally agriculture. Small farmers are a vocal and powerful force in Indian politics.
It is against this background that Australia officials should redouble their efforts to engage in region-wide trade diplomacy that will bring benefits to participating economies and help stabilise a region in danger of being destabilised by China’s rise.
In the often-used words of Chinese diplomacy, this should be a “win-win” for Australian diplomacy if China’s proclaimed desire to engage in the CPTPP is something more than a diplomatic ruse.
This is at a time when Beijing finds itself under pressure over issues like its expansion of military features in the South China Sea, its human rights abuses of the Uighurs in Xinjiang, and its flouting of agreed principles to preserve Hong Kong’s autonomy within a “one country, two systems” framework.
Beijing itself has not hidden one of its principal motivations for wanting to join the CPTPP. This is to enable better relations with an incoming American administration.
Having clumsily departed the European Union, the United Kingdom has applied to join the CPTPP. This follows the UK’s successful application to be included as an ASEAN dialogue partner, along with Australia, the EU, Russia, US, China, Japan, South Korea and India.
In other words, trade diplomacy is continuing to tilt towards the Indo-Pacific region. This is something the Australian government should exploit in the national interest.
Meanwhile, a trade and diplomatic conflict between Canberra and Beijing accompanied by a rash of Australian complaints about China to the World Trade Organisation rumbles on to neither’s advantage. This dispute, played out in trade, is having a detrimental effect on Australia’s economic growth prospects as well as China’s access at a reasonable price to high-quality Australian commodities such as coal.
Surging iron ore prices might have disguised the economic fallout for Australia in the latest trade figures, but this will not last. Australian exporters of coal, wine, lumber, lobsters, beef, wool, barley and other commodities are paying a price for Canberra’s poor management of the China relationship.
Beijing is far from blameless in all of this, of course. A possible off-ramp, though, may well lie in some creative trade diplomacy offered by a possible reset in US relations.
Australia needs to define a role for itself that separates it from what is happening between Beijing and Washington. Smart trade diplomacy, in contrast to a plodding, joined-at-the-hip-to-the-US approach, is required.
China’s interest in engaging on a broader trade front may well provide such an opportunity.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison might be warming to the goal of net-zero emissions by 2050, but federal Nationals leader Michael McCormack has thrown a spanner in the works by suggesting agriculture be excluded from the target.
On Sunday, McCormack told Sky News the Coalition government will not “whack regional Australia” just to meet a climate target. He went on:
There is no way we are going to […] hurt regional Australia, in any way shape or form just to get a target for climate in 2050. We are not going to hurt those wonderful people that put food on our table.
But the Nationals’ push is deeply misguided. It dumps the burden of emissions reduction on other sectors, and puts Australian farmers and the broader economy at greater risk of climate change damage.
Nationals leader Michael McCormack wants farming exempted from emissions targets.Daniel Mariuz/AAP
Farming emissions: a sobering picture
Most emissions from the farming sector come in the form of methane and nitrous oxide.
Nitrous oxide is released from nutrient-rich soils, such as soils where fertilisers have been applied or when livestock deposit urine and manure on the ground.
In 2019, agriculture produced almost 13% of Australia’s national emissions, or 69 million tonnes. Land clearing for agriculture also drives deforestation in Australia, which is responsible for about 30 million tonnes of greenhouse gases a year. Combined, the emissions comprised about 18% of annual emissions in 2019 – equal to the transport sector.
What’s more, agricultural emissions are projected to increase over the next decade. It’s estimated by 2030, the sector (excluding land clearing) will emit between 78 and 112 million tonnes of greenhouse gases each year. By 2050, that figure could reach 132.5 million tonnes, according to advice prepared for the federal government in 2013.
A report released last week by the expert Climate Targets Panel found Australia’s emissions must be slashed by 50% or more by 2030 to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. Australia must meet this target to be consistent with the international goal of keeping global warming below 2°C.
Granting an exemption to agriculture may well mean Australia would miss the 2050 target. At the very least, it would place an unfair burden on other industries to pick up the slack.
Forests, which reduce carbon in the atmosphere, are cleared for agriculture.Shutterstock
A challenging task
No-one says reducing emissions from the agriculture sector will be easy. In contrast to, say, the electricity sector, where low-carbon technology (in the form of renewable energy) is already widely deployed, such technologies in farming are largely still immature or involve complicating factors.
For example, chemical inhibitors can be applied to soil to reduce the production of nitrous oxide. However, inhibitors vary in effectiveness and the reasons behind this are not well understood.
Alternatively, legume crops increase nitrogen in the soil, and including them in rotations can mean less fertiliser is needed. But if planting legumes means other areas must be planted with other crops, this may lead to indirect emissions.
Feed additives given to livestock are a promising way to reduce methane emissions. For example 3-NOP, a chemical pellet mixed into animal feed, has been shown to slash methane emissions from Australian farms. However, 3-NOP is not yet been approved for use in Australia and the price may yet prove prohibitive.
Also, most of the agriculture sector’s methane emissions come from large farms where graziers don’t often directly feed or interact with livestock. That means feed additives and similar options are not practical in these systems.
Diagram showing the global carbon and nitrogen cycles and their interaction with land use.https://www.pce.parliament.nz/media/196523/report-farms-forests-and-fossil-fuels.pdf
Emissions from farms, returned to the land
So while the above options are being ironed out, what’s the best way to cut emissions from agriculture? Research I published last year proposed one solution: pairing agriculture emissions with forestry “sinks” – an area of trees and soil that suck up carbon dioxide.
In a neat synergy, methane and nitrous oxide last in the atmosphere for about the same times as carbon is stored in land sinks, such as trees and soil. So it makes sense to use land sinks to offset agriculture emissions.
Carbon dioxide, such as that emitted from power plants, lasts longer in the atmosphere than farming emissions. It’s best dealt with by decarbonising the electricity and transport sectors, rather than offsetting with biological sinks.
