Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ivan Maksymov, Australian Research Council Future Fellow (Senior Lecturer), Swinburne University of Technology

This year, my colleague Andrey Pototsky and I were awarded the Ig Nobel Prize in Physics for our experimental work involving vibrating living earthworms.

The Ig Nobel Prizes are awarded each year to recognise scientific research that’s not only thought-provoking, but also comical or unusual in nature.

Our work made people laugh, and then think. At face value, it was simply two researchers observing a bunch of worms jiggling on a loudspeaker.

From these observations, however, we’ve discovered the potential for a new, safer approach to linking the human brain with computers.

What did we do?

First, we sedated earthworms in alcohol to relax their muscles. We then vibrated them on a loudspeaker and used laser light to observe ripples on the surface of each worm.

Such ripples are known as Faraday waves. In nature, frogs create these waves on water’s surface to attract mates. Faraday waves can also be seen on a vibrating liquid drop, when the vibrations become intense enough to make the liquid’s surface unstable.

Earthworms consist mostly of water. So we expected a sedated worm to vibrate similarly to a water drop.

When we switched the loudspeaker on, the whole worm moved up and down. But when we increased the volume to above the “Faraday instability” level, Faraday waves appeared on the worms’ surface — just as we were expecting.

It’s important to note: even though these non-linear ripples are “unstable”, this doesn’t mean they behave in a completely chaotic way. In fact, Faraday waves can (after much trial and error) be “programmed” to behave in a certain way.

But why would we do this?

In past research, it has been hypothesised nerve impulses (which let nerve cells communicate with one another) move through the nerve fibre (or “axon”) as not only an electric signal, but also a sound wave which humans can’t hear. We also believe this is the case.

Nerve impulses let nerve cells communicate with one another, by moving through the nerve fibre (or “axon”). Past research has hypothesised nerve impulses move not only as electric signals, but also as sound waves which humans can’t hear. We also believe this is the case.

Sound and vibrations can both move through human skin, bones and tissue without causing damage. This is how medical ultrasound imaging is done. “Ultrasound” simply refers to sound waves with frequencies higher than humans’ upper audible limit.

Read more: Five amazing ultrasound inventions set to change the world (and not a pregnancy scan in sight)

Sound waves can also form “solitons”. These are waves that move for long distances and pass by each other without any deformation occurring. They keep their shape. Water waves in canals can move as solitons, as this video shows.

However, it’s hard to detect solitons in human nerves. That’s why researchers instead investigate them in the nerves of earthworms, which are an effective model.

Could ultrasound vibrations transmit thoughts?

If future research is able to confirm nerve impulses do, in fact, move through nerve fibres as solitons, our finding of Faraday waves in vibrating worms becomes significantly more important.

This may indicate potential to produce and modify nerve impulses in the brain. By externally generating ultrasound waves at different frequencies, such as on a mobile device, for instance, we may be able to trigger Faraday waves in the brain’s tissues.

We think these should then interact with the brain’s nerve impulses and activate certain signals corresponding to “thoughts”.

If the nerve impulses travel through the brain as solitons, they would keep their form throughout the process. And this would ensure the transmitted “thought” remains consistent until it’s processed by the brain.

The above process would equate to “programming” human thoughts.

The potential for brain-computer interfaces

There have been numerous attempts to link the human brain with computers. A growing number of high-tech companies, including Elon Musk’s Neuralink, plan to implant needle electrodes into human brains to achieve this.

This would allow the transmission of knowledge — for example, how to fly a helicopter or speak a foreign language — from a computer directly to a person’s brain in mere minutes. Of course, we’re still a long way off from knowing how to actually do something this complex.

However, this approach is very invasive and poses significant health risks, such as inflammation of the brain tissue or brain damage.

We believe our results, pending further detailed research, may help create a safer, sound-based link between the human brain and computers — one that works without unsafe needle electrodes.

Recently, solitons in optical fibres were used to achieve world record-high data transmission. Therefore, nerve signals moving as solitons should be able to help transmit high data rates to the human brain.

What happens now?

At present, we can’t claim we have solid scientific evidence Faraday waves can interact with natural nerve impulses in earthworms.

That said, our models suggest there should be a strong interaction between the two waves when the frequency of the Faraday wave oscillations coincides with the frequency of the nerve impulses.

No current models can predict exactly which frequencies are needed to allow this interaction. We’d have to conduct many, many trial and error tests to potentially find this out.

So far, we have pitched our ideas to several neurobiology research communities and have received positive feedback overall. Eventually, we hope our work could be useful to high-tech companies, as well as our colleagues investigating similar questions.

But for now, it continues.

Read more: Remote control for brain cells: scientists use ultrasound waves to activate neurons

– ref. We vibrated earthworms to learn about safely connecting human brains to computers – https://theconversation.com/we-vibrated-earthworms-to-learn-about-safely-connecting-human-brains-to-computers-148313

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Evita March, Senior Lecturer in Psychology, Federation University Australia

Humans are curious and social creatures by nature. The news helps us make sense of the world around us and connects us with our local, national and international community. So it’s no wonder we’re drawn to it.

Objective, legitimate news also keeps us informed, empowering us with knowledge to make balanced decisions.

But the way we consume news has been profoundly altered by media developments. As news outlets have adapted to media trends, the way people watch, read and listen to news has changed. And these changes aren’t without consequences.

The way we consume news matters

The increase of online news, particularly when presented via social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, has affected how we access and consume our news.

When news was delivered via traditional one-way outlets such as television and radio, we were passive receivers. But on social media platforms, we’re active consumers. We sculpt and cultivate our news through immediate feedback, such as reacts or shares.

There’s evidence this might not be especially good for us.

Read more: Australians are less interested in news and consume less of it compared to other countries, survey finds

Amid an unfolding crisis such as a pandemic, news presented via one-way outlets might be less damaging than news consumed online. In early months of COVID-19, researchers found news consumed online and via social media was associated with increased depression, anxiety and stress. The effects weren’t as bad when news was consumed via traditional media such as television and newspapers.

This isn’t limited to the pandemic. After the September 11 attacks, young people who consumed news via online sources experienced more PTSD symptoms than those using traditional media. This effect was attributed to more graphic images online, and the possibility for extra exposure as people could watch the footage repeatedly.

Where do we source news?

In an average week, more Australian news consumers source their news online (53%) than via print (25%). But perhaps surprisingly, television is still the most popular mode of news consumption. This year, 63% of Australians said they watched television news in an average week. Nevertheless, we’re far more actively engaged with our news than we once were.

Access to news is also radically different. The ability to consume news 24/7, via an almost endless variety of sources, has prompted experts to encourage us to moderate our news consumption.

Our bad news bias — not good news for our well-being

During times of crisis, we’re more drawn to news. In fact, Australians’ consumption of news significantly increased in 2020. During the 2019–20 bushfires, the percentage of heavy news consumers (people who consume news more than once a day) increased from 52% to 56%, and increased to 70% during the COVID-19 pandemic peak.

Read more: Twitter’s plan to help young people not get too overwhelmed by bad news doesn’t go far enough

Unfortunately, the impact of news on our well-being is also particularly salient during a time of crisis. Multiple studies have found the more we consume news during or after a tragedy, crisis or natural disaster, the more likely we are to develop symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Why are we so interested in bad news, anyway? University of Queensland psychologist Roy F. Baumeister and his colleagues have noted bad is stronger than good. Humans have a “negativity bias”, whereby we pay more attention to negative information than positive.

“If it bleeds, it leads”

Journalists are said to capitalise on our negative bias to capture our attention. Some news sources have learned this lesson the hard way. When a city reporter from an online Russian news website decided only to report good news for a day, they lost two-thirds of their readers.

The problem is, this negativity bias in the news can make the world appear worse than it truly is.

The repeated presentation of information can create cognitive distortions, meaning we’re likely to interpret newsworthy problems, like violent crime, as more prevalent than they really are.

This negativity bias might also explain the tendency to focus on ‘doom and gloom’ stories on social media, referred to as doomscrolling.

Research published this year showed when we perceive the daily news as negative, we can feel less positive overall. So it’s no wonder increased news consumption can impact our well-being.

Read more: Google News favours mainstream media. Even if it pays for Australian content, will local outlets fall further behind?

Those who use social media largely for news, instead of social networking, show increased anxiety and depression. These results highlight the importance of being strategic about how you use social media, particularly during times of crisis.

How can we take control of our news consumption?

First, it’s important to be aware your news consumption via different sources can look very different. Traditional media tends to focus on the facts, whereas stories, rumours, and human interest pieces are prioritised on social media.

Empower yourself with the knowledge that, as humans, we are subject to bias. The media and those producing the news know this. These biases, which make us wonderfully human, also make us wonderfully biased to the information we receive.

Our biases mean we’re more likely to be impacted by negative news and more likely to believe what we see is more prevalent than it truly is.

Read more: How fake news gets into our minds, and what you can do to resist it

That’s certainly not to say no news is good news. News is powerful, and helps us stay connected and informed. But in a world where we’re surrounded by news 24/7, it is important we are aware of our cognitive biases and the distortions they create. Let’s take control of our news consumption rather than allowing it to control us.

– ref. When too much news is bad news: is the way we consume news detrimental to our health? – https://theconversation.com/when-too-much-news-is-bad-news-is-the-way-we-consume-news-detrimental-to-our-health-146568

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Zena Cumpston, Research Fellow, University of Melbourne

Over countless millennia, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have harnessed the tremendous potential of plants, ingeniously using them for medicines, nutrition, to express our culture and to develop innovative technologies.

But as I learn more about First Peoples’ plant knowledge, I’m also better understanding the broader Australian community’s failure to recognise the depth and breadth of our expertise.

Aboriginal people, our culture and deep knowledges are often seen as “in the past”, fixed and stagnant.

Damaging perceptions which cast us as lesser and posit us as a homogenous peoples, who were limping towards inevitable extinction before the arrival of a “superior” race, still abound. Such tropes deny our dynamic place in the present day, and our ability to continuously adapt and innovate.

Below I’ve listed five of my favourite indigenous plants and the multiple ways Aboriginal people used them, and continue to do so.

Read more: To address the ecological crisis, Aboriginal peoples must be restored as custodians of Country

These plants are examples from my recent publication exploring Aboriginal plant use, and highlight our deep knowledge and holistic approaches to ecological management.

1. Spiny-headed mat-rush (Lomandra longifolia)

Spiny-headed mat-rush is a large tussocky plant found throughout southeastern Australia.

The Wurundjeri people particularly favour this plant for weaving cultural items such as necklaces, headbands, girdles, baskets, mats and bags for carrying foods, as well as for making technologies such as eel traps and hunting nets.

Its seeds are high in protein. They can be collected and pounded into a bread mix, with the core of the plant and the base of the leaves eaten as a vegetable.

Many diverse Aboriginal peoples use the roots to treat bites and stings. The caterpillars of several butterflies, such as the Symmomus Skipper, also rely on this plant for food and habitat.

2. Wallaby grass

There are around 30 types of wallaby grass in Australia. Native grasslands were once the most extensive habitat of Victoria’s western plains, but are now the most endangered plant community.

Grasslands provide food and habitat for a huge diversity of fauna, particularly birds, such as the peregrine falcon, whistling kite and Australian kestrels. Many animals, such as the legless lizard, little whip snake and fat-tailed dunnart, were once commonplace, but are now scarce in this endangered ecosystem.

Wallaby grass seeds make an excellent bread by pounding them into flour. The leaves and stem are also used to make cultural items, such as nets for fishing and hunting.

It’s also incredibly hardy – highly tolerant to frost, heat and drought, and requiring no fertilisers and little water. And it makes an excellent lawn, controlling erosion and weeds.

3. Bulbine lily (Bulbine bulbosa)

In summer, bulbine lily dies back to a dormant bulb, before re-shooting in late autumn. In spring, it displays vibrant yellow flowers.

Bulbine lilies can be found in all states except Western Australia, growing wild in tandem with milkmaids and chocolate lilies in the few areas of Victoria’s undisturbed remnant vegetation.

