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

Last week, a German vaccine advisory committee recommended the AstraZeneca vaccine only be used in 18-64-year-olds, citing a lack of data on the efficacy of the vaccine in people over 65.

Subsequently, the European regulator, the European Medicines Agency, conditionally approved the vaccine for anyone over 18.

What can we make of this? Should we be giving this vaccine to older people or not?

While we don’t yet have all the data we’d like, we don’t have reason to believe this vaccine won’t be at least somewhat effective in older adults. To exclude them from receiving it wouldn’t necessarily be the right approach.

The recommendation

STIKO, a German vaccine advisory committee that reports to the country’s government, was responsible for the draft recommendation which caused the stir. It released a similar final recommendation at the weekend.

While the German government may elect to follow STIKO’s advice or the European Medicines Agency’s guidelines, the latter’s approval carries significant weight. Equivalent to the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) in Australia, this body decides which vaccines may legally be supplied in Europe.

The AstraZeneca vaccine has already received approvals, not singling out older age groups, from multiple international regulators, including those in the United Kingdom, India and Mexico.

Read more: Germany may not give the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine to over-65s, but that doesn’t mean it won’t work

Why did STIKO make this recommendation?

STIKO’s advice is based on the fact it didn’t have enough data to definitively say whether the vaccine will work in older people — not because it won’t.

According to the data we have so far from AstraZeneca’s phase 3 trials, only two out of 660 people in the trial aged over 65 got sick with COVID-19. Two sick people isn’t enough for a strong statistical analysis.

AstraZeneca initially enrolled younger people in its trials, with older people enrolled only later. So data on older people in the original trials and another trial in the United States are still on the way.

What do we know about the vaccine?

We have very good safety data for the AstraZeneca vaccine in older people. Older people actually have significantly lower levels of early side effects after vaccination. This makes sense, as older people’s immune systems don’t tend to react as strongly to vaccines, which would reduce many of these early side effects.

But the vaccine has been shown to induce strong immune responses in older people, which are likely to provide a degree of protection. The European Medicine Agency’s press release on their decision refers to a reasonable likelihood of protection based on this data.

So, just looking at immune responses, it’s reasonable to anticipate the AstraZeneca vaccine will be of some benefit, at least, to older people.

Read more: Why we should prioritise older people when we get a COVID vaccine

What do we know from other vaccines?

Often, vaccines aren’t as effective in older people as compared to younger people, because their immune responses can be less robust. For example, in 2010-2011 in the US, the flu vaccine was 60% effective in the general population, but only 38% effective in people over 65.

There’s more information on efficacy in older people for other COVID-19 vaccines. Notably, the Pfizer vaccine maintained efficacy of 93.7% for people over 55, compared to 95% overall. Accordingly, it would be reasonable to prioritise the Pfizer vaccine for older people.

But we’re beginning to see that vaccine supply and distribution can be unpredictable, with supply issues for Pfizer and AstraZeneca starting to affect vaccine rollout.

Importantly, all COVID-19 vaccines assessed so far, including the AstraZeneca vaccine, provide a high level of protection against severe disease and death across variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

Limiting access limits options for older people

The question that advisory committees and regulators are weighing up is, should the AstraZeneca vaccine, or any vaccine, be recommended for older people if we know:

• the vaccine has low risk of side effects

• the vaccine has a fair but unconfirmed likelihood of providing some benefit

• COVID-19 has a higher likelihood of severe disease and death in the demographic.

This is tricky to navigate and advice may differ across different vaccines and countries. For example, China is delaying vaccine rollout to older people while it waits for more data.

But conditional approval is a reasonable path to take. It allows for some uncertainty and maintains contact with the manufacturer. It also recognises that the likely benefit of giving older people any available vaccine could outweigh the hypothetical risk that it might not work in the midst of a crushing pandemic.

Read more: The Oxford vaccine has unique advantages, as does Pfizer’s. Using both is Australia’s best strategy

In any case, approvals from regulators, such as the European Medicines Agency and the TGA, have the most impact — defining who the vaccine can be supplied to in a country.

If regulatory guidelines are kept open to all age groups above 18, it will facilitate access to vaccines for many people who could benefit from them. The next steps are distributing these vaccines, and educating and updating the public with the latest information as it comes to hand.

Crucially, we should support older people in vaccine decisions with two things; good information and easy access to an array of safe, protective vaccines.

– ref. The AstraZeneca vaccine and over-65s: we may not have all the data yet, but limiting access could be counterproductive – https://theconversation.com/the-astrazeneca-vaccine-and-over-65s-we-may-not-have-all-the-data-yet-but-limiting-access-could-be-counterproductive-154272

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Matthew S. Champion, Senior Research Fellow in Medieval Studies, Australian Catholic University

It’s the time of year when we Australians start returning to our normal rhythms. The first beats of the day are often the dreaded beeps of the alarm clock or a digital symphony from a bedside phone.

These modern electronic alarms are just the latest in a long sequence of methods used to wake us from sleep: from the watchmen on ancient city walls waiting for the dawn to more recent clocks on wheels that have to be chased to stop ringing.

The job of waking us up when our body clocks are telling us to sleep is a big ask. When did we first start using alarms, and what did they sound like? What’s changed about the sounds of time, and what hasn’t?

Birdsong

Some of the earliest words we have for time measurement show people’s particular interest in dividing up the different parts of the night.

In the pre-modern world, without electric lights and electric alarms, people paid more attention to the quality of light and the sounds around them. A rich vocabulary emerged in ancient languages for the different parts of the night. One early Latin word for the time before dawn was gallicinium, the time of the cock’s crow. Scientists have since discovered roosters really do know what time that is.

Birdsong remains an important way of experiencing waking up. In Australia, we often evoke birdsong when we think about sleep and waking — from morning caroling magpies, to the versatile currawong or the midnight call of willie wagtails. Less melodic, though equally striking, is another possible bird noise associated with early rising — “sparrow’s fart” — first attested to in the 19th century.

Read more: Birdsong has inspired humans for centuries: is it music?

Human wake-up calls

The human body has developed its own repertoire of alarms.

The Islamic call to prayer, the adhan, sung by men called muezzin, is one of the most sonically striking examples, with various versions marking out differences between traditions and regions. The melismatic chant — where a single syllable is sung over several musical notes — is both a wake up call to prayer (“Prayer is better than sleep”) and a prayer in itself.

Some early-morning calls were combined with weather forecasting systems. In the 15th century the town criers of the port of Sandwich on the south coast of England would call out the wind changes in the night so seafarers would know when favourable (or unfavourable) winds sprang up. Much later, in some parts of the industrial world, professional knocker-uppers might use a pea shooter or stick to tap on windows to wake you up for your shift.

Having humans wake you up would usually mean someone has to stay up all night. But how would that person know when to cry the alarm? Sundials would obviously be useless. This is one reason technologies developed to count the hours of night — ancient and medieval water clocks with markings to show how water flow corresponded to time passing, and later (from around the 14th century) sand glasses in the familiar hourglass shape.

Mechanical clocks

The Middle Ages saw one of our most amazing inventions — mechanical clocks, originally driven by weights. Gravity pulled suspended weights down to drive the clock mechanism. The weights were periodically wound back up for another cycle.

These clocks began as large objects in churches and town belfries. Some had elaborate automata: the extraordinary 16th-century Strasbourg clock includes a famous cockerel whose cries echo through the cathedral. Its automated rooster is from an earlier clock made in the 14th century.

Some large clocks played music on bells before striking the hours. This year is the 700th anniversary of what may be the first such musical clock, installed in a monastery near Rouen in 1321. It played a hymn, Conditor alme siderum (Dear Creator of the Stars), for the season of Advent that starts the Christian year.

Such chimes are our first recorded mechanical music, and a precursor to today’s musical alarms. The technology was probably developed by tech-geek monks as a way of dealing with waking up to sing their prayers in the night — even better if that wake-up call, like the adhan, was a pious prayer itself.

Read more: Acedia: the lost name for the emotion we’re all feeling right now

The modern alarm clock

The earliest versions of the clocks we know today were made for large communities, public spaces or courtly elites.

Gradually though, and certainly by the mid to late 15th century, you could find heavy iron wall clocks in private houses (made in places still famous for clockmaking, such as Switzerland). These often had pins that you could place around the clock face to set the bell ringing at a particular time. These house alarm clocks could wake the owner to work and pray.

It was during this period, too, that compact spring mechanisms made smaller and smaller personal watches possible, carried or worn on the body from the 16th century.

The personalisation of time accelerated in the 19th century and gave rise to some wild modern alarm clocks. Among the more striking inventions of the French magician Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin was a clock that lit a candle after the alarm sounded.

Read more: Morning haze: why it’s time to stop hitting the snooze button

Though nothing has reached the sophistication of the breakfast-making Rube-Goldberg-style alarm clocks seen on The Goodies, automaton clock alarms have promised freshly made coffee and toast or even just their aroma. Here the familiar sounds of the kitchen, with their enticing morning smells, soften the rude awakening from sleep.

Today’s alarms, with all their invention, come as a gift (or depending on how much you enjoy waking up, a curse) from the Middle Ages to us today.

– ref. Wakey wakey: a history of alarm clocks and the mechanics of time – https://theconversation.com/wakey-wakey-a-history-of-alarm-clocks-and-the-mechanics-of-time-153716

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

The first Newspoll of 2021 has the major parties tied at 50-50 on two-party preferred, a one-point gain for Labor since the final 2020 Newspoll in late November. The poll was conducted January 27-30 from a sample of 1,512 people.

Primary votes were 42% Coalition (down one point), 36% Labor (steady), 10% Greens (down one) and 3% One Nation (up one).

63% were satisfied with PM Scott Morrison’s performance (down three) and 33% were dissatisfied (up three), for a net approval of +30 points. While this is still very high, analyst Kevin Bonham says it is Morrison’s lowest net approval since April.

Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese had a net approval of -2, down five points. Morrison led Albanese by 57-29 as better prime minister (60-28 in November).

While much commentary has written off Labor for the next election, a source of hope for the opposition is that while the Coalition has usually been ahead since the COVID crisis began, the two-party-preferred margin has been close.

Read more: View from The Hill: Coal push from Nationals is a challenge for Scott Morrison

Morrison’s great approval ratings have not translated into big leads for the Coalition. It is plausible that by the middle of this year COVID will not be a major threat owing to a global vaccination program.

A return to a focus on normal issues could assist Labor in undermining Morrison’s ratings and the Coalition’s slender lead on voting intentions.

Albanese has come under attack from the left owing to Thursday’s reshuffle in which Chris Bowen took the climate change portfolio from Mark Butler.

But the Greens lost a point in Newspoll rather than gaining. With the focus on COVID, climate change appears to have lost salience.

On Australia Day and climate change

In an Ipsos poll for Nine newspapers, taken before January 25 from a sample of 1,220 people, 48% disagreed with changing Australia Day from January 26, while 28% agreed.

But by 49-41 voters thought it likely Australia Day would be changed within the next ten years.

In a Morgan SMS poll, conducted January 25 from a sample of 1,236 people, 59% thought January 26 should be known as Australia Day, while 41% thought it should be known as Invasion Day.

In an Essential poll conducted in mid-January, 42% (down 20 since January 2020) thought Australia was not doing enough to address climate change, 35% (up 16) thought we were doing enough and 10% (up two) thought we were doing too much.

Read more: Toxicity swirls around January 26, but we can change the nation with a Voice to parliament

But there was a slight increase in those thinking climate change was caused by human activity (58%, up two since January 2020), while 32% (steady) thought we are just witnessing a normal fluctuation in the earth’s climate.

Trump set to be acquitted in impeachment trial

I related on January 20 that Donald Trump was impeached by the US House of Representatives over his role in inciting the January 6 riots with his baseless claims of election fraud.

The Senate is tied at 50-50, with Vice President Kamala Harris giving Democrats the majority with her casting vote. But it requires a two-thirds majority to convict a president, so 17 Republicans would need to join the Democrats for conviction.

On January 26, a vote was called on whether it was constitutional to try a former president. The Senate ruled it constitutional by 55-45, but just five Republicans joined all Democrats.

That is far short of the 17 required to convict, so Trump is set to be acquitted at the Senate trial that begins February 8.

Only ten of over 200 House Republicans supported impeachment. It is clear the vast majority of Congressional Republicans consider it more important to keep the Trump supporters happy than to hold Trump accountable for the rioters that attacked Congress.

In a late January Monmouth University poll, 56% approved of the House impeaching Trump while 42% disapproved. When asked whether the Senate should convict, support dropped to 52-44.

Read more: Biden faces the world: 5 foreign policy experts explain US priorities – and problems – after Trump

FiveThirtyEight has started an aggregate of polls to track new President Joe Biden’s ratings. His current ratings are 54.3% approve and 34.6% disapprove for a net approval of +19.7 points.

While Biden’s ratings are better than Trump’s at any stage of his presidency, they are worse on net approval than all presidents prior to Trump this early in their terms.

Prior to Trump, presidents were given a honeymoon even by opposition party supporters, but it is unlikely the 30% or so who believe Biden’s win illegitimate will ever approve of him.

– ref. Polls say Labor and Coalition in a 50-50 tie, Trump set to be acquitted by US Senate – https://theconversation.com/polls-say-labor-and-coalition-in-a-50-50-tie-trump-set-to-be-acquitted-by-us-senate-154370

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Griffiths, Fellow, Grattan Institute

Political parties in Australia collectively received $168 million in donations for the financial year 2019-20. Today, Australians finally get to see where some of the money came from with the release of data from the Australian Electoral Commission.

While the big donors will make the headlines, they are only the tip of the iceberg. More than half of the funding for political parties remains hidden from public view. And that is exactly how the major parties want it.

What does the data tell us?

The Coalition and Labor received more in donations than all other parties combined. The Coalition received 41% of all funds (or A$69 million), while Labor received 33% ($55 million). The Greens came a distant third at 11% ($19 million), bumping Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party out of the position it held during the 2019 election.

The largest 5% of donors accounted for half of declared donations. For the second year in a row, the largest individual declared donation was made by Palmer’s company Mineralogy, which gave $5.9 million to his own party.

The Coalition’s largest donor, Richard Pratt’s Pratt Holdings, donated $1.5 million. Other major donations to the Coalition included the Greenfields Foundation ($450,000), an investment company linked to the Liberal Party; and Transcendent Australia ($203,000), a company owned by Chinese businesswoman Sally Zou.

Unsurprisingly, many of Labor’s largest donors are unions, led by the “Shoppies” union (the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees’ Association, or SDA), which donated almost $500,000. Labor also received large donations from fundraising vehicles associated with the party, including Labor Holdings Pty Ltd, which donated $910,000.

Read more: Eight ways to clean up money in Australian politics

Other large donors are bipartisan givers. The Australian Hotels Association gave $154,000 to the Coalition and $271,000 to Labor. Woodside Energy gave $198,000 to the Coalition and $138,000 to Labor. The Macquarie Group (including Macquarie Telecom) gave $254,000 to the Coalition and $184,000 to Labor. ANZ continued its regular donations to both sides with $100,000 each.

Total donations were smaller than the previous year (an election year). But those who donate “off-cycle” can still have substantial influence, whether they are political devotees, or playing the “long game” of using donations to open doors and wield political influence.