So farmers could, for example, offset their emissions by planting forests. This would enable them to start meeting a net-zero target while new methods for emissions reduction are developed and brought to market.
Research has shown the land sector could potentially achieve net-zero emissions by 2030, using carbon sinks and a mass reduction in land clearing.
Planting trees can offest emissions by farmers.Shutterstock
A clear way forward
Reducing the footprint of Australia’s agriculture sector is no simple feat. It will require:
substantial investment to address research gaps
incentives for farmers to adopt commercially viable mitigation options, such as anaerobic digestors to turn animal waste in intensive systems into energy
incentives for farmers to adopt options not yet commercially viable. This might mean reducing stock numbers when necessary, to restore degraded pastures which increases soil carbon stocks.
Australia’s agriculture is extremely vulnerable to the effects of climate change: bushfires and extreme weather, as well as changes to rainfall, temperature, soils, water, pests and diseases.
Farming should not be exempt from a net-zero target. Not only would this make the job of climate action harder for other parts of the economy, it will ultimately come back to bite farmers themselves.
We all had hoped for a positive start to 2021, but that has not been the case for Australia’s engagement in the region. The Australian government has shown disregard for the importance of our ties with Asia by axing its commitment to national strategic languages.
The Commonwealth has identified the study of languages such as Indonesian as being of national strategic importance since 2006.
From 2013, the government committed to promoting national strategic languages. These included Arabic, Indonesian, Chinese (Mandarin), Hindi, Japanese and Korean. The list potentially included any other languages identified by the Commonwealth.
This priority list was clear recognition that Australians must improve their capacity in these languages to be equipped for the Asian Century.
Funding terms no longer protect languages
One way the government promoted and protected these languages was through Commonwealth funding agreements with universities.
Every few years, the Commonwealth comes to an agreement with each university on the terms and conditions of the funding it provides. A condition of these agreements was that a university had to consult with the Commonwealth and obtain its approval if it planned to close a particular course. This included courses in nationally strategic languages.
A university could not close a language program involving a nationally strategic language without government approval. This condition was important symbolically as well as practically. It emphasised to universities the importance of commitment to Asian languages.
Funding agreements every year up to 2020 included protection for national strategic languages. This year the provision has suddenly disappeared from the agreements without consultation.
What this demonstrates is the nonsensical nature of the government’s new funding scheme for universities. It appears to offer an incentive for students to study a language by reducing fees for these courses. In reality, the government has made it easier for universities to cancel a language program.
And the government is aware several universities have proposed closing language programs as their budgets feel the pinch from the COVID-19 pandemic. These include La Trobe (Hindi and Indonesian), Swinburne (all foreign languages), Murdoch (Indonesian), Western Sydney University (Indonesian) and Sunshine Coast (Indonesian). Removing protection for national strategic languages shows the government’s commitment to the Indo-Pacific region is mere lip service. (Since the original announcements, the programs at La Trobe and Murdoch have been given temporary reprieves.)
The outlook for Indonesian programs appears bleak at La Trobe and several other Australian universities.Philip Mallis/Flickr, CC BY-SA
From enhanced diplomatic relations and cultural engagement to trade relations and social and religious ties, language learning has no shortage of benefits for individuals, communities and the nation as a whole.
Universities must acknowledge what they stand to lose if they close their language programs. Recent decisions like Swinburne’s to close its Japanese and Chinese programs, now confirmed to staff, come at a real cost to the university.
The Chinese and Japanese language programs are casualties of course cuts at Swinburne University of Technology.Nils Versemann/Shutterstock
The best universities in Australia know they attract students by leading with world-class research. However, a shrinking number of universities can credibly lay claim to world-class research that is relevant to the region in terms of language programs and academic country expertise. Any university can pay consultants to produce a slick marketing campaign but that is meaningless if the university lacks the expertise to back it up.
Closing language programs could lead to a loss of international students, particularly higher degree students, on top of those already lost to COVID-related border closures. These students are often attracted by specific country expertise that Australian universities and academics have to offer.
Australia was once known as the mecca of the academic world for Asian studies expertise. The breadth and diversity of its language programs was an integral part of that. It’s time to rebuild that status.
A blow to regional engagement
By cancelling language programs, universities are forfeiting their leading role in promoting deep and long-term engagement with our region. Quite simply, the lack of commitment of many universities demonstrates a gap in deep understanding of the importance of the Indo-Pacific to Australia.
The region has no shortage of challenges and its political, economic and social well-being directly affect Australia. COVID-19 is a stark example of this. Australia can’t afford to be monolingual in its engagement with the region.
What happened to a positive start to meet the challenges of a post-2020 world? Surely our government with its stated ambitions in the Indo-Pacific region must prioritise structural arrangements with our universities that ensure the next generation can equip themselves with the language skills they need for the Asian Century.
Australia and the United States have been waving through takeovers because the targets are small, something that’s usually good practice.
Under Australian law takeovers are normally permitted unless they would
have the effect, or be likely to have the effect, of substantially lessening competition
Under US law they are normally permitted unless their effect
may be substantially to lessen competition, or to tend to create a monopoly
It means the key question authorities in both countries ask before approving a takeover is whether it is big enough to take out a substantial competitor.
While in most industries that’s usually the right question, it’s the wrong question when it comes to digital platforms, as Facebook’s readily-approved takeovers of Instagram and WhatsApp is making clear.
Instagram, WhatsApp ‘too small to matter’
They were waved through because when Facebook acquired Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014 each was small. Instagram reportedly had only 13 full-time employees, WhatsApp 55.
Now, well after the events, the US Federal Trade Commission in cooperation with the attorneys of 46 states is suing Facebook, alleging it has been illegally maintaining its social networking monopoly through a years-long course of anticompetitive conduct.
Identified as part of Facebook’s strategy are its 2012 acquisition of Instagram and its 2014 acquisition of WhatsApp. The Commission says the conduct
harms competition, leaves consumers with few choices for personal social networking and deprives advertisers of the benefits of competition
It is seeking a permanent injunction that could, among other things, require Facebook to divest assets including Instagram and WhatsApp and require it to give notice and seek prior approval for future acquisitions.