It’s considered the sweetest tasting of all edible root plants and is available year-round. You can find a plump, round, cream-coloured storage organ (a type of underground stem) under its stalk, which can be eaten after being roasted. Bulbine lily is also nutritious, a good source of calcium and iron.

4. Black kurrajong (Brachychiton populneus)

Aboriginal peoples from many diverse groups favour the fibrous kurrajong bark for making string for fishing lines, nets and bags, as well as body adornments such as headbands.

Flowers turn to fruit in the form of leathery pods. These pods contain highly nutritious yellow seeds, which contain around 18% protein and 25% fat, and high levels of magnesium and zinc.

To eat the seeds, you first must remove toxic yellow hairs surrounding them. They can be eaten raw and roasted, and have a pleasantly nutty flavour. The young roots of this tree also make an excellent food source and can provide water.

5. Black sheoak (Allocasuarina littoralis)

Favouring dry conditions, black sheoak is native to Queensland, Tasmania, NSW and Victoria, and can grow up to eight metres high. It flowers in spring, with either rusty-brown spikes or red flowers that develop into cones.

Its seeds are an important food source for many native birds, including parrots and cockatoos.

Diverse groups of Aboriginal peoples use sheoaks for various purposes. The shoots and cones can be eaten, and sheoak wood can be used to fashion boomerangs, shields, clubs and other cultural implements because the wood is both strong and resists splitting and chipping.

In fact, the earliest evidence of boomerangs, found in the Wyrie Swamp in South Australia, were made from various sheoak species, and were dated at 10,000 years old.

Read more: The art of healing: five medicinal plants used by Aboriginal Australians

– ref. Food, tools and medicine: 5 native plants that illuminate deep Aboriginal knowledge – https://theconversation.com/food-tools-and-medicine-5-native-plants-that-illuminate-deep-aboriginal-knowledge-145240

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jessica Gildersleeve, Associate Professor of English Literature, University of Southern Queensland

A small group of novels are famous for their first lines: Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (1813), Herman Melville’s Moby Dick (1851) and Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina (1877). Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier (1938), belongs to this elite collection. Its opening line perfectly encapsulates the narrative’s core theme.

“Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again,” the book begins — though it is not Rebecca who speaks.

This is the strange paradox of Du Maurier’s novel: its characters are doomed to refer (and defer) endlessly to Rebecca, who “always” did things, perfectly and elegantly, a certain way, while Rebecca herself never appears.

Read more: Newly discovered Du Maurier poems shed light on a talented writer honing her craft

Two ghosts

It is the novel’s unnamed narrator who speaks that first line — the second Mrs de Winter, a woman perpetually in her predecessor’s shadow. She is quite simply, not Rebecca — her husband’s late first wife.

She is exceedingly young — shy, inexperienced, and under the thumb of a wealthy lady who has employed her as a travel companion.

In Monte Carlo, our narrator meets Maxim de Winter, a tall, dark and handsome aristocrat, recently widowed. He swiftly rescues her from drudgery, proposes marriage, and takes her back to England to live in his beautiful and ancient estate, Manderley.

The dual spectres of Rebecca and Manderley haunt de Winter and his bride but the circularity of the narrative makes escape impossible.

The novel begins at the narrative’s end, retelling the events leading to the couple’s nomadic life. Retrospection taints the novel with a pervasive sense of inevitable doom and a desperate sympathy for the naïve young narrator. Now, night after night, she must dream of Manderley again — of its beauty, to be sure, but also, too, of its oppressiveness.

The name “Rebecca” means to tie or to bind, a further allusion to the first Mrs de Winter’s stranglehold on her home and its inhabitants even after her death. She is imprinted on the house and on its (housekeeper, the silent and sinister Mrs Danvers, whose passionate obsession with her former employer is echoed in Carol Ann Duffy’s poem, Warming Her Pearls (1987).

Mrs Danvers’ snide comments constitute Rebecca’s continuing manipulations, even beyond the grave.

When Manderley hosts an annual costume ball, for instance, the second Mrs de Winter is anxious to impress her new husband and his guests. Mrs Danvers encourages her to dress as Caroline de Winter, one of her husband’s ancestors, whose imposing portrait graces the mansion’s hall.

But when she makes her grand entrance, her husband angrily orders her to change. Rebecca had worn an identical costume the year before. Mrs Danvers’ goal of humiliation is achieved.

A limited perspective

The novel’s use of first-person narration in some ways limits us to the inexperienced worldview of the young narrator.

She stands in for the hordes of young women of the interwar period, their families lost to the war while these young women were left to navigate the world unchaperoned and alone, without interested parties available to approve or consider their choice of husband.

But the reader does come to understand the narrator’s naivety, and to see what she does not see, with increasing anxiety for her safety.

While she cannot see beyond Maxim’s charm, or conceptualise Mrs Danvers’ obsession with Rebecca, the reader looks on helplessly as she experiences what we now recognise as “gaslighting”.

Read more: Explainer: what does ‘gaslighting’ mean?

Rebecca can be recognised as part of the genre of the “female gothic”, critic Ellen Moers’ term for works that derive their terror from women’s domestic entrapment and manipulation, as in the Bluebeard folktale.

Female gothic narratives seek to expose the psychological manipulations and abuse of power disguised as romance. This alone explains the narrator’s continued sympathy for her “wronged” husband, even at the novel’s end.

This use of the female gothic also constitutes a critique of the novel’s source text: Du Maurier’s Rebecca is a reimagining of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre (1847), in which Jane is disturbed by the looming presence of Mr Rochester’s first wife, the infamous “madwoman in the attic”.

Whereas Jane’s ultimate devotion to her husband is celebrated in that novel, Du Maurier encourages her reader to recognise her narrator’s powerlessness

Read more: Emily Brontë’s fierce, flawed women: not your usual Gothic female characters

Birds, horror and adaptation

Du Maurier’s writing has always lent itself to cinematic adaptation, particularly as horror. Perhaps most famously, Alfred Hitchcock adapted her short story to make The Birds, his 1963 film, while Nicholas Roeg’s adaptation of her story Don’t Look Now (1971) was screened in 1973.

Rebecca’s psychological suspense drew Hitchcock’s attention, and he swiftly adapted it as a film, released in 1940 starring Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine.

Hitchcock’s Rebecca won the Academy Award for Best Picture that same year. It also spawned a range of commercial products such as the “Rebecca Luxury Wardrobe” and the “Rebecca Makeup Kit”, one of the first films to do so.

Read more: Psycho turns 60 – Hitchcock’s famous fright film broke all the rules

Strangely, however, these beauty and fashion products were all associated with Rebecca, a woman who never appears on screen.

Hitchcock’s adaptation diverges from Du Maurier’s novel at its conclusion and in the way in which each narrative explains Rebecca’s death. Whereas Du Maurier lays a foundation for Maxim’s capacity for violence, Hitchcock positions him, like the narrator, as a victim of Rebecca’s cruel manipulations.

A new Netflix adaptation of Rebecca stars Lily James, Armie Hammer and Kristen Scott Thomas. This follows recent adaptations of Shirley Jackson’s 1959 novel The Haunting of Hill House (2018) and its second season, The Haunting of Bly Manor (2020), a reworking of Henry James’ The Turn of The Screw (1898).

Together, these constitute a series of gothic hauntings that draw attention not only to the psychological trauma inherent in those earlier works, but the way in which that trauma and its terrors are profoundly gendered.

Rebecca’s capacity to haunt the second Mrs de Winter, Mrs Danvers’ maintenance of her place in Manderley, Maxim’s power over his new bride, and the narrator’s cowing acceptance of all of this, point to the gendered power structures of both the gothic and the marriage plot.

Rebecca screens on Netflix from October 21.

– ref. Guide to the classics: Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier — gender, gothic haunting and gaslighting – https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-rebecca-by-daphne-du-maurier-gender-gothic-haunting-and-gaslighting-146573

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jack Vowles, Professor of Political Science, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington

As the dust begins to settle after the 2020 election, a new electoral landscape becomes visible. It is remarkably different from the one before.

One way to put this in perspective is by measuring what we call “vote volatility” — the net vote shift between parties from one election to the next. By this calculation the 2020 election has ended a period of relative stability.

More significantly, unless reduced after the final count, the net vote shift will be the biggest in over a century.

The challenge will be for Labour to capitalise on this landmark in New Zealand electoral history — before the wheel inevitably turns again.

The first Labour landslide

Vote volatility is calculated by adding the absolute changes in parties’ vote shares between elections, then dividing the sum by two. A score of 0 would mean parties all received the same vote shares as before. A score of 100 would mean a complete replacement of one set of parties by another.

Over the past century, New Zealand has had four elections in which net vote shifts have been well above the norm: 1919, 1935, 2005 and now 2020.

In 1919, the Labour Party broke through into the city electorates and destroyed an embryonic two-party system that had pitched the Reform Party against the Liberal Party at the 1911 and 1914 elections. This turned elections into three-way races, with Labour winning mostly major urban seats, the Liberals doing better in the provincial towns and cities, and Reform in the countryside.

Read more: Labour’s single-party majority is not a failure of MMP, it is a sign NZ’s electoral system is working

In 1935, in a massive electoral landslide, Michael Joseph Savage’s Labour advanced further, forming its first government. Three conservative parties merged to form the National Party, ushering in New Zealand’s second two-party system.

That lasted much longer, but began to decay as early as the 1950s. At the 1984 election, net vote shifts were higher than at any election since 1938. However, the first-past-the-post system had prevented the emergence of a multi-party system from the 1970s onwards.

An end to vote stability

An upward vote volatility trend, beginning as long ago as the 1960s, continued after the introduction of MMP. Through the 1996, 1999 and 2002 elections, it reached a peak in 2005. After that, votes moved back in the direction of Labour and National.

As the pattern seemed to persist it led some observers to wonder whether the multi-party politics promised by MMP was a “mirage”.

ACT became a one-seat party, its Epsom electorate strategically gifted from National. New Zealand First dropped out of parliament in 2008, but returned in 2011. Only the Green Party prospered from one election to the next, eating into Labour’s vote share as the party languished in opposition during the John Key years.

Despite the change of government in 2008, vote shifts were modest, a pattern repeated in 2011. Indeed, in 2014 net vote shifts were the second lowest of any election over the previous century, only slightly higher than those of the “no change” election of 1963.

Read more: With a mandate to govern New Zealand alone, Labour must now decide what it really stands for

In 2017, Jacinda Ardern’s Labour took office, reflecting a real shift to the left, but relying on New Zealand First’s coalition choice more than the movement of votes (which was not enough for a left majority). It seemed party politics under MMP had stabilised after a brief period of experimentation that ended after the 2005 election.

The 2020 election breaks the mould. If the pattern holds after the counting of special votes, it will surpass even 1935, New Zealand’s hitherto most dramatic realigning election.

Moreover, turnout was up, another indicator of a big change. This was despite a widely predicted Labour win and a big margin between Labour and National in pre-election polls — expectation of a decisive result usually pulls turnout down.

The challenge to create a legacy

One might dismiss this as a one-off. COVID-19 and the government response created a perfect storm. When the crisis is over, things will return to normal.

But one could have said the same thing in 1935. The depression of the 1930s gave Labour the chance to win. Even if the economic recovery that followed was only partly an effect of Labour policy, the party reaped the rewards in 1938.

Like Michael Joseph Savage before her, Jacinda Ardern has demonstrated the leadership demanded by the times. But there is a difference. Labour in 1935 came to power with a big promise of a welfare state. Labour in 2020 has made no big promises, although many smaller ones. It faces huge challenges, arguably much more demanding than those of the 1930s.

Read more: Jacinda Ardern and Labour returned in a landslide — 5 experts on a historic New Zealand election

COVID-19 and a sustainable economic recovery will be the first priorities. Climate change, increased international tension, trade wars, internal cultural diversity and working through ongoing responsibilities under the Treaty of Waitangi — all of these will test the mettle of the Ardern government.