But a lot of the money remains hidden from public view

Declared donations are only a fraction of the total money flowing to our political parties.

Out of $168 million in party funding, only $15 million of donations were declared (or just 9%). Another $59 million — around one-third — is public funding provided by electoral commissions.

The rest? A murky combination of undeclared donations and a messy bucket of funds called “other receipts”, which includes everything from investment income to money raised at political fundraising dinners. This chart shows the breakdown for the two major parties.

More than half of the Coalition’s private funding is undisclosed, and 40% of Labor’s funds. This rises to about 90% across both parties when other receipts are included.

The major parties want it this way

The Commonwealth donations disclosure regime is incredibly weak compared to almost all Australian states and most other advanced nations. Let’s be clear: this is a political choice backed in by the major parties.

In December, both major parties rejected a bill introduced by crossbench Senator Jacqui Lambie to improve transparency of political donations. It wasn’t revolutionary — the bill didn’t ban donors, or limit donations, or restrict what parties could do with donations. It simply proposed giving the public more and better information on the major donors, including:

• requiring donations over $5,000 to be declared by the parties (the current threshold is $14,300)

• stopping “donations splitting”, in which a major donor can hide by splitting a big donation into a series of small ones

• making income from political fundraising events declarable

• publishing data about donations within weeks (rather than the current eight to 19 months).

Yet, the bill was whitewashed. The committee rejected it on the basis that “there is already an effective regime in place”.

Our current system doesn’t have the balance right

The Commonwealth donations disclosure regime is supposed to provide transparency and to “inform the public about the financial dealings of political parties, candidates and others involved in the electoral process”. But it clearly does not deliver on this in its current form.

There is a balance to be drawn between the interests of donors in protecting their privacy and the interests of the public in knowing who funds and influences political parties.

Read more: A full ban on political donations would level the playing field – but is it the best approach?

But it is very hard to see how the current system – which keeps the majority of private money out of public view and unnecessarily delays the release of all donation data – has got the balance right.

A good disclosure system would close the loopholes that allow major donors to hide, while protecting the privacy of small donors.

Australians consistently say that they are suspicious that politicians are corrupt and that governments serve themselves and their mates rather than the public interest. Perhaps they’re right. Today’s donations release reminds us of the shortfalls of a system designed for donor and party interests over the public interest.

– ref. More than half of funding for the major parties remains secret — and this is how they want it – https://theconversation.com/more-than-half-of-funding-for-the-major-parties-remains-secret-and-this-is-how-they-want-it-154364

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Flavio Romero Macau, Senior Lecturer in Supply Chain Management and Global Logistics, Edith Cowan University

I live in Perth. Like most people here, on Sunday I was ready for a busy week of getting the kids to school, going to work, visiting the gym and so on. I planned to spend the hot afternoon at the beach.

That changed with the announcement of a five-day lockdown, effective from 6pm, sparked by a security guard at one of Perth’s quarantine hotels testing positive to COVID-19.

The lockdown rules are similar to those in other Australian cities in recent months. Shops for essentials such as groceries, medicine and other necessary supplies remain open. West Australian premier Mark McGowan urged people not to “panic buy”:

There is no need to rush to the supermarket. There will not be a shortage of toilet paper or other goods. You will be able to go out and shop for essentials over the course of this week. I urge everyone to remain calm and to act responsibly.

It made no difference. Within the hour, long queues formed outside supermarkets, service stations and other stores. People stood in 35⁰C heat for up to an hour awaiting their turn to strip store shelves of toilet paper and other items.

Read more: A toilet paper run is like a bank run. The economic fixes are about the same

We’ve seen this all before – nationwide in March, in Melbourne in July, Adelaide in November, and Sydney in December.

People are nervous, I get it. But the premier is right. There’s no need. The only shortages that will occur are those brought on by this very behaviour.

The good news, however, is that any induced shortages will be short-lived. In fact, by the time you read this, the fuss might be over.

The psychology behind stockpiling

For some, the news of a lockdown has little to no effect. Their behaviour is guided by a rational response to uncertainty. They watch in dismay the extreme responses of others during stressful times.

For some a lockdown triggers a complex psychological chain reaction, leading to panic buying and hoarding. Particularly for those more prone to feelings of insecurity and anxiety, stocking up on items is a way to feel more in control. The fact there’s no actual need, because supermarkets will be open tomorrow, has little to do with it. The fear of missing out (FOMO) overcomes rationality.

Not all stockpiling behaviour can be explained away as “irrational”, though. As we’ve seen in recent cases such as GameStop’s share price, people also make “rational” calculations about other people’s behaviour, and respond accordingly.

In this case, based on past evidence, it might seem quite sensible to predict some people will “panic buy” and decide the rational response to that irrational behaviour is to get in first.

Read more: Stocking up to prepare for a crisis isn’t ‘panic buying’. It’s actually a pretty rational choice

There’s little a political leader (or anyone else) can say that will change this. In fact, official warnings against panic buying might even do more harm than good by drawing attention to its probability.

Things will work themselves out

The good news is that any shortages are likely to be very short-lived – even if this lockdown continues beyond its scheduled five days.

Last March, when stockpiling led to weeks-long shortages of toilet paper, hand sanitiser and grocery staples such as pasta, it was because most of Australia was involved. Business and supply chains primed to run as efficiently as possible with highly predictable demand were taken by surprise. They struggled to compensate.

This time, having now had multiple experiences to hone their preparedness and response, supply chain managers know the drill.

Knowing such lockdowns are now a risk, they’ve added more fat to supply chains. Inventory is not kept at a minimum. Supermarkets are quick to limit the amount customers can buy. In most case shelves stripped today will likely be replenished tomorrow.

Read more: A toilet paper run is like a bank run. The economic fixes are about the same

With a localised event, also – in this case Perth and Western Australia’s southwest – extra stock can be diverted from around the country. There’s no need for suppliers to suddenly ramp up production. The only thing stopping supply returning to normal is the speed of transportation and restocking.

What happened across the nation in March 2020 was like a major accident leading to delays and detour on a supply chain highway. This situation is more like a car with a flat tyre slowing the traffic on a local road.

What comes next?

COVID-19 outbreaks – with short, sharp lockdowns in response – look to be part of the “new normal”, until the pandemic is over.

Outbreaks of store stripping also look to be part of the new normal. But so long as we don’t have these outbreaks in multiple states simultaneously, they will pass quickly.

So stay calm and avoid the rush.

– ref. ‘Panic-buying’ events are the new normal; here’s how supply chains have adapted – https://theconversation.com/panic-buying-events-are-the-new-normal-heres-how-supply-chains-have-adapted-154362

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dale Dominey-Howes, Professor of Hazards and Disaster Risk Sciences, University of Sydney

The human and environmental cost of climate change is all around us, and on the rise. The UN reports about 90% of all disasters are weather-related, and that weather and climate are major drivers of disaster risk. So it’s more important than ever to examine who is bearing the brunt of this change.

A growing body of post-disaster research shows people — even those living in the same area — experience disasters differently.

For some the events are minor inconveniences. For others they are devastating. Disasters exacerbate pre-existing inequalities in areas such as education, income, gender, ability/disability and social status.

Read more: Natural disasters increase inequality. Recovery funding may make things worse

As the UN puts it:

Poverty is both a driver and consequence of disasters, and the processes that further disaster risk related poverty are permeated with inequality. Socio-economic inequality is likely to continue to increase and with it disaster risk for those countries, communities, households and businesses that have only limited opportunities to manage their risks and strengthen their resilience. The geography of inequality expresses itself at all scales: between regions and countries, within countries and inside cities and localities.

Who is most at risk when disasters strike?

At the heart of this problem is lack of power and access to resources to increase resilience. An ideology that calls on each of us to be personally responsible for our own resilience and disaster preparedness — when power, wealth and income are distributed so unequally — has obvious shortcomings.

Examples of this dynamic abound.

Research by colleagues and I looked at disaster declarations in local government areas in New South Wales, and found a “hotspot” in the north of the state. Of the most disadvantaged local government areas in NSW, 43% were found in the state’s disaster hotspot.

Another study found residents in the Lismore town centre flood foodprint had “significantly higher levels of social vulnerability” and higher rates of smoking, alcohol consumption, pre-existing mental health conditions and poorer health – all of which make these people more vulnerable to disasters.

Heatwaves are set to become more common and more extreme as the climate changes. According to the Climate Council:

Those most at risk include the very old, the very young, those with existing health problems (such as heart, kidney, lung or liver disease) or disabilities, lower socio-economic, remote or marginalised communities, socially isolated individuals, the homeless, and those who work outdoors. People who do not have access to an air-conditioned environment are highly vulnerable.

Running air conditioning, of course, is an expensive luxury out of reach for many Australians and even those who can afford it worry it may become prohibitively expensive in future. Some local communities are trialling a system where local churches, halls and other air-conditioned venues can act as “heat refuges” on extremely hot days.

The “personal responsibility” ideology rings hollow when it comes to bushfire preparedness too. As others have argued, preparation can cost time and money especially for those not physically able to execute fuel reduction measures alone.

Evacuation as a primary safety measure for any number of disaster types may sound simple enough, but research shows even that’s not always easy for poorer, disadvantaged people. Recovery after disaster can extremely uneven within communities — especially in regards to housing and job markets — which can help compound pre-existing inequalities.

Poorer, more disadvantaged people are less likely to be able to afford household insurance, exposing them to even greater risk.

Some researchers have argued the COVID-19 pandemic is also a disaster, with its roots in climate change and environmental degradation, and that:

Along with habitat loss, shifting climate zones are causing wildlife to migrate to new places, where they interact with other species they haven’t previously encountered. This increases the risk of new diseases emerging.

The pandemic has certainly shone a blinding light on how pandemics are experienced differently by the haves and the have-nots, with those in casualised work, on lower wages and lower job security often at greater risk.

Read more: Natural disasters are affecting some of Australia’s most disadvantaged communities

What can we do to make people less vulnerable to disasters?

Too often, the difficult task of addressing inequality is left out of the disaster preparedness discussion.

But ensuring a minimum living wage, improving working conditions and boosting job security are crucial elements of disaster risk reduction. Raising the rate of Jobseeker (or Newstart) to keep recipients out of poverty is essential.

Lastly, we may need to start a national “catastrophe pool” of funds to help lower income households access insurance and to support the poorest to recover when disasters strike.

This story is part of a series The Conversation is running on the nexus between disaster, disadvantage and resilience. You can read the rest of the stories here.

– ref. You can’t talk about disaster risk reduction without talking about inequality – https://theconversation.com/you-cant-talk-about-disaster-risk-reduction-without-talking-about-inequality-153189

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Steven David Hitchcock, Lecturer, University of Sydney

In her new book, Can’t Even, American journalist Anne Helen Peterson writes of how Millennials have become “the burnout generation”.

[It’s] feeling that you’ve hit the wall exhaustion-wise, but then have to scale the wall and just keep going. There’s no catharsis, no lasting rest, just this background hum of exhaustion.

The book, recently released in Australia, builds on the viral essay Peterson wrote in 2019.

At its heart, the book is a critique about the nature of modern workplaces and the modern economy.

As Petersen recently told Vox,

There’s a feeling of instability that’s the baseline economic condition for many, many millennials, and it’s enhanced by these other components of our lives that make it harder to turn away from.

Peterson argues Millennials, born between the early 1980s and mid-1990s, have come of age in a world where more and more of their time is being demanded by not just work, but by life.

Technology means work follows us everywhere, at all hours, while leisure time happens (or is “performed”) on social media. Meanwhile, homes are turned into Airbnb rentals, cars become rideshare services.

What’s age got to do with it?

Peterson tells real and important stories about the frustration, anxiety, and malaise of herself and her contemporaries. However, she does us all a disservice by framing this as particularly “Millennial problem”.

While Peterson does acknowledge burnout impacts everyone, she assumes Millennials are a concrete group of people whose experience of burnout is exceptional.

The idea of clear generational groups, each possessing defining characteristics seems intuitive. It makes sense a group of contemporaries who had similar experiences in their formative years, would come to have similar attitudes, values, and beliefs.

But many scholars are uncertain that the generational groups as we know them — such as Millennials, Gen X or Baby Boomers — are as real or useful as we might think.

Read more: From Boomers to Xennials: we love talking about our generations, but must recognise their limits

Empirical research to prove generational groupings has produced “highly mixed and contradictory results”. So, many academics aren’t convinced birth-year groups even exist — there are too many variables.

For example, if a 20-year-old today doesn’t follow office etiquette, is this a product of them being Generation Z? Or because this person is new to the workforce?

Read more: Millennials at work don’t see themselves as millennials

More broadly, the majority of research about generations have been undertaken across Europe, North America, and Australia/Oceania. Given these three regions combined make up less than 18% of the world’s population, it becomes clear how little we know.

So, while the frustrations of Peterson and her contemporaries are real — it is important to emphasise they are something everyone is facing.

‘Feelings of energy depletion’

Burnout has historically been studied in relation to workplace stress, particularly where employees are in a caring role.

It is defined by World Health Organisation as

(a) feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion; (b) increased mental distance from one’s job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one’s job; and (c) reduced professional efficacy.

But medical experts are starting to see burnout as a society-wide issue, particularly as people find themselves overwhelmed and fatigued by COVID-19. Similarly, mental health groups have identified burnout as a product of long-term, or chronic, stress.

That is to say, scientists and support services are coming to understand burnout is not necessarily a product of the workplace specifically — but everything going on in someone’s life — from how much technology they use, to how many commitments they have.

Everyone is over it

In 2020, who of us can say they aren’t feeling burned out?

After a summer of bushires, we had (and still have) a pandemic. For many, the boundaries between work and life have collapsed as we have needed to work, care, and relax at home — sometimes in the same room.

COVID has been accompanied by a seemingly permanent state of angst, as we all found ourselves doomscrolling for the latest updates. Many people have also lost income and job security. And more than 2 million people around the world have lost their lives.

Burnout is about more than the pandemic

But it is not “just 2020”. The past several decades have seen huge changes to the way that we live, and engage with those around us.

For example, social media has had a profound effect — and not always for the better in terms of our mental health.

In the workplace, an “overtime culture” has blossomed. As of 2019, about 13% of Australia’s workforce was working more than 50 hours a week.

The rise in casual employment may have allowed for more flexibility, but it has increased insecurity — with no paid leave, and unstable work schedules.

Here it is important to note, in 2020, those aged 15-24 made up less than 40% of all casual jobs. While the casual workforce is skewed towards younger workers – the casualisation of the workforce impacts all of us.

Read more: Uber might not take over the world, but it is still normalising job insecurity

On top of all of this, we have seen rising levels of student and household debt, skyrocketing house prices, and the increasing effects of climate change.

We all have plenty of reasons to feel bombarded by life.

How do you solve burnout?

So, what do we do? It goes without saying, widespread burnout due to social, economic, and political forces in the middle of a pandemic is a complex problem to solve.

At an individual level, resources do exist to help us address our mental health and support those around us.

Read more: The day is dawning on a four-day work week

However, systemic change is far more complex. Academics and world leaders have suggested reducing the work week might be an important step. Though, as noted by Peterson, it’s no longer just work demanding our time, energy, and attention.

