Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Catherine Attard, Associate Professor, Mathematics Education, Western Sydney University

The Victorian government this week announced it would ban all banking schemes from operating in public schools from 2021.

This includes the controversial Dollarmites program, run by Commonwealth Bank, which teaches primary school children to save money and develop banking habits. Often, this is done by opening an account with the bank.

The Victorian government will replace these bank-led programs with school-led financial literacy programs.

Given the lack of evidence school banking programs lead to better financial literacy, their removal won’t have much impact on children’s learning. In fact, it might be the impetus schools need to take financial literacy education more seriously.

How financial literacy has changed in Australia

Many families and school communities participate in school banking simply because it is a tradition. In 2019, the ABC reported nearly two-thirds of the nation’s schools participate in school banking programs. The most well known is delivered by the Commonwealth Bank.

The incentive of cash payments to schools has contributed to the survival of the schemes despite a lack of evidence they do, in fact, improve children’s financial literacy skills. It was revealed in 2018, the Commonwealth Bank had paid a total of almost $400,000 to state schools across Queensland in a bid to encourage more students to join its banking program the year before.

At best, such programs promote saving habits, which can be taught by parents. At worst they are an administrative burden and a potential disruption to the flow of teaching and learning in Australian classrooms.

The Commonwealth Bank established its school banking program in 1931 to teach “money-management” skills to primary school students. But life has changed significantly since then.

We are rapidly moving towards a cashless society and the money-management skills required last century have evolved to significantly more complex consumer and financial literacy skills.

Along with basic money management, students leave school needing to understand the financial implications of subscriptions to services such as gym memberships, mobile phone plans and even TV streaming services. They need to understand credit card debt, buy-now-pay-later schemes, student loans, superannuation, taxation and of course the traditional lending structures of personal loans and mortgages.

Where is financial literacy in the curriculum?

It has long been acknowledged financial literacy should be part of the school curriculum. Most recently, this has been supported by the federal and state governments in the 2019 Alice Springs (Mparntwe) Education Declaration. The declaration specifically mentions the importance of developing strong financial skills among Australian students.

While the Australian Curriculum doesn’t have an explicit financial literacy curriculum, it provides a range of resources to help teachers implement financial literacy at all levels of schooling.

One of these resources is the Consumer and Financial Literacy Framework, which includes a strong rationale for financial literacy education in Australian schools, along with guidance on the progression of learning from the first year of school through to senior secondary.

Financial literacy education is embedded in the curriculum in two ways. First, it appears explicitly in several subject areas: mathematics, economics and business.

Within maths, children learn about the value of money. They learn to:

• solve problems involving money

• manage money by creating budgets

• explore and calculate percentage discounts

• work out the best value when making purchases

• choose financial products and solve problems that involve simple and compound interest, and profit and loss.

In economics and business, students learn how to make responsible and informed decisions about consumer issues, money management and assets.

Secondly, the Australian Curriculum General Capabilities and Cross Curriculum Priorities describe the overarching skills, knowledge, behaviours and dispositions necessary for the development of successful and active citizens.

Financial literacy is embedded in each of these two structures and teachers have the opportunity to use relevant learning tasks. For example, primary students in one study borrowed money from their school principal to design and conduct a market stall.

To do this, they had to come up with a business plan, understand their break-even point, and market and sell their products to other students at the school. The students then had to repay their debt to the principal before deciding on how to spend their profits.

This rich experience addressed several aspects of the maths curriculum while teaching the students about important financial literacy concepts. It was also authentic and engaging. It provided students with a sense of agency when they were able to use their profits to buy and donate Christmas gifts for needy children.

Do we need to do more?

While financial literacy is embedded into the curriculum, there is more work to be done inside and outside schools. Schools need to make sure financial literacy is explicitly taught in conjunction with key subject areas. A way to ensure this happens is to have it made more explicit in the Australian Curriculum.

Parents influence their children’s financial behaviours. Unfortunately we can’t assume all parents have sound financial literacy, nor can we assume all teachers do.

Financial literacy education for the broader community is critical if we are to ensure parents model positive financial behaviour to their children. ASIC’s MoneySmart website is a good place for parents to improve their financial literacy.

Likewise, teachers must have the opportunity to engage with professional development to increase their personal financial capabilities, as well as their ability to incorporate financial literacy into their teaching.

– ref. We don’t need banks teaching kids about money. Schools have it covered – https://theconversation.com/we-dont-need-banks-teaching-kids-about-money-schools-have-it-covered-151093

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jason Potts, Professor of Economics, RMIT University

Bitcoin is back.

Three years after the bubble that inflated its value from US$5,000 to US$20,000 in less than three months burst in spectacular fashion, plunging more than 80%, the cryptocurrency is again on the verge of a record high.

In recent days it has been trading above US$19,000, up from US$10,000 in October and US$5,900 in March. The price of Ethereum, the second-largest cryptocurrency by market value, has also surged over the past few months, up from less than US$250 in July to about US$600.

There are wild reports that by the end of 2021 Bitcoin could surge to US$100,000, or even US$318,000.

Cryptocurrency markets are notoriously volatile, so perhaps by the time you read this the value might have gone up. Or down again.

So what is going on? Is this another speculative bubble, fuelled by the “greater fool theory”?

Not necessarily. Unlike the 2017 bubble – when there was a lot of noise and excitement based on not very much actual mainstream adoption – there’s more substance to cryptocurrency price rises this time.

Indicative of the change is the stance of JPMorgan Chase, the largest bank in the US. In October analysts at the bank’s global asset management arm tipped a “doubling or tripling” in Bitcoin’s price.

Clearly something has changed, because back in September 2017 the bank’s chief executive, Jamie Dimon, called the cryptocurrency a “fraud” and “worse than tulip bulbs”, and said he would fire any employee trading it for being “stupid”.

Read more: Tulip mania: the classic story of a Dutch financial bubble is mostly wrong

Three basic trends can be discerned behind this change of heart.

1. Digital money is coming

First, there is the economic impact of COVID-19 and governments pumping massive amounts of money into economies. With investments such as property, savings and bonds less attractive, investors have been looking to assets with better prospects.

Money has been flooding towards traditional “safe-haven” assets such as gold as well as stocks aligned with the digital economy. Among the most favoured stocks: Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Etsy, PayPal and Zoom. Bitcoin offers aspects of both.

Read more: In gold we trust: why bullion is still a safe haven in times of crisis

The dramatic increase in online shopping and cashless payments due to COVID-19 has also accelerated interest in digital money.

Central banks – including the US Federal Reserve, European Central Bank, Bank of Japan, Swiss National Bank and the Bank of England – are pushing ahead to develop their own digital currencies (known as “central bank digital currencies” or CBDCs). Leading the pack is the People’s Bank of China, which is piloting a digital renminbi.

Cryptocurrencies are also becoming more usable through so-called “stablecoins” with values pegged to central bank currencies (the US dollar and the like) as well as improved wallets making it easier to swap tokens.

There are indications these trends will converge. China’s Digital Currency Electronic Payments system will have some level of support for Ethereum applications. Paypal already allows US users to buy Bitcoin through their Paypal accounts, and will enable Paypal payments with Bitcoin next year.

2. The technology is maturing

Second, the technology that supports cryptocurrencies is maturing.

One of the biggest problems for cryptocurrencies becoming mainstream is the sheer amount of energy-intensive computing processes required to make transactions secure (which is important as you don’t want the same token spent twice). The carbon emissions from Bitcoin mining have been estimated as more than that of a country such as Sri Lanka.

Ethereum has embarked on a major technical upgrade (called Eth2) transitioning the blockchain to a “proof-of-stake” mechanism that does away with energy-intensive computing processes. This should allay concerns of those holding back on environmental grounds and allow it to scale up.

Whole new layers are also being developed that will allow blockchain technologies to be used in financial markets. The latest is decentralised finance (known as defi), using blockchain to build completely digital and automated financial markets. These include decentralised exchanges and derivatives trading without traditional intermediaries such as stock markets or banks. This is only possible using blockchain infrastructure – and cryptocurrency.

3. Institutions see its value

Third – as illustrated by the changed stance at JPMorgan Chase – institutional investors are now embracing cryptocurrency.

US cryptocurrency asset manager Grayscale Investments last month surpassed $US10 billion in cyrptocurrency assets for institutional investors. This week global financial services company Guggenheim Partners (managing more than US$275 billion in assets) announced it could invest up to $US530 million in Bitcoin through Grayscale.

As Rick Rieder, chief executive of BlackRock, the world’s largest investment funds manager (more than US$7.4 trillion in assets under management) declared, “cryptocurrency is here to stay”.

Should you buy Bitcoin?

So what does this mean for you as a potential retail investor? Does buying cryptocurrency offer you a chance to make a fortune, like the guy said to have turned a US$3,000 investment in Bitcoin into US$25 million?

Not really. It’s still a gamble.

The opportunity was earlier in the year when prices were much lower, and when the markets were filled with uncertainty and confusion. Now you just risk buying high and selling low.

All cryptocurrencies remain volatile and speculative assets. Many people have been burned badly in the past by coming in at the top.

Read more: More than 1,000 cryptocurrencies have already failed – here’s what will affect successes in future

Maybe this time is different, and the Bitcoin bubble won’t burst. But if so it will be because cryptocurrency is becoming staid economic infrastructure, not the latest get-rich meme.

There are no guarantees. Bet only what you can afford to lose.

– ref. Bitcoin’s rebound: 3 reasons this time is (sort of) different – https://theconversation.com/bitcoins-rebound-3-reasons-this-time-is-sort-of-different-150731

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lorinda Cramer, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Australian Catholic University

There’s no denying the popularity of the singlet. The Chesty Bond, Australia’s best known singlet, has notched up more than 350 million sales. At last year’s Deniliquin Ute Muster, more than 3,970 blue singlets were counted.

Donned first as underwear, then for sport and later as the uniform of Australia’s working man, this simple garment has accrued complex cultural meanings over time.

Singlets have been famously worn by rock stars such as Jimmy Barnes and evolved into an item of gay dress.

Now worn by men and women alike, for sport, labour or leisure, they have a long and fascinating history.

From underwear to sportswear: 19th century singlets

The first singlets were concealed beneath clothing. The Workwoman’s Guide, a pattern book and instructional guide for making everyday clothing, was published in London in 1838. Though it contains the details for an extraordinary range of undergarments, it makes no mention of singlets.

Two years later, however, Mr Samuel Lyons advertised an auction of 40 cases of slop clothing in Sydney. Among the slops (relatively cheap, ready-made clothing) were 13 cases of plaid and velvet vests, short fitted coats called coatees and flannel singlets. This may be the earliest reference to the undergarment in an Australian newspaper.

Read more: A brief history of briefs – and how technology is transforming underpants

Australian gold-rush guides of the 1850s advised adventure-seeking migrants on the ideal clothing in which to seek their fortune. One helpfully suggested a digger’s outfit include two or three shirts, three pairs of trousers, a warm jacket and “two or three flannel singlets”.

These singlets formed a soft, warm, washable layer between men’s torsos and their outer clothing. However shirts, too, were considered underclothing at this time, serving a similar function.

In the second half of the 19th century, singlets emerged from beneath men’s clothes. Athletes, including pedestrians (competitive walkers or runners), wrestlers, wood-choppers and rowers, wore singlets openly for the first time.

This shocked some observers and intrigued others, who commented on the athletes’ magnificent physiques. Yet the benefit of wearing this simple, streamlined garment was clear. Singlets freed the shoulders and arms, enhancing movement.

An Australian work costume

Unsurprisingly, singlets were adopted by Australia’s working men shortly after.

Queensland’s colloquial term for the singlet, the “Jackie Howe”, takes its name from the shearer said to have bared his arms while setting new daily shearing records in 1892. In fact, it’s more likely he wore an undershirt. Later reports suggest he variously cut or tore the sleeves off his shirt, or perhaps did neither, merely inspiring another shearer to do so. At any rate, the name stuck, in Queensland at least.

Over the following decades, singlets became a distinctive element of the Australian work costume. During the first world war, soldiers were issued two singlets as part of their kit.

In the 1920s and ‘30s, close-fitting cotton “athletic” singlets were donned by timber cutters, construction workers and others involved in outdoor labour, most often paired with trousers and leather boots.

By the second world war, singlets were worn for sport and physical training and at rest.

Artist William Dobell, working for the Civil Construction Corps, painted several wartime images of workers clad in singlets, shorts and little else. One such painting, Concrete consolidation worker, Sydney graving dock (1944), depicts a man in shorts and a loose, white singlet, his body protected by a hat, gloves and work boots.

As this form of Australian masculinity took shape — strong, bronzed, well-built workers stripped down to their singlets — Bonds developed its Chesty Bond character.

He appeared in regular comic strips in Sydney’s Sun newspaper from March 1940. Slipping on a singlet exposed Chesty’s superhero-like form, but more importantly let his “great muscles work unimpeded”, as one cartoon put it. The image of Chesty Bond, with his distinctive jutting chin, powerful chest and rippling torso, still appears on the singlet’s packaging today.

Beyond the working man

The singlet’s symbolism had solidified as shorthand for the everyday working man by the mid-20th century. In the 1970s and ‘80s, pub-rock musicians drew on this connection, referencing the working-class roots of the music and their singlet-wearing fans.

Rose Tattoo favoured singlets in early promotional images to set off their tattooed arms.

Jimmy Barnes wore a white singlet in the film clip for Working Class Man (1985). Mark Seymour, front man of Melbourne’s Hunters and Collectors, was known for his high-energy, singlet-clad performances in hot, crowded venues.

At the same time, gay men began wearing singlets. The look, which first emerged in America, referenced tough, “macho” men. Combined with tight jeans and plaid shirts, singlets were an assertion of hyper-masculinity.

In the 1990s, singlets were recast again when underwear was embraced at gay clubs and dance parties. The singlet set off hard, smooth bodies, sculpted at the gym.

These examples point to the power of singlets to suggest a strong, rugged, muscular Australian masculinity. But singlets, too, have a darker side. Their ready association with hard-working and hard-drinking men has led to another particularly troubling, colloquial name: “the wifebeater”.

How you wear your singlet is a marker of class. White-collar workers wear singlets as often as their blue-collar counterparts, though theirs often remain unseen (at least at work), under business shirts and suits.

Women in singlets

Women’s sleeveless undergarments, including chemises and camisoles, were worn in the 19th century and “ladies’ singlets” were advertised in Australian newspapers by the 1880s.

It took longer for women, though, to bare their arms in the range of settings that men did. Singlets were dotted through the crowds — on both young men and women — at popular music festivals like Sunbury in the early 1970s.

Melbourne photographer Rennie Ellis, a prolific documenter of daily life and by extension daily dress, captured many singlet-wearing women in his images, particularly during the 1980s.

In 2005 Akira Isogawa, one of Australia’s most creative contemporary fashion designers, remade the humble Bonds singlet, stitching an extravagant panel of vividly embroidered red and purple flowers on its front. The singlet had become high fashion.

Singlets are now as popular with women as with men. Our preoccupation with physical fitness and gym-ready bodies has seen a huge range of Australian and international brands enter the singlet market. Singlets made as active wear have special breathable, sweat-wicking properties.

For our Olympic athletes, singlets have been green and gold. The National Museum of Australia recently acquired 1969 silver medallist Peter Norman’s singlet, while other Olympic singlets appear in museum collections around Australia. But on the local oval or at the gym, in the pub or in the backyard, singlets of all colours reign.

– ref. Friday essay: the singlet — a short history of an Australian icon – https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-the-singlet-a-short-history-of-an-australian-icon-145545

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kylie Pappalardo, Senior Lecturer, School of Law, Queensland University of Technology

In August, the communications minister announced a series of changes to copyright laws to “better support the needs of Australians and public institutions to access material in an increasingly digital environment”.

These changes are long overdue. But the year is ending, and we are yet to see the legislation.

The most important change is to ensure access to so-called orphan works.

Orphan works are copyrighted works for which the copyright owner can no longer be found.

The Australian Law Reform Commission and the Productivity Commission found that orphan works present a particular problem for public institutions. These include libraries, galleries, archives, museums and broadcasters, whose collections necessarily include items with unclear lineage.

Australia’s national and state libraries say orphan works comprise between 10% and 70% of their collections.

The National Film and Sound Archive says they comprise 20% of its collection.

Orphan works are inaccessible

In most circumstances, the existing law requires users to secure the copyright owner’s permission before copying or using a work, meaning that orphan works can’t be used.

The Film and Sound Archive says scores of projects that would have celebrated Australia’s heritage have been shelved because of the expense and impossibility of locating the descendants of copyright holders.

The proposed changes would permit people to use orphan works if they first conducted a “reasonably diligent” search and as far as reasonably possible clearly attributed the works to their authors.

Read more: 10 ‘lost’ Australian literary treasures you should read – and can soon borrow from any library

The standard is high – users would need to show clear evidence of good-faith efforts to identify and locate copyright owners in order to seek permission.

If the copyright owner isn’t found but later comes forward, the user and the copyright owner would have to agree on reasonable terms for any continued use.

Other proposed changes include a new fair dealing exception for the quoting of copyrighted material for non-commercial purposes.

It’s not always clear what it’s okay to quote

It is not always clear whether quoting from something infringes copyright. The exception will give researchers confidence.

The government says it will be narrowly tailored to reduce uncertainty and the administrative burden for schools, universities, libraries, museums, government agencies, academics and researchers who quote words from a book, passages from a piece of music or visual images taken from works of art.

Read more: How copyright law is holding back Australian creators

As well, the reforms would streamline licensing arrangements and exceptions for libraries, archives and educational and government institutions to allow things including

• making collections available online for browsing in a way that does not infringe copyright

• teachers using copyrighted material in online lessons in the same way as they are presently allowed to in face-to-face lessons

• schools playing sound recordings for activities such as school concerts

• governments using correspondence and other material sent to them for non-commercial purposes

These reforms are simple, reasonable, and ought not to be in dispute.