The 2020 election tells us the New Zealand party system is more prone to big shifts than expected after 2005. Periods of apparent two-party dominance may be temporary. Both Labour and National are prone to rise and fall, creating space for smaller parties to step into the gaps as they open, and fall back as they close.

The catalysts of change may be big external shocks or internal challenges. All else being equal, the 2020 election is likely to herald a period of Labour dominance, but eventually the tide will turn. Labour’s biggest challenge will be to establish a lasting policy legacy before that happens.

– ref. The 2020 NZ election saw record vote volatility — what does that mean for the next Labour government? – https://theconversation.com/the-2020-nz-election-saw-record-vote-volatility-what-does-that-mean-for-the-next-labour-government-148330

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mary-Louise McLaws, Professor of Epidemiology Healthcare Infection and Infectious Diseases Control, UNSW

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews announced on Sunday a further easing of coronavirus restrictions, as Victoria’s 14-day average of new daily cases continues to trend downwards.

Among the changes, Melburnians were told that from November 2 they can have two visitors at home per day, plus any dependants. Regional Victorians can already enjoy this rule, as their 14-day rolling case average is much lower at 0.4, compared with Melbourne’s 6.4.

This new rule replaces the “bubble” concept featured in the original roadmap. Under the previous plan in Melbourne, “step 3” of easing restrictions included a household bubble, whereby residents could nominate one other household with whom to socialise exclusively at home.

I understand the lifting of restrictions must be done compassionately with an eye on collective mental health. But from an outbreak-management perspective we must be very careful about indoor gatherings. The two people per day rule seems to be riskier than an exclusive bubble.

The bubble contains the infection risk

The risk of indoor spread is often greater because of poor ventilation, which might add to the risk of airborne spread. Further, people can unmask and fail to maintain physical distancing, which are more likely to happen indoors.

Close indoor contact poses the highest risk of transmission of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Victorian Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton reminds us indoor contact is about “20 times more dangerous than outdoors”. This is reflected in one study from Japan, which is yet to be peer-reviewed, and estimates “the odds that a primary case transmitted COVID-19 in a closed environment was 18.7 times greater compared to an open-air environment”.

Transmission still does occur outdoors, but the risk is lower.

The practice of exclusive social bubbles likely makes outbreaks easier to contain. The only people an infected person would have close indoor contact with would be their own household and their bubble household. In this scenario, contact tracers would know exactly whom to contact for isolation, testing and interviewing.

Here’s why the new lifting of the social rule is riskier

The proposed new rule could make timely contact tracing more difficult. With Melburnians allowed to have two adults over per day, they could have up to 14 contacts per week who don’t come from the same household.

Let’s go through a hypothetical example.

Say you are exposed to the virus unknowingly, on day zero. Over the next few days you start having visitors to your house. You can become infectious up to three days before showing symptoms. When COVID-19 cases have been diagnosed while asymptomatic (symptom-free but infectious) and followed up for at least seven days, up to 20% remain asymptomatic but infectious to others. Half of all people infected will develop symptoms around day five and day six and 97% will develop symptoms within 11 days.

So, you could be infectious to your visitors between day three and day five after being exposed while asymptomatic. That leaves three days when you could be contagious without knowing. We think people are more contagious when showing symptoms, but it’s widely accepted now that people can, and do, transmit the virus while asymptomatic.

Under the upcoming rule, during this three-day window, you could theoretically pass the virus to six adults from six different households (assuming you’re an extrovert who has lots of friends round for dinner). They can then transmit it to their households and friends in three days’ time to 18 people while they are asymptomatic. If your friends also brought their children or other dependants, who then got infected and went to school, the number could be even higher. Under the exclusive bubble, the problem would have been confined to just two households.

Then, after your final two guests leave on the evening of day five post-infection, you develop symptoms. You get tested on day six because your cough or sore throat did not go away. Your positive result is returned on day seven and a contact tracer interviews you within 24 hours. On day eight your visitors will start to be interviewed. If they don’t get interviewed immediately, your friends infected on day three have now already infected two others. Over the next two days your other four friends also became infected and passed it onto their friends.

Obviously this is a worse case scenario. But you can see how the chain of transmission can easily get out of control. That’s why being tested as soon as you have symptoms is so important. It speeds up the tracing of every contact you had over the 72 hours prior to your symptoms.

If we added to our scenario continuous asymptomatic transmission (where you never developed symptoms) it becomes even more concerning. This is because your infected friends could go on to infect many others before someone becomes sick and alerts contact tracers. Even more concerning is when you delay testing, which makes it even harder for you to recall who your contacts where and when your day zero was.

This is just a hypothetical situation. But it illustrates why I’m concerned about allowing widespread indoor close contact.

The hope is that new daily case numbers, by the time this rule is implemented, are so low the risk of new chains of transmission is very low too. Meanwhile, Victoria’s contact-tracing team is more robust than ever before.

Read more: Where did Victoria go so wrong with contact tracing and have they fixed it?

The other relaxed restrictions are less concerning

The other relaxed restrictions are of little concern. Allowing ten people to gather outdoors, from only two households, poses a negligible risk.

The extension of the 5km travel radius to 25km makes epidemiological sense. The risk increases when you allow people from high-risk areas into low-risk areas, so maintaining the “ring of steel” between metropolitan Melbourne and regional Victoria is logical. This approach of “ring-fencing” is a well-established tool and is why Wuhan, the city where the pandemic began, controlled the outbreak early and is now welcoming millions of tourists.

The next step, planned for November 2, also sees the return of retail shopping. This poses negligible risk as long as shoppers wear masks, maintain hand hygiene, and use QR codes on entry. In my view, the risk of transmission from wandering through shops is much lower than having people over to your house.

– ref. Melburnians will soon be able to have 2 visitors per day. It’s far riskier than an exclusive bubble – https://theconversation.com/melburnians-will-soon-be-able-to-have-2-visitors-per-day-its-far-riskier-than-an-exclusive-bubble-148430

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bobbie Oliver, Honorary Research Fellow, Humanities, University of Western Australia

The death of 23-year-old apprentice Jonnie Hartshorn on a Perth university building site is the 23rd workplace fatality among construction workers in Australia in 2020.

Hartshorn was killed on October 13 after falling 20 metres when the glass canopy of the building he was working on at Curtin University collapsed. Two co-workers were seriously injured.

The causes of the collapse, and any legal liability, are yet to be determined. But Hartshorn’s death highlights a tragic record of construction fatalities.

Today several hundred workers rallied at Western Australia’s Parliament House to demand new laws to make workplace manslaughter a criminal offence, as Labor governments have done in Queensland, Victoria and the Australian Capital Territory.

Western Australia’s Labor government has already introduced such legislation into parliament. But it has stalled in the upper house, where Labor members hold only 14 of the 36 seats. With the Liberal and National parties opposed to higher penalties, passage depends on four Greens, two One Nation members, one Liberal Democrat and one Shooters, Fishers and Farmers representative.

Criminal penalties may well help. But my research into the history of deaths on West Australian construction sites (for a paper to be published in the journal Labour History next month), highlights a range of issues contributing to past workplace deaths.

These include unskilled workers in insecure jobs, insufficient training, and the marginalisation of unions. These systemic problems also need to be addressed.

Read more: Killed in the line of work duties: we need to fix dangerous loopholes in health and safety laws

Workplace fatalities in Australia

The 23 deaths on building sites account for about 19% of the 122 workplace deaths in Australia so far this year. Just two industry sectors have had more deaths – transport, postal & warehousing (38 deaths) and agriculture, forestry & fishing (25 deaths) – with vehicle accidents being the main cause.

The most recent statistics from Safework Australia (the federal agency that develops national work health and safety policy) show the highest fatality rate is among machinery operators and drivers (6.2 deaths per 100,000 workers). This is followed by labourers (2.9 per 100,000) and technicians and trades workers (1.5). By comparison, the rate for clerical and sales workers is 0.1 per 100,000.

Work health and safety laws are the responsibility of state and territory governments. They mandate employer’s duties to provide a safe work environment, with penalties for non-compliance. The Australian Capital Territory was the first jurisdiction to introduce industrial manslaughter laws, in 2004. Queensland did so in 2017, and Victoria earlier this year. Elsewhere employers found culpable for worker deaths face only fines.

Read more: How and why do construction plant-related fatalities occur?

Would higher penalties prevent deaths?

Under existing West Australian laws, body corporates can be fined up to A$3.5 million for negligence causing a worker’s death. Between 1999 and 2019, though, the highest fine imposed was A$160,000, on trucking company Axedale Holdings in 2018 over the deaths of two construction workers, Joseph McDermott, 24, and Gerard Bradley, 27, who were crushed by concrete panels being unloaded from a trailer in November 2015.

Whether higher penalties create safer work places is a matter of debate.

Unions and others have campaigned for criminal penalties, believing the prospect of a prison sentence for employers might serve as an incentive to improve safety.

But international research shows the success rate of corporate manslaughter prosecutions against corporations and individual officers has been poor, because attributing physical fault is difficult.

Lines of non-responsibility

One of the problems on construction sites is the prevalence of sub-contractors and workers hired through labour-hire companies. This muddies clear lines of accountability. According to safety inspectors, labour-hire firms, sub-contractors and even construction companies are often ignorant of their duty of care to employees.

Some building companies are notorious for employing unskilled, poorly trained foreign nationals on casual contracts. Workers in precarious employment fear to speak out about safety breaches. Steve McCartney, the West Australian state secretary of the Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union, which represents maintenance workers on building sites, told me of cases of workers being sacked for speaking out about safety issues.

In these circumstances, responsibility for safety is often left to the individual worker, rather than the employer as work safety laws mandate

Pushing out unions

The casualisation of labour and emphasis on individual responsibility for safety is concurrent with the marginalisation of unions. Since July 2019, for example, changes to the federal Fair Work Act pushed through by the Morrison government require union officials to give 24 hours’ notice in writing before entering a work site.

The federal government has argued such amendments are necessary to curb unlawful union behaviour, particularly by the Construction, Forestry, Maritime, Mining and Energy Union.

Its war against the union has included a establishing a royal commission into the building industry in 2014, reinstating the Australian Building and Construction Commission in 2016 (first established by the Howard government in 2005), and several attempts to pass its Ensuring Integrity Bill, concentrated on reducing union power.

Read more: ‘Louts, thugs, bullies’: the myth that’s driving Morrison’s anti-union push

Whatever the merits of addressing “rogue unionists”, a wide-ranging body of research indicates work sites with an active union presence are safer than non-union sites. For example, a 2015 Canadian study analysing data from more than 40,000 construction firms concluded unionised workers were “almost 30% less likely to suffer critical injuries”.

Workers must, of course, take responsibility for their own safety, but this can only be effective in an environment where reporting safety breaches is encouraged and rewarded.

Employees are empowered when they have a voice through safety committees and union representatives. Secure work and adequate training are also empowering. Too many workers have neither.

– ref. Another building-site death adds to demands for industrial manslaughter laws – https://theconversation.com/another-building-site-death-adds-to-demands-for-industrial-manslaughter-laws-148335

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

We don’t have to credit Scott Morrison’s claim at Tuesday’s Coalition joint party room meeting that an election is the furthest thing from his mind, but we can take at face value his indication he wants to run full term.

Politics and the electoral implications of what he does are never out of Morrison’s thinking. But on the question of election timing, he didn’t have to be as categorical in his remarks, and what he said makes sense.

“I’m a full-termer, elections are too hard to win. I cherish every day – we’ll do it for the time we said we would,” he told his troops.

It’s always possible he flips his position (or is dissembling). But, as things stand, he probably means what he says because there are strong arguments for having the election when it’s due, in early 2022, rather than prematurely.

In recent weeks many in the media have been saying, publicly and privately, that we will likely have a late 2021 election.

But it’s clear from the polls and other evidence that the public don’t want to see too much political fractiousness now – and that might still be the position in a year’s time. One reason Labor is having so much trouble cutting through at the moment is that its attacks (inevitably) reintroduce partisanship.