As Peterson points out, one area that may need reimagining is how much and how often we consume information. Scholars in the 1960s were already raising concerns about the impact so much information could have on people, and in turn, society.

We as humans are social and curious creatures, but how much news, connection and information is good for us?

Comparing generations is a trap

As Slate journalist Shannon Palus observes, Peterson deserves credit for identifying big problems about a culture that constantly asks for more access to every aspect of our lives.

However, framing this issue as one belonging to, or uniquely impacting Millennials is a trap. It encourages us to compare different generations to see who is the least or most burned out.

Really, our attention should be devoted to working together to reduce burnout for everyone.

– ref. Millennials are not the only ‘burnout generation’ (just ask the rest of us) – https://theconversation.com/millennials-are-not-the-only-burnout-generation-just-ask-the-rest-of-us-147089

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By George Karystianis, Research fellow, UNSW

Rare access to almost half a million police reports of domestic violence has revealed a hidden picture of mental health issues in perpetrators and victims.

This is academics’ first attempt in the world to use computers to mine the text of so many police reports. These would otherwise have taken humans years to read and analyse.

As part of our recently published research, we discovered many more mentions of mental health issues in these police reports than expected.

We have already used those data to identify lesser-known groups vulnerable to domestic violence, including people with autism spectrum disorder and in yet-to-be-published research, people in nursing homes. But our findings could also have other implications for public health, victims, perpetrators and policing.

Here’s what we did

Police are often the first to attend domestic violence events. As well as details such as the names and ages of the people involved, police also write up a narrative description of the event, including any observable injuries, drug and alcohol information, and mental health.

The NSW Police Force told us that in 2017 alone, officers attended 123,330 domestic violence events. This gives some idea of the scale of the problem and the challenge of reading, processing and pulling together the volumes of information these reports contain.

So we developed a way of mining the text to automatically extract certain information. We analysed almost half a million (492,393) domestic violence police records in New South Wales, covering a 12-year period (2005-16).

Read more: Out of the shadows: the rise of domestic violence in Australia

To illustrate the advantage of automatic text processing, we estimate it would have taken one person around 160 years to read and process the reports. That’s based on 14 reports a day, working 220 days a year (unlike computers, humans take holidays).

Although the source records were not de-identified (it would have taken too long), we only extracted anonymised information (mentions of mental illness) to ensure privacy.

Here’s what we found

We focused on domestic violence events that mentioned a single perpetrator against a single victim (416,441). Within those, we identified more than 120 different mental illnesses for victims and perpetrators in almost 65,000 police-attended domestic violence events over those years.

These ranged from generic disorder descriptions (for example, mood disorders, self-harm) to highly specific conditions (for example, oppositional defiant disorder, dissociative personality disorder) for victims and perpetrators.

A total of 16% of domestic violence events examined had at least one mention of a mental illness for either the perpetrator or the victim. In more than three-quarters (76%) of these events, mental illness was mentioned for the perpetrator only, 17% for the victim only, and 7% for both victim and perpetrator.

Overall, mood affective disorders, which include depression or bipolar disorder, were the most common in both victims and perpetrators.

Read more: Domestic violence soars after natural disasters. Preventing it needs to be part of the emergency response

One key finding was a steady increase over time in domestic violence involving alcohol abuse in perpetrators aged 15-64 years. Another was the number of domestic violence cases with victims over 55 years said to have dementia.

While the records contained many more reports of mental health issues than we might expect, this is likely a big underestimate. This is because police do not systematically seek information on people’s mental health state when they attend domestic violence events.

We need to be careful when interpreting these results

We know police reports don’t capture all cases of domestic violence. We also need to be careful when using reports of mental health based on interviews with victims, perpetrators and third parties who are not mental health professionals (such as parents).

However, police reports draw on a range of sources, including the victims, perpetrators and witnesses. They also consider evidence at the scene (such as medications and signs of drug and alcohol use).

Due to stigma issues, people might not be comfortable or willing to share their own mental health issues with others, including police.

Read more: Media reporting on mental illness, violence and crime needs to change

What could this data be used for?

Rather than stigmatise people with mental health issues, our research can potentially dispel myths about domestic violence and mental health, and raise awareness about certain groups’ vulnerability.

For example, our research has identified vulnerable groups at risk of being victims of domestic violence, including people with autism spectrum disorders, carers, and people in specific settings (such as nursing homes).

We showed the perpetrators of domestic violence against people with autism spectrum disorders were more likely to be their family or carers. And the most common conditions in perpetrators were developmental conditions and intellectual disability; for non-autistic perpetrators, schizophrenia and substance abuse were most common.

From a public health perspective, this rich information also gives us extra insights not captured in data sources such as emergency department presentations, which cover only the more severe cases of domestic violence that result in significant physical injury.

And our data could also help police handle domestic violence events where mental health is an issue.

We are currently using artificial intelligence methods on the data from text mining and other sources to predict future domestic violence events by individuals with particular profiles.

There are concerns

This study raises the issue of how we use “big data” and how we share information between the police and mental health services.

We argue the potential benefits outweigh the potential harms, especially as analyses like ours can potentially increase community safety, lead to better outcomes for people with mental illnesses, and inform interactions with police.

Read more: Explainer: what is big data?

We suggest the public should be consulted about their views on “big data” issues, including any privacy concerns, rather than decisions being made solely by government officials and academics. This is important given the “big data” tsunami that has engulfed us, representing a significant public asset.

If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call the National Sexual Assault, Domestic Family Violence Counselling Service (1800RESPECT) on 1800 737 732 or Lifeline on 13 11 14.

– ref. We analysed almost 500,000 police reports of domestic violence. Mental health was an issue – https://theconversation.com/we-analysed-almost-500-000-police-reports-of-domestic-violence-mental-health-was-an-issue-153649

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Matthew Grant, Palliative Medicine Physician, Research Fellow, Monash University

From today (February 1), when you receive a prescription in Australia, it will list the name of the medication’s active ingredient rather than the brand name. So, for example, instead of receiving a prescription for Ventolin, your script will say “salbutamol”.

This national legislation change, called active ingredient prescribing, is long overdue for Australian health care.

Using the name of the drug — instead of the brand name, of which there are often many — will simplify how we talk about and use medications.

This could have a range of benefits, including fewer medication errors by both doctors and patients.

What is an active ingredient?

The active ingredient describes the main chemical compound in the medicine that affects your body. It’s the ingredient that helps control your asthma or headache, for example.

Drugs are tested to ensure they contain exactly the same active ingredients regardless of which brand you buy.

There’s only one active ingredient name for each type of medical compound, although they may come in different strengths. Some types of medications may contain multiple active ingredients, such as Panadeine Forte, which contains both paracetamol and codeine.

Read more: Prescribing generic drugs will reduce patient confusion and medication errors

There can be several brand names

Until now, doctors and other prescribers have used a mixture of brand and active ingredient names when prescribing medicines. An Australian study found doctors used brand names for 80.5% of prescriptions.

Different brands are available for most medications — up to 12 for some. Combined with active ingredient names, this equates to thousands of different names — too many for any patient, doctor, nurse or pharmacist to remember.

Here’s an example of the problem.

I ask John, a patient whom I’ve just met, whether he takes cholesterol medications, commonly called statins. The active ingredient names for this group of medications all end in “statin” (for example, pravastatin, simvastatin).

“Ummm, I’m not sure, is it a blue pill?” John asks.

“It could come in many colours. It might be called atorvastatin, or Lipitor,” I reply. “Perhaps rosuvastatin, or Crestor, or Zocor?”

“Ah yes, Crestor, I am taking that,” John exclaims, after deliberating for some time.

This is a common and important conversation, but could be simpler for both of us if John was familiar with the active ingredient name.

And while we did eventually come to the answer, this medication could have easily been overlooked, by both John and myself. This may have significant implications and interact with other medicines I might prescribe.

Read more: I’ve heard COVID is leading to medicine shortages. What can I do if my medicine is out of stock?

Cause for confusion

The main problem with using brand names for medications is the potential for confusion, as we see with John.

A prescription written using a brand name doesn’t mean you can’t buy other brands. And your pharmacist may offer to substitute the brand specified for an equivalent generic drug. So, people often leave the pharmacy with a medication name or package that bears no resemblance to the prescription.

When the terms we use to describe medicines in conversation, on prescriptions and what’s written on the medication packet can all be different, patients might not understand which medications they’re taking, or why.

This often leads to doubling up (taking two brands of the same medication), or forgetting to take a certain medication because the name on the package doesn’t match what’s written on your medication list or prescription.

Confusion resulting from using brand names has been associated with serious medication errors, including overdoses. Elderly people are the most susceptible, as they’re most likely to take multiple medications.

Even when the confusion doesn’t cause harm, it can be problematic in other ways. If patients don’t understand their medicines, they may be less likely to be proactive in making decisions with their doctor or pharmacist about their health care.

Health professionals can also get confused, potentially leading to prescribing errors.

What are the benefits of active ingredient prescribing?

The main benefit of the switch is to simplify the language around medications.

Once we become accustomed to using one standardised name for each medicine, it will be easier to talk about medicines, whether with a family member, pharmacist or doctor.

The better we understand the medications we’re using, the fewer errors we make, and the more control we can take over our medication use and decisions.

This change will also serve to promote choice.

When you’re prescribed a medicine with a certain name, you’re more likely to buy that brand. In some cases there may be generic medicines that are cheaper and just as effective. Or there may be other forms of the medication that better suit your needs, such as a capsule only available in another brand.

Not too much will change

This new rule is not expected to lead to extra work for doctors, pharmacists or other health professionals who prescribe medicines, as most clinical software will make the transition automatically.

Doctors can elect to still include the brand name on the prescription, if they feel it’s important for the patient. But aside from some limited exceptions, the active ingredient name will need to be listed, and will be listed first.

Some active ingredient names may be a bit longer and more complex than certain brand names, so there might be a period of adjustment for consumers.

But in the long term, this change will streamline terminology around medicines and make things easier, and hopefully safer, for everyone.

Next time you receive your prescription, have a look at the name of the active ingredient. Remember it, and use that name when you talk to your family, doctor and pharmacist.

Read more: Boomers have a drug problem, but not the kind you might think

– ref. Doctors must now prescribe drugs using their chemical name, not brand names. That’s good news for patients – https://theconversation.com/doctors-must-now-prescribe-drugs-using-their-chemical-name-not-brand-names-thats-good-news-for-patients-153796

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jenny Gore, Laureate Professor of Education, University of Newcastle

There have been some reports students fell behind during the remote learning period in 2020.

For instance, a report by the NSW education department found NSW students in year 3 were up to four months behind in reading in 2020 compared to their 2019 counterparts. And year 9 students were two to three months behind in numeracy.

Modelling by the Grattan Institute estimated disadvantaged students — including those from low socioeconomic families, Indigenous backgrounds and remote communities — had lost around two months learning during the remote learning period in Victoria.

Read more: 3 education questions the Victorian government should answer at the COVID-19 inquiry

Our research found only year 3 students from the least advantaged schools fell behind academically during the remote learning period.

But there was no difference in learning progress between 2020 and the year before in all the other year 3 and 4 students in our sample.

We were able to compare 2019 and 2020

We collected data on student achievement in NSW government primary schools during terms 1 and 4 in 2019 and during term 1 in 2020.

Students in year 3 and 4 in 2019 sat progressive achievement tests in maths and reading in term 1 in 2019, and then again in term 4, to see how they had progressed over the year.

We then had year 3 and 4 students sit the same test in term 1 of 2020. But then COVID struck.

So we approached the NSW education department about funding collection of the term 4 data in 2020. We wanted to see if the interruption to normal schooling during the year had affected average student progress from term 1 to term 4.

Read more: To learn at home, kids need more than just teaching materials. Their brain must also adapt to the context

We were uniquely positioned to compare the annual growth in student achievement in 2020 (where the year was interrupted) with our results from 2019.

Students in years 3 and 4 in 2020 took the same tests as we gave students in 2019. The total of 3,030 students across both years, from 97 schools, allowed us to examine the actual effects of the eight-to-ten week system-wide disruption to schooling in NSW caused by the pandemic.

We made sure to compare the results of students who attended schools with a similar Index of Community Socio-Educational Advantage (ICSEA). This score takes into account factors such as socioeconomic advantage and whether schools are in a rural area, as well as the proportion of Indigenous students in the school.

We also made sure to compare students with similar baseline test results.

Here’s what we found

We found no significant differences, on average, between the 2019 control group and 2020 cohort in student growth in maths or reading.

However, there were some differences when it came to particular groups of students.

Specifically, we looked at the effects for Indigenous students, students in different locations and from different socioeconomic levels (using their school ICSEA).

The average school ICSEA in Australia is 1,000. Schools in our sample ranged from less than 900 to greater than 1,100.

When it came to maths, our results showed:

• year 3 students from less advantaged schools (ICSEA less than 950) showed two months less academic progress in 2020, compared with the students in the 2019 group

• year 3 students in mid-range schools (ICSEA 950 – 1050) actually showed two months’ additional progress

• years 3 students showed no significant difference in the more advantaged schools (ICSEA greater than 1,050)

• year 4 students showed no significant difference in progress regardless of school ICSEA.

When it came to reading, we found no significant differences in academic progress between 2019 and 2020, regardless of school ICSEA.

We saw no significant differences in progress in both maths and reading for Indigenous students or those in regional locations. But the smaller sample of students in these groups means these results should be interpreted with caution.

What this means

Our study provides a counter-narrative to widespread concern about how much students fell behind during the remote learning period.

Indeed, the results are cause for celebration. Most students are, academically, where they are expected to be.

However, the lower achievement growth in maths for year 3 students in lower ICSEA schools must be addressed as a matter of urgency to avoid further inequities.

Read more: Victoria and NSW are funding extra tutors to help struggling students. Here’s what parents need to know about the schemes

Student well-being did suffer

We also interviewed 18 teachers and principals, asking them about things like student progress and well-being during the remote learning period. These interviews echo concerns raised by others about the well-being of both students and teachers.

They described the learning from home period as one of significant stress, anxiety and frustration in many families.

They also expressed concern about student well-being, even after the return to face-to-face schooling.

Supporting student mental health substantially increased the workload of school counsellors, where available, and of teachers and principals in addressing student behaviour.

One principal said:

We’ve got massive amounts of anxiety in our students. From physical behaviour, oppositional behaviours, kids not wanting to come to school. They’re melting down at school … I’m only a primary school, so I have no idea how the high schools are handling it.

They told us the exponential increase in workload during 2020 has taken its toll on teachers, including a significant drop in morale. Teachers and principals described the pressure of supporting remote learning, regardless of students’ access to the internet or a computer, combined with teaching children of essential workers who remained at school.

Their work also included developing and delivering online lessons and providing various forms of support to parents. When schools reopened, staff worked to support student well-being and reestablish relationships with their classes. They did this without the support of parent volunteers or the balance that comes from non-classroom activities like school assemblies and excursions that typically punctuate life in schools.

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

Our research highlights a need to provide ongoing support to all teachers and students to ensure their well-being as the 2021 school year commences. Let’s start with expressing immense gratitude to teachers for ensuring student learning despite the unprecedented circumstances of 2020.