Unfortunately, copyright is such a heated topic that even the easiest fixes are hard.

Governments drag their feet

In the past, proposals for more wide-ranging reform have been opposed by organisations representing copyright holders.

They have called instead for iterative, practical enhancements.

That’s what these changes are. They certainly don’t pose a financial threat to rights holders.

2020 is not the year to expect things to happen quickly. But these reforms are important partly because they respond to problems made apparent by COVID-19.

Proper access to copyrighted materials would enable educational institutions to deliver the same lessons online as they deliver in person. Cultural institutions would be able to service customers unable to visit in person and to people in lockdown.

Hopefully the government will introduce the changes quickly.

But we don’t have a good track record. Australia didn’t get an exception that legalised home use of video tape recorders until 2006, the year they began to be replaced by other recording systems.

These changes ought to be (and largely are) uncontentious. Researchers, librarians, filmmakers and teachers are waiting.

– ref. Researchers, librarians, filmmakers and teachers are eager for the copyright reforms the government has promised – https://theconversation.com/researchers-librarians-filmmakers-and-teachers-are-eager-for-the-copyright-reforms-the-government-has-promised-150141

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Burridge, Professor of Linguistics, Monash University

Symptom, virus, epidemic, quarantine.

We’ve become used to these terms in 2020. But the “COVID-19 vocabulary” might have been very different had it not been for a few twists and turns in English history.

If history had gone differently, for instance, we might visit the leech about flying venom or gound. But instead we now see the “doctor” about “viruses”.

English has long had a love affair with what linguists rather curiously describe as “borrowing” from other languages (as if we’re giving these words back!). In medical parlance, rare are those Old English survivors like midwife (historically, “with woman”).

To better understand this process, let’s journey to a time in English history when the metaphorical invasion of French words began with a literal invasion of the English homeland. Then, hold onto your arse-ropes (“intestines”) as we imagine an alternative universe in which that invasion never happened — and where we’d be speaking about health and illness in very different, Old English ways!

Read more: Barracking, sheilas and shouts: how the Irish influenced Australian English

Linguistic ‘poverty’ and the French invasion

Many a writer has claimed that English wasn’t up to the task of describing new concepts and feelings, including those linked to health and illness. Francis Bacon described English as a language that “would play the bankrupt with books”. Virginia Woolf believed medicine’s “empathy problem” could be linked to its “poverty of the language”.

For some time now we’ve been looking to other languages to fill this gap — the classical languages of course, but in particular French. After William the Conqueror took the throne following the Battle of Hastings in 1066, the English language was never the same again. The Normans controlled the state, the military, cultural and intellectual interests, and around 10,000 French words flooded into these areas.

Among the sciences, medical vocabulary incorporated the largest number of these, and most are still part of modern medical English: surgery, doctor, physician, surgeon, patient, malady, pain, disease, infection, plague, pestilence, pus, pustule, remedy, ointment, medicine and hospital are just a few. Even many of the Latin and Greek medical terms that came into English did so via Anglo Norman.

However, we must be careful not to exaggerate the impoverished state of English vocabulary before the arrival of the French. Many medical expressions would have been redundant borrowings, probably even more than we’re aware of, since our knowledge of Old English is quite limited.

So, what might our COVID-19 vocabulary look like now, if Harold had won the Battle of Hastings and English hadn’t become the linguistic “bitser” it is today?

Exit the French “doctor”, and enter the Old English “leech”

The Old English verb lacnian, meaning “to heal”, inspired more than a few medical terms, including the all-important læce “leech” or “medical practitioner” — a leech of the greatest skill was the heah læce (“high leech”) and one not so skilful the unlæce (“unleech”). Leechcraft was what these leeches practised, leechdoms were their remedies — and leech houses were where they later worked.

And while leech lives on as the “blood-sucking aquatic worm”, most of the Old English terms simply disappeared (læcegetawu “medical instruments”; læcecist “medical chest”; læceseax “lancet”). Of the numerous words for “disease” (adl, untrumness, suht, unhælth), only seocnes (“sickness”) survives. The adligende (“patient”) might be described as unstrang (“unstrong”), unmeaht (“weak”), lef (“injured”), untrymig (“ill”), unhæle (“sick”) or besmitten (“infected”) — of these, just (be)smitten remains, but only as “love-struck”.

“Night walkers” and “flying venoms”: The infectious hellscape of Old English

Not surprisingly, Old English had many terms for infectious disease. Leechbooks flourished with descriptions of assaults by supernatural beings and with constant reminders of the threat from invisible fiends like the niht gengan (“night walkers”) and onflyge (“on-flying things”). Particularly striking were the remedies for fleogendum attre (“flying venoms”). These illnesses were nasty — they arrived out of the blue, and they spread quickly through Anglo-Saxon communities. Undoubtedly among these various on-flying things were airborne viruses or infections.

But fear not, your local, bulk-billing leech might serve up a good treatment from 9th-century Google, Bald’s trusty leechbook:

Wið fleogendan attre asleah IIII scearpan on feower healfa mid æcenan brande geblodga ðone brand weorp on weg sing ðis on III […]

For flying venom, make four incisions in four parts of the body with an oak stick; make the stick bloody; throw it away; sing this three times […]

Certainly, Old English had no shortage of terms for pestilence in its wordhord, among them oncome (“on-come”), cwyld (from cwellan “to kill”), cothe (now a cattle disease) and also uncothe, a particularly malicious version (prefixes such as un- and dis- often intensified a pejorative sense). A strange-looking one was wolness (nothing to do with wellness!).

Unprecedented ‘viruses’, and noxious ‘sleepy dust’

The influx of French words created the system of levels that characterizes English vocabulary today (and consequently the way we talk about COVID-19). The native English words are typically shorter, more concrete and stylistically more neutral (they include grammatical words like a and the, and of course the obscene ones too). This basic vocabulary supports the lexical superstructure of French and classical words that are more formal, even high-falutin’.

The lofty French/Latin hybrid unprecedented has been shot into linguistic stardom by the current pandemic. It’s hard to imagine any of the native English equivalents (alone, unmatched, makeless, mateless and nonesuch) achieving this level of success.

Lockdown might be pure English, but social and physical distance and even that curve we’ve been hell-bent on flattening are pure French (flatten, though, we owe to the Vikings).

And, of course, there’s “virus” itself. Latin virus appeared in the leechbooks but referred to noxious secretions generally, before it shifted to the actual agent that causes an infectious disease. (As a curious aside, we note that 18th-century viricide was awkwardly ambiguous between the killing of viruses and the killing of husbands). There were plenty of Old English equivalents to virus, but gund stands out. It survived as gound into the 17th century, although it had narrowed in meaning to the gunge that collects in the corners of our eyes.

French and Latin borrowings are here to stay, and while we’ll miss the arse-ropes and wonder why gound ended up just in our eyes, we won’t miss those night walkers.

Read more: Oi! We’re not lazy yarners, so let’s kill the cringe and love our Aussie accent(s)

– ref. From ‘arse-ropes’ to ‘flying venom’, a history of how we have come to talk about viruses and medicine – https://theconversation.com/from-arse-ropes-to-flying-venom-a-history-of-how-we-have-come-to-talk-about-viruses-and-medicine-147441

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

In the moment, Scott Morrison’s angry denunciation of the offensive Chinese tweet about alleged Australian war crimes seemed a reasonable response.

In retrospect, it was probably ill-judged. This is so even though the response had bipartisan support.

The Chinese immediately knew they’d touched a raw nerve, and kept pressing it, through their hyperbolic mouthpiece The Global Times, and their embassy in Canberra.

They grabbed an opportunity to get their own back at a country inclined to focus on their bad human rights record.

In trying to show strength, the Australian government had exposed its sensitivity.

Morrison probably realised this. Twenty-four hours after calling his “virtual” news conference (he was still in quarantine at The Lodge following his Japanese trip) he told the coalition party room (remotely) that the government’s response to the tweet did not need amplification.

Read more: Politics with Michelle Grattan: Asia-Pacific expert Bates Gill on China’s endgame

On Thursday he wouldn’t even be drawn about the Chinese social media platform WeChat taking down a message of reassurance to the Australian Chinese community he had posted.

The digitally-contrived image of a soldier with a knife to a child’s throat tweeted by China’s foreign affairs spokesman was the equivalent of a highly objectionable cartoon. With hindsight, Morrison might have been better to send out a minister to respond to the tweet, or simply to dismiss it with a brief condemnatory line and minimum elaboration.

The tweet was part of the cat-and-mouse game the Chinese are playing with Australia. This might hurt their international image – it certainly should. But the price for Australia is much higher. Strikes at Australian exports are costly and disruptive for businesses and industries at the worst possible time, in the year of COVID.

More generally, it is hard to avoid the conclusion China is treating the Australian government with contempt. How else can we read it when Australian ministers haven’t been able to get their phone calls returned?

Within Australia there is a range of views on how to cope with this situation.

Some in business have urged the government to tone everything down, to be much more accommodating to China. On the other hand, some on the Coalition backbench and among the commentariat believe China should be given no quarter.

In response to what has become a more assertive and interfering Chinese regime, the government’s stance can be characterised as hawkish in action while reaching out rhetorically.

Even as he raged about the tweet on Monday, Morrison said he hoped “this rather awful event” might lead to a “reset” where dialogue could be restarted. At his Thursday news conference his message was the government’s desire for “constructive and open and regular dialogue at leader and ministerial level to address the tensions that are clearly there in the relationship”.

But also on Thursday parliament was considering legislation for a new national security test for foreign investment in a “sensitive national security business”.

It’s not admitted directly but this is aimed squarely at Chinese investment. It’s justified – but the Chinese judge the Australian government by its actions, not its words.

Legislation is also before parliament to allow the federal government to quash agreements state or local governments or universities have or propose with foreign governments. This has Victoria’s belt and road deal with China in its sights.

Critics see the government’s early call for an inquiry into the origins and handling of COVID-19 as an ill-judged provocation of China, and even date the deterioration in the relationship from then.

Undoubtedly China was angered. But its discontent goes much further back and is much broader, as its recently-circulated list of 14 grievances makes clear.

And the COVID call was reasonable enough, even if it invited angst. The pandemic has been a stop-the-world sort of event and how it all happened is significant for the future.

Read more: What’s behind China’s bullying of Australia? It sees a soft target — and an essential one

The unpalatable truth is that Australia has limited agency in how relations with China go from here.

The government won’t (and shouldn’t) make U-turns on key policies, such as Malcolm Turnbull’s law against foreign interference.

China is not likely to be swayed by rhetoric. And if one point of its concern is that Australia’s voice on certain issues (such as its warnings on Huawei) influences other countries, China will have even less reason to reduce its pressure.

For however long it wants to get in Australia’s face, China will play havoc with some of our exports. Australia takes comfort from the fact that its biggest export there – iron ore – is protected by China’s dependence on this supply and the difficulties of finding alternative sources. But that situation can’t be taken for granted indefinitely.

How the relationship evolves from here will be affected by the China-United States dynamic, as the Biden administration reshapes America’s policies. But it’s expected the Biden reset will be a matter of degree.

Whatever faults there have been on the Australian side, the rough-edged nature of the bilateral relationship is just one manifestation of China’s muscling up in the world, and particularly the region.

In 2014 Chinese President Xi Jinping addressed the federal parliament.

This was Xi’s fifth visit to Australia and included a trip to Tasmania which, he noted, meant he would have been to all states and territories. He was lyrical about the country’s “strange-looking kangaroos”, “cute koala bear”, “flocks of white sheep” and “ingenious Sydney Opera House”.

He was also very positive about the bilateral relationship (although China watchers might have read cautionary signs in his wider comments).

Read more: China hits out again – then tells Australia to fix the relationship

“China has always viewed Australia as an important partner,” he said.

“During my visit, the two sides have decided to elevate our bilateral relations into a comprehensive strategic partnership and announced the substantial completion of Free Trade Agreement negotiations. These two important outcomes will further boost China-Australia relations.

“Our relationship has reached a new and higher starting point, and we should be more visionary, broad minded and set more ambitious goals. Our two countries should increase dialogue and exchanges and deepen political trust, expand result-oriented cooperation, and work together to sustain peace, stability and prosperity in the Asia-Pacific.”

For Australia, this key relationship hasn’t become any less important in the relatively few years since Xi’s fifth and presumably last visit – indeed it’s more important. But managing it has become something of a political nightmare.

– ref. Grattan on Friday: China plays reverse ‘poke the bear’ – https://theconversation.com/grattan-on-friday-china-plays-reverse-poke-the-bear-151390

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joel Lexchin, Professor Emeritus of Health Policy and Management, York University, Emergency Physician at University Health Network, Associate Professor of Family and Community Medicine, University of Toronto

The news that Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine has gained emergency approval in the United Kingdom and may be distributed to selected high-risk groups as early as next week is welcome.

Headlines also suggest people in the United States and some other European countries could start being vaccinated before the end of the year.

For instance, a US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advisory committee is set to discuss the Pfizer vaccine on December 10 with a subsequent decision within a few weeks. And following the UK approval, there are reports the White House is putting pressure on the FDA to move faster.

However, Australia is set to wait until March for priority groups to be vaccinated, according to Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt. So why do Australians have to wait three months? And is that a worry?

What just happened?

According to Australia’s own drug regulator, the Therapeutic Goods Adminstration (TGA), the UK has provided an “emergency use” authorisation for the Pfizer vaccine, rather than going through the usual approval process. This emergency approval is temporary and is for a limited number of specific batches of the vaccine.

Meanwhile, the TGA says it continues to assess the safety and efficacy of the Pfizer vaccine as that information is submitted, and is working with regulators around the world to discuss vaccine development.

Hunt said that despite the Pfizer news in the UK, Australia’s plans have not changed:

Our advice remains that the timeline for a decision on approval is expected by the end of January 2021, and our planning is for first vaccine delivery in March 2021.

Read more: Pfizer vaccine has just been approved: here’s what the next few months will look like

Why the wait?

One reason Australia might be able to afford to wait is that we are not facing the same acute public health emergency as the US, UK and some European countries.

The US is recording almost 200,000 new cases a day, and the UK more than 10,000. Here in Australia, there have only been about 28,000 people infected since March. There are currently hardly any cases of community transmission and since the end of October only one person has died.

Read more: How to read results from COVID vaccine trials like a pro

There are also differences in how drug regulators around the world assess drug safety and efficacy.

In usual times, the TGA is about 120 days slower in approving drugs than the FDA. However, most studies show that there have been more safety problems with drugs fast-tracked by the FDA compared with drugs approved via its usual regulatory process.

The TGA is planning to use its provisional approval pathway which should speed up the process, but by how much is still a guess.

How fast is too fast? This is also unclear. The European Medicines Agency has criticised the UK’s quick emergency approval and said its own procedure relies on more evidence and checks.

There are many stages ahead

Regardless of the timing of regulatory approval, COVID vaccines still need to be made (and depending on the vaccine, imported), then distributed.

While all eyes are on the Pfizer vaccine at the moment, this is one of four for which the Australian government has agreements in place, should they prove safe and effective. Some of these vaccines are still in clinical trials.

Australia has also signed up for a shot at several other vaccines as part of the World Health Organization-backed COVAX agreement, should these prove safe and effective. Again, many of these are still in clinical trials.

Read more: Australia’s just signed up for a shot at 9 COVID-19 vaccines. Here’s what to expect

Finally, people still need to be willing to be vaccinated. An analysis of the Facebook page of the Australian Vaccination Risks Network, one of the country’s most prominent anti-vaccination groups, shows that since the start of the pandemic its page has attracted 36,962 likes and 32,350 comments; its posts have been shared 29,429 times.

In the meantime (and even for some time after vaccination), we will still need to wear masks when appropriate, physically distance and wash our hands. No vaccine will end the pandemic instantly.

So, should Australians be worried about the delay?

We don’t yet have long-term information about how long immunity will last and how common or serious any side-effects might be. There simply hasn’t been enough time. This might be less important in an emergency situation, but Australia is no longer in an emergency.

Many of us can’t wait to open up to the world and it’s hard to remain patient. But Melburnians, with their second lockdown, have taught us a lot about patience this year.

Perhaps we owe it to them to do our bit for the health of all Australians, accepting that time is a necessary part of good decision-making and planning.

And that involves waiting for a safe and effective vaccine to help us return to something resembling normal life.

Read more: What will Australia’s COVID vaccination program look like? 4 key questions answered

– ref. Should Australians be worried about waiting for a COVID vaccine when the UK has just approved Pfizer’s? – https://theconversation.com/should-australians-be-worried-about-waiting-for-a-covid-vaccine-when-the-uk-has-just-approved-pfizers-151287

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Celia McMichael, Senior Lecturer in Geography, University of Melbourne

Climate change is resulting in profound, immediate and worsening health impacts, and no country is immune, a major new report from more than 120 researchers has declared.

This year’s annual report of The Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change, released today, presents the latest data on health impacts from a changing climate.

Among its results, the report found there were 296,000 heat-related premature deaths in people over 65 years in 2018 (a 54% increase in the last two decades), and that global yield potential for major crops declined by 1.8–5.6% between 1981 and 2019.

We are part of the Lancet Countdown sub-working group focusing on human migration in a warming world. We estimate that, based on current population data, 145 million people face potential inundation with global mean sea-level rise of one metre. This jumps to 565 million people with a five metre sea-level rise.

Read more: Coronavirus is a wake-up call: our war with the environment is leading to pandemics

Unless urgent action is taken, the health consequences of climate change will worsen. A globally coordinated effort tackling COVID-19 and climate change in unison is vital, and will mean a triple win: better public health, a more sustainable economy and environmental protection.