Currently, it’s a period for incumbent leaders, even those under fire, as this week’s Essential poll again underlines. Despite Victoria’s slow emergence from lockdown, and the multiple problems of Dan Andrews’ government, 54% of Victorians approve of the job Andrews is doing as premier.

The Queensland election on October 31 will be a tangible test of the benefit of incumbency during COVID, but it’s accepted that the pandemic has put premier Annastacia Palaszczuk in a better position than she would have been in without it.

Even in ordinary times, people don’t like early elections. And, as Morrison says, he does “cherish every day” of power. An election late next year would mean most of 2021 would be in campaign mode, reducing what he could achieve.

Labor is apprehensive that the election might be held next year – in theory, a later date should advantage it. In practice, that wouldn’t necessarily be the case.

Elections are (with obvious qualifications) two-horse races and Labor faces an uphill task to present a convincing alternative whenever the poll is held.

Anthony Albanese is coming across as a trier, and his post budget pitch highlighting child care chose an issue of strong concern to many families. But colleagues continue to worry he and the opposition are not making an impact.

Switching leaders would be difficult and traumatic for Labor and not necessarily put it in a better position (and could burn a successor to no purpose).

Hard as it would be for Labor to accept, it may be a case of the COVID times simply not suiting it.

Having said that, we also know how quickly things can change in politics.

Morrison’s fate will rest on whether he has managed to get the country, and in particular its economy, convincingly on the road to “normality”. A 2022 election gives him more time to do that.

We don’t yet have any idea how 2021 will play out. It could be a rough year, easier to handle without the distraction of an election. And, who knows, by early 2022, we might even have people vaccinated.

– ref. View from The Hill: Morrison says he wants to run full term, and there are good reasons to believe him – https://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-morrison-says-he-wants-to-run-full-term-and-there-are-good-reasons-to-believe-him-148440

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jo Li Tay, Lecturer, School of Design and the Built Environment, Curtin University

In a new series, our writers explore their best worst film. They’ll tell you what the critics got wrong – and why it’s time to give these movies another chance.

As an academic, I am always amused to see my peers and students recoil in horror when I tell them I am a fan of Adam Sandler films.

“Really?” they usually say knowingly.

While his dramatic work in Punch Drunk Love (2002), The Meyerowitz Stories (2017) and Uncut Gems (2019) has been critically lauded, Sandler and his brand of slapstick comedy, though popular with audiences, are equally unpopular with critics.

But if you look beyond the surface-level silliness, many of his mass-market films contain a clever blend of social commentary, philosophy and moral education — all of which can be seen in the critically maligned Click (2006).

Directed by Frank Coraci, Click centres around Michael Newman (Sandler), a time-poor architect working long hours to try to get the promotion constantly dangled before him by his manipulative boss, all so he can provide an upper-middle class lifestyle to his wife and young children. Given a magical remote control, Michael finds he can speed up time.

Despite grossing over US$240 million (A$335 million) at the worldwide box office, Click has a Rotten Tomatoes score of just 34%.

Writing for The Guardian, Phillip French said, “There are more farts and embarrassing sex jokes than laughs — far more”.

John P. McCarthy from ReelTalk declared, “Sandler doesn’t have the class to pull it off”.

This response isn’t surprising. Click is guilty of using the same brand of immature humour hated by Sandler’s critics. But beyond the crass jokes (such as the repeated motif of the family dog mounting a plush toy duck), Click delivers profound lessons on work, life and relationships.

Sandler’s genius lies in his ability to deliver these messages with impact to a mass audience.

Searching for short-cuts

Michael’s predicament is all too familiar. Do we work to live, or live to work? Should life be a race we rush through at breakneck speed, keeping up with the Joneses, living our “best lives” and succeeding at all costs?

According to the Austrian-British philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, “In philosophy the winner of the race is the one who can run most slowly. Or: the one who gets there last.”

Click provides a perfect illustration of how tempting it can be to take short-cuts through life – contrary to the wisdom of Wittgenstein.

We see this play out early in the film, when Michael goes to buy a universal TV remote. At the shop, he meets Morty (Christopher Walken), a quirky salesman who gifts him one that performs like a TiVo. Popular in the early 2000s, this kind of video recorder could pause and rewind live television. Only in this instance, the remote works for real life.

Michael is thrilled with the remote’s powers, eagerly using it to fast-forward through boring and difficult situations. But, much to his horror, he soon realises repeating this action over time programs the remote to do so on autopilot.

To make matters worse, he discovers skipping through all the bad parts of life means he loses his connection with his family.

This is the philosophy at the heart of Click: in relationships, there are no shortcuts.

Strong, lasting relationships are not built on scattered celebrations of feelgood special events. Rather, it is the cumulative effect of doing mundane and insignificant things together over and over that bring us closer, and keep us close.

Having realised his relationships to his wife and children are more important than money and career, Michael desperately tries to spend time with them to make up for all that he missed. But it is too late – his wife has remarried and his children are now too busy living their own lives.

Read more: My best worst film: She’s The Man – Amanda Bynes shines in a hilarious commentary on gender

It gets better

Thankfully, Click does not merely place the problem under a microscope without offering closure. Upon discovering he has a chance at a do-over, Michael throws the remote away without hesitation.

In so doing, he demonstrates we can all choose to change for the better.

Although TiVo has long since been superseded, I still love this film. Click never fails to remind me the time I spend with my loved ones matters.

As we all grapple today with the promise of perfect lives serviced by apps designed to help us rush through life at breakneck speed, this message is more pertinent than ever.

– ref. My best worst film: dubbed a crass Adam Sandler comedy, Click is a deep meditation on relationships – https://theconversation.com/my-best-worst-film-dubbed-a-crass-adam-sandler-comedy-click-is-a-deep-meditation-on-relationships-147357

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Paul Williams, Senior Lecturer, School of Humanities, Griffith University

We’re at the mid-point of the Queensland election campaign.

Pre-polling opened on Monday, with about two million Queenslanders expected to vote before election day on October 31.

But with just 12 days to go, despite the Liberal-National Party (LNP) opposition stumbling a little more often than the Labor government, neither side has emerged as a clear front-runner. However, the ALP has its nose in front.

Pandemic conditions favour incumbents

Unusually, for a state that produced the likes of Bob Katter, Pauline Hanson and Clive Palmer, the campaign’s first two weeks have been notable only for a low-energy blandness. COVID-19 conditions and too few federal leaders appearing on the hustings have only added to a quiet air of sober austerity.

Fortunately for the Palaszczuk government, flavourless campaigns very often play into the hands of incumbents.

For example, the March 2020 election for the Brisbane City Council saw LNP Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner easily re-elected after a colourless campaign, despite early pandemic fears.

Indeed, it appears the pandemic has been a boon for incumbents everywhere. Between August and last weekend, Labor/Labour governments have been easily re-elected in the Northern Territory, Australian Capital Territory and New Zealand.

Voters, at least for now, appear to view leaders, parties and issues through a unique COVID-19 lens, and give governments free passes on such traditional vote-killers as debt, deficit and unemployment.

Read more: Jacinda Ardern and Labour returned in a landslide — 5 experts on a historic New Zealand election

Put simply, opposition parties are getting little traction when making the case for change. This phenomenon will not have escaped the attention of federal Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese.

Newspoll puts Labor ahead

The Queensland opposition’s own lack of traction was confirmed in a weekend Newspoll.

Currently, Labor and the LNP are evenly pegged in their primary vote at 37%, with Labor enjoying a narrow lead, after preferences, of 52 to 48%. That’s a swing to Labor of about one percentage point since the 2017 state election. If uniform, that swing could see Labor seize three additional LNP seats.

Newspoll also revealed a slightly higher Greens vote, with One Nation’s vote down by about five points since 2017.

Role reversal

That lack of appetite for change has seen something of a role reversal between the major parties.

Where the LNP is spruiking a “vision” via costly infrastructure projects — a $15 billion “New Bradfield” irrigation scheme and a $33 billion Bruce Highway upgrade — Labor is painting itself as the party of steady growth and public safety amid the greatest health crisis in a century.

Read more: Remember Quexit? 5 reasons you should not take your eyes off the Queensland election

Even so, the campaign is firmly aligned with the traditional pillars of Queensland political culture. In the words of political scientist Colin Hughes, this means it is about “things and places rather than people and ideas”.

It’s therefore hardly surprising that jobs, infrastructure, crime and frontline public service delivery are dominating.

But a theme of political stability also emerged during the first week. After eight decades of majority government, since the mid-1990s, Queensland has seen three hung parliaments.

Both Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk and LNP leader Deb Frecklington warned of instability being brought about by a vote for minor parties, then pledged “no deals” with crossbench members. Few believed either leader.

Integrity issues distract second week

The campaign’s second week turned to integrity when the ABC reported Frecklington had been referred by her own party to the Electoral Commission of Queensland after attending a dinner in August hosted by a property developer.

Under 2018 legislation, political donations from property developers are illegal.

Read more: Fundraising questions have interrupted the Queensland LNP’s election campaign. What does the law say?

Frecklington denied any wrongdoing. The LNP also denied reporting Frecklington, noting it “regularly communicates with the ECQ to ensure that [they] comply with the act.”

This came as the state’s Crime and Misconduct Commission (CCC) took the unprecedented step of writing to every candidate with a stark warning,

[…] the lines between government and the private sector are blurring, with overlapping networks of association involving consultants, influencers, lobbyists and executives.

Labor briefly played up integrity questions last week, but the Frecklington story soon faded.

Even so, the issue robbed the opposition of a valuable campaign oxygen and made Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s (probably only) visit to Queensland something of a non-event.

Economic issues still dominate

Indeed, the fact that Morrison’s intervention caused few local ripples underscores the fact this campaign is very clearly about Queensland affairs.

That’s why Palaszczuk and Frecklington spent about half of their first two weeks in the regions, where economic pain is so often felt hardest.

It’s also why the LNP is pledging an unemployment rate of 5% (down from the current 7.7%) and why Labor talked up its enthusiasm for coal mining via the approval of a $1 billion Olive Downs mine near Mackay.

Moreover, while Treasurer Cameron Dick insists Queensland must “borrow to build”, the LNP promises it could balance the budget by by 2024 without new taxes, asset sales or forced redundancies.

Last week, Labor jumped on Frecklington’s refusal to rule out “natural attrition” in the public service as a cost-saving measure — drawing comparisons with former LNP Premier Campbell Newman’s unpopular cuts. This is despite Labor’s own public service hiring freeze sounding remarkably similar.

Campaigns already ‘launched’

In a campaign already marred by vandalised corflutes and nasty tweets, the LNP has pledged to put Labor last on how-to-vote cards.

It’s a curious strategy that will have an effect only in a small number of seats where the LNP finishes third behind Labor and a minor party or independent. Later, the LNP said it would put the Informed Medical Options Party — an anti-fluoridation, anti-“forced” vaccinations group — last in the 31 seats the IMOP is contesting.

Will pre-poll voting beginning this week, up to 70% of electors could vote before October 31, when postal votes are also considered. This pressure to “front-end” their campaigns saw the major parties bring forward their campaign launches to Sunday, October 18.

Few surprises were offered, although Labor’s long-pledged euthanasia legislation and free TAFE for students under 25 years have generated headlines. The LNP’s $300 car registration rebate and plans for cheaper electricity for 16,000 manufacturing businesses will also provoke interest.

This election is still Labor’s to lose.

– ref. As the Queensland campaign passes the halfway mark, the election is still Labor’s to lose – https://theconversation.com/as-the-queensland-campaign-passes-the-halfway-mark-the-election-is-still-labors-to-lose-148267

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joe McIntyre, Senior Lecturer in Law, University of South Australia

Many Americans were riveted last week by the at times absurd confirmation hearing for US Supreme Court nominee Judge Amy Coney Barrett.

The death in mid-September of Ruth Bader Ginsburg thrust the issue of Supreme Court appointments into the heart of the US presidential election. The issue has been hard to avoid even here in Australia.

The contrast with appointments to our own High Court of Australia could not be more stark. Most Australians would be unaware the High Court is about to get two new judges, with replacements for the retiring Geoffrey Nettle and Virginia Bell expected to be named as early as this week.