No longer as small
Why didn’t the Commission act earlier?
It’s because at the times of the acquisitions it was impossible for it to know whether Instagram or WhatsApp would ever have been in any position to offer Facebook much competition.
A 2019 independent review of merger decisions by the UK Office of Fair Trade confirms this, noting that back in 2012 Facebook faced much stronger competitors in photo-sharing than Instagram and that photo apps weren’t attractive to advertisers.
The authorities would have found it hard to convince a court that taking over Instagram would have substantially lessened competition.
Yet it did, hugely, and not because Instagram was necessarily the best target.
Network effects empower the acquired
Platforms such as Facebook and Google gain their market power from so-called “network effects” and the accumulation of consumer data.
A network effect is the benefit a network gets from having people already on it. A network that your friends aren’t on isn’t particularly attractive.
And the more people that join, the more data the network amasses to target ads for advertisers.
Looked at through the lens of network effects, the key to the successes of Instagram and WhatsApp was that they were bought by Facebook. It gave them access to a vast network of existing users and their data.
The importance of this is illustrated by the WhatsApp takeover.
Unfortunately this statement was incorrect, and the European Commission believes Facebook knew it at the time.
In 2017 after the WhatsApp and Facebook data was indeed linked, the Commission fined Facebook €110 million for providing incorrect or misleading information
The problem wasn’t that Facebook acquired WhatsApp in particular.
It was that once it had acquired it (or any such platform), it was able to ensure it had access to the network and data needed to dominate its part of the market.
In other words, a Facebook acquisition of any proven start-up in any related field would have been likely to substantially lessen competition and should have been illegal.
Courts and regulators are missing what matters
This truth requires a change of mindset by both competition authorities and the courts. Both deal with the specifics of the target rather than the potential for the acquirer to supercharge the target and prevent any rival emerging to challenge it.
It means that to protect competition, dominant digital platforms should be prevented from acquiring any business in certain markets, even if there is plenty of competition in those markets and there’s nothing special about the targets.
Put bluntly, in some markets, whoever Facebook acquires will smother competition and the only way to stop that happening is to stop Facebook acquiring anyone.
This needn’t mean a blanket ban on dominant platforms acquiring firms, but it will mean the range of firms they can acquire will be severely wound back.
Of course, there’s nothing to stop them developing their own platforms in adjacent areas, although history has shown that even dominant platforms have a hard time developing, rather than buying, the necessary technology.
Google had to buy Android, YouTube and Quickoffice.
Proposed changes the wrong ones
It also means Australia’s Competition and Consumer Commission is missing the mark in its drive to expand the reasons it can use for rejecting mergers.
The final report of its digital platforms inquiry asks for the power to reject mergers because of the likelihood that the acquisition would result in the removal of a potential competitor and the nature and significance of assets acquired.
The requests focus on the target rather than what the acquirer can do for it.
What needs to be made clear is that a merger can be anticompetitive even if the target is not uniquely placed, either in terms of its ability to grow or its assets.
In the digital world an acquirer can substantially lessen competition simply by transforming the market it buys into. The target needn’t be the point.
In this series, our writers explore how food shaped Australian history – and who we are today.
The first whiffs of Chinese cooking in mid-19th century Australia would have emanated from tiny huts owned by Chinese workers in the goldfields. There, they faced racial hostility from the European miners, culminating in the Lambing Flat riots in New South Wales in 1860-61, where Chinese residents of the fields were physically assaulted and had their camps set on fire.
Chinese cooks were also employed in farms and factories and sold food from “cookshops” in the various urban centres for other migrants, such as Sydney’s Chinese furniture factory workers.
Locally sourced meat, seafood and vegetables were complemented by imported ingredients such as Cantonese sausage, tofu, lychee nuts, black fungus and bamboo shoots.
John Alloo’s Chinese restaurant traded in Ballarat during the gold rush, as pictured here in 1853.National Library Australia
But when it came to the development of Chinese cuisine here, food and politics were deeply entangled. The White Australia Policy of 1901, its amendment in the 1930s and abolition in 1973; the Tiananmen Square protest and other political developments all had consequences for Australia’s Chinese restaurant trade.
From the mines to the cities
When the gold rush years ended, Chinese miners flocked to the cities to start restaurants. The public taste in the first half of 20th century Australia shifted from mutton to lamb, before shifting further. While there were newspaper caricatures of Chinese people eating or selling cats and rats, some Anglo-Australians were soon attracted to flavours other than the one meat and three veg.
Anti-Chinese sentiment and other factors led to the Immigration Restriction Act 1901 – known as the White Australia Policy — restricting migration from Asia and the Pacific.
Most of Australia’s Chinese population before the White Australia policy were from Guangdong and served Cantonese fare. It was this food which took a foothold.
From the early 1900s, Chinese restaurants were concentrated in Chinatowns in Australia, as happened elsewhere around the world. Alongside food, these enclaves provided networks for Chinese labour, trade and provisioning Chinese ingredients.
The Australian public started eating at Chinese restaurants from the 1930s, or brought saucepans from home for takeaway meals. Chicken chow mein, chop suey and sweet and sour pork were the mainstays.
This photograph, taken for the Australian Consolidated Press in 1939, shows a Chinese Australian family eating dumplings together.Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales and Courtesy ACP Magazines Ltd
The latter — together with other dishes smothered in sweet sticky sauces — became the lurid-orange epitome of Chinese cuisine for many Anglo Australians.
This fondness was aided and abetted by Chinese cooks who thought this sweetness was what Westerners thought of — and wanted from — Chinese food.
For many Anglo-Australians, ‘Chinese food’ was defined by lurid-orange sauces.Drew Taylor/Unsplash
After White Australia
When the White Australia Policy ended, a new wave of more educated and affluent Chinese arrived. Settling in suburbs, they did not require the infrastructure of Chinatown. Later, from the 1980s, international Chinese students took up residence near university campuses.