Drought, fires and excessive heat

The 2020 report brings together research from a range of fields, including climate science, geography, economics and public health. It focuses on 43 global indicators, such as altered geographic spread of infectious disease, health benefits of low-carbon diets, net carbon pricing, climate migration and heat-related deaths.

The five hottest years on record have occurred since 2015, and 2020 is on track to be the first or second hottest year on record.

The 2020 Lancet Countdown report found extreme heat continues to rise in every region in the world and particularly affects the elderly, especially those in Japan, northern India, eastern China and central Europe. It is also a big problem for those with pre-existing health conditions and outdoor workers in the agricultural and construction sectors.

Read more: The world endured 2 extra heatwave days per decade since 1950 – but the worst is yet to come

While attributing heat-related deaths to climate change isn’t straightforward, rising temperatures and humidity will mean we can expect heat-related deaths to increase further.

Climate change is also an important contributing factor to drought. The report found that in 2019 excess drought affected over twice the global land surface area, compared with the 1950-2005 baseline.

Drought and health are intertwined. Drought can cause dwindling drinking water supplies, reduced livestock and crop productivity, and an increased risk of bushfire.

Mental health is also at risk, as Australian research from earlier this year confirmed. This looked at the declining mental health of drought-affected farmers in the Murray-Darling Basin over 14 years.

Further, the Lancet Countdown report found that between 2015 and 2019, the number of people exposed to bushfires increased in 128 countries, compared with a 2001-2004 baseline.

Read more: Climate change is bringing a new world of bushfires

Climate change worsens risk factors for more frequent and intense bushfires. We need only look to last summer’s unprecedented bushfires in Australia as a stark illustration. The number of people exposed to the bushfires was amplified by expanding settlements and inadequate risk reduction measures.

Sea level rise, human migration and health

As the world warms and the sea rises, millions of people will be exposed to coastal changes, including inundation and erosion.

Sea-level rise has direct and indirect consequences for human health. In some places, water and soil quality and supply will be compromised due to the intrusion of saltwater. Flooding and wave power will damage infrastructure, including drinking water and sanitation services. And disease vector ecology will also change, such as higher mosquito densities in coastal habitats, potentially causing greater transmission of infectious diseases like dengue or malaria.

However, people and communities may adapt by moving away. In Fiji, for example, at least four communities have relocated in response to coastal changes. The Fijian government notes planned relocation will be a last resort only when other adaptation options are exhausted.

Read more: Climate change forced these Fijian communities to move – and with 80 more at risk, here’s what they learned

Relocation might also lead to health threats . This includes physical health consequences from altered diets, as fishing and subsistence agriculture may be disrupted. There are also mental health impacts from people losing their attachments and connections to their places of belonging.

But sometimes, migration responses to climate change can have health benefits. Moving from vulnerable coastlines might reduce exposure to environmental hazards such as flooding, be an impetus to seek healthier livelihoods and lifestyles, and improve access to health services.

Our estimation of the number of people facing potential inundation is based on projections of global mean sea-level rise and on current population data.

In a high emissions scenario with warming of 4.5℃, seas could rise by one metre by 2100 relative to 1986–2005. This would see 145 million people face potential inundation.

A collapse of the Western Antarctic Ice Sheet could cause five to six metres of sea level rise. Under this extreme scenario, 565 million people may be inundated.

Read more: How many people will migrate due to rising sea levels? Our best guesses aren’t good enough

It is important to note, however, that uncertainties constrain our ability to forecast migration numbers due to sea-level rise. These uncertainties include future environmental and demographic factors and potential adaptation (and maladaptation) responses, such as living with water or coastal fortification.

So is there any good news?

The 2020 Lancet Countdown report notes improvements in some instances, as some sectors and countries take bold steps to respond to climate change.

We are seeing, for example, health benefits emerging from the transition to clean energy. Deaths from air pollution attributed to coal-fired power have declined from 440,000 in 2015 to 400,000 in 2018, despite overall population increases.

But more must be done: we need sustained greenhouse gas emission cuts, increased greenhouse gas absorption and proactive adaptation actions. Yet global efforts to address climate change still fall short of the commitments made in the Paris Agreement five years ago.

We cannot afford to focus attention on the COVID-19 pandemic at the expense of climate action.

If responses to the economic impacts of COVID-19 align with an effective response to climate change, we’ll see immense benefits for human health, with cleaner air, healthier diets and more liveable cities.

– ref. Climate change is resulting in profound, immediate and worsening health impacts, over 120 researchers say – https://theconversation.com/climate-change-is-resulting-in-profound-immediate-and-worsening-health-impacts-over-120-researchers-say-151027

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Christopher L. Diamond, Lecturer in Hindi, Australian National University

La Trobe University is in talks to discontinue its Hindi program, along with Greek and Indonesian. In the mid-1990s, six Australian universities taught Hindi. If La Trobe ends its program, Australia will be left with just one university (ANU in Canberra) that teaches Hindi.

This would be a significant setback for Hindi in Australia. The decision reflects a COVID-induced budget crunch at La Trobe, but also a long-term decline in the study of Asian languages in Australia.

Good relations with India are vital

Hindi’s decline may seem strange, since it’s the official language of India, with more than half-a-billion speakers. Australians have a growing interest in India and connections between Australian and Indian universities are increasing.

Read more: Hindi: India’s new English

Given the current tensions with China, Australia’s relationship with India – and other large Asian nations – has never been more important.

Even before the feud with China, the benefits of improving the Australia-India relationship were widely acknowledged. Australia and India have converging geostrategic interests. There is tremendous potential for mutual benefit by enhancing economic, social and cultural ties.

Here in Australia, the Indian diaspora is large, numbering around 660,000, and growing fast.

In the 2016 census, Hindi was among the fastest-growing languages in Australia. A closely related language, Punjabi, was the fastest-growing.

Community enthusiasm for Hindi is reflected in more than 2,400 community members signing a petition to save the La Trobe program.

Language helps bridge diplomatic gaps

In 2018, University of Queensland chancellor Peter Varghese, a former senior diplomat and public servant, released his government-commissioned India Economic Strategy to 2035. This report sought to guide Australia’s engagement with India for years to come.

Varghese noted Australia has struggled to match its enthusiasm for India with substantive engagement. Efforts to establish connections often fall short due to failures of mutual understanding.

The report argues “people-to-people” links between Australia and India will be as important as political linkages. They will help shape perceptions and foster mutual understanding in ways political delegations could never do.

Varghese was not alone. The Victoria government’s 2019 India Strategy made its first priority to “celebrate and strengthen our personal connections”.

Most recently, the 2020 joint statement on a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership between Australia and India, signed by their prime ministers, Scott Morrison and Narendra Modi, gives people-to-people connections a prominent place in “enriching all aspects of bilateral ties”.

Read more: Australia and India: some way to go yet

Government talk of “people-to-people connection” has not been followed up with support for this goal. In particular, support for language programs has languished.

Classes foster people-to-people connections

Language education cultivates people-to-people connections. These personal connections start from the very first day of a language class.

Hindi classrooms in Australia have immediate positive effects for Australian students and society. Students are immersed in a complex of perspectives that reflect life in all parts of South Asia and in global diaspora communities.

Hindi language teachers capitalise on the bicultural experiences of students with South Asian heritage. These students are already experts in negotiating a relationship between Indian and Australian cultures. These skills make our students the best ambassadors for Australia in the “nooks” of Indian life that evade official state actors.

Equal contributors to our classrooms are non-heritage students who enrol in tertiary-level Hindi courses because of their personal interest in South Asia. Together, heritage and non-heritage students negotiate learning Hindi and understanding Indian culture. They form lasting friendships that deepen the ways in which Australians of many different backgrounds understand each other.

Cultivating culturally literate Indian-Australian and non-Indian-Australian speakers of Hindi depends on providing a learning environment that is found only in university classrooms.

Read more: Get ready to learn Hindi: education in the Asian century

La Trobe’s proposal, by halving the national university-level Hindi teaching capacity, would also undermine our capacity for building human connections between India and Australia.

A blow to the local Hindi ecosystem

University-level Hindi programs form part of larger language ecosystems. They depend on thriving primary and high school programs. This ensures a supply of Hindi students and educators at all levels.

In Melbourne, a Hindi language ecosystem was just starting to take root. Two schools, Rangebrook Primary and The Grange College, now offer Hindi as their main language other than English. A number of energetic informal networks and societies focus on Hindi language and literature.

La Trobe’s Hindi conferences and events have been an important focal point for these groups over a number of years.

Read more: What languages should children be learning to get ahead?

The loss of the La Trobe program is thus not only a blow to students wishing to study Hindi at a university level, but also to this entire emerging Hindi language ecosystem.

While dynamic and engaging curriculums are needed to ensure sustainable Hindi programs at Australian universities, they are not enough on their own. There must also be sustained government support for establishing Hindi ecosystems in clusters around these universities.

One of us made this point in a co-authored policy brief published in 2018. It echoes commentary by others on the decline of Hindi education in Australia since the mid-1990s. Current events in Australia and in the Indo-Pacific should make it clear why we need to reverse this trend.

– ref. 6 unis had Hindi programs. Soon there could be only 1, and that’s not in Australia’s best interests – https://theconversation.com/6-unis-had-hindi-programs-soon-there-could-be-only-1-and-thats-not-in-australias-best-interests-151096

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amie O’Shea, Lecturer, Disability & Inclusion, Deakin University

Review: Thomas Banks’ Quest for Love, directed by Pip Kelly

In Thomas Banks’ Quest for Love, Banks — a writer and comedian with cerebral palsy — addresses the additional taboos experienced by people with disability with diverse sexual identities.

The son of sheep farmers in regional Victoria, Banks came out as gay to his parents aged 16 and made this film because he wanted “to make people understand what it’s like to have a disability, but also be gay too”.

Banks is not alone. In Australia’s largest national survey on the health and well-being of LGBTIQ people, more than a third of respondents identified as having a disability or a long-term health condition.

Many of Banks’ experiences shown in the film are echoed in my recent research with LGBTIQA+ people with disability in Victoria. They include having movements and mobility mistaken for drunkenness and managing disability disclosure in an online dating environment. Yet he remains determined.

Disability and sex

Sexuality is intrinsic to being human. Taboos around sexual identity and sexual expression form one of the barriers faced by people with disability. As disability advocate and writer Anne Finger has put it:

Sexuality is often the source of our deepest oppression; it is also often the source of our deepest pain. It’s easier for us to talk about — and formulate strategies for changing — discrimination in employment, education, and housing than to talk about our exclusion from sexuality and reproduction.

The current state of sex education and information provision for people with disability in Australia is deficient.

When available at all, it typically focuses on the “nuts and bolts” of sexuality without creating space for the nuance and exploration of the human experience.

The NDIS has led to a number of changes and improvements in the lives of people with disability in Australia, but the exclusion of sexuality continues.

In his own voice

Banks and I are both part of the Geelong LGBTIQ community. His part raunchy, part cheeky “oooh” is a kind of audible signature that alerts the room to his presence.

Although — or perhaps because — Banks has a speech impairment as a result of cerebral palsy, he is a master communicator. He capitalises on his diverse communication as an artistic strength. In the film, when he dials a wrong number, Banks patiently uses a variety of techniques to help the person on the call understand what he is saying. Eventually, he politely announces he will be hanging up.

So it’s rather jarring to hear voice-over actor Lachlan Tetloe-Stuart, who doesn’t have a speech impairment, read Banks’ first-person narration.

When Banks speaks on camera, his speech is subtitled because it can be difficult to understand. At other times, the use of the narrator is confusing. The audience misses the authenticity in Banks’ communication, and the opportunity to connect more directly with his experience. His story becomes mediated through another person.

The audience is presumed incapable of making the effort to read captions or invest effort in the act of listening.

Read more: In our own voices: 5 Australian books about living with disability

Unafraid to be seen

In earlier research, I spoke with a lesbian with intellectual disability who described a 2009 kiss between two female characters as “one of my favourite parts” of the TV soap Home and Away.

But a 2016 report from Screen Australia confirms the notable under-representation of LGBTQI characters (5%) and characters with an identifiable disability (4%). We clearly need to do better.

On the topic of inclusion and representation, Banks is not afraid to provoke. At one point he is seen interviewing guests at the Logie Awards red carpet, asking them why people with disability are not featured in mainstream Australian media — and certainly not allowed to be sexual.

When one celebrity humorously responds to his question by assuming he is straight, the point is neatly made that a non-normative sexual expression is inconceivable to many.

Twice in the film Banks is shown in a passionate kiss with another man. He makes visible that which is rarely seen: people with disability experiencing sexual pleasure.

Read more: Creating and being seen: new projects focus on the rights of artists with disabilities

In a magnificent demonstration of how strongly language can influence perceptions, Banks introduces us to his “personal assistant”. In choosing not to use the language of “carer” or “support worker”, Banks has positioned their relationship as one we associate with success, and away from ideas of “help”.

Thomas Banks’ Quest for Love speaks to the experiences of so many in the disability and LGBTIQ communities in the search for pride and self-acceptance in a world which seeks to diminish us.

He ends the film telling us:

I am me and I don’t give a shit about what people think about me. […] I know I will never become like you, but this is who I am.

Thomas Banks’ Quest for Love is out now on Stan.

– ref. Film review: Thomas Banks’ Quest for Love tackles life as a gay man with disability – https://theconversation.com/film-review-thomas-banks-quest-for-love-tackles-life-as-a-gay-man-with-disability-150060

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Chris Aulich, Adjunct Professor at the University of Canberra, University of Canberra

In recent days, the issue of government accountability was brought into sharp focus — again — when NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian admitted that community grants awarded primarily to councils in Coalition seats ahead of the 2019 state election was pork barrelling.

In defence, she said the practice of pork barrelling was “rightly or wrongly” normal and wasn’t illegal, and that governments of all colours engage in election spending in order “to curry favour” with the electorate.

When the premier of NSW uses as a standard of integrity that pork barrelling is “not against the law”, she shows contempt for democratic conventions and a U-turn from the views she expressed in February 2019 when introducing measures to strengthen integrity in government.

These measures included a revised code of conduct for ministers and a stern reminder to politicians that they “always remain accountable to the community”.

Ministers were once held to a higher standard

In the 1960s, the eminent scholar Roger Wettenhall argued ministers were accountable for all that occurred within their departments.

This was a recognition that even if ministerial action was not directly responsible for errors, ministers were nonetheless accountable for them. In the most serious cases, there was an expectation that ministers should resign, though in reality, few ever did.

Read more: As the government drags its heels, a better model for a federal integrity commission has emerged

Ministers are not just accountable for significant errors made within their departments, but also for behaviours deemed contrary to their ministerial code of conduct. Again, conventions hold that ministers should resign if their actions are deemed dishonest, were intended to mislead parliament or the public, or brought the government into disrepute.

Many ministers have resigned over improprieties in the past. For instance, Immigration Minister Mick Young stood aside over the “Paddington Bear” issue, Jim Cairns resigned over improperly seeking overseas loans, Jamie Briggs stepped down over his “personal behaviour” and Michael MacKellar resigned over importing a colour television.

How ministers today have dealt with scandal

But fast forward to today, and neither Richard Colbeck nor Stuart Robert have resigned over major blunders within their ministries related to aged care and the “robodebt” scandal, respectively.

This begs the question why Prime Minister Scott Morrison did not deem it sufficiently important to exact accountability from his ministers for their major mistakes, especially when these two cases cost more than a billion dollars of public funds.

It also remains unclear why minister Angus Taylor, who sent a letter to the lord mayor of Sydney making false accusations about the Sydney City Council’s travel expenses, was not asked to resign.

Similarly, the personal conduct of ministers Alan Tudge and Christian Porter has come under scrutiny thanks to an ABC Four Corners investigation, but has been dismissed by Morrison on the basis their alleged actions occurred during the watch of the previous prime minister.

And on numerous occasions, the travel allowances for ministers and MPs have been challenged, without serious repercussions. The current federal ministerial code of conduct spells out clearly that such indiscretions are not acceptable.

Read more: What’s in the ‘public interest’? Why the ABC is right to cover allegations of inappropriate ministerial conduct

This brings us back to the issue of pork barrelling. At the federal level, minister Bridget McKenzie did resign this year over the “sports rorts” affair. The code of conduct provides that ministers allocate the funds available to them in “the public interest”. McKenzie’s view that the public interest was the same as her party’s interest was unacceptable.

This scandal has parallels with an earlier “sports rorts affair” that cost Labor minister Ros Kelly her position in 1994, as well as with the current NSW local government grants scheme with its shredded papers.

Rather than accept their accountability like McKenzie and Kelly, Berejiklian is maintaining that pork barrelling is common practice — an opinion that might well be contested by parliament and the community.

Have politicians been emboldened by their COVID successes?

Why, then, are so many current politicians willing to dodge taking accountability for their actions? The easy answer is because they can.

After all, the government conventions around accountability have no legal force. They have merely been “honoured” by politicians as part of our democratic culture – as sociologist Edgar Schein suggests, it is “the way we do things around here”.

Read more: The long history of political corruption in NSW — and the downfall of MPs, ministers and premiers

It seems current politicians are re-setting this democratic culture and the conventions that go along with it. Modern politicians are now very savvy in managing the press, and deft at reframing issues to their advantage.

Berejiklian gave a master class in this when she was confronted with accusations of failing to disclose an intimate relationship with disgraced former MP Daryl Maguire.

She reframed the issue as a personal one, in which she had been swept along by a romantic attachment. She argues, probably correctly, that she did nothing that was illegal. However, her actions were highly questionable from an ethical point of view.

Perhaps our current federal and NSW leaders have been emboldened by their successes in responding to the pandemic and are counting on this to defuse criticisms of their actions. They likely believe that issues of accountability — at least in the public mind — might pale in relation to the “big” issues of bushfires and COVID-19.

As such, ignoring accountability is seen as merely a small peccadillo.