– ref. Remote learning didn’t affect most NSW primary students in our study academically. But well-being suffered – https://theconversation.com/remote-learning-didnt-affect-most-nsw-primary-students-in-our-study-academically-but-well-being-suffered-154171

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Doyle, Associate Professor of Media, Macquarie University

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

I’ve always preferred my fictional detectives on the weirder side.

Like the sour-tempered narrator of Derek Raymond’s Factory Series. Everyone hates the bloke. But not as much as he hates them back. (He calmly addresses an uncooperative desk sergeant as “you cunt”.) Exiled to the Department of Unexplained Deaths he sets about obsessively solving mysteries no one but he cares about. There’s a higher purpose to his misanthropy.

That series was written in the 1980s, shortly before James Elroy came along and put the whole genre into meltdown. I found myself losing interest in the all-too acceptably transgressive detectives who followed.

Then a few years ago a writer friend alerted me to author Sara Gran, and her almost-impossible-to-describe detective, Claire DeWitt. From precocious girl sleuth to drugged-up detective, she is complex yet dogged.

Words to live by

Claire’s background (we learn) is as a schoolgirl detective, in the Nancy Drew cosy tradition, one of three brainy Brooklyn teens inflamed by pulp novels, mystery comics and mail-order sleuthing paraphernalia. The girls quickly set about solving actual mysteries. Then one of the trio disappears, never to be seen again. That’s the backstory.

Present day Claire is a “detective”, although what that means is unclear. No office, no business cards, no website. She refers to herself as the unquestioned World’s Greatest Detective, and makes frequent mention of past cases, which have names like The Case of the Silver Pearl, The Case of the Omens of No Tomorrow, The Case of the End of the World, The Case of the Confused Academic — the way Dr Watson might refer to Sherlock Holmes’ famous cases.

Claire is never without her bible, Jacques Silette’s criminological masterwork, Détection. The fictitious Silette (I Googled him, just in case) is forever coming out with naff-deep pronouncements like, “Mysteries never end. We solve them anyway, knowing we are solving both everything and nothing”. Or, “No one is innocent. The question is how will you bear your portion of the guilt?” (Good question!)

Silette could easily have been mates with theory heavies like Jacques Derrida and Jacques Lacan, dropping as he does such whacky bon mots as “Karma is not a sentence already printed. It’s a series of words the author can arrange as he chooses”.

The world of amateur detection, it turns out, is a deeply riven one, with a few beleaguered Silettians duking it out against the ruthless anti-Silettians. (The international detective scene, with its arcane controversies and obsessional characters is a little like the chess world in The Queen’s Gambit, except with murders.)

Read more: My favourite detective: Trixie Belden, the uncool girl sleuth with a sensitive moral compass

A weakness for weed … and the rest

If this all sounds like a mighty piss-take on the Golden Age detective story, believe me it’s anything but. For one thing, Gran never, ever winks at the audience, never plays cute, never chases laughs. It’s all delivered utterly straight-faced.

For another, Claire is a total dope hog. If she happens upon a white powder or an amber fluid, or a pill, or something to smoke or sniff, she’s into it.

Sometimes the action will skip eight, ten hours or a whole day, then restart when a comatose Claire suddenly comes to with the breaking down of a toilet door by a terrified barman. People see her coming and they call the cops.

Read more: Friday essay: the complex, contradictory pleasures of pulp fiction

She is very “street”. In one classic set piece, two obviously armed teenage boys stand between her and her truck door in the Lower Ninth Ward in post Katrina New Orleans. Attuned to such cues, Claire sees suicidal longing in the beautiful eyes of the boy standing in front of her. She doesn’t oblige him.

Later on she shares a joint soaked in a brown liquid — formaldehyde? — with some anonymous street kid and they both slip into operatic hallucination, gaping in silence at the rising moon. That chemical delirium is kind of like what you feel when reading a Claire DeWitt novel.

The stories race ahead, as tough and beautifully written as any crime fiction. And for all the drug snarfing, Claire remains a very reliable narrator. It’s reality that’s unreliable.

Gran confidently assembles this cosy yet hardboiled grunge-social-realist material-yet-trippily-archetypal world. Into it he adds Claire: its druggy, self-harming, hyper-intellectual, spiritually questing, maybe psychotic but thoroughly unrelenting outsider shamus. It’s a big ask but it works.

By the end of latest novel, the third in the series, the overarching mysteries which thread all three together have joined in a single weave. So maybe Gran has finished with Claire. I hope not.

I let my mind fill with the case. It was only a case. Only another case. Another sentence of words to rearrange. Maybe that was all there was to life. One long case, only you kept switching roles. Detective, witness, client, suspect. Then one day I’d be the victim instead of the detective or the client and it would all be over. Then I’d finally have a fucking day off.

— Claire DeWitt and the Bohemian Highway

Read more: My favourite detective: Kurt Wallander — too grumpy to like, relatable enough to get under your skin

– ref. My favourite detective: Claire DeWitt’s personal loss and blackout hours make her weirdly compelling – https://theconversation.com/my-favourite-detective-claire-dewitts-personal-loss-and-blackout-hours-make-her-weirdly-compelling-149622

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Erin Smith, Associate Professor in Disaster and Emergency Response, School of Medical and Health Sciences, Edith Cowan University

Perth and the Peel and South West regions of Western Australia will go into a five-day hard lockdown from 6pm local time on Sunday, after one new local COVID-19 case was detected in the state.

The new case is a male security guard who was working on the same floor as a person in quarantine with the UK coronavirus variant.

Contact tracing is underway, and residents have been asked to get a COVID test if they visited any of several venues listed as potential exposure sites.

The lockdown is currently scheduled to last until 6pm on Friday February 5, although Premier Mark McGowan has not ruled out extending the restrictions if necessary.

What do the restrictions mean?

Residents will only be allowed to leave home for four essential reasons: work or study, exercise, to shop for essentials or to access healthcare.

Schools, many of which were scheduled to begin on February 1, will remain closed for the coming week.

Face masks will be mandatory in the state when leaving home for essential reasons.

The WA state election campaign has been suspended, and Big Bash cricket fixtures and Perth Fringe Festival events cancelled for the duration of the lockdown.

McGowan said the lockdown is “a crucial reaction to keep the community safe”.

Border restrictions likely

McGowan has also recommended that other states suspend travel to WA — a blunt tool for dealing with outbreaks of this size.

Restricting travel from specific hotpots can be a successful circuit-breaker to disease transmission.

But hard border closures — particularly with no evidence of widespread community transmission — seem unnecessary and counterproductive at this stage, and are associated with a host of health and economic consequences.

Face masks, meanwhile, can certainly help reduce the risk of disease transmission, and thereby help keep borders open.

Quashing a cluster before it happens

Compared with Victoria’s months-long COVID lockdown, Perth’s latest lockdown — like Brisbane’s earlier this year — aims to stamp out a new COVID cluster before it gains a foothold.

Read more: Brisbane’s COVID lockdown has a crucial difference: it aims to squash an outbreak before it even starts

The lockdown will hopefully act as a circuit-breaker, minimising community transmission and allowing health authorities to trace and test anyone who might have been infected.

Disappointingly, meanwhile, Perth supermarkets were hit with a wave of panic-buying, similar to the scenes during previous lockdowns elsewhere.

Read more: Why are people stockpiling toilet paper? We asked four experts

This behaviour is unnecessary and counterproductive. Shops will remain open, and people will still be able to buy what they need during the lockdown. Crowding into shops (especially without wearing masks) directly before the lockdown begins actually increases the risk of infection.

Is the lockdown an overreaction?

Back on January 13, WA’s chief health officer Andy Robertson suggested the state would likely enter a short, sharp lockdown if a coronavirus outbreak was detected within the community.

Going hard and fast was effective in South Australia, and also seems to have been quite effective in Queensland.

Read more: South Australia’s 6-day lockdown shows we need to take hotel quarantine more seriously

Queensland chief health officer Jeannette Young said the January 2021 lockdown did indeed act as a circuit-breaker, similar to SA’s November 2020 response, to stop the virus spreading out of control.

“I think Adelaide managed their outbreak brilliantly … it was probably one of the best responses in the country,” she said.

Last year, at the height of Melbourne’s second COVID wave, UNSW professor and epidemiologist Mary-Louise McLaws suggested public health officials were likely to be criticised regardless of their strategy.

“If we call it early, then the public thinks that we’re saying the sky is falling in. If we call it late, then you’re said to not be able to handle an outbreak. So you’re not going to win,” she said.

If health authorities are going to cop criticism either way, this suggests the best strategy is to err on the side of overreacting, rather than underreacting, and aim to be safe rather than sorry.

By this logic, Perth’s five-day circuit-breaker is simple common sense.

– ref. Perth’s 5-day ‘circuit-breaker’ lockdown isn’t an overreaction to a single case — it’s basic common sense – https://theconversation.com/perths-5-day-circuit-breaker-lockdown-isnt-an-overreaction-to-a-single-case-its-basic-common-sense-154348

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

Right-wing Liberal backbencher Kevin Andrews – the father of the House of Representatives – has lost preselection to a barrister and former special forces veteran who served in Afghanistan.

Keith Wolahan, 43, defeated Andrews, 65, who held a number of portfolios in the Howard and Abbott governments, by 181 to 111 for the blue ribbon Victorian seat of Menzies, which Andrews has occupied since he won it at a byelection in 1991.

This was the first time in decades that a federal member has lost a preselection ballot in Victoria.

His defeat is a blow for the Liberal conservatives, who campaigned hard to shore him up, and will hearten the local Liberal critics of outspoken NSW right winger Craig Kelly, who has been a thorn in the government’s side over COVID and a hardliner on climate issues.

Kelly confirmed to The Conversation on Sunday night that he was seeking another term and was “absolutely confident” he would have Scott Morrison’s support and that of “all my colleagues”.

Andrews has been a strongly conservative voice on issues ranging from euthanasia and abortion to climate change, and also a player in leadership battles. His last ministerial post was in the defence portfolio in the Abbott government, a job he lost when Malcolm Turnbull became leader.

In the Howard years Andrews introduced the private member’s bill that quashed the Northern Territory’s euthanasia law.

Andrews had endorsements from Morrison, John Howard and Tony Abbott, as well as from a raft of ministerial colleagues, including the deputy Liberal leader Josh Frydenberg. In his letter of endorsement Morrison wrote that Andrews “provides wise counsel to ministers and colleagues, including myself”.

But the result shows that high profile endorsements don’t always impress locals – the Menzies preselectors responded to the call for renewal at the centre of Wolahan’s campaign. It is an embarrassment particularly for Assistant Treasurer and Victorian conservative faction leader Michael Sukkar.

Wolahan has a master’s degree in international relations from the University of Cambridge, as well as degrees from Monash and Melbourne universities. He was an army reserve commando – he did not serve in the regular army.

He said after the result: “Today was a vote by the members for the future”.

Frydenberg said: “Today the Liberal Party in the seat of Menzies has started a new chapter”.

Before the ballot Liberal sources had predicted a close result that could go either way – the size of the margin was a surprise.

– ref. Liberal right-winger Kevin Andrews defeated in preselection by Afghanistan veteran – https://theconversation.com/liberal-right-winger-kevin-andrews-defeated-in-preselection-by-afghanistan-veteran-154349

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

Suddenly, economic forecasters are optimistic.

Six months ago the forecasting team assembled by The Conversation was expecting Australia’s recession to continue into 2021, sending the economy backwards a further 4.6% throughout the year.

This morning, in the survey prepared ahead of the Reserve Bank board’s first meeting for the year and an address by the Reserve Bank governor to the National Press Club on Wednesday, the same forecasting team is upbeat.

It expects the recovery that began in the September quarter of last year to continue, propelling the economy forward by a larger than normal 3.2% throughout 2021, with growth slowing to more sedate 2.1% per year by the middle of the decade, still well above than dismal 1.7% per year expected six months ago.

Read more: So far so good: MYEFO budget update shows recovery gathering pace

The unemployment rate is now expected to remain near its present 6.6% throughout 2021, instead of soaring to almost 10% as expected six months ago.

But improvement in the unemployment rate is expected to be slow, and as house prices and share market prices climb, most of the panel expect the Reserve Bank to lose its patience and begin to lift interest rates from their emergency lows before the end of next year, ahead of its published schedule.

The 21-person forecasting panel includes university-based macroeconomists, economic modellers, former Treasury, IMF, OECD, Reserve Bank and financial market economists, and a former member of the Reserve Bank board.

Economic growth

Only two of the panel expect the economy to shrink further in 2021.

The rest expect the economy to grow, two of the panel by at least 5%, something that isn’t out of the question given that the economy shrank by 7% during the worst three months of the 2020 coronavirus restrictions and clawed back only 3.3% in the three months that followed.

Panellist Saul Eslake who forecast growth of 3.5% in 2021 six months ago is now forecasting growth of 5.25%, saying the transition away from JobKeeper and other supports has been going more smoothly and the property market and residential building market have holding up much better than he had expected.

Growth will be constrained by unusually slow population growth, a gradual tightening of government purse strings and anticipation of higher interest rates.

China’s 2021 growth, expected to be 4% six months ago, is now expected to be 6.3% as it reaps the fruits of having recovered early from its coronavirus crisis with its production systems intact. Panellist Warren Hogan cautions that longer term China is likely to place less importance on economic growth and more on military adventurism.

The continuing COVID crisis in the United States is expected to push its recovery out into the second half of the year as vaccination programs and President Biden’s stimulus measures take hold.

Unemployment

Although few on the panel expect unemployment to get much worse, most believe it will be many years before the unemployment rate shrinks to the 4.5% to 5% the Reserve Bank has adopted as a target.

Panellist Julie Toth says the end of JobKeeper in March will reduce the ability of struggling businesses to keep their employees. Closed boarders mean skill mismatches and shortages will grow alongside persistent unemployment and underemployment.

Other panellists warn of a “jobless recovery” as large organisations that held onto labour during the crisis start to shed staff as part of digitisation programs.

Living standards

Annual wage growth, at present a minuscule 1.4% – the lowest in the 23 year history of the index – is not expected to improve at all in the year ahead, ending 2021 at 1.4%.

At the same time annual inflation is expected to climb from last year’s unusually low 0.9% to 1.6%, putting it above wage growth for the first calendar year on record, sending the buying power of wages backwards.

A broader measure of living standards, real net national disposable income per capita, which takes account of the hours worked in each job and other sources of income, is expected to continue to climb in 2021, continuing the recovery begun in last year’s September quarter after the precipitous slide of 8% during the first half of last year.

Household spending is expected to climb a further 3.4% in real terms, continuing the recovery begun in the September quarter after a slide of 13.8% in the first half of last year.

Interest rates

The panel expects the Reserve Bank to lift its cash rate from the present all-time low of 0.10% well ahead of the “at least three years” timeframe set out by the bank.

The bank had promised not increase the cash rate until actual inflation was “sustainably within” its 2% to 3% target range.

And it had moved the three-year bond rate to 0.10% as a sign that it expected the cash rate to stay at 0.10% for at least three years.

Although few on the panel expect inflation to climb back to the Reserve Bank’s target range by the end of next year, most expect the bank to begin to lift its cash rate by then.