Fewer still could explain how those judges will be appointed, and what is involved in the process.

The US Supreme Court and the High Court of Australia perform similar constitutional roles: both courts resolve technical legal cases, as well as those of enormous political significance. Both also have the power to strike down legislation.

But whereas appointments to the US Supreme Court are a highly visible festival of political intrigue and showmanship, the process in Australia is a secretive affair occurring strictly behind closed doors.

Even avid court watchers are left to speculate who will be appointed to replace retiring judges, as well as when such appointments will even be announced.

While our judges may prefer their relative anonymity, the process for choosing who sits on the highest court must be more transparent. Our system is beginning to look outdated.

Read more: What would Amy Coney Barrett, Trump’s pick for the Supreme Court, mean for abortion rights in the US?

Huge discretion to appoint any lawyer to the court

When the High Court was created in 1903, it comprised three judges. Over the past 120 years, the size of the bench has expanded to seven. Following a referendum in 1977, a mandatory retirement age of 70 was introduced.

However, the Constitution and subsequent legislation are conspicuously silent on the process to be followed in appointing judges. Section 72 of the Constitution says only

The justices of the High Court […] shall be appointed by the governor-general in council.

In practice, this means judges are nominated by the prime minster following advice of the cabinet, with significant weight given to the recommendation of the attorney-general.

Read more: Deep cultural shifts required: open letter from 500 legal women calls for reform of way judges are appointed and disciplined

The Constitution does not mention qualifications for High Court judges. The High Court of Australia Act 1979 does require appointees to have been either a judge of an Australian court or enrolled as a legal practitioner for at least five years. This minimal threshold provides a very low bar for eligibility.

Similarly, the requirements for vetting judges are scarce. The High Court of Australia Act provides a minimum role for consultation with the states:

Where there is a vacancy in an office of justice, the attorney-general shall, before an appointment is made to the vacant office, consult with the attorneys-general of the states in relation to the appointment.

Such consultations occur in private. There is no requirement for how extensive they must be, nor do they need to factor into the final decision at all. A five-minute session at the end of a National Cabinet video conference would suffice.

In practice, these provisions grant huge discretion to the cabinet to appoint almost any lawyer they wish.

Fortunately, the country has organically developed some strong political conventions to guide the process, including commitments to make appointments based on merit, as well as geographic and (more recently) gender diversity. Unlike the US, a judge’s political leanings are not overtly taken into account.

While a handful of judges have been former politicians, by and large we have been blessed with an apolitical bench populated by the most eminent judges and lawyers in Australia.

However, both the Trump administration in the US and the Johnson government in the UK have shown just how brittle political conventions can be. Once those conventions shatter, the social legitimacy of public institutions — including courts — can quickly evaporate.

Ways to make our system more open and fair

Our system may seemingly work well, but there are ways we could reform the appointment process to make it more open.

One option is to beef up the role of the state attorneys-general to more actively involve them in the decision.

Historically, the most important issue when vetting potential judges in Australia is not whether they are conservative or liberal, but whether they are likely to favour Commonwealth or state interests.

This may have contributed to a significant centralisation of power in our federation. The High Court is supposed to be the nation’s court, not a tool of the Commonwealth. Direct involvement of the states in the appointment process may moderate any potential for partisan (as in, pro-Commonwealth) judges to be appointed.

Read more: Appointing Australia’s highest judges deserves proper scrutiny

Secondly, and more radically, we could minimise the role of political interests in the process by adopting a more open and accountable method.

We could look to the UK for models to follow. For lower court appointments, the UK uses a judicial appointment commission — an independent body — that selects candidates based on merit in a “fair and open competition”.

For Supreme Court appointments, a statutory selection committee makes recommendations to the lord chancellor, who has limited capacity to reject candidates or ask the committee to reconsider.

This new process has been stunningly successful, though there are some lingering concerns over the lack of diversity on the court.

Thirdly, we could minimise the potential for a single appointment to dominate the High Court for years by imposing term limits on judges.

After Justice Edward McTiernan reluctantly retired in 1976 at the age of 84 (and after 46 years on the bench), a constitutional retirement age of 70 was introduced.

While this prevents judges from clinging to their positions into very old age, a younger appointment can still serve for many decades.

Justice James Edelman, for example, was appointed to the court in 2017 at age 43 and is not due to retire until 2044. This potentially creates an incentive for politicians to appoint a sympathetic judge at a young age in an attempt to exert influence on the court for a long time.

One approach may be to replace the retirement provision with a term limit of 10 years. This would encourage the appointment of judges at the prime of their judicial careers with the necessary experience for the job, but prevent anyone from sitting on the court for decades.

Such reforms could enhance the functionality and social legitimacy of our courts, while avoiding the political infighting of the US approach. What seems increasingly clear is the current secretive and archaic process is beginning to look decidedly inappropriate for contemporary Australia.

– ref. Two High Court of Australia judges will be named soon – unlike Amy Coney Barrett, we know nothing about them – https://theconversation.com/two-high-court-of-australia-judges-will-be-named-soon-unlike-amy-coney-barrett-we-know-nothing-about-them-147853

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hassan Vally, Associate Professor, La Trobe University

Victoria recorded one new case of COVID-19 on Monday, another fantastic result that suggests the coronavirus outbreak there is now being well controlled. Premier Daniel Andrews said on Tuesday the state was “well placed this weekend to be able to make very significant announcements about a further step to opening”.

It’s worth acknowledging what a fantastic job everyone has done in Victoria. Huge sacrifices have been made, people have done the hard yards in difficult circumstances, and now it’s time to step our way out.

Here are answers to common questions about emerging from lockdown and how to make sure you’re doing it safely.

Read more: Melbourne is almost out of lockdown. It’s time to trust Melburnians to make their own COVID-safe decisions

When and how should the Victoria-NSW border reopen?

The Sydney Morning Herald reports the NSW-Victoria border could reopen within a month (and Andrews said he would like to see NSW reopen to regional Victoria as early as this week).

The Herald quoted NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian saying:

We are very keen to see what happens in Victoria once further restrictions are eased because that’s the real test […] And if Victoria demonstrates that they’ve […] upped their contact-tracing capacity, that they’re able to demonstrate they’re not going to have uncontrolled outbreaks while they’re easing restrictions, well that will give us confidence to open the borders.

So there’s a bit of guesswork here but if you match her comments up with the current roadmap to ease restrictions, it sounds like there’s a chance the border could be reopening some time in the first half of November.

There will be a period of watching closely how well Victoria does as restrictions ease; this will be the real test of where Victoria is at in terms of suppressing transmission.

But once you have confirmation NSW and Victoria are pretty much tracking the same way, there’s no reason to keep the border closed. There are plenty of good economic and social reasons to have it open.

Even though the numbers look fairly similar between Victoria and NSW, the shape of the two outbreaks has been and remains slightly different. In NSW, most new cases are from overseas arrivals and the number of mystery cases is lower, as shown in this excellent breakdown published by the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.

So, quite reasonably, there’s a bit of caution about letting Victorians into NSW; there’s more uncertainty around exactly where Victoria sits in terms of controlling the spread of the virus. But as long as things continue to go well in Victoria as it opens up, NSW can have greater confidence it’s safe to reopen the border.

How should the opening of the border be managed? Well, I don’t think you can attempt a staged opening of a border. The whole point of a border reopening is to allow free movement between the two states. Either you wait until you’re confident and then open the border, or you don’t do it at all. You can’t half open it.

Is fishing allowed in Victoria?

For Melburnians, the answer is basically yes, assuming there’s a fishing spot within your 25km radius and you’re sensible about it. As with all activities, it’s important to stick to the restriction changes announced this week and follow hygiene and distancing rules. (Use this ABC tool to find out what’s within 25km of your Melbourne home.)

For regional Victorians, you can go fishing as long as you’re being COVID-safe and following the restrictions (outlined in the Instagram post embedded above).

The Victorian Fishing Authority says:

When fishing or boating you must keep a 1.5m distance from other participants, wear a fitted face covering at all times (except for children under 12 or where an exemption applies), practice good hygiene and not share equipment.

I’m not much of a fisherman myself but, as an epidemiologist, I think fishing sounds like a lovely, low-risk, relaxing outdoor activity — if you don’t mind dealing with the fish.

When can Melbourne people travel to regional Victoria?

According to the Department of Health and Human Services, for Melburnians:

Travel to regional Victoria is still only allowed for permitted purposes even if this is within 25km. This means you cannot travel into regional Victoria for exercise or recreation.

This is the “ring of steel” you have heard so much about, the aim of which is to protect regional Victoria from the virus in metropolitan Melbourne.

The government’s Roadmap for reopening currently says when there have been zero new cases in the community for more than 14 days, the state can move to the roadmap’s final step. Then, travel within Victoria will be allowed (but you can’t enter any restricted area).

Read more: As holidaymakers arrive, what does COVID-19 mean for rural health services?

Can regional Victorians visit Melbourne?

According to the third step in the roadmap, regional Victorians:

…must not travel into metropolitan Melbourne under current restrictions, except to buy necessary goods and services, for care and compassionate reasons or permitted work or education. While in metropolitan Melbourne you must comply with the metropolitan Melbourne restrictions.

You can travel through metropolitan Melbourne on your way to a holiday in regional Victoria but shouldn’t stop unless it is for one of the three permitted reasons.

Being smart about it

As the pendulum shifts away from the government telling us what we can do, to us making our own decisions, it’s important to be COVID-safe in the way we navigate this new normal.

That means limiting your contact with people, wearing a mask, practising social distancing and hand hygiene, staying home when sick, and getting tested if you have symptoms.

Read more: WHO is right: lockdowns should be short and sharp. Here are 4 other essential COVID-19 strategies

– ref. When and how should the Victoria-NSW border reopen? Is fishing allowed in Victoria? When can I travel between Melbourne and regional Victoria? Your COVID-19 questions answered – https://theconversation.com/when-and-how-should-the-victoria-nsw-border-reopen-is-fishing-allowed-in-victoria-when-can-i-travel-between-melbourne-and-regional-victoria-your-covid-19-questions-answered-148428

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Les Christidis, Professor, Southern Cross University

The tawny frogmouth is one of Australia’s most-loved birds. In fact, it was first runner-up in the Guardian/BirdLife Australia bird of the year poll (behind the endangered black-throated finch).

Tawny frogmouths are found throughout Australia, including cities and towns, and population numbers are healthy. We’re now in the breeding season – which runs from August to December – so you may have been lucky enough to see some pairs with chicks recently.

Here are five fascinating things about tawny frogmouths that you might not know.

Read more: What Australian birds can teach us about choosing a partner and making it last

1. They are excellent parents

Tawny frogmouths are excellent parents. Both males and females share in building the nest and incubating the eggs, generally one to three. The eggs take 30 days to hatch, with the male incubating during the day and both sexes taking turns during the night.

Once hatched, both parents are very involved in feeding the fledglings. A young bird’s wings take about 25 to 35 days to develop enough strength for flight (a process known as “fledging”).

2. They mate for life

Tawny frogmouths pair for life. Breeding pairs spend a great deal of time roosting together and the male often gently strokes the female with his beak. Some researchers report seeing tawny frogmouths appear to “grieve” when their partner dies.

For example, renowned bird behaviour expert Gisela Kaplan tells of rearing a male tawny frogmouth on her property then releasing it to the wild. It found a female mate and raised nestlings. One day, the female was run over on the highway; Kaplan recognised its markings.

She found the male “whimpering” on a nearby post. Kaplan reportedly said: “It sounds like a baby crying. It affects you to listen to it.” According to Kaplan, the male stayed there for four days and nights, and did not eat or drink.

3. They’re not owls

Although tawny frogmouths are often referred to as owls, they are not. But they do resemble owls with their large eyes, soft plumage and camouflage patterns, because both owls and frogmouths hunt at night. This phenomenon (where two species develop the same attributes, despite not being closely related) is called “convergent evolution”.