Independents may be the key

In the broader context, voters have shown they are more willing to elect local independents, such as Helen Haines, Rebekha Sharkie and Zali Steggall at the federal level and Roy Butler, Joe McGirr and Helen Dalton in NSW, who are not seen to be in the mould of other politicians.

There is clearly a move towards candidates who place a very high value on conventional values, such as representation and integrity. And it is these members who may act as circuit breakers to stop the further corrosion of democratic conventions in our governments.

Simon Longstaff, executive director of The Ethics Centre, summed this up well when he noted

we want politicians who see engagement in public life as a vocation and not just a game. We want politicians who will speak the truth – even when it harms them to do so. We want politicians who respect us as citizens and not just as voters.

If the major parties continue to ignore accountability, perhaps the election of independents and minor parties will provide the stimulus for truth to power.

– ref. Why can politicians so easily dodge accountability for their mistakes? The troubling answer: because they can – https://theconversation.com/why-can-politicians-so-easily-dodge-accountability-for-their-mistakes-the-troubling-answer-because-they-can-150839

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrea Mosler, Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, Sport and Exercise Medicine Research Centre, La Trobe University

Have you been hitting the gym again with COVID restrictions easing? Or getting back into running, cycling, or playing team sports?

As many of you might’ve experienced, the inevitable muscle soreness that comes after a break can be a tough barrier to overcome.

Here’s what causes this muscle soreness, and how best to manage it.

What is muscle soreness and why does it occur?

Some muscle soreness after a workout is normal. But it can be debilitating and deter you from further exercise. The scientific term used to describe these aches is delayed onset muscle soreness, or DOMS, which results from mechanical disruption of the muscle fibres, often called “microtears”.

This damage causes swelling and inflammation in the muscle fibres, and the release of substances that sensitise the nerves within the muscle, producing pain when the muscle contracts or is stretched.

This pain usually peaks 24-72 hours after exercise. The type of exercise that causes the most muscle soreness is “eccentric” exercise, which is where force is generated by the muscle as it lengthens — think about walking downhill or the lowering phase of a bicep curl.

There’s good news about this pain though. When the muscle cell recovers from this “microtrauma”, it gets stronger and can produce that force again without the same damage occurring. So although this strengthening process is initially painful, it’s essential for our body to adapt to our new training regime.

The inflammatory component of this process is necessary for the muscle tissue to strengthen and adapt, therefore the repeated use of anti-inflammatory medication to manage the associated pain could be detrimental to the training effect.

Will recovery gadgets put me out of my misery? Not necessarily

Before we even think about recovery from exercise, you first need to remember to start slow and progress gradually. The body adapts to physical load, so if this has been minimal during lockdown, your muscles, tendons and joints will need time to get used to resuming physical activity. And don’t forget to warm up by getting your heart rate up and the blood flowing to the muscles before every session, even if it’s a social game of touch footy!

Read more: Heading back to the gym? Here’s how to avoid injury after coronavirus isolation

Even if you do start slow, you may still suffer muscle soreness and you might want to know how to reduce it. There are heaps of new recovery gadgets and technologies these days that purport to help. But the jury is still out on some of these methods.

Some studies do show a benefit. There have been analyses and reviews on some of the more common recovery strategies including ice baths, massage, foam rollers and compression garments. These reviews tend to support their use as effective short-term post-exercise recovery strategies.

So, if you have the time or money — go for it! Make sure your ice baths are not too cold though, somewhere around 10-15℃ for ten minutes is probably about right.

And a word of caution on ice baths, don’t become too reliant on them in the long term, especially if you are a strength athlete. Emerging research has shown they may have a negative effect on your muscles, blunting some of the repair and rebuilding processes following resistance training.

But the efficacy of other recovery strategies remain unclear. Techniques like recovery boots or sleeves, float tanks and cryotherapy chambers are newer on the recovery scene. While there have been some promising findings, more studies are required before we can make an accurate judgement.

However, these recovery gadgets all seem to have one thing in common: they make you “feel” better. While the research doesn’t always show physical benefits for these techniques or gadgets, often using them will result in perceived lower levels of muscle soreness, pain and fatigue.

Is this just a placebo effect? Possibly, but the placebo effect is still a very powerful one — so if you believe a product will help you feel better, it probably will, on some level at least.

The ‘big rocks’ of recovery

Some of the above techniques could be classified as the “one-percenters” of recovery. But to properly recover, we need to focus on the “big rocks” of recovery. These include adequate sleep and optimal nutrition.

Sleep is one of the best recovery strategies we have, because this is when most of the muscle repair and recovery takes place. Ensuring a regular sleep routine and aiming for around eight hours of sleep per night is a good idea.

When it comes to nutrition, the exact strategy will vary from person to person and you should always seek out nutrition advice from a qualified professional, but remember the three R’s:

• refuel (replacing carbohydrates after exercise)

• rebuild (protein intake will aid in the muscle repair and rebuilding)

• rehydrate (keep your fluid intake up, especially in these summer months!).

Enjoy your newfound freedom when returning to sport and exercise, but remember to focus on a slow return, and to make sure you’re eating and sleeping healthily before spending your hard-earned cash on the hyped-up recovery tools you may see athletes using on instagram.

– ref. Feeling sore after exercise? Here’s what science suggests helps (and what doesn’t) – https://theconversation.com/feeling-sore-after-exercise-heres-what-science-suggests-helps-and-what-doesnt-150277

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Angela Spinney, Lecturer/Research Fellow in Housing and Urban Studies, Swinburne University of Technology

The stereotype of a homeless person – those living in tents or sleeping in parks or doorways – is just the visible tip of the much larger crisis of homelessness in Australia.

For every one of about 8,000 “rough sleepers” there about 14 others staying in temporary accommodation or with others in severely crowded dwellings. That’s a total of more than 116,000 homeless Australians, according to Australian Bureau of Statistics census data.

About 60% are under the age of 35, though the number of homeless aged 55 and older has been steadily increasing. About a quarter are women and children fleeing domestic violence.

The causes of homelessness are complex. The sterotype is that it involves mental illness and substance addiction. But the more common denominators are poverty, unemployment and a lack of affordable adequate housing.

Whatever the cause, research by myself and colleagues for the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute proposes a path forward to reduce, and even eliminate, homelessness in Australia.

To do so requires moving away from treating the problem in an uncoordinated manner at the point of crisis and investing in an integrated system that prioritises prevention, fast rehousing and an adequate supply of affordable long-term housing.

Read more: Homelessness soars in our biggest cities, driven by rising inequality since 2001

A historical legacy

Australia’s existing approach to dealing with homelessness is the legacy of a response originating in the 19th century, long before the advent of the modern welfare state, relying on charitable institutions to pick up the pieces of an economic system failing to care for the most vulnerable.

This has resulted in a somewhat chaotic system of small-scale and often disconnected services that are funded to only put a band-aid on the problem. It is mainly oriented towards crisis responses, with limited resources devoted to responding to homelessness once it has occurred, often only providing temporary relief from homelessness.

Federal, state and territory governments provide about A$250 million a year in funding to the 1,500 not-for-profit “specialist homelessness services” – organisations such as Launch Housing and Vincent Care – to provide support services and short-term accommodation in refuges, hostels, motels and caravan parks.

But this is insufficient to achieve the aim of even providing temporary accommodation to all those in need. Homeless services turn away almost 60% of those who ask for help. People instead have to rely on the kindness of family and friends, or sleep in their cars or on the street, while they wait to receive assistance. There is no statutory duty to provide assistance to homeless people in Australia.

The status quo is an expensive and unsatisfactory approach. We can do much better.

Read more: If we realised the true cost of homelessness, we’d fix it overnight

Housing comes first

An emerging trend internationally is to reorient homelessness service systems away from a largely crisis response and towards prevention and long-term solutions.

The key is a “Housing First” approach, investing resources into first getting people into long-term accommodation, and then providing support to address the reasons they found themselves homeless in the first place.

Once housing is secured, relevant support workers can then support clients with particular needs, from preparing for employment, drug and alcohol rehabilitation, negotiating the legal system arising from domestic and family violence, and psychiatric or psychological counselling.

Evidence to the superiority of the “Housing First” approach comes from Norway. Over the past 12 years the number of homeless Norwegians has fallen by more than 35%. This compares with Australia’s approach, which in the past 20 years has managed to only marginally reduce the number of rough sleepers while other categories of homelessness have continued to rise.

We need an integrated strategy

A clear deficiency in Australia’s approach to homelessness has been the lack of any integrated national strategy and leadership. This means funding arrangements in states and territories are piecemeal and inadequate.

The first step in moving to a “Housing First” approach is coordinated federal and state funding for an adequate supply of affordable and social housing.

As we outline in our new report Ending homelessness in Australia: A redesigned homelessness service system, an integrated national strategy would also include an enhanced role for universal welfare services such as primary health services, schools and colleges to assist people at risk of homelessness.

They would have a duty to prevent homelessness when possible, assisting clients to maintain their existing housing or to access new housing. Where this is not possible, they would refer clients to specialist housing services for assistance finding crisis accommodation, and then long-term housing.

In this system, providing crisis accommodation would be the solution of last resort.

That affordable housing is the first step in solving homelessness may seem startlingly obvious. But, counterintuitively, that’s not the premise of how the current system works.

Read more: Victoria’s $5.4bn Big Housing Build: it is big, but the social housing challenge is even bigger

We cannot stress enough how much an adequate planned supply of long-term affordable and social housing that is appropriate, secure and safe is vital to any successful attempt to end homelessness.

– ref. Eliminating most homelessness is achievable. It starts with prevention and ‘housing first’ – https://theconversation.com/eliminating-most-homelessness-is-achievable-it-starts-with-prevention-and-housing-first-151182

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Paterson, Professor of Earth Sciences, University of New England

Deep sea animals can be the stuff of nightmares.

Many inhabit the ocean’s twilight zone (down to 1,000 metres depth), where sunlight has virtually disappeared, and have adapted their vision to this dark alien world. Evolution gave them large, complex eyes to see in dim light — examples include the Vampire Squid, Sloane’s Viperfish, and various predatory crustaceans.

But how far back in prehistoric time do these scary, sharp-eyed creatures go?

Our study, published today in Science Advances, looked at radiodonts (meaning “radiating teeth”) — a type of ancient arthropod (animals with jointed legs but no backbone).

We found they developed sophisticated eyes more than 500 million years ago, and some were adapted to the dim light of deep water.

Our study provides new information about the evolution of the earliest marine animal ecosystems.

In particular, it supports the idea that vision played a crucial role during the Cambrian Explosion, a pivotal phase in history when most major animal groups (including the oldest fish) first appeared during a rapid burst of evolution.

Once complex visual systems arose, animals could better sense their surroundings. That may have fuelled an evolutionary arms race between predators and prey. Once established, vision became a driving force in evolution and helped shape the biodiversity and ecological interactions we see today.

Read more: Life quickly finds a way: the surprisingly swift end to evolution’s big bang

A brief guide to radiodonts

Radiodonts are weird animals. Now extinct, they once dominated the oceans, especially during the Cambrian Period (541 million to 485 million years ago).

Some of the first radiodont fossils discovered more than a century ago were isolated body parts, and initial attempts at reconstructions resulted in some “Frankenstein’s monsters”.

But over the past few decades many new discoveries — including whole radiodont bodies — have given a clearer picture of their anatomy, diversity and possible lifestyles. Nevertheless, complete radiodonts still look like something from science fiction!

There are many species of radiodonts and they share a similar body layout.

The head has a pair of large, segmented appendages for capturing prey, a circular mouth with serrated teeth, and a pair of eyes. The rest of the body looks rather like that of a squid.

It might sound like a chimera of different animal parts, but the jointed appendages and compound eyes allow us to classify radiodonts as arthropods, which include insects, spiders and crabs.

Over the past decade, new radiodont fossils have revealed a surprising variety of forms and enhanced our understanding of how they lived and especially how they fed.

One genus of radiodont, Anomalocaris, has long been considered an apex predator, akin to the modern great white shark. It had a large body, more than 50 centimetres long, and very strong, spiny head appendages it used for catching prey. It swam by undulating flaps on the sides of its body.

However, other radiodonts were gentle giants, such as the two-metre-long genus Aegirocassis, which used its appendages for filtering plankton.

All the better to see you with

Despite the recent surge in knowledge about these awesome arthropods, little was known about the optics of radiodont eyes. In 2011, we published two papers in the journal Nature on fossil compound eyes from the 513-million-year-old Emu Bay Shale on Kangaroo Island, South Australia.

The first paper documented isolated eye specimens (up to 1 cm in diameter) that could not then be assigned to a known arthropod species. The second paper reported the stalked eyes of Anomalocaris in spectacular detail.

Since then, we have amassed a much larger collection of eyes from the Emu Bay Shale, shedding new light on radiodont vision.

Importantly, our new study identifies the owner of the eyes from our first 2011 paper: ‘Anomalocaris’ briggsi — the inverted commas indicate that it represents a new genus yet to be formally named.

We discovered much larger specimens of these eyes (up to 4 cm in diameter). They possess a distinctive “acute zone” — enlarged lenses in the centre of the eye’s surface that enhance light capture and resolution.

Radiodont eyes are also extremely sensitive. A single eye of Anomalocaris aff. canadensis — “aff.” meaning “affinity”, as it is closely related to this Canadian species — with more than 24,000 lenses, is rivalled only by certain insects such as dragonflies. These make it a highly visual, shallow-water predator, capturing prey with appendages bearing barbed spines.

The large lenses of ‘Anomalocaris’ briggsi suggest it could see in very dim light at depth, similar to amphipod crustaceans, a type of prawn-like creature that exists today. The frilly spines on its appendages filtered plankton that it detected by looking upwards.

The compound eyes of the two radiodonts from the Emu Bay Shale are outliers among arthropods, living or extinct. Their sheer size places them among the largest arthropod eyes ever.

Read more: Final frontiers: the deep sea

– ref. Freaky ‘frankenprawns’: ancient deep sea monsters called radiodonts had incredible vision that likely drove an evolutionary arms race – https://theconversation.com/freaky-frankenprawns-ancient-deep-sea-monsters-called-radiodonts-had-incredible-vision-that-likely-drove-an-evolutionary-arms-race-146104

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Fabio A Capitanio, Lecturer in Geophysics, Monash University

Our planet is unique in the Solar system. It’s the only one with active plate tectonics, ocean basins, continents and, as far as we know, life. But Earth in its current form is 4.5 billion years in the making; it’s starkly different to what it was in a much earlier era.

Details about how, when and why the planet’s early history unfolded as it did have largely eluded scientists, mainly because of the sparsity of preserved rocks from this geological period.

Our research, published today in Nature, reveals Earth’s earliest continents were entities in flux. They disappeared and reappeared over 1.5 billion years before finally gaining form.

Early Earth: a strange new world

The first 1.5 billion years of Earth’s history were a tumultuous period that set the stage for the rest of the planet’s journey. Several key events took place, including the formation of the first continents, the emergence of land and the development of the early atmosphere and oceans.

All of these events were the result of the changing dynamics of Earth’s interior. They were also catalysts to the first appearances of primitive life.

The preserved record of Earth’s first 500 million years is limited to just a few tiny crystals of the mineral zircon. Over the next billion or so years, kilometre-long (and larger) fragments of rock were generated and preserved. These would go on to forge the cores of major continents.

Scientists know about the properties of rocks and the chemical reactions that must occur for their constituent minerals to be made. Based on this, we know early Earth boasted very high temperatures, hundreds of degrees hotter than today’s.

Read more: Earth’s rock-solid connections between Canada and Australia contain clues about the origin of life

An epic metamorphosis

Earth’s crust today is made of thick, buoyant continental crust that stands proud above the sea. Meanwhile, below the oceans are thin but dense oceanic crusts.

The planet is also broken into a series of plates that move around in a process called “continental drift”. In some places, these plates drift apart and in other they converge to form mighty mountains.

This dynamic movement of Earth’s tectonic plates is the mechanism by which heat from its interior is released into space. This results in volcanic activity focused mainly at the plate boundaries. A good example is the Ring of Fire — a path along the Pacific Ocean where volcanic eruptions and earthquakes are frequent.

To unravel the processes that operated on early Earth, we developed computer models to replicate its once much hotter conditions. These conditions were driven by large amounts of internal “primordial heat”. This is the heat left over from when Earth first formed.

Our modelling shows the release of primordial heat during Earth’s early stages (which was three to four times hotter than today’s) caused extensive melting in the upper mantle. This is the mostly solid region below the crust, between 10km and 100km deep.

This internal melting created magma which, through a plumbing system, was thrust out as lava onto the crust. The shallow mantle left behind, dry and rigid, became welded to the crust and formed the first continents.

The pulse of first life

Our research revealed a lag between the formation of Earth’s first crust and the development of the mantle keels at the base of the first continents.

The first formed crust, which was present between 4.5 billion and 4 billion years ago, was weak and prone to destruction. It progressively became stronger over the next billion years to form the core of modern continents.

This process was crucial to continents becoming stable. When magma was purged from Earth’s interior, rigid rafts formed in the mantle beneath the new crust, shielding it from further destruction.

Moreover, the rise of these rigid continents ultimately led to weathering and erosion, which is when rocks and minerals break down or dissolve over long periods to eventually be carried away and deposited as sediment.

Early erosion would have changed the composition of Earth’s atmosphere. It would have also provided nutrients to the oceans, seeding the development of life.

From our observations, we conclude the breaking of Earth’s early crust was necessary to make way for a sturdier replacement. And had this not happened, we would not have the continents, nor life, as we know it.