With this, Chinese restaurants and provision stores were no longer found only in Chinatown. Still, the survival of Chinatowns depends on the Chinese food industry: in restaurants, cafes and grocery shops. The majority of Chinese restaurants in Australia are of the mum-and-dad variety and not part of global fast food conglomerates.
Both resident and transient Chinese consume and purchase Chinese goods in Chinatown for two reasons: to consume the familiar foods of home or childhood and to reconnect with their culture. And in eating Chinese meals in Chinatown, Australians show off their global palate by tasting a foreign and yet familiar cuisine.
Tiananmen and Hong Kong
Following the 1989 Tiananmen Square student protest, the Australian government granted permanent residence to 20,000 Chinese international students.
They brought food practices from many different regions of China. Importing their own particular ingredients and cooking methods, restaurants started offering cuisines from Hunan, Sichuan, Beijing and Shanghai.
In the years before and after Britain returned Hong Kong to China in 1997, numerous Cantonese chefs migrated to Australia. Locals at the time boasted that the best Hong Kong Cantonese food in the world was found in Perth’s Northbridge.
Australian Chinese food is becoming increasingly diverse and refined.Hanxiao/Unsplash
Today the discerning restaurant diner in Australia looks more for regional foods from China: the hot chilli lamb and noodles from Uyghur cuisine, the delicate dumplings of Shanghai, the Beijing hot pot. “Chinese food” is no longer a good enough descriptor for the variety of cuisines available in Australia.
But while Australians can now eat Peking duck and xiao long bao (soup dumplings), the ubiquitous Chinese restaurant — with its sweet and sour pork and chow mein — still exists across Australia in a culinary time warp. It is evidence of the enduring love for Chinese food here.
The COVID-19 pandemic means this week’s Lunar New Year will be different. Usually marked by an obligatory reunion dinner, this year not every family member will be at the dining table — but every dining table is sure to be piled high with food.
The Nationals leader and Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack will have to navigate a slippery path when the Nationals begin discussing Scott Morrison’s evident desire to embrace a 2050 net-zero emissions target.
Although Morrison has not adopted the target, and has put conditions on his move towards it, all the signs are that he wants to do so in coming months.
But this would require the minor Coalition partner to sign up. Nationals sources say they expect the issue to be canvassed at next Monday’s regular party meeting.
The Nationals are divided, putting McCormack, whose leadership is perennially under attack from a group within the party, in a very difficult position.
Some Nationals are sceptical of the assurance given by Morrison last week that regional Australia would not be left worse off in any change in the government’s climate policy. He insisted any change would only be driven by technology and not involve higher taxes.
The minimum price for a Nationals’ sign up would be the exemption of agriculture, which accounts for about 13% of total emissions.
Adopting the 2050 target would boost Australia’s currently low international credibility on climate change, which has been further highlighted by the election of the Biden administration with its big ambitions.
Agriculture Minister David Littleproud would be disposed to finding a way to adopting the target.
Littleproud told the ABC on Monday: “The National Party’s made it very clear, that until we can be honest with the Australian public about how you reach net zero by 2050, we’re simply signing up to platitudes”.
But even with the carve out of agriculture, and other aid for farmers, a move to the target is being strongly resisted by former resources minister Matt Canavan and some other Nationals backbenchers. Canavan told Sky he was prepared to “fight like hell”.
“I don’t think we should be talking about the weather in 30 years time” but instead concentrating on pressing matters, he said.
Former leader Barnaby Joyce told The Conversation Morrison was being very clever.
He “has inspired the Nationals to have negotiations on what they will or won’t accept on a policy he has not even announced”.
Joyce said there was concern among Nationals “if we get this wrong and go to an election, it could be catastrophic”.
He said McCormack “has to be tough enough to say ‘no’ and mean it – otherwise you are going to get whatever they dish up”.
The National Farmers Federation reiterated on Monday “farming and agriculture cannot be worse off going forward with any carbon commitments or emissions reduction schemes”.
CEO Tony Mahar said: “The NFF has a clear climate change policy that supports an economy-wide NCZ 2050 target with two clear caveats – that there is an economically viable pathway forward and agriculture is not worse off”.
Mahar said farmers were well placed to seize the opportunities from a reduced emissions future, and many were doing so.
He said much work was being done, led by government and industry, on measuring agriculture’s contribution to sequestering and reducing emissions, particularly in the complex area of soil carbon.
“It is important this work is completed before determining agriculture’s role in any national emissions reduction target,” he said.
“Care needs to be taken that agricultural land does not get transferred into carbon sinks that are subeconomic, havens for feral plants and animals and a fire risk.
“Offsetting is a legitimate solution that must meet economic viability thresholds that allow benchmarked income and proper management.”
NSW environment Minister Matt Kean last week criticised as “ridiculous” Morrison’s saying he wouldn’t commit to the 2050 target before he could say how it would be achieved.
“[US president John] Kennedy didn’t know how to get to the moon when he set the target,” Kean said.
“Let’s set the goal — and I have every confidence in the Australian people, our industry and their enterprising nature to be able to hit that goal.”
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Caleb Ferguson, Senior Research Fellow, Western Sydney Nursing & Midwifery Research Centre, Western Sydney Local Health District &, Western Sydney University
There are increasing concerns the new Apple iPhone 12 could interfere with implantable cardiac devices such as pacemakers, presenting a risk for people with heart problems.
The issue relates to a particular feature of the iPhone 12 — a new magnetic charging technology called MagSafe — which uses magnets to attach wireless charging accessories to the phone.
Patients with implantable cardiac devices are being warned keeping their iPhone 12 too close to their chest, such as in a shirt pocket or handbag, could cause temporary disruptions to their cardiac device’s functions.
So how does this happen, and what do you need to know if you’ve got both an implanted cardiac device and an iPhone 12?
First, some background
Pacemakers, and another type of implantable cardiac device called implantable cardioverter defibrillators, are both used widely in health care.