Panellist Mark Crosby says rising home and other asset prices will put the bank under pressure to backtrack on its commitment in the knowledge that the economy is in a position to withstand more normal rates.

Long-term interest rates are already higher than they were at the start of this year.

The panel expects the ten-year benchmark used to set the rates at which the government can borrow to gradually climb from last year’s all-time lows.

Asset prices

Sydney home prices are expected to climb 4.9% after climbing 2.7% in COVID-hit 2020. Melbourne prices are expected to climb a lesser 4.4% after slipping 1.3%.

Saul Eslake says Melbourne’s economy has been far more reliant on interstate and international migration than any other part of Australia and has damaged its image as a desirable destination by its handling of the pandemic.

Other panellists draw a distinction between apartment price growth, which should be weak because of lower demand for international student rentals, and freestanding home prices which should be supported by an implicit Reserve Bank guarantee of three years of ultra-low interest rates.

The panel expects housing investment to climb 3.8% after falling 5% during the first nine months of 2020.

The Australian share market collapsed 37% in just over a month in the early weeks of the coronavirus crisis and spent the rest of 2020 recovering.

Although opinion is split about 2021, the panel’s average forecast is for growth of 3.5%

Panellist Mala Raghavan says low interest rates are forcing long term investors to take positions in companies with strong fundamentals. Craig Emerson says he expects the equities bubble to burst at some point, but probably not while low interest rates continue.

At US$160 a tonne, the iron ore price has almost doubled since the start of 2020.

On balance the panel expects it to ease to US$133 throughout 2O21, noting that at some point Brazil is going to return to full production after a series of dam collapses and pandemic-related problems. China is thought to prefer to buy from Brazil.

Business

The panel expects Australian businesses to find any lift in the share market and consumer spending uninspiring.

After collapsing 24% in the first nine months of 2020 the panel expects non-mining business investment to climb by only 2% in 2021 and 3.1% in 2022.

It cites low immigration and uncertainty over COVID and the shape of new business practices as more important in determining investment decisions than the government’s generous tax incentives.

Government

The panel’s central budget deficit forecasts are not too far from the latest government forecasts released in December at A$192 billion in 2020-21 and $114 billion in 2021-22.

Panellists note that the government will have little opportunity to restrain spending in the lead up to the election and will be under pressure to boost the JobSeeker unemployment benefit which is due to sink back to its pre-COVID level on April 1.

– ref. A little ray of sunshine as 2021 economic survey points to brighter times ahead – https://theconversation.com/a-little-ray-of-sunshine-as-2021-economic-survey-points-to-brighter-times-ahead-154157

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Renwick, Professor, Physical Geography (climate science), Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington

New Zealand’s Climate Change Commission today released its long-anticipated advice to the government on how to reshape the economy to meet the country’s domestic and international climate change obligations.

The document sets out three emissions budgets, covering 15 years to 2035 in five-yearly plans. It also provides advice on the direction policy should take to achieve the country’s 2050 net-zero goal.

New Zealand’s net emissions rose by 57% between 1990 and 2018, placing it among the poorest performers in the OECD. As one of New Zealand’s six climate change commissioners I have been part of the process of making a clear case to government that we must take “immediate and decisive action on climate change” across all sectors.

The commission’s priorities include a rapid shift to electric transport, accelerated renewable energy generation, climate-friendly farming practices and more permanent forests, predominantly in native trees. It also says New Zealand must raise its pledge under the Paris Agreement, known as the Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), because its current commitment is not compatible with the goal of limiting warming to 1.5℃ above pre-industrial levels.

Ambitious but realistic carbon budgets

The good news is the draft carbon budgets are achievable, with technologies that already exist.

The commission’s advice is built around 17 recommendations that cover many sectors of the economy. One of the key messages is that Aotearoa New Zealand cannot plant its way out of trouble but needs to make real cuts in emissions and eliminate the use of fossil fuels.

Most of the solutions are well known. We need to reduce emissions from transport, from energy and industry, from agriculture and from waste.

Read more: Climate emergency or not, New Zealand needs to start doing its fair share of climate action

Reducing transport emissions is crucial as the sector was responsible for 36.3% of New Zealand’s emissions of long-lived greenhouse gases in 2018 and accounts for most of the growth in emissions over the past 30 years.

Recommendations for the transport sector include electrification of the vehicle fleet, improved public transport networks and better integration of active transport (walking and cycling). A rapid increase in electric cars would reduce emissions from private and commercial transport, while supporting low-carbon fuels like “green” hydrogen and biofuels would help the freight sector (including heavy trucks, shipping and aircraft).

Part of the transport story is urban planning — changing how people and goods move around. The commission recommends limiting urban sprawl, making walking and cycling safer and easier and shifting more freight from road to rail or shipping.

The commission also calls for rapid decarbonisation of electricity generation, and energy generally, to phase out the use of coal. Between now and 2035, it estimates New Zealand could cut transport emissions by 47% and those coming from heat and electricity generation by 45%.

Emissions from agriculture

Methane accounts for 43.5% of New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions, and more than 80% of total methane comes from cud-chewing farm animals. But the short-lived nature of methane in the atmosphere means we do not need to reduce methane emissions so fast.

The Zero Carbon Act calls for a 24-47% reduction in methane emissions by 2050, compared to net-zero for carbon dioxide.

The commission’s advice is that biogenic methane emissions can be reduced by 19% by 2035 while further improving productivity in the sector through better feed, fewer but more productive animals and continued research into emission-reducing technologies.

The commission calls for real cuts in emissions rather than offsets through tree planting, but argues forestry should continue to play an important role in the long-term storage of carbon, for example if timber is used in buildings or furniture and to provide bioenergy.

It recommends a shift towards more permanent native forests to improve long-term carbon storage, biodiversity and soil retention.

Waste is another sector with significant potential to cut emissions. Per head of population, New Zealanders throw away roughly twice what an average OECD citizen does. The commission recommends moving towards a circular economy, where resources are valued and reused.

In terms of greenhouse gas emissions, the main issue in the waste sector is methane release from decomposing solid waste. Capturing that gas at source could reduce methane emissions by 14% by 2035.

Read more: Ardern’s government and climate policy: despite a zero-carbon law, is New Zealand merely a follower rather than a leader?

Cost of a fair transition

The commission’s draft budgets recommend an overall reduction in total greenhouse gas emissions of 36% by 2035, starting with 2% by 2025 and 17% by 2030. It estimates the cost of achieving this is less than 1% of projected GDP, much lower than was initially thought.

The payoffs for public health, for our environment and biodiversity make this a good investment, let alone the huge avoided costs from unchecked climate change.

The commission’s recommendations will go through a public consultation process until 14 March, and the government has until the end of the year to decide which parts of the advice it takes on board.

An important aspect of the advice is inclusiveness and support for all sectors of society as we move to a low-emissions future. The commission takes a te ao Māori (Māori world view) approach, making it clear that Aotearoa must have an equitable and fair transition.

– ref. Climate Change Commission calls on New Zealand government to take ‘immediate and decisive action’ to cut emissions – https://theconversation.com/climate-change-commission-calls-on-new-zealand-government-to-take-immediate-and-decisive-action-to-cut-emissions-154264

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alice Gorman, Associate Professor in Archaeology and Space Studies, Flinders University

On January 31, 1961, an intrepid chimpanzee called Ham was launched on a rocket from Cape Canaveral in the United States, and returned to Earth alive. In this process, he became the first hominin in space.

In the 1950s, it was unclear whether humans could survive outside Earth – both physically and mentally. The science fiction writer and warfare expert Cordwainer Smith wrote about the psychological pain of being in space.

Plants, insects and animals had been taken to high altitudes in balloons and rockets since the 18th century. The Soviet Union sent the dog Laika into orbit on Sputnik 2 in 1957. She died, but from overheating rather than the effects of space travel itself.

Read more: How animal astronauts paved the way for human space flight

While the USSR focused on dogs, the US turned to chimpanzees as they were the most like humans. The stakes became higher when US President John F. Kennedy promised to land humans on the Moon by the end of the 1960s.

Biography of a non-human astronaut

Ham was born in 1957 in a rainforest in the Central African nation of Cameroon, then a French territory. He was captured and taken to an astronaut school for chimps at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico.

The astrochimps were trained to pull levers, with a banana pellet as a reward and an electric shock to the feet for failure. The chosen chimp would test life support systems and demonstrate that equipment could be operated during spaceflight. Ham showed great aptitude, and was selected the day before the flight.

On January 31, 1961, Ham was launched into space, strapped into a capsule inside the nosecone of a Mercury-Redstone rocket. The rocket travelled at 9,000km/h, and reached an altitude of 251km. The whole flight took 16 minutes from launch to return.

Throughout the journey Ham was obliged to pull a lever. He received two shocks for not doing this correctly, out of 50 pulls. He achieved this with a 16cm rectal thermometer in place to monitor his temperature.

He experienced 6.6 minutes of free fall and 14.7_g_ of acceleration on descent – much greater than predicted. The biomedical data showed Ham experienced stress during acceleration and deceleration.

Jane Goodall, an expert in primate behaviour, said she had never seen such terror in a chimp’s expression. However, Ham was calm when weightless.

Ham survived the flight itself, but nearly drowned when the capsule started filling with water after its ocean splashdown. Fortunately, the helicopter recovery team reached him in time. Ham’s treat on emerging from the spacecraft was an apple, which he devoured eagerly.

After his flight, Ham lived for 20 years by himself, in a zoo in Washington DC. People wrote him letters, and some were answered by zoo staff signed with Ham’s fingerprint. In 1980 he was sent to another zoo to live with a group of chimps. He died in 1983 at the age of 26.

A proposal to stuff and display his body was abandoned after an outcry. But he did undergo a postmortem. Ham’s flesh was stripped from his skeleton, cremated, and buried at the Space Hall of Fame in Almogordo, New Mexico. The National Museum of Health and Medicine in Washington DC retains his bones.

Cyborg and simian, man and machine

Ham sits at an interesting intersection of race, gender and species. “Ham” was an acronym for Holloman Aero Medical, but as American philosopher of science Donna Haraway has pointed out, “Ham’s name inevitably recalls Noah’s youngest and only black son”.

While the chimps were in training at the Holloman Airforce Base, women were actively excluded from spaceflight. Pilot Jerrie Cobb said she would take the place of one of the chimps if it meant having a shot at space.

Read more: Almost 90% of astronauts have been men. But the future of space may be female

The astronauts of the 1960s Mercury program felt their masculinity threatened by performing the same tasks as chimps. In a scene from the 1983 film The Right Stuff, based on Tom Wolfe’s book for which he did extensive interviews with the astronauts, one says:

Well none of us wants to think that they’re going to send a monkey up to do a man’s work … what they’re trying to do to us is send a man up to do a monkey’s work.

In the I Dream of Jeannie episode “Fly me to the Moon” (1967), astronauts Tony Nelson and Roger Healey train Sam the chimp for spaceflight.

They are envious that Sam gets to go to the Moon before them. “He can’t make any decisions, we might as well have a robot up there,” says Major Nelson.

This refers to an ongoing battle among both Soviet and US astronauts about how much autonomy they would have as pilots. On both sides of the Iron Curtain, being controlled by machines was felt to diminish masculinity.

Chimps in space also threatened the accepted evolutionary order. In some versions of the famous “March of Progress” illustration of human evolution, the first figure is a knuckle-walking ape and the last is an astronaut. Ham was leapfrogging to the front of the evolutionary queue in a Planet of the Apes-style interspecies competition.

Ham’s spaceflight made him more than animal, but still less than human.

A mere 10 weeks after Ham’s feat, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space when he orbited Earth on April 12. On November 26, Enos the chimp completed an orbit.

We don’t send animals into orbit any more as proxies for human experience. But there is one chimp still in space. The calls of a wild chimp were recorded on the Voyager Golden Records, now heading out beyond the Solar system.

– ref. Apes, robots and men: the life and death of the first space chimp – https://theconversation.com/apes-robots-and-men-the-life-and-death-of-the-first-space-chimp-153644

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Daniel Angus, Associate Professor in Digital Communication, Queensland University of Technology

On January 13 the Australian Financial Review reported Google had removed some Australian news content from its search results for some local users.

Speaking to the Guardian, a Google spokesperson confirmed the company was “running a few experiments that will each reach about 1% of Google Search users in Australia to measure the impacts of news businesses and Google Search on each other”.

So what are these “experiments”? And how concerned should we be about Google’s actions?

Engineering our attention

Google’s experiment (which is supposed to run until early February) involves displaying an “alternative” news website ranking for certain Australian users — at least 160,000, according to The Guardian.

A Google spokesperson told The Conversation the experiment didn’t prevent users (being experimented on) from accessing a news story. Rather, they would not discover the story through Search and would have to access it another way, such as directly on a publisher’s website.

Google’s experiment is a form of “A/B testing”, which classically involves dividing a population randomly in half — into groups A and B — and subjecting each group to a different “stimulus”.

For example, in the case of web design, the two groups may be served different web layouts. This could be done to test changes to layout, the colour scheme or any other element.

Performance in A/B testing is judged on a range of factors, such as which links are clicked first, or the average time spent on a page. If group A perused the site longer than group B, the modification tested on group A may be considered favourable.

In Google’s case, we don’t know the motivation behind the tests. But we do know a small subset of users received different results to the majority and were not alerted.

The experiment has resulted in the promotion of dubious news sources over trusted ones, some of which have been known to publish disinformation (which intends to mislead) and misinformation (false claims that are spread regardless of intent).

Read more: The ACCC is suing Google for misleading millions. But calling it out is easier than fixing it

When asked about this ranking, Google’s spokesperson said it was a “single anecdotal screenshot” and the experiment didn’t “remove results that link to official government departments and agencies”.

Intent to manipulate

A/B testing is a widespread practice. It can range from being fairly benign — such as to determine the best location for an advertisement banner — to much more invasive, such as Facebook’s infamous mood experiment.

In January 2012, Facebook conducted an experiment on 700,000 users without their knowledge or explicit consent. It adjusted users’ feeds to artificially boost either positive or negative news content.

One reported aim, according to Facebook’s own researchers, was to examine whether emotional states could spread from user to user on the platform. Results were reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Following the report’s publication, Facebook’s “experiment” was widely condemned by academics, journalists and the public as ethically dubious. It had a specific objective to emotionally manipulate users and didn’t obtain informed consent.

Similarly, it’s unlikely users caught in the midst of Google’s Australian news experiment would realise it.

And while the direct risk to those being tested may seem lower than with Facebook’s mood experiment, tweaking news results on Google Search introduces its own set of risks. As research my colleagues and I has shown, platforms and news media both play a large role in spreading conspiracy theories.

Google tried to downplay the significance of the experiment, noting that it conducts “tens of thousands of experiments in Google Search” each year.

But this doesn’t excuse the company from scrutiny. If anything, it’s even more concerning.

Imagine if a police officer pulled you over for speeding and you said: “Well, I speed thousands of times each year, so why should I pay a fine just this one time I’ve been caught?”

If this is just one experiment among of tens of thousands, as Google has admitted, in what other ways have we been manipulated in the past? Without basic disclosures, it’s difficult to know.