Read more: Magnetism of Himalayan rocks reveals the mountains’ complex tectonic history

– ref. The floor is lava: after 1.5 billion years in flux, here’s how a new, stronger crust set the stage for life on Earth – https://theconversation.com/the-floor-is-lava-after-1-5-billion-years-in-flux-heres-how-a-new-stronger-crust-set-the-stage-for-life-on-earth-151276

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peta-Anne Zimmerman, Senior Lecturer/Program Advisor Griffith Graduate Infection Prevention and Control Program, Griffith University

On Monday the Victorian government announced an overhaul of the state’s hotel quarantine program. The government has introduced a new oversight agency, COVID-19 Quarantine Victoria, and crafted a “reset” of rules and regulations in the hotel quarantine process.

This robust suite of interventions, based on nationwide experience, aims to prevent transmission of COVID-19 to the Victorian community primarily from returning international travellers who have a high risk of infection.

From an infection prevention and control standpoint, the new system definitely has some improvements. But there are still issues yet to be resolved, and some unknowns that haven’t been made clear to the public.

No more private security

One of the most obvious changes, and possibly the most controversial, is Victoria Police taking the lead on security and management. They will be assisted by the Australian Defence Force (ADF), in a bid to avoid a repeat of the previous program’s high-profile breaches.

Corrections Commissioner Emma Cassar will lead the new agency, and will report to police minister Lisa Neville, who will have overall responsibility for the new system.

But we are concerned this could be perceived to be an armed security detail, with a custodial approach rather than a public health focus. Experience has shown this can be detrimental. Gaining community trust, rather than appearing to take a punitive approach, is vital. Recent events in Adelaide highlight the crucial importance of people being able to cooperate with contact tracers without fear of the ramifications.

Infection control must be handled by experts

The government has repeatedly said the new system will have stronger infection prevention and control protocols, with rigorous training and evaluation. Failure to comply with infection prevention and control resulted in numerous incidences of transmission in hotel quarantine in the past.

Reinforcing these procedures can only be a good thing, as long as the expertise is sourced from recognised experts, and supported by advice from other specialities such as public health and occupational hygiene.

Read more: Aged-care facilities need accredited infection control experts. Who are they, and what will they do?

Staff ‘bubbles’ and daily testing

The new system will also feature “staff bubbles”. Having a group of staff who consistently work together on the same shifts, with no crossover with staff on other shifts, aims to minimise the number of people an infected person can be in contact with.

This approach has been used in a range of industries, and has been recommended by occupational hygiene experts throughout the COVID-19 response.

The addition of the current active simulation exercises, which stress-test Victoria’s strategy, can only be a positive.

Daily COVID testing of staff and weekly testing of their household contacts is another big change. Daily testing of staff has some merit, although the suggested changes and restrictions being placed on their household contacts such as increased testing and limitations on where they can work is concerning.

There are significant privacy concerns with the new “contact tracing in advance” system, which will identify staff and all their significant contacts, such as members of their households and other frequent contacts, in advance. These contacts will have to provide information on their places of work, schooling and so on. In the event a staff member contracts COVID, part of the legwork is already done.

But while undoubtedly useful for contact tracing, privacy breaches from government IT systems are not uncommon.

Also troubling is the suggestion that recruitment may exclude those with contacts who work in other high-risk industries, such as aged care. This measure could potentially put existing staff out of work. COVID-19 Quarantine Victoria suggests that other places to live may be found if workers live with an at-risk contact, which has human rights implications and doesn’t take into account family or carer responsibilities.

The hotel quarantine overhaul will also see staff exclusively employed or contracted by COVID-19 Quarantine Victoria, with cleaners and others only working at one site. This will mean more secure work for some, which is a positive, and may reduce the risk of transmission between workplaces. Indeed, insecure and casual employment has been a common theme in the spread of COVID-19.

But we don’t yet know exactly how this will work. For example, it’s not clear whether this also applies to the police, who may have casual jobs on the side.

Read more: Mapping COVID-19 spread in Melbourne shows link to job types and ability to stay home

Regional quarantine not necessarily better

Some experts have raised the possibility of having quarantine facilities in regional areas, to reduce the risk of breaches in dense urban areas.

The Northern Territory’s quarantine program for returned travellers at Howard Springs has shown that this approach can work, but there are potential issues.

Such a facility needs a sustainable workforce who aren’t travelling between locations. There is little point in moving quarantine outside of cities only to have the workforce commute from cities or elsewhere, with the associated transmission risks this brings.

Also, extensive health care would need to be provided for returned travellers. Returnees could have many chronic and acute health-care needs that may strain local health services. A proliferation of sites like Howard Springs would test the capabilities of AUSMAT (multi-disciplinary medical assistance teams deployed during crises) and the state and territory health services that support them, particularly as we head into the storm and bushfire season.

As with anything during COVID-19, only time will tell how successful this new strategy will be. The Victorian government is certainly showing a capacity for reflection, and a determination to do better. But there is only so much preparation we can do when facing the greatest variable and challenge in any outbreak response: human nature.

Read more: AUSMAT teams start work in aged care homes today. But what does this ‘SAS of the medical world’ actually do?

– ref. Victoria’s hotel quarantine overhaul is a step in the right direction, but issues remain – https://theconversation.com/victorias-hotel-quarantine-overhaul-is-a-step-in-the-right-direction-but-issues-remain-151101

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jon C. Day, PSM, Post-career PhD candidate, ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, James Cook University

The Great Barrier Reef is now in “critical” condition and the health of four other Australian World Heritage properties has worsened, according to a sobering report just released by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

The IUCN is the global authority on nature. Its third outlook report marks the first time the IUCN has declared an Australian property as critical, which means its values are severely threatened and deteriorating. The health of the Blue Mountains, Gondwana Rainforests, Shark Bay and the Ningaloo Coast has also been downgraded.

Read more: We just spent two weeks surveying the Great Barrier Reef. What we saw was an utter tragedy

The assessment, while chastening, is not surprising. The Great Barrier Reef has endured three mass coral bleaching events in five years, and last summer’s bushfires caused untold damage in the Blue Mountains and Gondwana Rainforests (not to mention the current fires at the reef’s Fraser Island).

Climate change remains the key issue for World Heritage places, not just in Australia but globally. In fact, the IUCN assessment found climate change threatens 11 of Australia’s 16 properties. This raises further questions over our national climate response.

World Heritage: the best of the best

The latest report builds on previous reports from 2014 and 2017, and shows the status and trends of World Heritage properties identified for their outstanding natural values. As the report states:

our ability to conserve these sites is thus a litmus test for the broader success of conservation worldwide.

To qualify for World Heritage listing for natural values, a place must meet one or more of four criteria: exceptional beauty, geology, ecological processes, and species and habitats.

Some properties are also recognised for cultural values and, if they have both, they’re referred to as “mixed”. Across the world there are 252 natural and mixed World Heritage properties, of which 16 are in Australia.

The IUCN is the official advisor on nature to UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee. The IUCN Outlook report involves assessments by hundreds of international experts, who examine the conservation prospects of all natural and mixed World Heritage properties. It focuses on their natural values, the threats to these values and the effectiveness of actions to protect them.

Threats to our iconic places

Climate change is now the most prevalent threat to natural World Heritage sites, and to many cultural sites.

Overall, the report assessed climate change as a high or a very high threat in 83 out of 252 global properties (33%). This rate is double in Australia, with climate change listed as a threat to 69% (11 of 16) of Australian properties.

And when considering the four natural criteria individually, climate change is the greatest threat to each. This is likely to get worse in future, as climate change is expected to affect more than three times the number of properties impacted by any other threat.

For many properties, the deteriorated conservation outlook is the result of accumulated threats. Impacts of climate change, like coral bleaching and bushfires, are often exacerbated by other threats. For example, the federal government’s 2019 Outlook Report for the Great Barrier Reef listed 45 threats including climate change. This included poor water quality from land-based runoff, coastal development and fishing.

At the time of writing, the website which provides the full rationale behind the IUCN outlook was not yet publicly available. However the threats facing the five downgraded Australian sites are well documented.

These include marine heatwaves, which lead to coral bleaching in the Great Barrier Reef and Ningaloo. In Shark Bay, marine heatwaves also cause seagrass — critical habitat for a vast diversity of species — to die-off. Poor water quality, such as from urban and agricultural run-off, is another big threat to the Great Barrier Reef.

Read more: ‘Bright white skeletons’: some Western Australian reefs have the lowest coral cover on record

More frequent and intense bushfires are a problem for the Blue Mountains, Shark Bay, and Gondwana Rainforests. These ancient rainforests, along with Ningaloo and Shark Bay, also face threats of invasive species, diseases and storms.

Punching below our weight

While there have been some successes globally, the threats facing our heritage places are escalating.

Since the 2017 assessment, of the 252 properties analysed globally, 16 (6%) have deteriorated and only eight (3%) showed improvement. Notably, Australia is punching below its weight, with 31% of properties having deteriorated (5 of 16) and zero with improvement.

Read more: Prepare for hotter days, says the State of the Climate 2020 report for Australia

All of Australia’s World Heritage properties are recognised as having “highly effective” or “mostly effective” protection and management activities.

But the deterioration of the Great Barrier Reef, the Blue Mountains, Gondwana Rainforests, Shark Bay and Ningaloo Coast casts doubt on whether these actions are an effective response to threats, especially climate change.

Australia’s climate response has been widely criticised, most recently by Christiana Figueres, the former chief of the UN Climate Framework. In a keynote to open the Australian Emissions Reductions Summit yesterday, Figueres said:

I have been pretty vocal about my frustration for so many years of the completely unstable, volatile, unpredictable stand and position on climate change in Australia.

“Meeting and beating” Australia’s 2030 emissions targets has been the Morrison government’s catch-cry. But the target lacks ambition and the government hasn’t ruled out using Kyoto carry-over credits to help meet it. The government has also refused to commit to a target of net-zero emissions by mid century, in contrast to the policies of many of our international peers.

Management of non-climate stressors is, and will remain, essential to halt the decline of the values of our properties. But Australia must adopt more ambitious climate goals to avoid losing those values that make our heritage places special, preserving them for future generations.

Read more: NSW has joined China, South Korea and Japan as climate leaders. Now it’s time for the rest of Australia to follow

– ref. ‘Severely threatened and deteriorating’: global authority on nature lists the Great Barrier Reef as critical – https://theconversation.com/severely-threatened-and-deteriorating-global-authority-on-nature-lists-the-great-barrier-reef-as-critical-151275

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tim Baxter, Fellow – Melbourne Law School; Senior Researcher – Climate Council; Associate – Australian-German Climate and Energy College, University of Melbourne

Australia’s latest emissions data, released this week, contained one particularly startling, and unjustifiable, fact. Against all odds, in a year when emissions fell in almost every sector, Australia’s export gas industry still managed to do more climate damage.

A new Climate Council report released today, to which I contributed, sheds more light on the problem of Australia’s expanding gas industry.

It reveals in alarming detail how gas emissions are cancelling out the gains won by Australia’s renewables boom. It also shows how gas emissions are almost certainly under-reported, and uncovers the misleading claims underpinning the Morrison government’s gas-led economic recovery.

This is clearly an unsustainable state of affairs. Australia has this year been in the grip of a climate crisis: unprecedented drought, the Black Summer bushfires and another mass bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef. The gas industry escalates this risk and puts more Australians in harm’s way.

Gas: bucking the trend

As is now well known, COVID-19 restrictions helped trigger a fall in carbon dioxide emissions globally.

In Australia, emissions from transport dropped by 24% compared with April–June last year, as people stayed out of cars and planes.

Emissions from electricity dropped by around 5% in the quarter, compared with the corresponding quarter last year. This was mostly due to continued wind and solar expansion; demand for electricity dropped only marginally.

Overall, industrial demand for electricity was roughly the same as last year. Meanwhile, although office blocks and shopping centres were shuttered, power was needed in the domestic sector to heat homes and charge iPads for homeschooling.

Overall, almost every sector, including gas, also produced fewer emissions in the June quarter than in the same period the year before. Across the economy, emissions for the quarter were 7% lower than the same period last year. This result is represented in the graph below.

While emissions from the gas sector declined in the lockdown months, the sector’s poor emissions performance over the full 12 months to June meant it managed to increase its emissions over the year – one of the few sectors to do so.

How did gas get this bad?

Australia became the world’s largest exporter of liquefied gas in 2019. Our report shows almost three-quarters of gas extracted in Australia in 2019 was compressed and processed to send overseas, as shown below.

Remarkably, on top of this, in 2019 the Australian gas export industry was itself the second-largest user of gas in Australia for the first time. More than a quarter of gas consumed in Australia was used to liquefy and chill gas for export overseas.

So the Australian gas export industry uses or exports nearly 80% of the gas it extracts each year – four times the amount needed to service the country’s own needs. Clearly claims of a shortfall in domestic gas supplies, such as those used to justify the recent Narrabri Gas Project approval, are bogus.

A worse problem than we thought

The reports shows rising gas emissions are cancelling out gains made by Australia’s record build of solar and wind generation capacity. Between 2005 and 2018, emissions from the electricity sector fell by 15 million tonnes per year. Emissions from the gas sector increased by 25 million tonnes per year in the same period.

Our report also highlights serious problems with official estimates of gas emissions along the supply chain. These estimates are based on decades-old research designed for the US gas industry.

Read more: Climate explained: methane is short-lived in the atmosphere but leaves long-term damage

Australia is also underestimating the harm caused by gas emissions. Methods used by the federal government to quantify the relative impact of methane are incomplete and ignore recent scientific advances. If methane’s effect was considered completely, this would further increase the assessed impact of the gas industry on Australia’s emissions.

Underpinning all this, the international gas market is in crisis as a result of a global oversupply. The drastic increase in Australia’s gas exports in recent years has left us dangerously exposed to international boom-and-bust market cycles, and subsequent job losses and power price volatility.

Most of Australia’s gas is expensive to produce compared to international competitors. The centrepiece of the federal government’s gas-led recovery, a stretch goal of A$4 per gigajoule for gas, has been described by the extraction industry’s own lobbyists as a “myth”. And several Australian export plants were recently declared by banking giant HSBC as “at risk”.

Seizing the opportunity

Fossil fuel extraction and consumption in Australia makes up 80% of our annual emissions. But as the Climate Council report shows, this figure is likely a gross underestimate. And of course, it does not account for the additional emissions produced when Australia’s gas exports are burned overseas.

COVID created a temporary blip in global emissions. If we don’t use it as an opportunity to consider a planet without coal, oil and gas consumption, the climate gains will amount to nothing.

– ref. ‘Unjustifiable’: new report shows how the nation’s gas expansion puts Australians in harm’s way – https://theconversation.com/unjustifiable-new-report-shows-how-the-nations-gas-expansion-puts-australians-in-harms-way-151199

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Christopher Ziguras, Professor of Global Studies, RMIT University

The arrival at Darwin airport on Monday of 63 students from China, Hong Kong, Japan, Vietnam and Indonesia on a charter flight from Singapore ended an eight-month hiatus in international student arrivals in Australia. They are now in the Howard Springs quarantine facility.

Read more: 5 ways Australia can get ahead in attracting and retaining Chinese international students

Quarantine capacity is a major issue, given the numbers of international students. Using student accommodation to quarantine newly arrived students is a way to increase this capacity. Our research, released today, shows this could be important for solving the quarantine issue.

But shouldn’t Australians get priority?

Over the years we have become accustomed to hundreds of thousands of young learners crossing our borders. In airport arrival halls incoming international students rubbed shoulders with Australian students returning from exchanges, study tours and internships. In departure lounges departing international students, with perhaps some hints of an Australian twang in their accents, mingled with Australian students setting off on their big adventures.

Despite student mobility being a normal feature of modern Australia, it was inevitable “Australians first” critics would deride the arrivals. Tasmanian Senator Jacquie Lambie said she found the student quarantine program “sickening”.

The Department of Home Affairs said the students arriving in Darwin were in addition to the government’s returning passenger caps. And that is the way it should be. Just as international students do not displace any local students from university places, it is important their arrival does not delay the return of Australian citizens and permanent residents.

All Australian states are considering plans to create secure corridors for students to return for the 2021 academic year. Universities, schools and colleges across the country are planning for their return, albeit with some online learning continuing to allow for social distancing on campus. The Commonwealth has sadly remained lukewarm on the states’ proposals to date.

Read more: COVID to halve international student numbers in Australia by mid-2021 – it’s not just unis that will feel their loss

Student housing provides an answer

The investment in purpose-built student accommodation over the past decade has been enormous.

Our research identified nearly 67,000 beds in this form of accommodation in Australia’s capital city CBDs alone. The Student Accommodation Association estimates there are over 95,000 beds Australia-wide. Major developments are due to open soon that will swell those numbers.

As well as dramatic increases in scale, the character of this purpose-built accommodation has changed significantly. Older student dormitories are relatively small and closely affiliated with universities, religious orders and other not-for-profit organisations. The newer commercial developments are large-scale properties, usually in city centres.

According to City of Melbourne data, between 2011 and 2018 the average height of purpose-built student accommodation increased from five storeys to 24. The average number of beds increased from 82 to 579! The largest planning application for a new property in Melbourne comprised 901 beds across 49 storeys, while the tallest building is 63 storeys with 740 beds.

A large proportion of these beds are now sitting empty. These facilities provide an ideal means for developing parallel pathways for these students to return to Australia without using existing channels for repatriating Australians. Whole buildings with hundreds of beds could easily be dedicated to housing the international students waiting to begin or resume their studies here.

How would student quarantine work?

The design of these buildings varies considerably. Authorities would be able to choose from many different bedroom and communal space configurations.

At first, it is likely quarantine authorities will want students to be kept in isolation for 14 days, so student apartments with their own kitchenettes and bathrooms are likely to be chosen. Over time, as confidence builds and systems to manage risks are refined, small clusters may be possible, using buildings in which several rooms share a kitchen and living space.

In either model, student accommodation properties are better suited to quarantine than hotels. They already provide pastoral care, security and staff attuned to the needs of newly arrived young people as a matter of course.