Pacemakers have traditionally been used to regulate a person’s heartbeat, particularly if it’s slow.
Implantable cardioverter defibrillators regulate the heart’s rhythm in people who experience heart rhythm disorders, such as ventricular arrhythmias. These devices can also deliver defibrillation (a shock) to restore a normal heart rhythm in the event of a sudden, life-threatening arrhythmia.
Implantable cardioverter defibrillators have been shown to improve survival for people with heart rhythm problems, and they’re becoming more common in Australia.
Around 200,000 Australians have a pacemaker or defibrillator implanted. It’s also now common to have a dual-function implantable cardioverter defibrillator and pacemaker.
MagSafe was developed with a view to removing the need for charging cables between the phone and the charger. Instead, a ring of magnets built around a charging coil inside the back of the iPhone connects the phone magnetically with various charging accessories.
Implantable cardiac devices work by sending electrical impulses to the heart. Magnetic and electrical fields are related — electrically charged particles that align in the same direction generate a magnetic field.
Most magnets are made from materials called alloys. Variations in the combination of alloys creates different types of magnets with different strengths. Ceramic magnets, such as those we use on the fridge, are not particularly strong, so won’t interfere with cardiac devices.
But the magnets inside the iPhone 12 and MagSafe accessories contain 100% recycled rare-earth elements. Rare-earth magnets are the strongest type of hard magnets on the market today — and strong enough to cause an interaction between the phone and the cardiac device.
Implantable defibrillators are designed to react with magnets
When clinicians need to deactivate implantable cardiac devices, they generally use magnets. Implantable cardioverter defibrillators, for example, may be deactivated for a range of reasons, including because it’s the patient’s preference, or when they’re nearing the end of their life.
Pacemakers and implantable cardioverter defibrillators have an inbuilt switch that reacts to externally applied magnetic fields. So clinicians can apply a clinical ring magnet to temporarily deactivate the device. We call this “magnet mode”.
Implantable cardioverter defibrillators can save someone from a life-threatening arrhythmia. But the iPhone 12 could interfere with the device’s functions.Shutterstock
It appears proximity to an iPhone 12 also causes “magnet mode” to kick in. Recently, a team of cardiologists tested the interaction between the iPhone 12 and an implantable cardioverter defibrillator. They noted immediate suspension of the implantable cardioverter defibrillator, which persisted as long as the iPhone was placed over the left side of the chest, in a shirt pocket.
When an implantable cardioverter defibrillator is in “magnet mode”, it’s reprogrammed to manufacturer settings, and the arrhythmia detection and treatment functions are deactivated or disabled. Temporary pacing modes are not affected, so the implantable cardioverter defibrillator can still increase heart rate if it’s slow.
Removing the magnet (the iPhone) should return the implantable cardioverter defibrillator to its previous program settings. But even a temporary disruption to this technology could potentially be dangerous.
We haven’t been able to find information describing any real-world cases of interference caused by the iPhone 12, and scientists are yet to test the effect of an iPhone 12 on a pacemaker.
But the evidence we have so far has prompted experts to draw attention to the issue.
Advice for people with implantable defibrillators and pacemakers
The Heart Foundation and the Australian and New Zealand Cardiac Device Advisory and Complication Committee have both warned iPhone 12 users with these implants to avoid placing the iPhone 12 in a top shirt pocket.
Apple has acknowledged the issue, recommending iPhone 12 users keep their iPhone and MagSafe accessories a safe distance away from their implantable cardiac devices. They specify 15cm apart, or more than 30cm apart if the phone is wirelessly charging.
Apple has also recommended patients consult their doctor and device manufacturer for device-specific recommendations.
If you have an implantable cardioverter defibrillator or a pacemaker, avoid storing your iPhone 12 in the left-hand shirt pocket or in a handbag on your left arm. A pocket in your pants will be safer.
And it’s a good idea to speak with your health-care professional about magnetic sensitivity and your device during your next visit.
These days people trading on the stock market want more than just a strong financial return. They’re increasingly opting for investments that will also have a positive societal impact.
The coronavirus pandemic showed us even established tech companies can suffer downturns in the short term. Apple, a tech behemoth, was left reeling when Chinese manufacturing hubs were temporarily shut down last year.
In the longer term, however, technology stocks remain a first choice for many investors. Historically, they’ve dominated global stock markets and continue to grow at a remarkable rate.
Even during the downward spiral of the pandemic, tech stocks such as Zoom and Microsoft soared in value as an influx of people started working from home. The question for many investors now is: how can one find profitable investments without supporting unethical activity?
Growth of tech stocks
According to investment advisers Morningstar, technology stocks account for 24.2% of the top 500 stocks in the United States. Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Alphabet (which owns Google) dominate the market, with a combined value of more than US$4 trillion.
Tech stocks also take centre stage in Australia. We’ve seen the rapid rise of “buy now, pay later” companies such as Australian-owned Afterpay and Zip.
At the same time, we’ve seen an increase in the number of Australians moving to ethical superannuation funds and ethically-managed investment schemes. The latter lets investors contribute money (to be managed by professional fund managers) which is pooled for investment to produce collective gain.
It’s estimated indirect investment through these schemes has increased by 79% over the past six years.
While ethical investing is a broad concept, it can be understood simply as putting your money towards something that helps improve the world. This can range from companies that advocate for animal rights, to those aiming to limit the societal prevalence of gambling, alcohol or tobacco.
Although there is no strict definition of ethical investment in Australia, many managed funds and super funds seek accreditation by the Responsible Investment Association Australasia. The “ethical” aspect can be grouped into three broad categories:
environmental — such as developing clean technology or engaging in carbon-neutral manufacturing
social — such as supporting innovative technology, reducing social harms such as poverty or gambling, boosting gender equality, protecting human and consumer rights or supporting animal welfare
corporate governance — such as being anti-corruption, promoting healthy employee relations or institutional transparency.
As investors we must be very careful about the fine print of the companies we invest in. For example, accreditation guidelines dictate that a managed investment fund excluding companies with “significant” ties to fossil fuels could still include one that earns up to a certain amount of revenue from fossil fuels.