Unlike owls, tawny frogmouths do not have powerful feet and talons with which to capture prey. Instead, they prefer to catch prey with their beaks. Their soft, wide, forward-facing beaks are designed for catching insects. They will also feed on small birds, mammals and reptiles.

4. They are masters of disguise

Tawny frogmouths are extremely well camouflaged and when staying statue-still on a tree branch they appear to be part of the tree itself. They often choose to perch near a broken tree branch and thrust there head at angle, further mimicking a tree branch.

5. They make strange noises

Tawny frogmouths are quite vocal at night and have a range of calls from deep grunting to soft “wooing”. When threatened, they make a loud hissing sound. Their vocalisations have also variously been described as purring, screaming and crying.

6. They can survive extremes

In colder regions of Australia, tawny frogmouths are able to survive the winter months by going into torpor for a few hours. In this state, an animal slows its heart rate and metabolism and lowers its body temperature to conserve energy.

On very hot summer days tawny frogmouths will produce mucus in their mouths which cools the air they breathe in, thereby cooling their whole body.

7. They need old trees

It’s not that uncommon to see tawny frogmouths dead on the road; they often flit across the road chasing insects at night and can be hit by cars.

Tawny frogmouth populations are holding relatively steady, but there is a shortage of old trees for nesting. They especially like trees with old branches as they mimic old branches and stick out like sore thumbs on young branches.

When one NSW council chopped down a suburban tree that a tawny frogmouth pair had reportedly used for years as a nesting site, one of the birds was photographed sitting on a nearby woodchipper — a poignant image.

8. They’re not good at building nests.

Tawny frogmouths are pretty slack when it comes to nest building. They simply dump twigs and leaves in a pile and that is it. Chicks and eggs have even fallen out of the nest when parents are swapping brooding duties.

Read more: Laughs, cries and deception: birds’ emotional lives are just as complicated as ours

– ref. Hard to spot, but worth looking out for: 8 surprising tawny frogmouth facts – https://theconversation.com/hard-to-spot-but-worth-looking-out-for-8-surprising-tawny-frogmouth-facts-146484

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nat Kassel, PhD Candidate, Griffith University

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg promised a federal budget focused on “jobs, jobs, jobs”. In one sense he didn’t disappoint. His budget speech mentioned jobs 37 times – an average of about once a minute.

“This budget is all about jobs,” he declared. But it wasn’t about all jobs.

While the budget devotes billions to getting unemployed Australians into traditional employment, it does little for those with diminishing opportunities to find work outside the “gig economy”, where they are effectively treated as subcontractors, not as employees with rights secured by the Fair Work Act.

The government’s A$37 billion in subsidies for businesses include almost A$4 billion for JobMaker subsidies (paying $200 a week for hiring a new employee aged 16-29, and $100 a week for an employee aged 30-35), and A$1.2 billion for apprenticeships in advanced manufacturing. There’s also A$1 billion for businesses in the defence industry and A$3 billion for infrastructure projects.

But largely missing from the government’s considerations are those in sectors hit hardest by the COVID-19 pandemic where jobs are increasingly precarious.

It is not just workers in “blue-collar” jobs in hospitality and delivery that increasingly face few opportunities to find a secure, full-time job. Casualised, part-time and freelance “gig” work is also increasingly common in “white-collar” industries such the media, the arts and higher education.

Read more: Budget 2020: promising tax breaks, but relying on hope

Rise of the gig economy

The term “gig economy” was coined in 2009, at the height of the global financial crisis, as scores of unemployed and underemployed workers picked up various odd jobs to cover their living expenses. Journalist Tina Brown (a former editor of The New Yorker) described workers in the knowledge economy increasingly depending on “a bunch of free-floating projects, consultancies, and part-time bits and pieces” for work.

Brown predicted the gig economy was “the new face of the job market” for knowledge workers.

A decade on, it’s difficult to track the exact scale and shape of the gig economy – partly because terms like “gig work”, “freelance work”, “flexible work” and “digital platform work” are used interchangeably.

Australian Bureau of Statistics numbers, for example, are often cited to show the proportion of “employees without paid leave entitlements” hasn’t risen greatly in the past two decades. But this doesn’t capture the insecurity of workers not counted as employees.

Read more: Self-employment and casual work aren’t increasing but so many jobs are insecure – what’s going on?

A 2016 report by the Grattan Institute estimated 0.5% of Australians used peer-to-peer work platforms once a month. A 2019 national survey of 14,000 Australians found 13% of respondents had undertaken “digital platform work”, with 7% doing so (or seeking to do so) in the previous 12 months.

The five most common platforms used were Airtasker, Uber, Freelancer, Uber Eats and Deliveroo. The most common type of work was food delivery, followed by professional services work, maintenance and then writing or translation work. More than a quarter had done computer-based work only.

According to technology researchers writing in the Harvard Business Review:

The COVID-19 pandemic could well prove to be a pivotal point in the gigification of knowledge work, and many firms will be attracted by the prospects of the direct and indirect cost savings that the gig economy model seems to offer.

Gig work during the pandemic

As as freelance writer and PhD candidate, I can relate. Through my paid work and own experience, I’ve seen how the COVID-19 crisis is affecting both blue and white-collar workers.

Earlier this year, when the first wave of the pandemic hit, I was commissioned to write an article about the four major food delivery platforms in Australia (Uber Eats, Menulog, Deliveroo and DoorDash). It was supposed to be a comparison article aimed at potential customers, explaining which platform is best. But speaking to delivery drivers made it clear not a single one of these companies would guarantee their workers a minimum wage.

One of the gig workers I interviewed was Joseph, who was delivering food around Perth for Uber Eats. As the first restrictions kicked in, his work evaporated almost immediately. He told me that one week he made $78 for 10 hours’ work – about $7.80 an hour, less than half the national minimum wage of $19.84 an hour. After fuel and vehicle costs, he estimated he cleared just $20.

All five delivery workers I interviewed said they had earned less than the national minimum wage at one time or another. Joseph at least qualified for JobSeeker, but others were migrant workers with no right to welfare payments.

Read more: Delivery workers are now essential. They deserve the rights of other employees

Being a white-collar gig worker

The irony of writing about gig workers like Joseph who grapple with precarious work is that the article I was writing was itself gig work.

Over the past few years I’ve worked regularly as a freelance journalist and copywriter for various publications and brands. In a typical week I’d spend Monday in an office writing listicles and advertorials for a website aimed at high school students. On a Tuesday I’d commission and edit articles for a travel website. For the remainder of the week I’d pitch interviews and feature articles to publications.

I commuted to different offices and co-working spaces around Sydney, worked from my windowless bedroom or in nearby cafes. I accepted just about every writing gig I could find, using all my own equipment, setting my own schedule and invoicing as a sole trader. I took occasional cleaning and bar-tending jobs for extra cash.

Though I mostly enjoyed the work, it was challenging to stay on top of five or six different gigs simultaneously. I spent a lot of time chasing up late invoices and it was difficult to financially plan beyond paying my monthly rent.

Closing the loophole

Now, as a PhD student, I am contemplating how much the gig economy has encroached on academia. It has been estimated that up to 70% of teaching staff in some Australian universities were precariously employed, as casuals or on short-term contracts, before the pandemic.

These academics were naturally the first to lose their jobs, with the universities excluded from the federal government’s JobKeeper scheme.

Read more: A new definition of ‘worker’ could protect many from exploitation

If the government is “all about jobs”, it’s time to acknowledge the need for substantive reform to Australia’s industrial relations laws, to close the legal loopholes that allow businesses to exploit workers as non-employees.

– ref. The budget promises jobs, but does little for workers in the gig economy – https://theconversation.com/the-budget-promises-jobs-but-does-little-for-workers-in-the-gig-economy-142638

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Crowley, Associate Professor, Public and Environmental Policy, University of Tasmania

After the 2008 global financial crisis, Green New Deals were proposed in various countries as a way to pick up the pieces of the economy. The general idea is to create jobs while rebuilding societies, by targeting environmental innovation as the key to economic recovery.

We’re in the midst of another global financial crisis that’s infinitely more crippling than in 2008, and the global pandemic that brought it on shows no signs of easing. So is now really the right time to, yet again, advocate for a Green New Deal?

Read more: Why it doesn’t make economic sense to ignore climate change in our recovery from the pandemic

In his speech to the National Press Club last week, national Greens leader Adam Bandt reiterated his push for the deal. He lambasted the Morrison government’s economic response to COVID-19 in the federal budget, which largely shunned renewable energy investment, calling it “criminal”.

The Greens’ proposal echoes Labor, business, unions and environmental groups, and even some conservatives, who think green policies are vital to strengthen the economy post-pandemic.

And they’re right, the Green New Deal is explicitly designed to assist recovery after a crisis. With many countries already taking on similar ideas, the Coalition government’s steadfast investment in fossil fuels will only hold Australia back.

What is a Green New Deal?

The Green New Deal is an environmental version of economic stimulus, modelled upon US President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal of massive public spending to create jobs after the 1930s depression.

It couples climate action with social action, creating jobs while reducing emissions, and reducing energy costs by adopting renewables. It’d come at a cost, however, to the fossil fuel industry.

Read more: Politics with Michelle Grattan: Adam Bandt on Greens’ hopes for future power sharing

The Greens want Australia to quit coal by 2030, and have an independent authority, Renew Australia, to manage a just transition for workers, create jobs and see no one left behind in the transition to 100% renewable energy.

Even the International Monetary Fund sees a global green fiscal stimulus, with investment in climate change action and transitioning to a low carbon economy, as the right response to the COVID crisis.

Green New Deals around the world

In the socially democratic Scandinavian countries, green-led economic recovery has been the go-to policy response to political, banking, fiscal and resource-based economic crises in recent decades.

Energy taxation, offset by cuts in personal income tax, and social security contributions have driven economic recovery. As a result, Nordic economies have grown by 28% from 2000–17, while carbon emissions have fallen by 18%.

In late 2019, before the onset of COVID, the European Union announced a Green New Deal worth €1 trillion in public and private investment over the next decade to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050.

Read more: ‘Green Deal’ seeks to make Europe the first climate-neutral continent by 2050

However, this funding is no longer assured. The COVID crisis has put a hole in EU finances, caused divisions over spending priorities and seen few environmental strings attached to member country bailouts.

In the US, the Green New Deal featured strongly in the Obama administration’s grappling with the global financial crisis. Now, during the pandemic, it’s featuring again as a proposal from the Democrats.

Between September 2008 and December 2009, South Korea and China outstripped the post-GFC efforts of the rest of the G20 nations with their astonishing green stimulus spending of 5% and 3.1%, respectively, of GDP.

Today, South Korea is using its COVID response to trigger environmentally sustainable economic growth, spending US$61.9 billion to invest in wind, solar, smart grids, renewables, electric vehicles and recycling.

Read more: South Korea’s Green New Deal shows the world what a smart economic recovery looks like

It’s clear nations around the world have decided a Green New Deal is exactly the right stimulus response to crises, including the current fallout from the global pandemic. So how is Australia tracking?

Australia risks being left behind

The lessons for Australia are, firstly, that it risks being left behind in the technological advances that come with shifting to a greener economy, if it neglects the environment in its COVID stimulus planning.

It should embrace the COVID crisis and the climate crisis as dual challenges, given Australia’s urgent need to reduce its emissions in electricity, transport, stationary energy, fugitive emissions and industrial processes.

Australia can be confident investment in clean energy that sets it on the path to carbon neutrality by 2050 will not only be rewarded economically, but also diplomatically, as it joins the global, willing climate coalition.

The UN chief economist, Elliott Harris, has called for Australia and other nations to

place more ambitious climate action and investment in clean energy at the centre of their COVID-19 recovery plans.

Instead, the Coalition government has given fossil fuels four times more stimulus funding than renewables, and has prioritised coal-fired power, carbon capture and storage, and gas industry expansion in its recent federal budget.

This is a risky investment strategy. The International Energy Agency sees a poor economic future for fossil fuels, with demand for coal on the decline and jobs in renewables expected to increase.