They should have no trouble implementing rigorous quarantine requirements to ensure no further outbreaks are caused by contagion through support staff, as has occurred in other contexts in Melbourne and Adelaide. Staff would have minimal contact with student residents. Meals could be left at the door, and rubbish collected at the door.

Staff and education providers could deliver support services by phone and video. Many universities are already providing daily exercise classes and arranging virtual meet-ups. These programs could easily be tailored to students in quarantine.

We have learned much this year about how to reduce the risk of transmission from incoming travellers. We know contact between quarantine workers and the broader community poses a serious risk. Thus, most staff working in student quarantine facilities would likely live on site. The scale of the newer properties makes this easy to implement.

Risks can be further reduced by arranging direct flights from a city with few cases to an Australian city where the students are transported directly to one facility, thereby avoiding flight transfers in busy hub airports. Testing would be required prior to departure and again before leaving quarantine. Staff would be tested regularly.

Students and education providers cover costs

These arrangements need place no burden on the Australian community. The Darwin model, in which students pay for their flights and the university covers quarantine costs, seems like a reasonable split.

Read more: Australian universities could lose $19 billion in the next 3 years. Our economy will suffer with them

Curiously, Charles Darwin University was not the first Australian university to organise charter flights and dedicated quarantine arrangements for students. In September, RMIT chartered a flight from Melbourne to Vietnam to return 270 people, including many students from RMIT’s Vietnam campus who had been on exchange in Melbourne when the virus hit, as well as RMIT staff and business partners. A second RMIT charter flight from Melbourne landed in Da Nang on November 28.

Australia’s international education sector has the capacity to manage such logistics. Our universities have extensive experience in moving tens of thousands of students around the world every year. Our accommodation providers have huge capacity in new facilities specifically designed for students.

Expanding parallel pathways for students to return to Australia need not interfere at all with the return of Australians.

– ref. How unis can use student housing to solve international student quarantine issues – https://theconversation.com/how-unis-can-use-student-housing-to-solve-international-student-quarantine-issues-150180

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rebecca Clements, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning, University of Sydney

Many Australian cities have fallen back on offering free car parking to attract visitors back to the CBD after the pandemic. In contrast, cities around the world are basing their recovery strategies on bold and evidence-based urban transformations.

Read more: How COVID all but killed the Australian CBD

In August, Adelaide City councillors voted for incentives for people to drive and park within the CBD, including a controversial “driver’s month” promotion. In Perth, free parking in the CBD during the holidays is expected to cost A$700,000.

In Victoria, the state hit hardest by the pandemic, the City of Geelong has announced a range of free CBD parking policies estimated to cost several million dollars. Melbourne City Council has endorsed free on-street parking via a voucher system estimated to cost $1.6 million in lost revenue. It’s also seeking to reduce the state-based congestion levy on off-street parking by 25%.

The move to increase car traffic into the central city is perhaps most surprising in the case of Melbourne. Planners have called it a “1960s solution” and a “lost opportunity”. Free parking and other incentives for car travel are at odds with the city’s recent Transport Strategy 2030, which seeks to prioritise walking, cycling and public transport.

Parking incentives don’t work

These car-led approaches to a hoped-for economic recovery were rushed out ahead of new evidence and modelling. This approach also goes against decades of available evidence on the detrimental impacts of conventional urban parking policies in Australia and internationally.

Free parking – pursued and mandated in many cities since the mid-20th century – has a nasty habit of building in unnecessary car use through narrowly targeted subsidies to car users, which directly undermine other transport modes. Parking researcher Liz Taylor recently explained the historical myths and troubled relationships between retail and parking we risk perpetuating.

Read more: The elephant in the planning scheme: how cities still work around the dominance of parking space

COVID has changed cities, and we must adjust

Cheap parking has poor prospects for attracting enough visitors to offset the changes the pandemic has brought to Australian CBDs. CBDs rely heavily on daily office workers – who are now largely working from home – and on large residential populations, including international students and tourists to whom borders are now closed.

In Melbourne, daily journeys into the city are down 90%. Only 8% of office towers are occupied.

Even so, car traffic is now at roughly 90% of its pre-COVID levels. Cars are already back, but that does not translate to people in CBDs – and road capacity means the city can’t manage many more cars.

Similarly, Australian CBD retail landscapes have been drastically altered. Experts predict many lasting changes, including retail “localism” in the suburbs.

Read more: The suburbs are the future of post-COVID retail

Parking hasn’t played any role in these changes. Instead, major economic shifts and political decisions have forced and enabled changes in work and lifestyle.

Many CBD workers simply won’t have to come back. CBDs previously didn’t need to be pleasant to be full of people – many were forced to be there. That has changed, and so the city must change too – from a destination of default to a destination of choice.

The adjustment can create better cities

Encouraging cars back into the hearts of cities isn’t just a bad recovery strategy. It could be a huge missed opportunity to create more attractive, high-amenity cities.

Around the world, many cities are welcoming the chance to use parking and streets differently, farewelling the daily car commute to embrace something better.

In Paris, Mayor Anne Hidalgo’s visionary “15-minute city” plan aims to replace 60,000 surface parking spaces with green pedestrianised streets, safe dedicated cycling networks and “children streets” near schools. The plan actively turns away from car dominance.

Barcelona’s mayor has announced a massive green revamp of the central city. Its already successful Superblock model, based on large-scale pedestrianisation, will be super-sized. Intersections and parking are being turned into parks and plazas.

Read more: Superblocks are transforming Barcelona. They might work in Australian cities too

London is creating hundreds of low-traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs), as is car-dependent Brussels. LTNs are based on transforming streets with quality cycling and pedestrian infrastructure, closing some streets to car traffic and otherwise instituting low speeds. Oslo’s “Vision Zero” strategy demonstrates the power of these measures to transform cities.

As these cities are finding, street reclamation projects can succeed quickly, and local businesses and neighbourhoods of all income levels benefit. However, leaders need to “hold their nerve” through the complex period of change.

New ways of seeing cities

Australian cities are changing with COVID too. Melbourne in particular has been forced to radically rethink streets as public space at a metropolitan scale. Through innovative co-operation between retailers and local councils, hundreds of parklets have emerged across the city.

These spaces offer sensible, creative and exciting ways for people to re-embrace dining out after lockdown. The enthusiastic reception is already causing many retailers to forget about parking and call for permanent changes.

The City of Melbourne has issued 1,300 outdoor dining permits and transformed 200 on-street parking spaces. This raises the the question of whether free parking is the best use of its precious public space and funds.

While systematic study of parking is often scarce, far stronger evidence supports the economic value of space for active transport, green space and outdoor dining. Our future cities can be places where people “will see the street belongs to them”.

Street space can feel like the exclusive (and hostile) realm of cars, but it is simply public land that is currently (mis)allocated to cars. Perceptions are beginning to change, allowing city residents to reimagine what streets might offer beyond moving and storing cars.

The race is on to invite people back to our cities. But a return to streets full of cars, narrow sidewalks crowded with pedestrians, and parking problems that never go away simply isn’t much of an invitation.

When urbanist Brent Toderian asked people to post photos showing #TheBeautyofCities, the hundreds of submissions featured green streets full of people walking, cycling and having fun, not car parking and traffic.

– ref. Why Australian cities need post-COVID vision, not free parking – https://theconversation.com/why-australian-cities-need-post-covid-vision-not-free-parking-150380

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jessica White, UQ Amplify Associate Lecturer, The University of Queensland

Fiction and non-fiction works about disability and Deafness are often hampered by stereotypical representations. A disability is frequently presented as something to “overcome”, or used to characterise someone (ever notice all those evil characters portrayed as disfigured?).

These representations obscure the joys, frustrations and creativity of living with disability and Deafness.

Dutch author Corinne Duyvis started the #OwnVoices movement on Twitter because she was frustrated that calls for diversity within the publishing industry did not extend to diverse authors. Originating in discussions of young adult fiction, #OwnVoices aims to highlight books written by authors who share a marginalised identity with the protagonist.

Life writing also provides firsthand accounts of disability and Deafness, showing what it is like to navigate a world designed for able-bodied people. In addition, these books help people with disability and Deafness learn more about their condition, and create community.

Australia has an established literary tradition of writing about disability. Here are five books by Australian disabled writers that reveal insights into their lives and conditions.

Read more: Creating and being seen: new projects focus on the rights of artists with disabilities

1. Alan Marshall’s Hammers Over the Anvil (1975)

Many readers will be familiar with Marshall’s I Can Jump Puddles (1955), the first book in his series about growing up and living with polio in rural Australia.

Where that book is a cheerful and somewhat sanitised account of living with a disability, Hammers Over the Anvil (1975), the fourth and final book in Marshall’s series, is more realistic.

Marshall’s publisher refused to publish the book, thinking it would tarnish his image. Despite — or perhaps because of — his brutal treatment, Marshall shows a keen sympathy for disenfranchised people and also for animals.

2. Donna Williams’ Nobody Nowhere: The Extraordinary Autobiography of an Autistic Girl (1991)

Donna Williams was not diagnosed with autism until she was an adult; prior to that she was thought to be deaf and psychotic.

Her story begins at age three and is thick with sensory details, which both delight and overwhelm Williams. She recounts interactions with hostile people — including her own mother, who wanted to admit Williams to an institution.

This book was the first full-length, published account by a person with autism in Australia. It became an international bestseller, spending 15 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, and was translated into 20 languages.

3. Gayle Kennedy’s Me, Antman & Fleabag (2007)

In this book, Gayle Kennedy, of the Wongaibon people of south west New South Wales, uses a series of engaging vignettes to describe her life as a First Nations woman who had polio.

Kennedy was sent away for treatment. When she returned, her parents seemed like strangers; it took a while to readjust. Though the subject matter sounds heavy, this humorous and accessible work is rich with stories about the importance of family (including dogs!) and the impact of racism.

It is also an important book because it chronicles some of the experiences of First Nations people with disability. It won the David Unaipon award in 2006.

4. Andy Jackson’s Music Our Bodies Can’t Hold (2017)

Poet Andy Jackson, who has a condition called Marfan Syndrome that affects the body’s connective tissue, began performing poetry to give himself more control over representations of his body.

His collection consists of biographical poems of people with Marfan Syndrome, some of whom he interviewed, and historical figures who are thought to have had the condition, including Abraham Lincoln, the ancient Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten, Mary Queen of Scots, composer Sergei Rachmaninoff and blues guitarist Robert Johnson.

Poetry, with its focus on voice, is strongly connected to the way that bodies express themselves, often in unique ways. As Jackson writes at the end of his poem Jess:

now look at this photo and tell me

you still want sameness.

5. Carly Findlay (ed), Growing Up Disabled in Australia, 2021

The final book on my list is one I haven’t read yet – but I cannot wait until I can. Edited by Carly Findley, who has ichthyosis, this collection to be released early next year, will highlight the range of childhoods experienced by people with disability in Australia.

We will be able to read about how young people manage ableism and the (sometimes) soreness of not fitting in, and interviews with prominent Australians such as Senator Jordon Steele-John and Paralympian Isis Holt.

I lost most of my hearing when I was four, and when I was growing up I didn’t read a single book that featured a character who was Deaf. Books like Growing Up Disabled will help young Deaf and disabled people recognise themselves in Australian literature.

Read more: The Shadow Whose Prey the Hunter Becomes review: Back to Back Theatre’s exciting reframing of disability

In my own hybrid memoir, Hearing Maud, I weave together my experiences of Deafness with those of Maud Praed, the Deaf daughter of 19th century expatriate Australian novelist Rosa Praed.

Maud and I were born 100 years apart, and although our lives went in radically different directions many of our circumstances are the same — especially the expectation that we conform to a hearing world. My disability is often invisible, and I wanted to explain the relentless and exhausting attention that is needed for me to function. Deafness is far more complex than simply not hearing.

There are thousands more examples of the ways authors can write about living with disability. The International Day of People with Disability is a great time to start reading.

Read more: On screen and on stage, disability continues to be depicted in outdated, cliched ways

– ref. In our own voices: 5 Australian books about living with disability – https://theconversation.com/in-our-own-voices-5-australian-books-about-living-with-disability-150543

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

It’d be wrong to say that we are out of recession, although that’s how the graph of Wednesday’s GDP numbers makes it look.

Gross domestic product (the measure of everything produced and earned and spent) fell 7% between the March and June quarters after slipping 0.3% between the December and March quarters, and then rebounded 3.3% between the June and September quarters.

It was the biggest bounce since 1976, after the biggest fall on record.

Quarterly percentage change in gross domestic product

But it hasn’t anything like got us back to where we were.

When the levels rather than the changes in GDP are graphed, it is clear that, as Treasurer Josh Frydenberg put it, we have “a lot of ground to make up”.

Quarterly real gross domestic product

At first sight the graph of quarterly gross domestic product looks odd. Surely if GDP fell 7% and then rebounded by half that much it should have got back half its losses.

But 3.3% of a small number is much less than 7% of a bigger number. We’ve regained only two fifths of what we lost.

Read more: 6 things to watch for as Australia crawls out of recession

And we’ve lost more than that. Had the economy grown as the Reserve Bank forecast before the coronavirus crisis, we would have spent and earned A$509 billion in the September quarter instead of $476 billion.

It’s consumer spending that’s bounced

What drove the bounce was a rebound in consumer spending after months in which we were confined to quarters, and here the news is better than it seems.

Quarterly change in household final consumption expenditure

Nationwide, household spending jumped 7.9% after falling 12.5%, but excluding locked-down Victoria (which will have its own delayed bounceback) household spending in the rest of the country rebounded 11% after falling 12%.

And it bounced back in exactly the places it collapsed while we were locked down; in services such as tourism and hospitality.

Household spending by category

Victoria’s economy literally went backwards.

Spending in Victoria continued to fall while spending everywhere else bounced back.

In only one category, home alcohol consumption, did spending in Victoria advance while spending in other places retreated.

State and territory final demand, September quarter

Consumers financed the extra spending by saving less, but even so, Australia’s household saving ratio remained alarmingly high.

In the June quarter Australian households saved a record (upwardly revised) 22.1% of what they earned. In the September quarter that fell to 18.9%, which is still far too high.

In good times, less-worried Australians save less than half that.

Household saving ratio

Frydenberg put the best spin he could on the extraordinarily high amount of saving by saying it would provide “ongoing support for the economic recovery in the new year as confidence continues to build”.

Australia was as well positioned to recover as “any nation on earth”. Over the past year its economy has contracted less than Britain, France, Germany and Japan.

Exports, business investment continue to fall

Much of that success is due to Australia’s achievement in getting on top of the virus and the success of JobKeeper in keeping Australians in work until conditions improved. The Reserve Bank believes it saved 700,000 jobs.

Working against that has been the forth consecutive quarterly fall in export income (something set to worsen unless relations with China improve) and the sixth consecutive fall in business investment.

In a quarter when consumer spending recovered, non-mining business investment fell a further 3% on top of a fall of 8.6% in the previous quarter.

The US National Bureau of Economic Research defines a recession as

a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in real GDP, real income, employment, industrial production and wholesale-retail sales

On that basis Australia is still in one. Employment, income and production remain well down on where it was a year ago. GDP is down 3.8% on where it was a year ago.

Speaking as the national accounts were being released, Reserve Bank Governor Philip Lowe said he expected Australia’s unemployment rate to remain above 6% for the next two years.

Annual wage growth would remain less than 2%

It was possible the economy could do better.

His forecasts assume no widespread vaccination against coronavirus until late next year. They also assume international travel restrictions until 2022.

But it was also possible things could be worse.

Just three months ago that many were hailing a robust bounce-back in Europe.

Now, Europe’s economy is expected to sink again in the December quarter as member states struggle to contain the virus.

Australia was on a different path, but there was “no guarantee we will remain so”.

– ref. It isn’t right to say we are out of recession, as these six graphs demonstrate – https://theconversation.com/it-isnt-right-to-say-we-are-out-of-recession-as-these-six-graphs-demonstrate-151210

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jane Chalmers, Senior Lecturer in Pain Sciences, University of South Australia

Cardi B’s song WAP and the Netflix show Sex Education place female orgasms on centre stage in popular culture.

But female orgasms are also the subject of serious academic research.

Here’s a snapshot of what research tells us about female orgasms, what we don’t know, and what researchers want to find out.

Read more: From reproducers to ‘flutters’ to ‘sluts’: tracing attitudes to women’s pleasure in Australia

1. When women orgasm, what actually happens?

When women orgasm, their pelvic floor muscles contract rhythmically and involuntarily. These contractions are thought to help move blood out of erect tissues of the clitoris and vulva, allowing them to return to their usual flaccid (floppy) state.

During sexual arousal and orgasm, women’s heart rate, respiration rate and blood pressure also rise.

Read more: ‘Is it normal for girls to masturbate?’

Levels of oxytocin, known as the “love hormone”, increase during sexual arousal and are thought to peak during orgasm.

The areas of the brain associated with dopamine, the “happy hormone”, are activated in men and women.

And in women, other areas of the brain are activated further during sexual arousal and peak with orgasm. These include those associated with emotions, the integration of sensory information and emotions, higher-level thinking, and motor areas associated with pelvic floor muscles.

The “right angular gyrus” part of the brain may also be linked with an altered state of consciousness some women say they experience when they orgasm.

Read more: Health Check: does the ‘G-spot’ exist?

What is trickier to determine is how the body and brain relate. We know the frequency and intensity of female orgasms depends on a range of complex psychosocial factors, including a woman’s sexual desires, self-esteem, openness of sexual communication with their partner, and general mental health.

2. Not all women orgasm. Is that a problem?

Orgasms are not a big deal for all women, and that’s completely normal.