So while investment manager AMP Capital is accredited, it can still include companies earning up to 10% of their revenue from fossil fuel distribution and services.
The terms ‘ethical’, ‘sustainable’ and ‘green’ are sometimes used interchangeably when referring to environmentally-responsible investing.Shutterstock
5 tips for ethical tech investment
Many technology stocks are well placed for ethical investment and you can choose to invest on your own, or indirectly via a managed investment fund. In either case, you should do some basic homework first.
1) Monitor the fund or company to ensure standards are maintained
For a company to be listed with the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) it has to be publicly listed. It is therefore required to submit an annual audit report (audited by third-party auditors) to the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), as per the Corporations Act 2001.
While you can access plenty of information about a tech company from its own website and distribution channels, this is usually embellished and/or handpicked by the company itself. Make sure your information comes from diverse sources.
3) Consider how employees rate the company and why
Keep in mind a technology company might be environmentally ethical but still fall down on other issues, such as gender pay parity, for instance. It’s important to listen to employees’ claims about a company’s internal workings as such insight may otherwise be unavailable.
There are a number of independent sites reporting on corporate culture ratings, including Glassdoor.
4) Assess the environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) score
One benefit of investing in large to medium-sized tech companies is the ability to analyse their ESG score, issued by agencies such as Refinitiv. This score reflects how well the company adheres to ethical practice across environmental, social and corporate governance-related matters.
5) Watch out for buzzwords
If you’re looking to invest in clean technology, watch out for buzzwords used in company reports. These are terms which at face value may seem to align with your own ethical investment values, without actually delivering.
For instance, “carbon net zero” and “carbon neutral” are not the same thing. This is an important distinction to consider if you’re wanting to make environmentally-responsible investments.
Wrapped in COVID Safe vigilance, Australian theatre has cautiously begun to welcome back guests. The Sydney Festival withstood border closures and local outbreaks to offer a wide variety of events to summer revellers in the open air, online and in theatres. The Perth festival has scrambled to reschedule performances after the city’s short, sharp lockdown. Across the nation, performers are still holding their breath.
In Victoria, they must remain two metres apart when rehearsing or performing and singers must wear masks. In NSW, no more than five singers should perform indoors and they should face outwards. Arts special interest groups have prepared useful, if complex, tables of state-by-state rules and restrictions.
My first trip back to theatre in person was The Picture of Dorian Gray late last year. It was strange not being able to enjoy a pre-show drink in the foyer and the sea of masks in the audience was an unsettling sight. Uncannily, the one-woman show conveyed isolation in a social world obsessed by appearance. I found it a bit hard to breathe in the auditorium.
Inspiration — meaning both to draw breath and the power that brings forth creativity — has always been integral to theatre and performance. Of course, the two are intimately linked.
Breath is one of the few functions of the body that can both occur automatically and also be controlled consciously, although we still have so much more to learn about it.
Breath control is crucial to actor training and performance. It supports the voice, punctuates spoken phrases, sustains concentration, allows relaxation, and can assuage performance anxiety.
Inspiration literally means to “breathe in”, as the atmosphere of the outside world enters into our body. In theatrical terms, breath has long been harnessed to fuel an emotional connection with an audience.
First century CE Roman orator and teacher Quintilian tells a devastating story of his own grief when he breathed in the last exhalation of his dying son. The act was driven by the belief that it would allow his child’s spirit to live on in his own body, a reversal of a practice whereby sons would do this for their parent.
Quintilian went on to develop a theory of rhetoric and the communication of emotion. His 12-volume Institutio Oratoria established the theory and practice of rhetoric, and provided a lifelong manual for the public speaker.
The key point is that in order to convey emotion, you first need to feel it yourself and then transmit it through breath.
Stanislavski’s approach — which later developed into Method Acting employed by players from Marlon Brando, Daniel Day-Lewis, and Angelina Jolie to the late Heath Ledger – uses prana breath and visualises the different parts of his system as a set of lungs.
Harnessing breath, Stanislavski’s teaching influenced generations of actors.
Around the same period, avant-garde French theatre theorist Antonin Artaud wrote about a “hieroglyphics of breath” whereby performers can communicate directly with the audience through a language of breathing grounded in nature.
In contrast, the modernist playwright Samuel Beckett did away with actors altogether in his one-minute play Breath, which consisted of a pile of rubbish, lights fading up to the sound of a baby’s first cry and then fade to black. The body is cut off from breath.
Australia is a multicultural society. There are different traditions, cultures, accents and languages all over the country.
The latest Census data show almost 30% of Australians speak a language other than English, or English and another language, at home.
In our latest survey, we have had responses from 281 multilingual families across Australia, who speak a variety of languages at home. They include Arabic, Vietnamese, Mandarin, Teo Chew and Spanish.
We found many first-generation migrant parents are hesitant to pass on their first language to their children. This is because they believe a different language at home will give their children a foreign accent. Yet some parents also feel if they speak English to their children, their children will pick up their own accented English.
This can leave some parents in somewhat of a catch-22, feeling that no matter what, their children will be faced with the same discrimination as them.
But it’s important to speak to your children in your own language, and your own accent. By being exposed to multiple ways of communicating, children learn multiple ways of thinking.
They learn to understand that everyone plays different roles, has different identities; and that others may speak or look different.
Bias against foreign languages
Research suggests people are highly biased in their preferences for certain accents and languages. According to the linguistic stereotyping hypothesis, hearing just a few seconds of an accent associated with a lower-prestige group can activate a host of associations.
Hearing a stereotypical “foreign accent”, for example, can lead people to immediately think of that person as being uneducated, inarticulate or untrustworthy.
These kinds of biases develop early in life. In a 2009 study, five-year-old children chose to be friends with native speakers of their native language rather than those who spoke a foreign language or had an accent.