Read more: ‘Backwards’ federal budget: Morrison government never fails to disappoint on climate action

However, the government’s COVID advisory commission — led by a former mining executive, and criticised by independent MP Zali Steggall for lack of transparency — is recommending a gas-led, not green-led, recovery.

If the Coalition were to attempt it, a Green New Deal would ease the shift away from fossil fuels. It would focus, as such deals do elsewhere, on creating jobs by accelerating the transition to a low-carbon economy. It’s time to get on board.

– ref. You’ve probably heard of the Green New Deal in the US — is it time for one in Australia? – https://theconversation.com/youve-probably-heard-of-the-green-new-deal-in-the-us-is-it-time-for-one-in-australia-148254

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joseph Ibrahim, Professor, Health Law and Ageing Research Unit, Department of Forensic Medicine, Monash University

This article is part of our series on the future of aged care.

In the face of the harrowing findings of the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety and the COVID-19 crisis, it’s abundantly clear the way we provide residential aged care in Australia needs to change.

Over the past couple of decades, government regulation has failed to keep pace with an increasingly privatised market of for-profit providers.

Successive parliamentary inquiries, productivity commissions and the like have offered many solutions, but few have been adopted. Each time we see a piecemeal approach with adjustments in only one part of residential aged care, rather than wholesale reform.

The greatest failing of our nation in residential aged care is we have the knowledge, skills and capability to deliver a world class system. Yet the abuse, neglect and substandard care continues, largely unabated.

COVID-19 and the royal commission have shone a light on a broken system

The deaths of residents during the COVID-19 pandemic, as tragic as they are, do not approach the magnitude of neglect and abuse that exists in residential aged care in Australia.

The most damning is the failure of successive governments to address the physical and sexual violence that occurs in residential aged care. It is perverse that they keep an annual tally — in 2018-19, 5,233 assaults were reported — but there’s been no action to deliver systemic changes.

The advent of a new serious incident reporting scheme is lipstick on a pig. There seems to be more concern about the reporting burden on providers and the regulator than the safety of residents.

Read more: It’s hard to think about, but frail older women in nursing homes get sexually abused too

Residents who aren’t subjected to blatant abuse may still receive substandard care and suffer being over-sedated, falling and fracturing a hip, or developing a large pressure injury.

The provider may receive a notice of non-compliance and little else. It’s the resident who dies prematurely or has a poorer quality of life.

To improve residential aged care in Australia, we first need to address the violation of residents’ basic human rights.

A human rights-based approach

The future of aged care demands an active human rights legal centre to uphold the rights of aged-care residents at policy formulation and in the courts.

Meanwhile, we must hold providers to higher standards. The current system of weak enforcement and inconsequential sanctions must change. Approved providers, their board members and executives should be held criminally culpable for institutional neglect and abuse, similar to what happens in workplaces.

Without substantive consequences, government ministers, their departments, the regulator and providers will not change their behaviour.

Alongside tackling the abuse and neglect, respecting residents’ rights means giving them a say, as well as increasing the accountability and transparency of government and providers.

Residents should be the focus — but they’re not heard

In the first instance, aged care must be designed from the perspective of the person it’s intended to serve — the older person. Residential aged care should be a place where older people thrive, not simply where they go to die.

But currently, residential aged care operates according to what’s convenient for government, aged-care providers, and hospitals.

We saw an example recently at the height of the COVID-19 crisis in aged care, where some residents with coronavirus were denied access to hospital care. In certain instances, these decisions were made regardless of whether remaining in the facility aligned with the resident’s wishes or their best interests.

Read more: Older Australians deserve more than the aged care royal commission’s COVID-19 report delivers

Aged care operates around, rather than with, the resident. This approach was common in the 1950s when, for example, male general surgeons represented the views of women with breast cancer. Evidently, we’ve come a long way in health care, but not aged care, since then.

Participatory decision-making is a fundamental concept in society generally — an example would be public consultations about urban renewal projects — and in health care specifically. But it doesn’t exist in aged care.

Governments, many peak bodies and advocacy groups claim to speak for residents, but in reality very few do. We make excuses that it’s impossible to include residents because they have dementia, are not interested, or don’t understand what’s required to operate an aged-care home. But this is not necessarily the case.

Models for engaging consumers are readily available, as is guidance for supported decision-making, which enables people with cognitive disabilities to exercise their legal decision-making rights.

Participation must go beyond asking about what flavour of ice cream to serve with dessert. Residents should, for example, be able to influence the selection of staff, sit on the board of governance, and be consulted about the operations of the care home and the whole sector.

Establishing a national group comprised almost entirely of aged-care residents, with the addition of legal and administration expertise, and people who can assist with supported decision-making, would be a positive step. This group would report to federal parliament about funding, policy and practice reforms for aged care.

Residents need someone to be accountable — but they’re stateless

The tragedy of the COVID-19 pandemic laid this bare. Responsibility was offloaded to providers as if residents were property. Any higher accountability was shunted between the regulator and federal and state government. No one was in charge, leading to needless deaths.

We could address this by establishing an Aged Care Ombudsman with powers to investigate the performance of aged-care providers, and hold all levels of government, including the regulator, accountable for their actions and inactions.

A more radical approach would be to reimagine our representative democracy. Perhaps if the 213,397 residents living in aged care could directly elect two members of federal parliament, governments may become accountable.

Residents need transparency — but they’re kept in the dark

Residents and families don’t have access to information to inform decisions about choosing a care home, or to monitor the quality of care.

There’s no detailed financial disclosure about how funding received for an individual resident is allocated to them; nor information about staffing; nor comprehensive performance data about a provider, beyond how many non-compliance notices they’ve received.

Despite a huge number of stakeholders in aged care, government, providers, and peak bodies representing providers continue to resist any effort towards greater transparency.

Two recent examples include failing to pass legislation that would make the staffing levels of aged-care homes publicly available, and installing the national aged care advisory group for COVID-19 without any explanation of the process by which it was formed.

To get a clearer picture of how the government makes decisions critical to resident care and safety, we need to scrutinise the nature and extent of relationships between government, providers and peak bodies.

To this end, we should adopt a national public register of competing interests in aged care like some countries have to address the relationship between big pharma and health professionals.

Read more: We’ve had 20 aged care reviews in 20 years – will the royal commission be any different?

To further increase transparency, and importantly to give residents and families the information to which they’re entitled, there are a few other things which are long overdue. We should implement:

• a comprehensive suite of quality performance indicators to measure each facility’s performance (beyond the pitiful three currently in place)

• an annual national expert review of serious incidents, with lessons learned to improve the sector

• a national register that gathers data by facility on quality of life and health outcomes for aged-care residents (including premature death and injury).

It will take guts

A world-class system need not be expensive; substantial improvements are possible in the health and well-being of residents with modest increases in funding.

This requires structuring services that deliver health care, personal care, rehabilitation, palliative care, support social inclusion, and, importantly, respect human rights.

To achieve this, we’ll need to give residents a voice and establish greater accountability and transparency across the sector.

If we can address these issues, then it will be worthwhile taking the next steps to fix the specifics — such as the well-documented staffing issues.

But without these changes, whatever is built will simply collapse again.

Fixing aged care is not conceptually hard. It just takes guts to recognise we haven’t given aged care and older people a fair go, and we must set that right.

Read more: Aged care failures show how little we value older people – and those who care for them

– ref. If we have the guts to give older people a fair go, this is how we fix aged care in Australia – https://theconversation.com/if-we-have-the-guts-to-give-older-people-a-fair-go-this-is-how-we-fix-aged-care-in-australia-147461

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Gluckman, Director of Koi Tū, the Centre for Informed Futures; former Chief Science Advisor to the Prime Minister of New Zealand, University of Auckland

The World Health Organization (WHO) has come in for its share of criticism for its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. While some faults are the responsibility of the WHO, others were caused by member states, which did not always act as quickly as they should have.

In our opinion, the fundamental problem was that the WHO’s current information sharing, response and organisational structure to deal with infectious diseases that may spread across borders quickly and dangerously is out of date.

We argue the global population deserves a better model — one that delivers information about the risk of emergent infectious diseases faster and in a way that is transparent, verifiable and non-politicised.

Preparing for the next pandemic

More than one million people have died of COVID-19, and that number could double before the pandemic is brought under control.

COVID-19 is not the first pandemic, nor will it be the last. The WHO was also criticised after the 2014 Ebola epidemic.

Read more: The WHO’s coronavirus inquiry will be more diplomatic than decisive. But Australia should step up in the meantime

Global responses to such threats have precedents dating back to 1851 and the development of stardardised quarantine regulations. The international initiatives that have since followed, punctuated by the formation of leading international bodies such as the WHO in 1946, represent incremental progress. The most recent iteration of work in this area is the International Health Regulations of 2005.

We suggest a new protocol should be added to the WHO. We have drafted a tentative discussion document, which is available upon request, based on the following six broad ideas.

Read more: The next once-a-century pandemic is coming sooner than you think – but COVID-19 can help us get ready

1. The WHO remains the central decision-making body

We want to strengthen the collection and sharing of information related to infectious diseases, but we believe the WHO must remain the international entity that interprets the material, raises alerts for the global community and organises responses.

Despite retaining the centrality of the WHO, we suggest a new protocol to provide the basis for the independent collection, sharing and transfer of information between countries and with the WHO. Fundamentally, we want the early-warning science to be divorced from the policy responses.

2. Obligation to issue risk warning

A clear and binding legal principle needs to be explicitly written into international law: namely, that there is an obligation to pass on, as quickly as possible, information about a hazardous risk discovered in one country that could be dangerous to others.

The international community first saw this thinking in the 1986 Convention on Early Notification of a Nuclear Accident, developed after the Chernobyl incident. We believe the same thinking should be carried over to the early notification of infectious disease threats, as they are just as great.

3. Independence in science

We need legally binding rules for the collection and sharing of information related to infectious diseases. These rules must be detailed, but have the capacity to evolve. This principle is already developing, beginning with innovative solutions to problems like regional air pollution, which separates scientists from decision-makers and removes any potential for partisan advice.

The core of this idea needs to be adapted for infectious diseases and placed within its own self-contained protocol. Signatories can then continually refine the scientific needs, whereby scientists can update what information should be collected and shared, so decision-makers can react in good time, with the best and most independent information at their fingertips.

4. Objectivity and openness

We must articulate the principle that shared scientific information should be as comprehensive, objective, open and transparent as possible. We have borrowed this idea from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) but it needs to be supplemented by the particular requirement to tackle emergent infectious disease risks.

This may include clinical and genetic information and the sharing of biological samples to allow rapid laboratory, medical and public health developments. Incomplete information should not be a reason to delay and all information should be open source. It will also be important to add a principle from international environmental law of acting in a precautionary manner.

In the case of early notification about infectious diseases, we contend that even if there is a lack of scientific certainty over an issue, it is not a reason to hold back from sharing the information.

5. Deployment to other countries

We realise information sometimes needs to be verified independently and quickly. Our thinking here has been guided by the Chemical Weapons Convention and the use of challenge inspections. This mechanism, in times of urgency, allows inspectors to go anywhere at any time, without the right of refusal, to provide independent third-party verification.

In the case of infectious diseases, a solution might be that in times of urgency, if 75% of the members of the new protocol agree, specialist teams are deployed quickly to any country to examine all areas (except military spaces) from where further information is required. This information would then be quickly fed back into the mechanisms of the protocol.

6. Autonomy and independent funding

We suggest such a protocol must be self-governing and largely separate from the WHO, and it is essential it has its own budget and office.

This will increase the autonomy of the early-warning system and reduce the risks of being reliant on the WHO for funding (with all the vagaries that entails). If well designed, the protocol should provide a better way for state and non-state actors to contribute.

The goodwill and financial capacity of international philanthropy, transnational corporations and civil society will need to be mobilised to a much greater degree to fund the new protocol.

The authors worked with Sir Jim McLay, whose leadership contribution and input on the proposed protocol has been integral to the project.