And 21% of Australian women aged 20-64 say they cannot climax. From a simplistic biological viewpoint, anorgasmia (the inability to orgasm despite adequate sexual stimulation) is also not a problem. However, women with anorgasmia often report shame, inadequacy, anxiety, distress and detachment surrounding intercourse and orgasm.

These negative emotions might be related to the long history of suppression, and now celebration, of women’s sexual pleasure.

For many women, orgasms represent empowerment. Understandably, then, anorgasmia can leave women feeling as though there is something wrong with them. Some might fake orgasm, which around two-thirds report doing. This is usually to make them feel better about themselves, or to make their partners feel better.

More than 80% of women won’t orgasm from vaginal stimulation alone. So if anorgasmia is a problem, trying different types of stimulation might help, particularly clitoral stimulation.

When anorgasmia leads to negative feelings or gets in the way of forming or sustaining healthy sexual relationships, it becomes a problem. But certain websites, “sextech” (technology that aims to enhance female sexual experiences), and dedicated health professionals can help.

3. Can you over-orgasm?

No! While a survey run by an online dating site suggests 77% of women have had multiple orgasms, academic research suggests the figure is much lower, at around 14%.

Some women who have multiple orgasms report their second orgasm as the strongest, but ones after that become less intense.

Just make sure you have enough lubrication to last the distance, as prolonged stimulation without sufficient lubrication can lead to pain.

Around 50% of women in one study said they use vibrators to reach orgasm (or multiple orgasms). Some people say vibrators can decrease the sensitivity of the clitoris, making it harder for women to orgasm through clitoral stimulation that doesn’t involve vibration. However, most research finds any desensitisation is mild and transitory.

4. What use is it anyway?

Evolutionists tend to take three views on why the female orgasm has evolved: to increase the success of reproduction; to enhance pair-bonding between women and their sexual partner; or the one I consider the most likely, is that women’s orgasms do not serve any evolutionary purpose at all. They are simply a by-product of evolution, existing because the male and female genitals develop in a similar way as embryos, and only begin to differentiate at about six weeks’ gestation.

Just because women’s orgasms do not serve an evolutionary purpose, that doesn’t mean they aren’t important. Women’s orgasms are important because for many women, they contribute to healthy relationships and their sexual well-being.

Read more: Oh, oh, oh! The clitoris certainly gives pleasure. But does it also help women conceive?

What’s left to find out?

For a long time, we’ve assumed details about the female orgasm based on its male counterpart. And it’s only since 2011 that we’ve been able to map what happens in women’s brains during sexual stimulation. So there’s plenty about the female brain during orgasm we haven’t yet explored.

We’ve only recently learned about the true size and function of the clitoris. We’re also still debating whether the G-spot exists.

Women’s sexuality, desires, likes and dislikes are also incredibly varied. And in this article, we’ve only talked about, and included research with, cis-gendered females, people whose gender identity and expression matches the sex they were assigned at birth.

So we also need more research with gender-diverse people to better understand the complexity and diversity of orgasm and sexuality.

Whether science can explain all these differences in the complexity of the human being remains to be seen.

– ref. 4 things about female orgasms researchers actually study – https://theconversation.com/4-things-about-female-orgasms-researchers-actually-study-151015

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard Bryant, Professor & Director of Traumatic Stress Clinic, UNSW

A film being made about the 1996 Port Arthur massacre, which claimed 35 lives, has been criticised by Tasmanian politicians, survivors of the mass shooting, the local community and police.

The film, to air next year on Stan, is directed by Justin Kurzel who made a 2011 film about the Snowtown murders. Titled NITRAM (the name of the Port Arthur killer spelt backwards), it is being filmed in Victoria and will look at “the events leading up to one of the darkest chapters in Australian history”.

Although it is almost 25 years since the massacre, many have argued dramatising the event in a film is insensitive to those who lost loved ones, were personally injured, or witnessed the horror of that day — and could severely affect their mental health.

People who are deeply affected by exposure to traumatic events can develop debilitating psychological conditions, such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Others who suffer the loss of a loved one, especially when it happens in traumatic circumstances, can develop prolonged grief disorder, a persistent grief reaction that does not ease over time.

Both conditions are characterised by distressing memories that can be triggered by reminders of the trauma. It is reasonable to think most Australians would find watching a reconstruction of the massacre, or even a film about events that led gunman Martin Bryant to behave the way he did, disturbing.

However, a film about the shootings is likely to be very distressing for those people directly impacted by the massacre, particularly those who still have PTSD or strong grief responses.

We need to remember that PTSD and severe grief can last for decades in some people, as we have seen in many war veterans. Of course, those people directly affected by the massacre can choose to not see the film. However, they will probably be unwittingly exposed to advertising, media coverage and conversations about it, which can all trigger trauma memories.

Read more: Explainer: what is post-traumatic stress disorder?

Intentionally triggering trauma

But is triggering trauma memories necessarily a bad thing? We know from many studies of both PTSD and grief that the best treatments available are psychological interventions that involve re-living the trauma memory in a therapeutic setting.

In this safe and controlled environment, the person can master their emotions and understand the experience better. Thus in therapy, we intentionally trigger trauma memories.

This is done in a very different way, however, to the experience of seeing a film. Whereas a film involves a single exposure, in therapy this process is highly personalised, is imagined for at least 30 minutes in a way that engages one’s emotions, and is repeated frequently so the person learns that the memory is no longer distressing.

In this sense, it is unlikely that seeing a film about the massacre would be therapeutic for someone with PTSD.

However, it could be constructive if it prompted a person to seek evidence-based therapy to address their PTSD or grief reactions. We know that most people with PTSD or prolonged grief do not receive this treatment.

Memory reconsolidation

The other psychological mechanism that is important in discussing the merits and potential pitfalls of such a film is termed “memory reconsolidation”.

Each time we recall a memory, it becomes malleable or flexible in our brain. This occurs because of plasticity in our brains, which causes the memory to become unstable and then gradually stabilise again in the following hours. This is important because it means the memory is susceptible to modification during that time.

Read more: Forgetting Martin Bryant: what to remember when we talk about Port Arthur

Administering pharmacological or psychological interventions during the period of memory instability has been shown to “update” the memory. This process suggests a film about the Port Arthur shootings has the potential to not only trigger memories but also contribute to how these memories are reconsolidated — and in turn how a person may feel about the event.

How the film is made

This leads to an important issue about the content of this film. The key question may not be whether it should be made but rather how it is made.

Much criticism of the film, which will reportedly star Judy Davis, Anthony LaPaglia and American actor Caleb Landry Jones, has been around its possible impact on survivors and the community.

Without minimising the merits of this argument, our knowledge about trauma memories suggests the main challenge for the film’s producers is that it be made with sensitivity to those directly affected by the shootings, and does not aggravate any psychological distress.

If a film depicts much graphic violence or idealises or excuses the shooter’s actions, it could compound the traumatic nature of people’s memories. This could be detrimental to someone whose memories of the event are triggered by the film.

The producers would do well to consult with those directly affected by the shootings, as well as mental health experts, to ensure the film minimises exacerbating psychological distress.

– ref. Is it wrong to make a film about the Port Arthur massacre? A trauma expert’s perspective – https://theconversation.com/is-it-wrong-to-make-a-film-about-the-port-arthur-massacre-a-trauma-experts-perspective-151277

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bernadette McSherry, Foundation Director, Melbourne Social Equity Institute and Professor of Law, University of Melbourne

Louise Milligan’s new book, Witness, reports how traumatic the criminal justice system can be for victim-survivors of sexual assault.

This is not the first time we have heard how official responses to sexual violence can cause harm.

As the child abuse royal commission pointed out,

the criminal justice system is unlikely ever to provide an easy or straightforward experience for a complainant.

The Victorian Law Reform Commission is currently looking at how to improve responses to sexual offences. As part of this, it is seeking submissions on whether there are other ways — beyond criminal trials — to better meet the needs of people who have experienced sexual harms.

The limits of criminal trials

Criminal trials may hold offenders to account and officially acknowledge and denounce sexual harm. However, they are far from perfect.

While research suggests victim-survivors want to be heard, believed and vindicated, going to court means they are cross-examined on their version of events. The truthfulness of their account is publicly challenged in cases where the defendant offers a different story.

Victim-survivors report being re-traumatised by the trial process, as their explanation of what happened is tested in court.

Even when an alleged offender is convicted, some victim-survivors still do not feel justice has been done. They may have their own questions for the offender that remain unanswered.

Some of the problems with the criminal justice system can, and should, be addressed through reform. Other problems may be unavoidable in an adversarial system.

Restorative justice

Research indicates victim-survivors want a range of things when seeking “justice”. These include telling their story in full, having it heard and believed, holding the perpetrator to account and preventing further harm.

Given trials may not achieve all of these goals, some experts have argued victim-survivors should be able to choose from a “menu” of justice options.

Read more: Review: Louise Milligan’s Witness is a devastating critique of the criminal trial process

With this in mind, restorative justice is one option being explored by the Victorian Law Reform Commission.

Restorative justice initiatives are separate to criminal trials but can operate at the same time and don’t necessarily replace criminal justice proceedings.

In general, restorative justice will see the people affected by a crime — both victims and perpetrators — brought together. They will discuss the impact of the crime and how to repair the harm it caused.

Restorative justice programs already exist in relation to a range of harms. For example, Victoria and the Australian Capital Territory now use it for family violence.

The ACT and New Zealand also offer facilitated meetings between a person who has been sexually harmed, the person who caused the harm and their support people.

Doing justice differently

In Victoria, a restorative justice program — independent of the courts — previously operated through a community service. Victim-survivors of sexual assault were referred to the program or contacted the service themselves.

The facilitator — a specially trained sexual assault counsellor — met with them and discussed their motivations, the process and likely outcomes. If the case was suitable, the facilitator contacted the person alleged to be responsible and invited them to be involved.

After a series of preparatory meetings, a supported meeting with the victim, the person responsible and other friends and family took place.

Restorative justice processes may give victim-survivors an opportunity to tell their story without being limited by legal rules and get back a sense of control in their lives.

In an evaluation of the Victorian program, one survivor said it made her feel as though,

what I had to say mattered and that everyone was listening to me and taking it in and considering it.

But the approach is not without its critics. There are concerns it may provide another opportunity for perpetrators to manipulate and harm their victims. Indeed, in the same evaluation report, victim-survivors recognised that restorative justice processes could be re-traumatising.

As one interviewee noted,

I think you just need to be careful at what stage in the victim’s recovery you’re going to do that, if at all.

Implementing restorative processes

Whether restorative processes should be one of the justice options available to victim-survivors remains a matter of debate. There are also important questions around what model could be used.

These include whether restorative justice outcomes should influence criminal sentences, what standards and training need to be put in place and are there cases where it is not appropriate?

Academics also emphasise the need for more research with victim-survivors, to better understand the benefits and limits of different programs.

Listening to experiences

Legal categories such as “rape” and “sexual assault” play an important role in naming behaviour and organising community responses. However, these terms cover a wide range of experiences. Victim-survivors may have different ideas about what justice and accountability might mean.

The challenge for law reform inquiries is to look beyond categories and engage with the real lives of those who experience such harm.

Read more: NSW law reform report misses chance to institute ‘yes means yes’ in sexual consent cases

For this reason, the Victorian Law Reform Commission is also examining other options that could make the justice system safer for victim-survivors, such as victim-survivor advocates and alternative ways of reporting sexual harm.

The key question in the Victorian inquiry is, what will really improve the justice system’s response to sexual offences? It is only through learning more about victim-survivors’ experiences that this question might be answered.

Submissions to the inquiry close on December 23. The Commission is due to report to the Victorian government by August 2021.

– ref. ‘What I had to say mattered’ — how can we provide justice for sexual assault victims beyond criminal trials? – https://theconversation.com/what-i-had-to-say-mattered-how-can-we-provide-justice-for-sexual-assault-victims-beyond-criminal-trials-150075

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ray Norris, Professor, School of Science, Western Sydney University

In September 2019, my colleague Anna Kapinska gave a presentation showing interesting objects she’d found while browsing our new radio astronomical data. She had started noticing very weird shapes she couldn’t fit easily to any known type of object.

Among them, labelled by Anna as WTF?, was a picture of a ghostly circle of radio emission, hanging out in space like a cosmic smoke-ring. None of us had ever seen anything like it before, and we had no idea what it was. A few days later, our colleague Emil Lenc found a second one, even more spooky than Anna’s.

Anna and Emil had been examining the new images from our pilot observations for the Evolutionary Map of the Universe (EMU) project, made with CSIRO’s revolutionary new Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) telescope.

EMU plans to boldly probe parts of the Universe where no telescope has gone before. It can do so because ASKAP can survey large swathes of the sky very quickly, probing to a depth previously only reached in tiny areas of sky, and being especially sensitive to faint, diffuse objects like these.

I predicted a couple of years ago this exploration of the unknown would probably make unexpected discoveries, which I called WTFs. But none of us expected to discover something so unexpected, so quickly. Because of the enormous data volumes, I expected the discoveries would be made using machine learning. But these discoveries were made with good old-fashioned eyeballing.

Read more: Expect the unexpected from the big-data boom in radio astronomy

Hunting ORCs

Our team searched the rest of the data by eye, and we found a few more of the mysterious round blobs. We dubbed them ORCs, which stands for “odd radio circles”. But the big question, of course, is: “what are they?”

At first we suspected an imaging artefact, perhaps generated by a software error. But we soon confirmed they are real, using other radio telescopes. We still have no idea how big or far away they are. They could be objects in our galaxy, perhaps a few light-years across, or they could be far away in the Universe and maybe millions of light years across.

When we look in images taken with optical telescopes at the position of ORCs, we see nothing. The rings of radio emission are probably caused by clouds of electrons, but why don’t we see anything in visible wavelengths of light? We don’t know, but finding a puzzle like this is the dream of every astronomer.

Read more: The Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder finally hits the big-data highway

We know what they’re not

We have ruled out several possibilities for what ORCs might be.

Could they be supernova remnants, the clouds of debris left behind when a star in our galaxy explodes? No. They are far from most of the stars in the Milky Way and there are too many of them.

Could they be the rings of radio emission sometimes seen in galaxies undergoing intense bursts of star formation? Again, no. We don’t see any underlying galaxy that would be hosting the star formation.

Could they be the giant lobes of radio emission we see in radio galaxies, caused by jets of electrons squirting out from the environs of a supermassive black hole? Not likely, because the ORCs are very distinctly circular, unlike the tangled clouds we see in radio galaxies.

Could they be Einstein rings, in which radio waves from a distant galaxy are being bent into a circle by the gravitational field of a cluster of galaxies? Still no. ORCs are too symmetrical, and we don’t see a cluster at their centre.

A genuine mystery

In our paper about ORCs, which is forthcoming in the Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia, we run through all the possibilities and conclude these enigmatic blobs don’t look like anything we already know about.

So we need to explore things that might exist but haven’t yet been observed, such as a vast shockwave from some explosion in a distant galaxy. Such explosions may have something to do with fast radio bursts, or the neutron star and black hole collisions that generate gravitational waves.

Read more: How we closed in on the location of a fast radio burst in a galaxy far, far away

Or perhaps they are something else entirely. Two Russian scientists have even suggested ORCs might be the “throats” of wormholes in spacetime.

From the handful we’ve found so far, we estimate there are about 1,000 ORCs in the sky. My colleague Bärbel Koribalski notes the search is now on, with telescopes around the world, to find more ORCs and understand their cause.

It’s a tricky job, because ORCS are very faint and difficult to find. Our team is brainstorming all these ideas and more, hoping for the eureka moment when one of us, or perhaps someone else, suddenly has the flash of inspiration that solves the puzzle.

It’s an exciting time for us. Most astronomical research is aimed at refining our knowledge of the Universe, or testing theories. Very rarely do we get the challenge of stumbling across a new type of object which nobody has seen before, and trying to figure out what it is.

Is it a completely new phenomenon, or something we already know about but viewed in a weird way? And if it really is completely new, how does that change our understanding of the Universe? Watch this space!

– ref. ‘WTF?’: newly discovered ghostly circles in the sky can’t be explained by current theories, and astronomers are excited – https://theconversation.com/wtf-newly-discovered-ghostly-circles-in-the-sky-cant-be-explained-by-current-theories-and-astronomers-are-excited-142812

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Daryl Sparkes, Senior Lecturer (Media Studies and Production), University of Southern Queensland

What was filmmaker John Hughes thinking when he made Home Alone?

His previous films were either about awkward teens finding their way in the world (The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off etc), or awkward adults finding their way in the world (Uncle Buck, Planes, Trains and Automobiles). Plus a franchise featuring both groups (National Lampoon’s Vacation).

But Home Alone (1990), enjoying a 30th-anniversary re-release in Australian cinemas this week, plays differently. Eight-year-old Kevin McCallister (Macaulay Culkin) is punished and forced to sleep in the attic. There, he wishes his family never existed.

The next morning he wakes to find himself the only occupant of his house — forgotten by the rest of his family as they head to Paris for Christmas.

There are no self conscious teens grappling with coming-of-age issues and no irresponsible and naïve adults belatedly learning life lessons in this film. Instead we get super cute Kevin pretending to be the “man of the house”.

A false sense of cuteness

Hughes obviously knew he had lightning in a bottle with Culkin, who had co-starred in Uncle Buck the year before.

Although only nine at the time of filming, Culkin is a strong, extroverted actor with great comic timing and a lively, energetic performance. He delivers his lines thoughtfully and can turn on the emotion when he needs to. He carries the film single-handedly. All other characters are really just plot devices for Kevin’s mischievousness — or his introspection.

But if Kevin is “home alone”, where is the drama? Hughes introduces a secondary plot of two burglars trying to break into the house. This is where the film takes an uncharacteristic turn for the macabre.