One hypothesis is that this is due to our broader survival mechanism. Babies learn early to tune in more to the voice of their caregiver rather than a stranger’s voice. This means they are better able to detect when they are in a dangerous situation.
However, over time, these stranger-danger associations become stereotypes, which can lead us to hear or see what we expect. When we get older, we need to unlearn our biases that once kept us safe to become more accepting of others.
Almost 30% of Australians speak a language other than English at home.Shutterstock
In Australia, there is systematic discrimination towards speakers of Australian Aboriginal English, as well as towards speakers of “ethnolects”, which are a way of speaking characteristic of a particular ethnic group — such as Greek, Italian or Lebanese.
When people hear these accents, they may think that person does not speak English well. But having an accent is special: it signals you are multilingual and you have the experience of having grown up with multiple cultural influences.
Accentuate the positive
Many of the parents we surveyed felt hesitant to speak multiple languages at home, or felt their efforts were not being supported at school.
One parent told us:
Instead of helping her (my daughter) develop the language, all primary teachers assessed her language in comparison with the monolinguals and demanded to cut the other languages “to improve” the school language.
I would not have dared to experiment here in Australia with the kid’s second language. The peer pressure, the teacher’s pressure and the lack of language schools are main factors.
But over the centuries, some of the world’s brightest people, such as author Joseph Conrad spoke with a strong accent. Many others, such as Vladimir Nabokov, Gustavo Pérez-Firmat and Eva Hoffman (who wrote Lost in Translation in her second language) harnessed the benefits of being bilingual to produce astounding literary works, drawing on the different “voices” in their heads to act out different characters.
In this way, a second language can be a superpower.
Multilingual exposure facilitates interpersonal understanding among babies and young children. This social advantage appears to emerge from merely being exposed to multiple languages, rather than being bilingual per se.
Research shows migrant parents who feel pressured to speak to their children in their non-native language feel less secure in their role as parents. But if they feel supported in using their first language, they feel more confident as parents, which in turn has a positive effect on children’s well-being.
Migrant parents who raise their kids with more than one language say they feel like they’ve given them an advantage in life.Shutterstock
We found migrant parents who do raise their children in more than one language report feeling good about passing on their culture to their children, and feel they have given them an advantage in life. They also feel as though their children are more connected to their extended family.
Here are some ways you could help your children keep their native language, and accent, alive:
check out your local library or BorrowBox for books or audiobooks in different languages
connect with other multilingual families on social media for virtual or face-to-face playdates
schedule video chats with grandparents and extended family members. Encourage them to speak their language with your child
find out if your child’s preschool has a program for learning a new language, or check out Little Multilingual Minds. If your child is older, encourage them to take up a language in primary or high school. It’s never too late.
One parent shared their strategy for helping their child speak in different languages and accents:
I play games with accents, one child is learning French, the other Italian, so I play games with them about the pronunciation of words and get them to teach me words in the language they are learning and emphasise the accent.
We hope linguistic diversity becomes the status quo. This way, all children will gain cultural awareness and sensitivity. They will become more attuned to their evolving identities, and accept others may have identities different to their own.
Do you speak more than one language at home? Help us find out more about multilingualism in Australia by responding to this survey.
You can also help us find out Australian’s attitudes towards accents by taking part in this survey.
It’s the second case in a Victorian quarantine hotel in less than a week, after a resident support worker from the Grand Hyatt in central Melbourne tested positive for the virus on Wednesday night.
It again raises a question many have been asking for months: why is hotel quarantine situated in big cities, often in the CBD itself?
I believe it’s well and truly time to move quarantine to remote locations, to reduce the risk of transmission into dense urban areas.
What is wrong with quarantine hotels?
On the March 27, 2020, the National Cabinet agreed that from March 29, all incoming travellers would be required to undertake a 14-day supervised quarantine period in a designated facility, and that was the beginning of quarantine hotels. Crucially, however, states and territories were left to choose the facilities, and pass state and territory legislation to enforce the requirements.
When these regulations were put into place, Australia was in a desperate hurry to find some way of quarantining returning Australians, and hotels were seen as a good solution to the problem. But there are two major problems with this approach.
The first is that hotels are not built for quarantine. They’re not designed to limit the spread of infectious diseases. Many do not have adequate ventilation.
The spread of aerosols — tiny viral particles that can remain suspended in the air — has been implicated in many of these breaches.
The second problem is that most states are using hotels in the centre of their major cities. This means if the virus does escape, via an infected worker or otherwise, the potential for significant spread is higher because of the densely populated urban setting.
We have many rural quarantine options
It’s very hard to make a quarantine station 100% leak-free. At the end of the day, they’re run by humans, who occasionally make mistakes. And SARS-CoV-2 is a very contagious virus.
But if we move quarantine facilities out of cities to isolated places, any leaks would be much less likely to cause major transmission events.
The Northern Territory hosts returned travellers at its Howard Springs facility, 25km southeast of Darwin. So far, no quarantine staff have contracted the virus from residents.
The Queensland government is in talks with the federal government over a proposed quarantine facility in Toowoomba, 125km west of Brisbane. A local construction company said it can build a 1,000-bed accommodation facility for staff, including the first 500 beds in just six weeks.
Staff who would live and work at these facilities would also need to be paid extremely well. They would be living and working in remote areas, must live at the facility, and are putting themselves at risk of infection. Even cooks working at remote mining sites are paid handsomely.
The federal government needs to step in
One issue that arises from using rural quarantine is cost. It will be expensive to build and run these isolated facilities, and to fly workers in and out. It will also be expensive to fly returned travellers into these remote settings, presumably at the expense of the government. But what are the broader economic costs of continued outbreaks, and of the ensuing lockdowns? Any assessment of the costs should take this into account.
Another issue is that for rural or remote quarantine to work, the federal government would have to fund and implement the program. Under section 51 of the Constitution, it’s federal parliament’s responsibility to make laws about quarantine.
There will no doubt be arguments made that such a program isn’t worth it because we’re only a few weeks away from vaccinating border and quarantine staff.