A history of non-disclosure

This isn’t the first time Google has been caught experimenting on users without adequate disclosure. In 2018, the company released Google Duplex, a speech-enabled digital assistant that could purportedly make restaurant and other personal service bookings on a user’s behalf.

In the Duplex demos, Google played audio of an AI-enabled speech agent making bookings via conversations with real service workers. What was missing from the calls, however, was a disclosure that the agent opening the call was a bot, not a human.

Critics questioned the deceptiveness of the technology, given its mimicry of human speech.

Google’s controversial dismissal in December of world-leading AI ethics researcher Timnit Gebru (former co-lead of its ethical AI team) cast further shade over the company’s internal culture.

What needs to change?

Digital media platforms including Google, Facebook, Netflix and Amazon (among others) exert enormous power over our lives. They also have vast political influence.

It’s no coincidence Google’s news ranking experiment took place against the backdrop of the escalating news media bargaining code debate, wherein the federal government wants Google and Facebook to negotiate with Australian news providers to pay for using their content.

Google’s spokesperson confirmed the experiment is “directly connected to the need to gather information for use in arbitration proceedings, should the code become law”.

Read more: Google’s ‘open letter’ is trying to scare Australians. The company simply doesn’t want to pay for news

While users benefit from the services big tech provides, we need to appreciate we’re more than mere consumers of these services. The data we forfeit are essential input for the massive algorithmic machinery that runs at the core of enterprises such as Google.

The result is what digital media scholars call an “algorithmic culture”. We feed these machines our data and in the process tune them towards our tastes. Meanwhile, they feed us back more things to consume, in a giant human-machine algorithmic loop.

Until recently, we have been uncritical participants in these algorithmic loops and experiments, willing to use “free” services in exchange for our data. But we need to rethink our relationship with platforms and must hold them to a higher standard of accountability.

Governments should mandate minimum standards of disclosure for platforms’ user testing. A/B testing by platforms can still be conducted properly with adequate disclosures, oversight and opt-in options.

In the case of Google, to “do the right thing” would be to adopt a higher standard of ethical conduct when it comes to user testing.

– ref. Google is leading a vast, covert human experiment. You may be one of the guinea pigs – https://theconversation.com/google-is-leading-a-vast-covert-human-experiment-you-may-be-one-of-the-guinea-pigs-154178

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Daniel Angus, Associate Professor in Digital Communication, Queensland University of Technology

On January 13 the Australian Financial Review reported Google had removed some Australian news content from its search results for some local users.

Speaking to the Guardian, a Google spokesperson confirmed the company was “running a few experiments that will each reach about 1% of Google Search users in Australia to measure the impacts of news businesses and Google Search on each other”.

So what are these “experiments”? And how concerned should we be about Google’s actions?

Engineering our attention

Google’s experiment (which is supposed to run until early February) involves displaying an “alternative” news website ranking for certain Australian users — at least 160,000, according to The Guardian.

A Google spokesperson told The Conversation the experiment didn’t prevent users (being experimented on) from accessing a news story. Rather, they would not discover the story through Search and would have to access it another way, such as directly on a publisher’s website.

Google’s experiment is a form of “A/B testing”, which classically involves dividing a population randomly in half — into groups A and B — and subjecting each group to a different “stimulus”.

For example, in the case of web design, the two groups may be served different web layouts. This could be done to test changes to layout, the colour scheme or any other element.

Performance in A/B testing is judged on a range of factors, such as which links are clicked first, or the average time spent on a page. If group A perused the site longer than group B, the modification tested on group A may be considered favourable.

In Google’s case, we don’t know the motivation behind the tests. But we do know a small subset of users received different results to the majority and were not alerted.

The experiment has resulted in the promotion of dubious news sources over trusted ones, some of which have been known to publish disinformation (which intends to mislead) and misinformation (false claims that are spread regardless of intent).

Read more: The ACCC is suing Google for misleading millions. But calling it out is easier than fixing it

When asked about this ranking, Google’s spokesperson said it was a “single anecdotal screenshot” and the experiment didn’t “remove results that link to official government departments and agencies”.

Intent to manipulate

A/B testing is a widespread practice. It can range from being fairly benign — such as to determine the best location for an advertisement banner — to much more invasive, such as Facebook’s infamous mood experiment.

In January 2012, Facebook conducted an experiment on 700,000 users without their knowledge or explicit consent. It adjusted users’ feeds to artificially boost either positive or negative news content.

One reported aim, according to Facebook’s own researchers, was to examine whether emotional states could spread from user to user on the platform. Results were reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Following the report’s publication, Facebook’s “experiment” was widely condemned by academics, journalists and the public as ethically dubious. It had a specific objective to emotionally manipulate users and didn’t obtain informed consent.

Similarly, it’s unlikely users caught in the midst of Google’s Australian news experiment would realise it.

And while the direct risk to those being tested may seem lower than with Facebook’s mood experiment, tweaking news results on Google Search introduces its own set of risks. As research my colleagues and I has shown, platforms and news media both play a large role in spreading conspiracy theories.

Google tried to downplay the significance of the experiment, noting that it conducts “tens of thousands of experiments in Google Search” each year.

But this doesn’t excuse the company from scrutiny. If anything, it’s even more concerning.

Imagine if a police officer pulled you over for speeding and you said: “Well, I speed thousands of times each year, so why should I pay a fine just this one time I’ve been caught?”

If this is just one experiment among of tens of thousands, as Google has admitted, in what other ways have we been manipulated in the past? Without basic disclosures, it’s difficult to know.

A history of non-disclosure

This isn’t the first time Google has been caught experimenting on users without adequate disclosure. In 2018, the company released Google Duplex, a speech-enabled digital assistant that could purportedly make restaurant and other personal service bookings on a user’s behalf.

In the Duplex demos, Google played audio of an AI-enabled speech agent making bookings via conversations with real service workers. What was missing from the calls, however, was a disclosure that the agent opening the call was a bot, not a human.

Critics questioned the deceptiveness of the technology, given its mimicry of human speech.

Google’s controversial dismissal in December of world-leading AI ethics researcher Timnit Gebru (former co-lead of its ethical AI team) cast further shade over the company’s internal culture.

What needs to change?

Digital media platforms including Google, Facebook, Netflix and Amazon (among others) exert enormous power over our lives. They also have vast political influence.

It’s no coincidence Google’s news ranking experiment took place against the backdrop of the escalating news media bargaining code debate, wherein the federal government wants Google and Facebook to negotiate with Australian news providers to pay for using their content.

Google’s spokesperson confirmed the experiment is “directly connected to the need to gather information for use in arbitration proceedings, should the code become law”.

Read more: Google’s ‘open letter’ is trying to scare Australians. The company simply doesn’t want to pay for news

While users benefit from the services big tech provides, we need to appreciate we’re more than mere consumers of these services. The data we forfeit are essential input for the massive algorithmic machinery that runs at the core of enterprises such as Google.

The result is what digital media scholars call an “algorithmic culture”. We feed these machines our data and in the process tune them towards our tastes. Meanwhile, they feed us back more things to consume, in a giant human-machine algorithmic loop.

Until recently, we have been uncritical participants in these algorithmic loops and experiments, willing to use “free” services in exchange for our data. But we need to rethink our relationship with platforms and must hold them to a higher standard of accountability.

Governments should mandate minimum standards of disclosure for platforms’ user testing. A/B testing by platforms can still be conducted properly with adequate disclosures, oversight and opt-in options.

In the case of Google, to “do the right thing” would be to adopt a higher standard of ethical conduct when it comes to user testing.

– ref. Google is leading a vast unethical human experiment. You may be one of the guinea pigs – https://theconversation.com/google-is-leading-a-vast-unethical-human-experiment-you-may-be-one-of-the-guinea-pigs-154178

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Evangeline Mantzioris, Program Director of Nutrition and Food Sciences, University of South Australia

Did you make a New Year’s resolution to run a marathon? Or perhaps you’ve conquered a marathon and want to take on an even longer event?

Your diet is crucial in long-distance running. If you don’t eat the right foods in the right amounts, you might not get enough energy to train and compete properly.

Over time, not having enough energy during training can lead to “relative energy deficiency in sport” (RED-S) syndrome. This condition can cause problems such as poor recovery between training sessions, reduced training capacity, recurring injuries, and a suppressed immune system.

It can also put you at risk of further health complications. The major long-term one is an increased risk of osteoporosis and bone fractures. Depending on the severity, it can also cause heart problems and gastrointestinal issues such as constipation.

To lower your risk of relative energy deficiency, here’s what you should eat if you’re running long distances.

Carbs are your best friend

Carbohydrates provide most of the energy used during any length of exercise.

The International Olympic Committee on Nutrition for Sport recommends endurance athletes, who compete or train up to three hours a day, consume at least 6-10 grams of carbs per kilogram of body weight each day.

For a 70kg person, this equates to 420-700g a day. For ultra-endurance athletes (people who train or compete for more than four or five hours per day) it’s 8-12g per kilogram. For a 70kg athlete, that’s 560-840g a day.

About 50g of carbs can be found in each of the following foods: five Weetbix biscuits, four slices of bread, two large bananas, three medium-sized potatoes, 600ml flavoured milk, a cup of rice, or one-and-a-third cups of pasta. As you can see, you would have to eat quite a lot of carbs throughout the day to reach the recommendation!

The committee also recommends you eat 1-4g of carbs per kilogram of body weight in the four hours before exercise.

So for a 70kg runner, that means 70-280g of carbs before an event. There’s roughly 70g of carbs in each of the following: two slices of fruit toast with a large banana, one-and-a-half cups of cooked pasta, or 600mls of flavoured milk plus an apple.

You also need to keep up your carb intake during endurance events. You’ll need to consume 30-60g per hour, and during ultra-endurance events up to 90g per hour, regardless of your weight. Ideally, the foods would be high in carbohydrates and low in fibre to minimise gastrointestinal discomfort such as bloating or runner’s diarrhoea.

A total of 60g of carbs would be three slices of white bread with jam, or two energy gels (small packets of high-carbohydrate gel). Sports drinks are also useful if you don’t feel like eating. A 600ml bottle would help with rehydration and provide about 40g of carbs.

These recommendations are only guides. Athletes should consider their current diet along with training intensity, whether they’re meeting training goals, how quickly they tire during training or competition, recovery between training sessions, and weight changes.

Also consider fat and protein

More fat is used as the duration of exercise increases, and if the exercise lasts more than four hours, your body will begin to use small amounts of protein. It’s hard to determine the exact levels of fat and protein used, as this depends on the intensity of exercise and level of training.

Nevertheless, as fat contributes to energy, it’s important to include healthy fat sources such as olive oil, nuts, seeds and dairy products in your diet, although there are no set guidelines for how much fat you need to eat.

There’s also some evidence omega-3 fats, found in fish, may support muscle growth and reduce muscle soreness.

Protein is needed for muscle repair. The International Society of Sports Nutrition Guidelines recommend endurance athletes consume 1.4g of protein per kilogram of body weight, every day. This equates to 98g for a 70kg runner. Each of these foods contains about 10g of protein: two small eggs, 30g cheese, 40g lean chicken, 250ml dairy milk, three-quarters of a cup of lentils, 120g tofu, 60g nuts or 300ml soy milk.

Consuming 20g of protein in the 1-2 hours after exercise helps maximise muscle repair and gain. This amount of protein can be found in one small tin of tuna, 600ml of milk, or 80g of chicken.

Read more: Science of champion runners: inside the body of elite endurance athletes

Drink plenty of water (but don’t go overboard)

You can lose a significant amount of water via sweat during endurance training and events. Making sure you’re hydrated is vital for performance and health. One of the easiest ways to know how hydrated you are is by checking your urine colour — it should be clear or hay-coloured. If it’s amber or darker, you need to drink more water.

While dehydration is problematic, you should also be careful not to drink extreme amounts of water, which can cause sodium levels to drop too low. This is rare, but if you gain weight right after an long-distance event, it might mean you’re drinking too much water.

Read more: Too much of a good thing? How drinking too much water can kill

And don’t forget iron

One of the most important nutrients for endurance athletes is iron. Iron loss occurs during heavy sweating, and women are at increased risk of iron deficiency with menstrual losses.

It’s important to include red meat in your diet, or if vegetarian or vegan to consume more beans, lentils and whole grains.

Read more: How to get the nutrients you need without eating as much red meat

Ultimately, no two athletes have the same requirements to achieve the goals they want from training and competing.

While you may be tempted to buy supplements to improve your performance, this will have little impact unless you get the diet right first. It may be worthwhile talking to an accredited sports dietitian to ensure you’re meeting your energy and fluid requirements and are not at risk of relative energy deficiency syndrome.

– ref. Planning on running a marathon? A sports dietitian on what to eat for long-distance running – https://theconversation.com/planning-on-running-a-marathon-a-sports-dietitian-on-what-to-eat-for-long-distance-running-153425

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Burnett, Honorary Associate Professor, ANU College of Law, Australian National University

It’s official: Australia’s natural environment and iconic places are in deep trouble. They can’t withstand current and future threats, including climate change. And the national laws protecting them are flawed and badly outdated.

You could hardly imagine a worse report on the state of Australia’s environment, and the law’s capacity to protect it, than that released yesterday. The review of the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity (EPBC) Act, by former competition watchdog chair Professor Graeme Samuel, did not mince words. Without urgent changes, most of Australia’s threatened plants, animals and ecosystems will become extinct.

Federal environment minister Sussan Ley released the report yesterday after sitting on it for three months. And she showed little sign of being spurred into action by Samuel’s scathing assessment.

Her response was confusing and contradictory. And the Morrison government seems hellbent on pushing through its preferred reforms without safeguards that Samuel says are crucial.

A bleak assessment

I was a federal environment official for 13 years, and from 2007 to 2012 was responsible for administering and reforming the EPBC Act. I believe Samuel’s report is a very good one.

Samuel has maintained the course laid out in his interim report last July. He found the state of Australia’s natural environment and iconic places is declining and under increasing threat.

Read more: Environment Minister Sussan Ley is in a tearing hurry to embrace nature law reform – and that’s a worry

Moreover, he says, the EPBC Act is outdated and requires fundamental reform. The current approach results in piecemeal decisions rather than holistic environmental management, which he sees as essential for success. He went on:

The resounding message that I heard throughout the review is that Australians do not trust that the EPBC Act is delivering for the environment, for business or for the community.

A proposed way forward

Samuel recommended a suite of reforms, many of which were foreshadowed in his interim report. They include:

• national environmental standards, legally binding on the states and others, to guide development decisions and provide the ability to measure outcomes

• applying the new standards to existing Regional Forest Agreements (RFAs). Such a move could open up the forest debate in a way not seen since the 1990s

• accrediting the regulatory processes and environmental policies of the states and territories, to ensure they can meet the new standards. Accredited regimes would be audited by an Environment Assurance Commissioner

• a “quantum shift” in the availability of environmental information, such as accurate mapping of habitat for threatened species

• an overhaul of environmental offsets, which compensate for environmental destruction by improving nature elsewhere. Offsets have become a routine development cost applied to proponents, rather than last-resort compensation invested in environmental restoration.