Read more: Home alone feeling scrooged? These Christmas movies deserve some love, actually

What has been one of Hughes’ usual saccharine romps involving dysfunctional people learning to deal with family life becomes a sadistic and bruising experience akin to a PG-rated Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

The film lures you into its cutesy first two acts – Kevin walking around in his dad’s shoes; shopping at the supermarket; the famous aftershave scene where he evokes Edvard Munch’s The Scream – before Kevin unleashes a bloody onslaught of booby traps and tortures expected of an Arnold Schwarzenegger action movie.

A dark psychology

Hughes knows his cinema history. You can see the influence of Buster Keaton or Charlie Chaplin in Home Alone, setting up one sight gag after another. But here, each gets increasingly violent.

Hughes demonstrated fine comic writing skills with John Candy and Steve Martin in Planes, Trains and Automobiles and with Candy again in Uncle Buck. Both films are laden with slapstick. But their jokes are the result of stupidity on behalf of the adult characters. The hurt is to themselves, and mostly superficial.

Kevin’s tricks, however, involve BB gun shots to the face and genitals, scorching metal searing flesh, nails inserted into feet and the use of flame throwers.

Read more: How far can you go to lawfully protect yourself in a home invasion?

At the end of the film Kevin doesn’t need the pandering of his mother — he needs a serious psychological assessment.

It is almost like watching a short film within a much larger one. It seems Hughes started out writing a script with the same central idea of most of his films: that even though families bicker and often harass each other, familial love is the unbreakable core of life.

But then he went dark. Really dark.

Home Alone feels like it was written by Hughes for the first hour — then Quentin Tarantino, with its ultra violence. It then lapses back into Hughes-with-extra-schmaltz for the last 20 minutes.

We need to talk

How one uber-violent kid’s movie is frequently ranked among the best Christmas movies of all time defies description. It was by far Hughes’ greatest commercial success.

I’m not sure exactly what messages child audiences are picking up through all of this. I doubt they would be healthy, but that is probably better left to a psychologist to parse. Still, this screen duality of cutesiness/darkness appears to have been experienced by Culkin himself in real life.

Culkin’s parents carefully fostered the “America’s darling” persona throughout his young career. In his teens, Culkin became emancipated from them, taking control of his finances. (He later claimed his father had been psychologically and physically abusive). Career-wise, Culkin basically disappeared after 1994’s Richie Rich. The typical descent into drugs and alcohol followed. Now 40, he says he is substance free and has described himself as essentially “retired” from acting.

Home Alone spurred four sequels, but only Home Alone 2 (1992) features Culkin again. It’s basically the same movie as the original, set in a different place, complete with torture scenes on the same burglar characters.

Disney has announced plans to reboot the Home Alone series. It may not be a bad move on their part. But could they ever find another child actor who epitomised “cute” as much as Culkin did?

Home Alone is in cinemas from December 3.

– ref. Home Alone at 30: how one case of parental neglect led to (hilariously) painful outcomes – https://theconversation.com/home-alone-at-30-how-one-case-of-parental-neglect-led-to-hilariously-painful-outcomes-150534

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Villeneuve, Associate Professor, University of Sydney

Australians with disability are disproportionately affected by disasters such as fire, floods, cyclones and heatwaves. Yet we rarely hear their perspectives and insights on what’s needed to ensure they’re not left stranded when disaster strikes.

So in 2019 we hosted seven community engagement forums in four Queensland communities to find out more about the experiences of people with disability in emergencies. The 190 participants included 66 people with disability. Our research was published this week in the International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction.

Out of the 66 people with disability we spoke to, only a handful had taken emergency preparedness steps such as:

• documenting instructions for support workers in an emergency
• holding household emergency meetings
• planning evacuation routes.

Australia has no nationally consistent standards to ensure access and inclusion of people with disability in disaster risk reduction. Too often, people with disabilities are left out of the conversation until it’s too late.

Our study participants with disability called for “disability-specific” training and tools (including funding) to help them build emergency preparedness plans.

Preparedness builds confidence – but most ‘don’t have a plan’

For people with disability, having an emergency preparedness plan can help build confidence. One person observed:

I noticed that that person felt very confident about how things would progress if there was an emergency because she knew what she would take from her apartment. She had a circle of support around her who understood what her support needs were, and I just picked up on a really strong sense of security and confidence, actually, because it was probably the most fleshed-out plan that I heard.

Another said:

They’ve set themselves up as being self-sufficient, and they had basically emergency kits done up […] They basically had a DEB, a disability emergency bag, done up with the missing pieces. Now they’re prepared for it.

However, most participants with disability reported they “don’t have a plan”, acknowledging emergency plans are “in our heads”. Their plans tend not to have been formalised, communicated to others, or practised to see if they work.

Research shows people with disability are two to four times more likely to die or be injured in a disaster than the general population.

They experience higher risk of injury and loss of property, and greater difficulty with evacuation and sheltering. They generally require more intensive health and social services during and after disasters.

Stigma and discrimination marginalise people with disability from mainstream social, economic and cultural participation. Distressing examples from our study in Queensland reinforced this. One person told us:

That [person] … he’s in a wheelchair. He’s got a unit in [area of town]. Don’t have family, he was under water. His carer was gone; and then we heard that he was there. So, they went over there, and they found him in the water sitting in his [wheel]chair by himself.

Another said:

That was our problem because we went five days, it’s just myself and my brother who has a learning disability, we were in the house for five days. Nobody checked on us.

Then the next person [I spoke to] didn’t feel any sense of community whatsoever. Felt totally isolated through the flood. Doesn’t live in town. Lives on acreage. Had challenges. Carers couldn’t get to him to look after him and the family. Immediate family had disabilities as well. And it would’ve been lovely if somebody had cared.

Excluded from community engagement

Despite facing disproportionate risk in emergencies, people with disability are often excluded from community engagement activities aimed at boosting self-reliance in a disaster.

A UN survey on disability and disasters found the majority of respondents with disability (85.57%) from 137 countries had not participated in community-level disaster risk reduction.

Only 20% were able to evacuate effectively, rising to 38% when appropriate information was available.

What did people with disability recommend?

First, people with disability want access to the same information others receive. As one interviewee said:

We do a lot of education. I just don’t think it’s tailored to people with disabilities, for sure it’s not.

Another said:

The other thing, which is an eye-opener for me as well, is that you tend to put disability in one group. But I spoke to three different people who had three different disabilities, and you realise that the communication has to be targeted. Because those three people required completely different things. And the information they got was not in a mode which they could use.

The Disability Inclusive Disaster Risk Reduction Framework and Toolkit provides direction for government and emergency services to get started on creating resources in formats people with disability can use.

Second, people with disability want “disability-specific” tools and training, to help them develop a personal emergency preparedness plan.

We worked with the Queenslanders with Disability Network to co-design the Person-Centred Emergency Preparedness Workbook.

The workbook is a four-step conversation guide that helps people with disability to:

1. identify their strengths and support needs in everyday life
2. know their level of emergency preparedness and learn about their disaster risk
3. plan for how they will manage their support needs in an emergency
4. communicate the plan with the people in their support network and address gaps through collaboration.

Are you an Australian resident living with disability or chronic health condition? The University of Sydney is carrying out a project supporting people with disability to prepare for, respond to and recover from an emergency event such as pandemic, bushfire, flood etc. The researchers are keen to know how prepared you are for an emergency, what you can do for yourself and what supports you need in an emergency. Complete an online survey here. If you prefer a telephone survey, please email your name and contact number to kcha8811@uni.sydney.edu.au

This article was co-authored by Michelle Moss, Director of Policy and Strategic Engagement at the Queenslanders with Disability Network.

– ref. ‘Nobody checked on us’: what people with disability told us about their experiences of disasters and emergencies – https://theconversation.com/nobody-checked-on-us-what-people-with-disability-told-us-about-their-experiences-of-disasters-and-emergencies-151198

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Janine Dixon, Economist at Centre of Policy Studies, Victoria University

Our economy has grown in the September quarter (the three months to September) after two quarters of going backwards.

Using the literal meaning of recession, we are no longer in one – economic output (the things we produce and consume) is no longer be going backwards.

But things won’t be like they were. Even a rebound in gross domestic product of 3.3% (the biggest in 40 years) doesn’t make up for the 7% we lost in the previous quarter, meaning we’ll remain worse off than we were at the start of the year and much worse off than we would have been had the pandemic not happened.

Here are six things to expect as the economy recovers:

1. Consumer spending will recover first, but might need help

Consumer spending will to return to normal first, as forecast in the budget.

(Don’t be fooled by the forecast decline of 1.5% for 2020-21 compared to 2019-20. From where we stood in the June quarter 2020 – an enormous decline of 12% on the March quarter – this is a massive recovery.)

So far the signs are promising, but in part this might be because the stimulus payments are still flowing, keeping household disposable income above pre-COVID levels.

Read more: Top economists want JobSeeker boosted by $100+ per week and tied to wages

The coronavirus supplement that tops up JobKeeper and other benefits (originally A$225 per week) winds down to $75 per week after Christmas and expires on March 31.

JobKeeper, originally $1,500 per fortnight, became harder to get in October and will wind down to $1,000 per fortnight in January and $650 for part-time workers, before expiring on March 31.

Treasury expects wage growth to be slower than price growth for the next two years, so a household-led recovery is by no means guaranteed.

If the recovery stalls in the household sector, activities such as hospitality, retail and arts and entertainment will suffer a second blow and unemployment will remain high.

After the year we’ve had, the household sector could be forgiven for losing confidence.

The government should consider extending the coronavirus supplement payments, and be ready for further one-off stimulus payments if required.

Unlike the imminent income tax cuts, these measures are temporary and can be discontinued as soon as they are no longer required.

Governments can also stimulate demand directly. Victoria has announced an additional 4000 tutors to assist school students left behind after an interrupted year. Other areas in which governments could usefully create meaningful jobs include the care sector and the arts.

2. Overseas demand won’t assist in the recovery

Exports face headwinds and are unlikely to recover over the next 18 months.

The International Monetary Fund expects the global economy to shrink by 4.4% in 2020 after growing 2.8% in 2019, a turnaround of more than 7%.

This will be apparent in all of Australia’s major customers including China and will depress demand for exports.

Read more: Budget 2020: promising tax breaks, but relying on hope

More importantly, travel bans have come close to eliminating “exports” of tourism and education, which together account for almost one fifth of Australian export income.

This income will remain weak until international travel properly restarts.

3. We will lose four years population growth

Before the crisis, the 2019 mid-year budget update predicted Australia’s population would grow from 25.6 million to 28.4 million by June 2026.

This year’s budget says we won’t get there until June 2030, a full four years later.

Even after travel resumes, net overseas migration is expected to remain lower than before due to economic uncertainty and weak labour market conditions.

Businesses will find it more difficult to get the staff they need through skilled migration, crating a greater role for higher education and vocational education.

By 2024 migration is assumed to return to normal, yet population growth will continue to be slow. This is because the birth rate is projected to be lower than usual for the remainder of the decade.

4. Business investment will be weaker, and different

2020 has been a difficult year, but it’s also been the year we’ve learnt to do things differently.

We have learnt about on-line shopping, working from home, telehealth and on-line entertainment, and we will continue to make use of what we have learnt after the pandemic is over.

These changes could drive the next genuine wave of productivity growth.

Read more: COVID-19 has changed the future of retail: there’s plenty more automation in store

Bricks-and-mortar retail, commercial office space, roads, bridges and railways are all investments that facilitate the meeting and movement of people.

With new technologies and a smaller population that is learning to keep things local, these old-world investments won’t be as generate the same returns as they once might have.

Where we might see the investment dollars being spent is on home improvements, while government investment dollars could be spent on improving local amenities such as parks and community centres.

5. We’ll need to get more people into paid work

A year ago, 66% of Australia’s adult population was participating in the labour market, either by being employed or looking for work.

During the crisis the participation rate dipped below 63%.

It has since returned to 65.8%, a touch above where the budget expects it will stay. Other countries including Canada, Britain, New Zealand and Germany do better than us.

There’s room to get more unpaid carers (many of them women) into the paid workforce.

More than 900,000 people who perform significant unpaid caring work say they would like more paid employment.

In my work for the National Foundation for Australian Women, I found the net budgetary cost of increasing caring services was modest, mainly because it brought about a strong increase in the tax-paying workforce.

6. One last dark cloud: the terms of trade

The terms of trade measure what we can buy for each unit of what we sell; how many imports we can buy for each unit we export.

The budget forecasts a fall of almost 11% in 2021-22 as a result of lower prices for iron ore.

Taking a long view, this may be nothing more than a correction, but it is as big a fall in a single year as we experienced in the dog days after the end of mining boom when the terms of trade declined for four consecutive years, and we experienced four years without real growth in income growth per capita.

Read more: An all-out trade war with China would cost Australia 6% of GDP

Population, participation and productivity are the “three P’s” that drive economic growth in the long run, but in the short run a big decline in the terms of trade poses a real risk to a household-led economic recovery.

Where to from here

In an effort to avoid more economic pain, the government has rightly abandoned fiscal restraint in the most recent budget.

Much of its recovery strategy (perhaps too much) is built around income tax cuts and investment incentives.

I see a need for a greater emphasis on temporary measures aimed at supporting household spending, given the role it will have to play in unwinding the recession.

Read more: Modelling finds investing in childcare and aged care almost pays for itself

In the longer term, there is a case for paring back some of the larger income tax cuts to expand child care, aged care and disability care; measures that would support low-paid workers, boost labour force participation, and improve the standard of living for many Australians.

– ref. 6 things to watch for as Australia crawls out of recession – https://theconversation.com/6-things-to-watch-for-as-australia-crawls-out-of-recession-148797

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexander Gillespie, Professor of Law, University of Waikato

With tension escalating between China and members of the Five Eyes security alliance, most recently over a Chinese tweet that used a doctored image to attack Australia, New Zealand is arguably in a prime position to broker a kind of truce.

Someone needs to take the initiative. Right now, things are deteriorating, as the trade stand-off with Australia demonstrates.

With China having already reacted to Five Eyes criticism of its Hong Kong policies by threatening that “their eyes will be plucked out”, the situation is combustible: a large, tinder-dry pile of disputes, with both sides flicking matches of angry rhetoric at each other.

On one side we have the Five Eyes allies — America, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. In the minds of many in the West, this is a family of nations in which peoples, culture and values are tightly interwoven.

On the other side is China, with which New Zealand has had an official relationship since the turn of the 20th century. While the two countries fought on the same side in the second world war, once China became communist their paths diverged. They were on opposite sides in the Korean and Vietnam wars.

These days, of course, New Zealand and China are friends and important trading partners. Deepening cultural, scientific, environmental and social exchanges support their economic relationship.

New Zealand in the middle

When it comes to its security interests, New Zealand is potentially more attractive to China than the other Five Eyes nations — particularly for its independent foreign policy (including becoming nuclear-free in the 1980s) and the absence of any specific disputes between the two nations.

This balanced position offers New Zealand a unique opportunity to become the catalyst for positive change. To do so will require a short-term feel-good factor and some longer-term goals — starting with a couple of invitations.

Read more: With foreign policy largely missing from NZ’s election campaign, what global challenges face the next government?

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has already issued an invitation to President-elect Joe Biden to visit New Zealand. She should now do the same for the paramount leader of China, Xi Jinping.

Such invitations in the past have been about building confidence and trust — often by focusing on something valuable and symbolic nations already share in common. Historically, for instance, Richard Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev bridged the divide in 1973 by committing to joint conservation initiatives.

Feathered diplomacy: could the bar-tailed godwit offer common ground for a China-Five eyes summit? www.shutterstock.com

A bird in the hand?

Taking that example, then, what better symbol for New Zealand, the US and China than the bar-tailed godwit, or kuaka? The bird holds the world record for migration, flying between parts of North America, China, Australia and its furthermost destination, New Zealand (depending on its subspecies).

New Zealand could host an international gathering to discuss a dedicated flyway agreement, with rigorous conservation goals, in which all countries jointly strive to protect the birds and their habitats.

Read more: A Biden presidency might be better for NZ, but the big foreign policy challenges won’t disappear with Trump

Of course, the real purpose of such a meeting would be to create an environment where the US and China could talk about the key issues that threaten everyone. For precedent, recall Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev at Geneva in 1985, when the two leaders met in a neutral location and took the first steps towards building a working relationship that ultimately led to the end of the Cold War.

For such a plan to work, all sides will need a secure venue to communicate directly, without publicly inflaming matters in the international media. To start the ball rolling, New Zealand should offer to host this ground-breaking, face-to-face gathering as the ideally placed mediator.

Reducing tension the goal

Although there are many things for China and the Five Eyes partners to resolve, the immediate priority must be to secure peace and reduce tensions. The precedent here is what George Bush senior and Boris Yeltsin finally did in 1992, building on the positive achievements their predecessors had created.

Then, when the trust was solid and the time was right, nuclear control and disarmament treaties were concluded, making the world safer.

Read more: What Australia can learn from New Zealand: a new perspective on that tricky trans-Tasman relationship

New Zealand’s objective should be nothing less than trying to copy the precedents that ended the first Cold War with the Soviet Union. The objective would be a series of interlinked, equitable agreements.

These would cover nuclear arms control (especially at the regional level, with a starting focus on particular platforms such as intermediate-range nuclear missiles); limits on the amount, build-up and location of conventional weapons; and confidence-building measures (such as open skies verification agreements).

It would also be necessary to create new rules for military training exercises, mutual observers, and strict protocols to avoid accidental clashes.

None of this is easy or quick, but it is better than standing by while the situation worsens. Rather than be passive hostages to fortune, New Zealand should act. Invite Biden, invite Xi, look at the godwits — and start talking long-term peace, security and stability.

– ref. Why New Zealand is ideally placed to broker a truce between China and the Five Eyes alliance – https://theconversation.com/why-new-zealand-is-ideally-placed-to-broker-a-truce-between-china-and-the-five-eyes-alliance-151195