But this misses the key point that vaccines won’t cause COVID to disappear overnight. The South African government has just stopped the rollout of the AstraZeneca vaccine because of its poor effectiveness against the South African variant. This virus will be with us for a long time to come, so relocating quarantine stations to remote settings is still a worthy investment.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nathan Bartlett, Associate Professor, School of Biomedical Sciences and Pharmacy, University of Newcastle
South Africa will pause its rollout of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine after a small study suggested it offers minimal protection against mild and moderate infection from the South African coronavirus strain known as B.1.351.
The South African health minister said the government was waiting for scientific advice on next steps.
A media release issued overnight by the University of Oxford said a study of about 2,000 volunteers with an average age of 31 found a two-dose regimen of the AstraZeneca vaccine (officially known as ChAdOx1 nCov-19):
provides minimal protection against mild-moderate COVID-19 infection from the B.1.351 coronavirus variant first identified in South Africa. Efficacy against severe COVID-19 infection from this variant was not assessed.
The analysis is yet to be peer reviewed or published.
The AstraZeneca vaccine, sometimes also called “the Oxford vaccine”, is a core plank in Australia’s coronavirus vaccine plan, with the Australian government securing 53.8 million doses. It’s worth remembering, though, that it’s just one of the vaccines that will be made available in Australia — and that vaccines are just one of a range of responses we will need to get the pandemic under control.
So what’s all this mean for you? There’s no doubt this news is disappointing — but it’s also no great surprise given how quickly this virus mutates. And it doesn’t yet mean Australia should abandon its plan to rollout the AstraZeneca vaccine.
The sobering reality is setbacks such as these are to be expected in vaccine development, especially when dealing with an agile, fast-mutating virus such as this coronavirus.
South Africa will suspend its roll-out of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine while it awaits advice about a new small study.AP Photo/Jerome Delay, File
Still better for Australia to have AstraZeneca than not
It’s reasonable for the South African government to pause while it reflects on what these new data mean.
For Australia, it’s too early to bin the AstraZeneca vaccine as part of our rollout, especially as the South African variant is not yet prevalent here. If we did that every time we got new data, we would never get any vaccines out. I think, at this point, it is still better to have the AstraZeneca vaccine in Australia than to not have it.
Based on Australia’s current circumstances, I think it’s reasonable to say we just need anything that will help reduce the risk of severe disease. That will help ease the burden on health-care systems.
We will get better vaccines coming out all the time. It’s an iterative process.
Encouragingly, Oxford said in its press release that:
Work is already underway at the University of Oxford and in conjunction with partners to produce a second generation of the vaccine which has been adapted to target variants of the coronavirus with mutations similar to B.1.351, if it should prove necessary to do so.
Australian health minister Greg Hunt said on radio on Monday he was not concerned about the effectiveness of the AstraZeneca vaccine.AAP Image/Lukas Coch
Such an agile virus demands a range of responses
These new developments highlight how quickly this incredibly agile coronavirus adapts and changes. While the level of infection remains so high, we must get used to the idea that new strains will be appearing all the time.
Vaccines are best suited to stationary targets and currently, SARS-CoV-2 is anything but — with so much human infection occurring, the virus has huge opportunity to mutate and generate variants.
Having said that, the newest vaccine technologies such as mRNA vaccines (including what’s commonly known as the Pfizer vaccine) can rapidly update and reformulate to keep up with mutant viruses.
Of course, it still takes some time to manufacture and distribute new vaccines so there will inevitably be a lag of months between identifying a new virus variant and making and distributing an updated vaccine.
A month is a long time in a pandemic. That underscores how critical treatments addressing these gaps are going to be if we are to have any chance of bringing this pandemic to an end within the next couple of years. Those responses will likely include antivirals that reduce duration of infection and other treatments that provide rapid, broad spectrum protection against viruses by directly boosting innate immunity in the airways.
We will get better vaccines coming out all the time.AP Photo/Valentina Petrova
Managing expectations
Vaccines can have amazing efficacy in clinical trials but things may be different in the real world when you are dealing with different populations and exposure to different virus strains. That is a normal part of vaccine development and global rollout, and we must manage expectations around this.
We always knew the first generation vaccines would be far from perfect, and certainly not a magic bullet. As scientists have said all along, this is a long game with incremental gains. And with so much research focused on beating this pandemic, there is huge reason for optimism.
We don’t want people to be discouraged from getting vaccines. Based on current circumstances and the fact the South African variant is not yet prevalent in Australia, the AstraZeneca vaccine will be one of a suite of responses that will help bring a reduction in serious disease in the first place — and ultimately prevent transmission as vaccines become more effective and supported by other treatments.
Just like you get a new flu shot every year, so it may be in the future you get a new coronavirus jab as better and more targeted vaccines become available.
New treatments will become available to support better and better vaccines, which will slowly but surely bring an end to this pandemic.
The University of PNG has clarified that Papua New Guinea’s higher education loan programme (Help) is administered by a government department and not the university.
Vice-chancellor Professor Frank Griffin said the Department of Higher Education, Research, Science and Technology (DHERST) looked after the loan programme.
He said UPNG had no control over it.
Professor Griffin was responding to queries on why the university was telling students to pay the compulsory fee of K2939 (NZ$1160) to register before applying for the loan.
Parents and students were hoping to pay the fee from the Help loan.
But Professor Griffin said DHERST had informed UPNG that a student had to register first at the university before applying for a Help loan.
He said registration was based on paying the compulsory fee – something UPNG had no control over.
UPNG vice-chancellor Professor Frank Griffin … Help student fees assistance programme explained. Image: UPNG
‘Leave no one behind’ “Last year, we were advised by the government to leave no one behind,” Professor Griffin said.
“So we went ahead and registered all students.
“But this year, the policy was changed by the department (DHERST).
“Last year, we did not get all of the Help funding.
“It’s a programme done by DHERST so who they give the money or decide to give the money to is a question you have to ask the department.”
Asia Pacific Report republishes The National articles with permission.