Under-resourcing is a major problem with the EPBC Act, and Samuel’s report reiterates this. For example, as I’ve noted previously, “bioregional plans” of land areas – intended to define the environmental values and objectives of a region – have never been funded.

Respecting Indigenous knowledge

One long-overdue reform would require decision-makers to respectfully consider Indigenous views and knowledge. Samuel found the law was failing in this regard.

He recommended national standards for Indigenous engagement and participation in decision-making. This would be developed through an Indigenous-led process and complemented by a comprehensive review of national cultural heritage protections.

Read more: Juukan Gorge: how could they not have known? (And how can we be sure they will in future?)

The recommendations follow an international outcry last year over mining giant Rio Tinto’s destruction of 46,000-year-old caves at Juukan Gorge in Western Australia. In Samuel’s words:

National-level protection of the cultural heritage of Indigenous Australians is a long way out of step with community expectations. As a nation, we must do better.

Confusing signals

The government’s position on Samuel’s reforms is confusing. Ley yesterday welcomed the review and said the government was “committed to working through the full detail of the recommendations with stakeholders”.

But she last year ruled out Samuel’s call for an independent regulator to oversee federal environment laws. And her government is still prepared to devolve federal approvals to the states before Samuel’s new national standards are in place.

In July last year, Ley seized on interim reforms proposed by Samuel that suited her government’s agenda – streamlining the environmental approvals process – and started working towards them.

In September, the government pushed the change through parliament’s lower house, denying independent MP Zali Steggall the chance to move amendments to allow national environment standards.

Ley yesterday reiterated the government’s commitment to the standards – yet indicated the government would soon seek to progress the legislation through the Senate, then develop the new standards later.

Samuel did include devolution to the states in his first of three tranches of reform – the first to start by early 2021. But his first tranche also includes important safeguards. These include the new national environmental standards, the Environment Assurance Commissioner, various statutory committees, Indigenous reforms and more.

The government’s proposed unbundling of the reforms doesn’t pass the pub test. It would tempt the states to take accreditation under the existing, discredited rules and resist later attempts to hold them to higher standards. In this, they’d be supported by developers who don’t like the prospect of a higher approvals bar.

A big year ahead

Samuel noted “governments should avoid the temptation to cherry pick from a highly interconnected suite of recommendations”. But this is exactly what the Morrison government is doing.

I hope the Senate will force the government to work through the full detail of the recommendations with stakeholders, as Ley says she’d like to.

Read more: Environment laws have failed to tackle the extinction emergency. Here’s the proof

But at this stage there’s little sign the government plans to embrace the reforms in full, or indeed that it has any vision for Australia’s environment.

All this plays out against still-raw memories of last summer’s bushfires, and expected pressure from the United States, under President Joe Biden, for developed economies such as Australia to lift their climate game.

With the United Nations climate change conference in Glasgow in November, it seems certain the environment will be high on Australia’s national agenda in 2021.

– ref. A major report excoriated Australia’s environment laws. Sussan Ley’s response is confused and risky – https://theconversation.com/a-major-report-excoriated-australias-environment-laws-sussan-leys-response-is-confused-and-risky-154254

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gianluca Demartini, Associate professor, The University of Queensland

The Australian government’s push to make Google pay news organisations for linking to their content has seen the search giant threaten to pull out of Australia.

Google Australia’s managing director Mel Silva said if the government’s proposal goes ahead, “we would have no real choice but to stop making Google Search available in Australia”.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison pushed back saying he won’t respond to “threats”. Even the Council of Small Business Organisations Australia says Google needs “strong and stringent” regulation because of its monopoly on searching the web.

What if Google pulls out?

Google’s proposal to make Google Search unavailable in Australia means we would need to search the web using other systems and tools. If this really happens, we could no longer go to google.com and google.com.au to search the web.

Read more: It’s not ‘fair’ and it won’t work: an argument against the ACCC forcing Google and Facebook to pay for news

It is important to note that Google is not just web search. Google’s parent company Alphabet Inc also runs key web portals such as YouTube, and productivity tools such as Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs and Google Maps (which actually started in Australia). Those services are not going to be removed from the Australian market, even if web search does get pulled out.

Online advertising is another sector in which Google is the market leader and where it makes money. Pulling Google web search out from Australia does not mean businesses would no longer be able to advertise using Google’s services.

But with no Google Search here, those adverts would no longer appear ahead of any other search results and be visited by Australian users.

Businesses would still be able to put their adverts on other Australian websites that use the Google Ads service.

The issue with this scenario is that Google’s key competitive advantage is the ability to access data from people using its search services. Pulling web search out from the Australian market would mean Google missing out on that data from people in Australia.

The alternatives to Google

Google is the dominant search engine in Australia — it has 94% of the web search market in Australia — but there are other search services.

The second most popular search engine in Australia is Bing, developed by Microsoft and often integrated into other Microsoft products such as its Windows operating system and Office tools.

Another less popular search option is Yahoo, which also offers its own news and email service.

Other alternatives include niche search engines that offer unique tools with special features.

For example, DuckDuckGo is a search engine that has recently risen in popularity thanks to a commitment to protecting its users’ privacy.

Contrary to the web search products from Google and Microsoft, DuckDuckGo does not store its users’ search queries or track their interactions with the system.

The quality of DuckDuckGo’s search results has improved over time, and is now comparable to that of the most popular search engines.

It says it now processes a daily average of more than 90 million search queries, up from just over 51 million the same time last year.

Despite not drawing on users’ data to refine its search algorithms, the technology behind DuckDuckGo and other smaller players is based on the same machine-learning methods that others are using.

Search the web, save the planet

Another interesting and recent proposal of an alternative web search engine is Ecosia. This system is unique as it focuses on sustainability and positive climate impact.

Its mission is to reinvest the income generated by search advertisements (the same business model Google Search is using) to plant trees in key areas around the world.

So far, it says it has 15 million users and has contributed to planting more than 100 million trees, about 1.3 every second.

Will Google really abandon Australia?

Tim Berners-Lee, widely regarded as the inventor of the web, has pointed out that the idea of asking web platforms to pay to post links runs counter to his fundamental concept.

Read more: Web’s inventor says news media bargaining code could break the internet. He’s right — but there’s a fix

That said, it is also unfair for a search engine to make money using content that others have created.

It is also true that most of Google’s revenue already comes from asking others to pay for links on the web. This is how Google’s online advertising works: Google Ads makes advertisers pay for every impression users get or click users make to navigate to the advertised web page.

If users end up buying the advertised product, Google gets an even higher payment.

More likely than Google pulling out of the Australian market, the government and the search giant should diplomatically find a compromise in which Google still provides its web search product in Australia and there will be a return to news organisations for Google making use of their content.

– ref. If Google does pull its search engine out of Australia, there are alternatives – https://theconversation.com/if-google-does-pull-its-search-engine-out-of-australia-there-are-alternatives-154060

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

The federal government is talking tough about making Google and Facebook pay Australian news businesses for linking to, or featuring, these publishers’ content.

The digital platforms have been talking equally tough. Facebook is threatening to remove Australian news stories and Google says it will shut off search to Australia if the government pushes ahead with its “mandatory bargaining code”.

The code is meant to help alleviate the revenue crisis facing news publishers. Over the past two decades they have made deep cuts to newsrooms. Scores of local print papers have become “digital only” or been shut down completely.

Read more: Digital-only local newspapers will struggle to serve the communities that need them most

If legislated, the code will require the platforms to negotiate payments to news publishers, as well as disclose changes in algorithms affecting traffic to news sites.

But the code is unlikely to do much to fix the crisis faced by journalism in the internet age. It isn’t even a band-aid on the problem.

The traditional commercial news business model is broken beyond repair. If the government wants to save the social benefit of public-interest journalism, it must look elsewhere.

Newspapers didn’t sell news, but readers

To understand why the commercial news model is so broken, we first need to recognise what the primary business of commercial news media has been: attracting an audience that can be sold to advertisers.

Newspapers attracted readers with news and feature journalism that provided public value, but also information of interest such as weather forecasts, sports scores, stock prices, TV and radio guides and comics. Readers even sought out papers for their advertisements – in particular the “classifieds” for jobs, cars and real estate.

Before the internet the newspaper was the only place to access much of this information. This broad bundle of content attracted a wide range of readers, which the economics of newspapers – particularly the cost of producing the journalism – required.

Why the business model is broken

Internet technologies introduced two changes that have dismantled the newspaper business model.

They offered new and better ways to connect buyers and sellers, pulling advertiser spending away from newspapers. More than 70% of revenue for a typical daily newspaper came from advertising. Before 2000 print media attracted nearly 60% of Australian advertiser dollars, according to an analysis for the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s Digital Platforms Inquiry. By 2017 it was just 12%.

Australian advertising expenditure by media format and digital platform

Internet technologies also provided better ways to access the non-journalism information that had made the bundled paper valuable to a mass of readers.

Readers also now access news in many other places, through news apps, aggregators and social media feeds such as Twitter, Reddit, Apple News, Flipboard and many others, including Facebook and Google. Research by the University of Canberra’s News and Media Research Centre published in 2019 found just 30% of Australian news consumers accessed online news directly from news publishers’ websites.

The bargaining code doesn’t solve the main problem

If Google and Facebook are “to blame” for news publishers’ malaise, it is not in the way the bargaining code suggests. Separate from their linking to, or featuring, these publishers’ content, the digital platforms are just more effective vehicles for advertisers seeking to buy consumers’ attention. They serve ads based on consumer interests or in relation to a specific search.

The simple fact is news publishers’ core content is not that important to the platforms’ profitability.

Research by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism during the 2019 UK general election – tracking 1,711 people aged 18-65 across mobile and desktop devices for six weeks – found news took up just 3% of their time online (about 16 minutes and 22 visits to news sites a week).

So if stories from Australian news outlets disappeared from Facebook or Google search results, it would barely make a scratch on their appeal to advertisers.

Read more: It’s not ‘fair’ and it won’t work: an argument against the ACCC forcing Google and Facebook to pay for news

Save journalism, not commercial publishers

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s Digital Platforms Inquiry has rightly noted the revenue crisis has crippled commercial provision of public-interest journalism “that performs a critical role in the effective functioning of democracy at all levels of government”.

But the core of the problem is that funding such journalism through advertising is no longer viable. Other solutions are needed – locally and nationally – to ensure its survival.

Read more: Web’s inventor says news media bargaining code could break the internet. He’s right — but there’s a fix

Commercial news organisations no longer offer value to advertisers. Instead of searching for ways to make an obsolete business solvent, efforts should focus on alternative ways to fund public-interest journalism.

More funding for independent public broadcasters is one solution, and incentives for philanthropic funding and non-profit journalism organisations are proving successful in other countries.

It’s a global problem. To solve the crisis in Australia will require focusing on the core problem and thinking bigger than a bargaining code.

For transparency, please note The Conversation has also made a submission to the Senate inquiry regarding the News Media and Digital Platforms Mandatory Bargaining Code.

– ref. The old news business model is broken: making Google and Facebook pay won’t save journalism – https://theconversation.com/the-old-news-business-model-is-broken-making-google-and-facebook-pay-wont-save-journalism-150357

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ted Snell, Honorary Professor, Edith Cowan University

Review: Maverick Modigliani, directed by Valeria Parisi.

It is not surprising we are fascinated by the story of Amedeo Modigliani, a boy from Livorno who arrived in Paris in his early 20s determined to make a reputation as an artist. His story could well have emerged from an all-night script session on a Hollywood backlot.

In the heady creative cauldron of sin-city, surrounded by artists from all over Europe (now grouped together as the School of Paris), a devastatingly handsome young man flees his family to find fame. Quickly seduced by its licentiousness, he lives life to the full.

Fuelled by alcohol and drugs, he paints furiously. His affairs are legendary, most famously with the poets Anna Akhmatova and Beatrice Hastings.

In a career of 15 years, he painted over 400 pictures, made a handful of stone carvings, and produced an archive of drawings before succumbing to tubercular meningitis at the age of 35 in 1920. Two days later, his pregnant young lover, fellow painter Jeanne Hébuterne, took her own life.

Although her family refused to allow the couple to be buried together, in 1930 they finally relented and they now lie together under his epitaph “Struck down by Death in the moment of glory” and hers “Devoted companion to the extreme sacrifice”.

Life on the screen

To memorialise Modigliani on the centenary of his death, Italian director Valeria Parisi created the documentary Maverick Modigliani, interviewing historians, artists, forgers and curators about his life and his legacy.

Modigliani’s story has been brought to the screen before.

One of the most visually stunning is Modì (1989) directed by Franco Brogi Taviani in 1989, with Richard Berry in the lead role. Taviani explores the artistic milieu of Paris with relish, detailing the creative exchange that lured artists from around the world.

When Martin Scorsese was planning a movie about Modigliani in the early 1980s, he cast Al Pacino, which sadly never made it to the screen.

Mick Davis’ eponymous film, the 2004 turkey starring Andy Garcia as our hero and Elsa Zylberstein as Jeanne, highlighted the dangers of making the wrong casting choice.

Unfortunately, documentaries don’t provide the same emotional engagement as a good biopic like Modì, and Maverick Modigliani has all the genre’s standard tropes.

A group of talking heads pontificating about the artist and his work interspersed by footage and still images of Parisian life then and now does little to convey the vibrancy and energy of his extraordinary life.

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

The scripted voice over, delivered in the guise of Jeanne doesn’t work. If Jeanne was more confessional, more probing, even more salacious, it might have drawn us into their world. Instead, her sad story is obscured by her thoughts on events that happened after she was dead and seems strangely disengaged and disingenuous.

The film does little to interrogate Modigliani’s work.

Instead, we are taken on numerous sidetracks to document student pranks about lost sculptures and an interview with a forger who describes how easy he was to copy. While his life is a Greek tragedy, in this film Modigliani remains a rather bland character.

Elegant revision

Modigliani was a stylist who embraced the current interest in the art of other exotic cultures and antiquity to create an elegant revision under the guise of modernism.

Though shocking to the Parisian public of 1917, his nudes are updated versions of his Renaissance precursors, fashionably hip and rendered in bold flat colour. They are the perfect synthesis of what was happening around him. Modì was a sponge, soaking up the influences of African art, Picasso, Matisse, and Constantin Brâncuși. There is no “School of Modigliani.”

For Nu couché, painted in 1917, his influence was clearly Édouard Manet’s Olympia. However, his similarly supine model seems much less in control as she lies back exposing herself. Her eyes are empty sockets, she is neatly trimmed, available; she is a pinup.

In so many ways it is an uncomfortable painting with none of the inference, subtlety or sophistication of its precursor. The pose is unconvincing, the face is a mask, yet the message of this “portrait” is clear.

It is undoubtedly why it caused a bidding war at Christie’s in 2015 and set a record price for the artist of US$170.4 million. But as a painting it is a mediocre effort.

That said, there are a few real portraits in his oeuvre, works that do extend the genre. His remarkable images of fellow artists Moïse Kisling, Chaïm Soutine and Jean Cocteau are graphically strong and insightful. It is a pity he didn’t show his female models the same respect.

Obscuring the true man

In the end credits, Parisi adds a text explaining she didn’t take sides in the debates over Modigliani’s legacy: which paintings were considered fakes, which are thought to be overly cute, and which stand among the great portraits of the century.

“We have accepted and reported the opinions and statements made by the historians, experts and curators we interviewed in a neutral way,” she says.

Perhaps this is the problem. We know very little more about the artist or his work than when we started. Parisi doesn’t stake a claim for Modigliani or try to convince us one way or the other. For anyone who knows a little of the back story and has scanned a few art books, there isn’t much more to be gained from Maverick Modigliani. What a shame.

Maverick Modigliani is in limited release this weekend.

– ref. Maverick Modigliani review: unimaginative documentary avoids the dramatic truths – https://theconversation.com/maverick-modigliani-review-unimaginative-documentary-avoids-the-dramatic-truths-154072

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nick Wilson, Professor of Public Health, University of Otago

Despite a recent best-in-the-world ranking for its handling of COVID-19, New Zealand remains at risk as the pandemic intensifies globally. With more infectious variants of the virus emerging, there are many persisting concerns.

In particular, the number of infected people entering managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) facilities at the border is increasing. This pressure contributes to the risk of border failures, which are now regular.

There have been at least nine since August 2020, including the most recent issues with the Pullman Hotel in Auckland.

We argue the time has come to “turn down the tap” of infected travellers coming from so-called “red zone” countries where the pandemic is out of control. We have already advocated for a traffic light system to achieve this.

One option is to reduce the risk of infected travellers getting on flights by using brief pre-departure quarantine and COVID-19 testing in carefully designed ways.

For example, an additional low-cost, rapid antigen test prior to boarding, plus clear instructions to passengers about the need for a period of pre-travel self-quarantine to reduce their risk of infection, could be a prerequisite.

Tighter measures available

A more intensive approach could require all red zone travellers to undergo pre-flight quarantine for five days in an approved airport hotel facility, with daily rapid (saliva) testing by New Zealand-certified officials.

The logistics of this could be simplified by having these approved airport hotel facilities located at specific travel hubs — for example, London, Hawaii and Singapore.

Read more: COVID-19: Northland case is a reminder NZ’s ‘dumb good luck’ may run out

Another possibility is simply to further limit the bookings in MIQ facilities available to travellers from red zone countries — say, down to 500 travellers a month — to make the situation more manageable.

Australia has recently reduced the cap on incoming travellers. The New Zealand government could also temporarily suspend approval for any flights originating in red zone countries.

Benefits from limiting red zone arrivals

Of course, political decision-makers need to consider the immediate well-being of travellers coming from red zone countries (150 to 250 people per day on average).

Some are returning for compelling reasons: they have a health condition and genuinely fear dying in the pandemic, they are coming home to care for a sick relative, or they have lost a job overseas and lack financial support.

But these important considerations will apply to a relatively small number of individuals. They do not outweigh the far greater duty to the rest of New Zealand’s citizens to keep the country COVID-free.

The greater good

Turning down the tap is important for maintaining COVID-19 elimination, providing multiple benefits:

1. Protection from illness and death from COVID-19 outbreaks. Although the outbreak in Victoria, Australia, was eventually controlled, there were still more than 800 deaths. There are also concerning reports of debilitating ongoing symptoms being a feature of COVID-19 infection, and “long COVID” may become a huge public health problem.

2. Protection from the psychological stress, economic disruption and other hardship caused by lockdowns. For example, Auckland Council’s chief economist estimated the cost of level 3 lockdown at 250 jobs and $NZ60-75 million in GDP each day.

3. Protection from greater inequalities from outbreaks that hit communities with higher background rates of chronic disease (Māori, Pacific, low-income New Zealanders), as seen in past pandemics. A recent study estimated those existing inequalities could double the risk of death for Māori and Pasifika compared with NZ Europeans. Indeed, Māori leaders are already calling for reduced traveller numbers.

Read more: NZ needs an evolving pandemic strategy if it’s to keep the public’s trust

Health authorities have a specific duty of care to protect workers in MIQ facilities from infection. While personal protective equipment (PPE) is provided, we know failures can still occur despite workers using it.

There is a case to be made that health authorities are currently not adequately meeting their duty of care by permitting large numbers of infected people to pass through these MIQ facilities.

No legal obstacles

Legal experts have considered the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990, the Immigration Act 2009 and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (OHCHR, to which New Zealand is a signatory) and confirmed the government can legally set conditions on returning NZ citizens — as is already being done.

Read more: If border restrictions increase to combat new COVID-19 strains, what rights do returning New Zealanders have?

There have been no successful legal challenges to New Zealand’s current quarantine requirements, or in Australia with its even tighter systems. Those requirements can logically be extended to include pre-flight quarantine and testing, and further limiting MIQ bookings to make border control safer and more manageable.

The claim that citizens are rendered “stateless” by such measures is a myth.

In summary, the risk of COVID-19 border control failures appears to be increasing. Action is needed to reduce the proportion of infected people boarding flights, or reducing travel from high-risk countries, or both.

There is no legal case against turning down the tap, provided it is clear such measures are time-limited and not absolute.

– ref. COVID-19: the science and law are clear — it’s time for NZ to turn down the travel tap from high-risk countries – https://theconversation.com/covid-19-the-science-and-law-are-clear-its-time-for-nz-to-turn-down-the-travel-tap-from-high-risk-countries-154159

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Kenny, Professor, Australian Studies Institute, Australian National University

Anthony Albanese’s sudden change of heart, swapping out Labor’s climate spokesman Mark Butler in favour of the more conservative Chris Bowen, can be read in two ways.

First, as a shrewd chess move: one that sharpens the economic arguments in favour of green jobs, boxes in Bowen’s Right faction behind existing climate ambition, and perhaps constrains Bowen as a potential leadership aspirant.

Alternatively, critics could view Albanese’s decision as more self-serving — the manoeuvring of an opposition leader desperate to shore up his defences.

The NSW Right’s outspoken convener Joel Fitzgibbon had made unusually public attacks on the Left-aligned Butler. Albanese will have a job of convincing people he has not blinked under pressure, throwing an ally under a bus.

That perception could, in turn, be dangerous. It may even trigger existential discussions on his leadership. Not merely because of the loyalty questions it invites, but because of the policy implications in an area of chronic political miscalculation.

Judging by his behaviour, Fitzgibbon surrendered his frontbench spot last year to free his arms for the move against Butler, and by proxy, the campaign against Albanese’s leadership.

The Hunter-based MP is trenchantly pro-coal and anti-progressive. He’s made no secret of his antipathy for green-tinged inner-city politics, which he believes has alienated the party’s industrial origins.

Fitzgibbon blames Labor’s obsession with climate change for everything from the 2019 election failure – where it pledged a 45% emissions cut by 2030 – to the party’s dwindling purchase in the outer suburbs and regions.

Albanese’s position, like all opposition leaders, relies on a mixture of support: in his case, a foundation of Left MPs and the crucial backing of key NSW and some Victorian Right figures. Unsurprisingly, these supporters were the main beneficiaries of the reshuffle.

Read more: Grattan on Friday: Albanese’s reshuffle sharpens focus on ‘jobs’ but talk about his own job will continue

Deputy leader Richard Marles gets a super-portfolio combining national reconstruction, employment, skills, small business and science. Another Victorian Right figure, Clare O’Neill, gets a frontbench promotion as spokeswoman for senior Australians and aged care services – assisting the relocated Butler in health and ageing.

And Ed Husic, also an influential player in the NSW Right, is elevated to shadow cabinet in industry and innovation.

Taken separately, these moves may be justified. Together, however, they might also hint at Albanese’s vulnerability, given his own Left faction’s minority position.

The bigger concern for progressives in the short-term will be what these personnel changes amount to in policy terms, if anything.

Does Albanese intend to scale back Labor’s climate ambitions? Fitzgibbon has explicitly called on his party to ditch interim targets entirely, and simply adopt the government’s goal of 26% emissions reduction by 2030.

During the 2019 election, then leader Bill Shorten struggled to quantify the negative impact on economic growth arising from Labor’s proposed 45% cut in emissions.

It was a strategic vulnerability on which Prime Minister Scott Morrison capitalised. He argued relentlessly that Labor’s formula would cost Australian jobs and send household and business electricity prices soaring.

Read more: Labor’s climate policy is too little, too late. We must run faster to win the race

Albanese’s decision to defer interim targets until closer to the next election had already invited doubts about whether Labor is truly committed to reaching net-zero emissions by 2050. Butler’s removal is likely to exacerbate those doubts.

The hold-fire approach leaves Labor’s left flank exposed to the Greens’ claims it is equivocating on climate action, just as the rest of the world finds new resolve.

As Albanese put the final touches on his reshuffle, the Climate Targets Panel of scientists and economists released a chastening report. It showed Australia would need to slash emissions by 50% by 2030, and achieve zero emissions by 2045 (rather than 2050) to be in line with the Paris commitment of keeping global warming inside 2℃.

Freshly installed US president Joe Biden has used a series of executive orders to accelerate US restructuring. He hopes to spur global momentum for climate action, calling on developed economies to rapidly increase their commitments.

Albanese, however, denies any diminution. He maintains that Bowen, a former treasurer, is better placed to reframe climate policy in more starkly economic terms, stressing the opportunities for new green jobs against the risks cited by the Coalition.

This may well be sound. Bowen’s established economic standing could allow a “green jobs of the future” rebranding of Labor’s emissions approach.

That would be a breakthrough, given the widening divide between Labor’s professional and blue-collar constituencies, and claims by Fitzgibbon and others on the party’s Right that it has abandoned regional workers through its green emphasis.

There’s little doubt that, as an experienced minister, Bowen has the skills and the policy depth for the job.

But there’s a judgement question. His role in the 2019 election loss – chief advocate of an unwieldy suite of adventurous tax proposals – was arguably more central to Labor’s shock defeat than any perceived overreach on climate.

Not finished yet, Fitzgibbon has described Butler’s removal as a good start but called for further policy change.

Fitzgibbon’s Right-aligned parliamentary colleagues seemed willing to accept his public undermining of Butler. It will be interesting to see whether they allow the same treatment of Bowen.

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

– ref. Albanese throws a bone to Labor’s Right, but Joel Fitzgibbon remains off the leash – https://theconversation.com/albanese-throws-a-bone-to-labors-right-but-joel-fitzgibbon-remains-off-the-leash-154179

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Doran, Associate professor/Deputy head of school, UNSW

How does a small retail company that sells video games, worth less than US$400 million in the middle of 2020, become a US$10 billion company in less than six months? How does its share price climb from about US$20 on Jan 12, 2021, to US$347 on January 27 – then fall back to US$193 the very next day?

The stunning price surge in GameStop shares, driven largely by hyped-up Reddit users with the aid of Elon Musk, has drawn the attention of the US government, led to calls for regulation from the head of the NASDAQ exchange, and even driven up the shares of an Australian mining company with a coincidentally similar sharemarket code.

How is this happening? The simple answer is it’s a power play, magnified by social media, between small retail investors who want some share prices to rise and larger hedge funds who have made big bets that those same prices will fall.

Revenge of the little fish

Melvin Capital is a hedge fund (worth US$12.5 billion until recently) with a “short position” on GameStop. A short position means Melvin was betting GameStop’s share price would fall (a reasonable bet, as the outlook for bricks-and-mortar video game stores is a bit like what happened to Blockbuster and other video rental outlets). This in itself is not at all unusual.

What made the past two weeks so unique was the heavy involvement of small individual investors in driving the action. Through platforms like Reddit (specifically the Wall Street Bets forum, which describes itself as “like 4Chan found a Bloomberg terminal”), these retail investors have worked to together to drive prices so high that hedge funds have had to abandon their short positions.

As a result, the short sellers have lost a lot of money and the retail investors (and anybody else with GameStop shares) have made huge profits. Normally on the stock market, the shark swallows the little fish. Now the little fish are eating the shark.

Read more: Explainer: what is short selling?

These individual investors started buying shares (and options to buy shares in the future) in GameStop, and other companies that had significant short positions. In fact, the 50 most shorted companies on the Russell 3000 index have gone up 33% this year.

This increase has become a surge in recent days. GameStop surged in value by 92% on January 26 (US time), leapt another 134% on January 27, and has traded more than 178 million shares. The average volume typically traded for GameStop is roughly 10 million shares per day. This is not normal.

How long can redditors remain irrational?

How is it possible that small retail investors can drive the value of a company up like this?

Two important factors have led to the situation. The first is structural. Investors seized on the fact that Melvin, and another fund called Citron Capital, had significant short positions in GameStop.

When a stock price surges, short sellers must either put in more money to sustain their position or liquidate it. Melvin tried to sustain its short position, because the hedge fund’s managers believe the stock is overvalued, and has suffered massive losses as a result (last week, Melvin announced it was already down 30% on the year). This is a case of the well-known idea that “the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent”.

Melvin may ultimately be right, and GameStop’s price will eventually fall, but retail investors who knew about Melvin’s bet forced it into an untenable position. With the price continually pushed up, Melvin was left with a stark choice: continue to go short, or else realise its losses.

How buying creates more buying

This leads to the second factor, which is mechanical. The retail investors driving the price surge are much smaller than the hedge funds they are battling. By buying the stock and call options (which are effectively rights to buy the stock in future at a certain price), retail investors are causing market makers to also buy shares in GameStop.

Read more: Gambling on the stock market: are retail investors even playing to win?

Market makers are companies that facilitate share trades by owning stocks and making them available for sale. Market makers don’t care about whether stock prices rise or fall; they just want a cut when people buy or sell.

So when an investor buys a call option from a market maker, the market maker will immediately hedge the position by buying the stock. This way, they are covered whether the price rises or falls.

If there is a big enough surge in speculators buying call options, as we have seen with GameStop, it will be accompanied by a lot of stock buying.

This is a cascading effect, which leads to price runs. In this case, it’s running the price up, but we are just as likely to see the same effect running the price down as well. (This is what happened on a larger scale on October 19, 1987, triggering the Black Monday stock market crash.)

After the surge

These two factors – short sellers getting squeezed and market makers hedging their bets – have led to this situation. You need both for what we are witnessing: an investor with an exposed position (Melvin) and a flurry of investors targeting that position (Redditors and others).

Soon this will be all over. Late on January 27 (US time), Melvin Capital announced it had abandoned its short position. It’s unclear how much money Melvin lost, but it has taken on almost US$3 billion in investment from the Citadel and Point72 funds to cover its losses.

The next morning, GameStop’s price actually continued to rise, reaching almost US$500 for a brief moment. However, at that point several popular retail stockbrokers – including Robinhood, Interactive Brokers and E*Trade – intervened to limit trading in several highly active stocks including GameStop. The price quickly plummeted before rallying and ending the day at $US193.60.

What’s next? With the short sellers removed from the game, the reality of the company’s business prospects may reassert themselves.

The past two weeks have been exciting times for market watchers. But we cannot ignore the apparent ease with which these stocks have been manipulated, and the possibility of more market manipulation in the future.

Read more: The S&P 500 nears its all-time high. Here’s why stock markets are defying economic reality

– ref. GameStop: how Redditors played hedge funds for billions (and what might come next) – https://theconversation.com/gamestop-how-redditors-played-hedge-funds-for-billions-and-what-might-come-next-154076