– ref. WHO reform: a call for an early-warning protocol for infectious diseases – https://theconversation.com/who-reform-a-call-for-an-early-warning-protocol-for-infectious-diseases-148078

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brett Hutchins, Professor of Media and Communications Studies, Monash University

Australian sport’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic has been remarkable. Major leagues reorganised with impressive speed to keep games going. Schedules dissolved, seasons were compressed and players relocated. And the once unthinkable is now reality: the AFL grand final will be held in Brisbane.

What if the Australian sport industry could apply the same urgency and innovation to a different but no less significant global crisis – climate change?

Each week, teams and fans fly vast distances, producing significant carbon emissions. And that’s not to mention their other activities. According to the UN Sports for Climate Action Framework, “sport’s contribution to climate change – through associated travel, energy use, construction, catering, and so on – is considerable”.

Professional sport has enormous power to influence positive change. So ahead of this weekend’s grand finals, let’s examine the carbon emissions of our major men’s football leagues: the AFL, NRL and A-League, as well as Australia’s Super Rugby teams.

The carbon cost of football

Our small-scale study analysed air travel-related emissions for the final four rounds of 2019 regular season games. We used the International Civil Aviation Organisation’s measurement methodology to create a snapshot of carbon dioxide-equivalent (CO₂-e) generated by flying teams to and from games in different cities.

Air travel from just one month of football competition in Australia across the four men’s codes generated emissions equivalent to about 475 tonnes of carbon dioxide. Across the codes, teams travelled 231,000km in a single month.

Here’s how each league compared:

– AFL: 18 teams travelled 72,316km across Australia, producing an estimated 187.4 tonnes of CO₂-e or about 10.4 tonnes per team

– NRL: Largely concentrated in NSW and Queensland, the 16 teams covered the shortest distance: 46,400km. They generated 92.1 tonnes of CO₂-e or around 5.7 tonnes per team.

– A-League: 62,660km of air travel, which generated 107.5 tonnes of CO₂-e. The team average (10.7 tonnes) is higher than the AFL and NRL, as teams are spread between Perth and Wellington in New Zealand.

– Super Rugby: the four Australian teams in 2019 produced 87.8 tonnes of CO2-e from 49,624km in the air, with a team average of about 21.9 tonnes. Two games in Tokyo increased this average, although the Sunwolves are now defunct. Nonetheless, teams also flew to Argentina, South Africa and New Zealand during the season.

Unsurprisingly, far-flung teams produced the highest CO2-e emissions. However, the relatively short Melbourne-Sydney air route is the second most carbon-intensive at around 34 tonnes, exceeded only by Melbourne-Perth. The 25 teams in Sydney and Melbourne (plus Geelong) mean many return flights between the cities are required each season.

Explore the full results in this interactive graphic:

Come fly with me

Full seasons ran between 18 and 27 rounds, depending on the code. The results prompted us to consider how leagues and fixtures might be organised to reduce the number of flights taken during a season.

Many teams are located in the Newcastle-Sydney-Wollongong corridor (plus Canberra) and Melbourne/Geelong. So visiting interstate and New Zealand teams could play two or three fixtures in these locations before returning home. Depending on the code, similar arrangements are possible in southern Queensland, Adelaide and Perth.

Read more: We need to ‘climate-proof’ our sports stadiums

Organising teams into geographically proximate conferences, as Super Rugby does, is worth considering. This might mean, for example, that Melbourne-based AFL or A-League teams, and Sydney-based NRL or A-League teams, might play each other more often in front of large crowds in their home city.

Representative fixtures, such as the State of Origin rugby league series, could be shortened and based in one location. Teams could travel to play two or three games, then return home.

Even minor reductions in travel-related carbon emissions are worth investigating, and publicly showcasing, in an effort to spur more serious environmental efforts by leagues and teams.

Greening the game

There are other ways leagues can encourage a sustainable sporting future. In Britain, for example, League Two’s Forest Green Rovers is the world’s first carbon-neutral football club.

Its home ground features solar panels, electric vehicle charging points and a vegan matchday menu. The team plays on an organic pitch, cut by a solar-powered robot lawnmower, and collects and recycles rainwater. Clubs in Australia could follow this lead to achieve meaningful environmental credentials.

Read more: Just not cricket – how climate change will make sport more risky

Carbon measurement, reduction and offset strategies and environmentally responsible sponsorship policies are also needed.

Codes could hold environmentally themed rounds and games, and promote current and former sportspeople speaking about the need for action on climate change and environmental issues, such as:

Leading, not following

Last summer’s extreme weather in Australia was a taste of what’s to come under climate change.

Bushfires covered the Australian Open tennis in thick smoke. Cyclists in the Tour Down Under rode through bushfire-ravaged landscapes, and the three previous tours had stages shortened or modified due to extreme heat.

In other parts of the world, sports have been disrupted by events such as floods and reduced snow and ice cover.

Reducing the carbon footprint of sport is clearly in the interests of both the planet, and the leagues themselves. It’s now time for sport’s decision-makers to face reality.

Read more: Climate explained: are we doomed if we don’t manage to curb emissions by 2030?

– ref. Fewer flights and a pesticide-free pitch? Here’s how Australia’s football codes can cut their carbon bootprint – https://theconversation.com/fewer-flights-and-a-pesticide-free-pitch-heres-how-australias-football-codes-can-cut-their-carbon-bootprint-148258

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gabi Mocatta, Lecturer in Communication, Deakin University, and Research Fellow in Climate Change Communication, Climate Futures Programme, University of Tasmania

Universities are vital hubs of research and teaching on climate change. As large organisations, they also have significant emissions, which contribute to our climate crisis. Universities should therefore lead global action to limit climate change. How best can they do this?

It’s Global Climate Change Week. This annual event aims to encourage universities – staff and students – to engage with each other, their communities and policymakers on climate change action and solutions. As organising committee members and academics working on climate change, we explore here what leadership in university-based climate action looks like.

The reasons to act are obvious. In Paris in 2015, the international community agreed to pursue all possible measures to limit the global temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. But current policies have us on track for an increase of about 3.6°C by 2100.

Read more: Climate change is the most important mission for universities of the 21st century

The need to cut greenhouse gas emissions is urgent – the consequences of not doing so catastrophic.

What university climate action looks like

Universities are big consumers and emitters – some sectors more than others. Universities also have the autonomy to make decisions on sustainability and are increasingly doing so, individually and collectively.

Read more: Astronomers create 40% more carbon emissions than the average Australian. Here’s how they can be more environmentally friendly

Many universities are basing their efforts on the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Sustainability includes radically reducing carbon footprints.

Organisations like the International Universities Climate Alliance and Australasian Campuses Towards Sustainability support such efforts. Campaigns like Race to Zero, Countdown and the Global Colleges and Universities Climate Letter provide forums for institutions to commit formally to reducing emissions.

Tasmania, a case study

And what does this climate action look like on the ground? We’ll start with our university, the University of Tasmania – the case we know best.

The university recently ranked third in the world in the Times Higher Education university rankings for climate action. The rankings measure research on climate change, energy use and climate change adaptation.

Our university punches above its weight, with many climate change research groups and more IPCC authors than any other Australian university. Researchers in social sciences, law, education and humanities are also influential in the study of climate change and its impacts.

The University of Tasmania has closely audited and reduced emissions and offset its remaining emissions. Certified carbon-neutral since 2016, it’s one of only two Australian universities to achieve this status (the other is Charles Sturt University).

Divesting from fossil fuels

Fossil fuel divestment is a process of transition with three elements:

• negative screening – no new investments in fossil-fuel-related industries

• positive screening – investment in renewable energy and ecologically sustainable industries

• phased withdrawal of existing investments in fossil-fuel-related industries and activities.

To mark Global Climate Change Week, the University of Tasmania has just announced it aims to divest from any fossil-fuel-exposed investments by the end of 2021. The university already has no direct shareholdings in fossil fuel companies. Its investment strategy will include positive screening, investing in companies that are working towards a zero-carbon economy and the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Many universities are making divestment the core of their climate action. In Australia, La Trobe started that trend in 2016.

Globally, one of the largest divestment pushes has come from the University of California Berkley. In 2019, it announced it would divest completely from fossil fuels in its US$126 billion investment portfolio and $70 billion pension fund.

Here in Australia, an ongoing campaign is pushing the 450,000-member higher education superannuation fund, UniSuper, to divest from fossil fuel investments.

Read more: Want to know if the Paris climate deal is working? University divestment is the litmus test

Generating power on campus

Some universities are generating their own renewable power.

For example, Deakin University has developed an industrial-scale microgrid: a 14.5 hectare solar energy farm with a 1 megawatt central battery. The project integrates rooftop solar panels and smaller batteries across the Waurn Ponds campus.

The University of Queensland has set up and maintains a A$125 million solar farm just outside Warwick to offset its annual electricity needs.

Read more: In a world first, Australian university builds own solar farm to offset 100% of its electricity use

Monash is investing A$135 million in its Net Zero initiative. Already partly solar-powered, the university has committed to carbon-neutral infrastructure and operations by 2030.

UNSW plans to expand its onsite solar generation and buy 100% renewable power for the remainder, reducing its emissions in line with keeping global warming under 1.5°C.

Universities can and must do more

Many universities have made a start, but they must be more ambitious as climate action leaders. All universities can and should take meaningful and visible action.

This Global Climate Change Week, students, staff, university communities, get informed. Urge your university to divest from fossil fuels, use renewable energy and commit to achieving net zero emissions – soon. Organise your own campus sustainability initiative, or get active in your university’s existing one.

Only by acting to understand and reduce their own climate impacts can universities be credible climate leaders. Their role as platforms for climate change research and engaged political commentary, as well as sustainable institutional practices, makes them global exemplars on climate action. In this, universities are essential to all of our futures.

– ref. This is how universities can lead climate action – https://theconversation.com/this-is-how-universities-can-lead-climate-action-147191

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Meg Elkins, Senior Lecturer with School of Economics, Finance and Marketing, RMIT University

As second-wave outbreaks of COVID-19 around the world demonstrate, it’s a tricky transition from hard lockdowns to more relaxed, but still effective, measures.

The responses of different nations (Sweden and Taiwan, for example) have their champions, but the truth is there no shining example to follow on how to keep the coronavirus in check while returning, as much as possible, to living life as before.

Right now the government of Victoria, Australia’s second most populous state, is involved in just such an experiment. Its success in moving beyond lockdown to a sustainable “COVID-normal” will hold lessons for nations still on the upward curve of their own second waves (such as Austria, France, Germany, Italy and Britain).

There are also lessons for other Australian states, which have relied (perhaps too much) on hard borders to keep the virus out rather than new social norms to manage the virus.

The Victorian response will prove to be a template to emulate. Or dissected for pitfalls to avoid.

Read more: As a second wave of COVID looms in the UK, Australia is watching closely

As behavioural economists, we’re interested in what drives cooperative, and non-cooperative behaviour. We’re particularly interested in how rules, and law enforcement, shape social norms, as well how they can inadvertently lead to greater resistance and rule-breaking.

One clear point evident from the Victorian experience is how blunt the tools of lockdown and law enforcement are to achieve social conformity to new behavioural norms. Moving to “COVID-normal” will require looking for other, less punitive ways to get people to do the right thing.

Policing the rules

Till now the approach of the Victorian government has been very blunt indeed. Its stage 4 rules have been among the more severe imposed in any democracy in the world. These rules have been criticised as excessive or unnecessary, but they have been simple and straightforward. Both to follow and to enforce.

This the Victorian police force has done with zeal, empowered by harsh fines for breaches of public health directives. Though their job has undoubtedly been made harder by rule breakers emboldened by conspiracy theories, videos of police forcefully arresting resisters have both confirmed protesters’ paranoia about living in a police state, and eroded community support.

Polling by Roy Morgan in mid-September showed just 11% of Victorians now rate the Victorian police very highly for honesty and ethical standards, compared to 37% in 2017. Overall approval has fallen from 76% to 42%.

This loss of trust reflects scandals such the Lawyer X case (which led to a royal commission). But “heavy-handedness” enforcing COVID-19 rules was the next most cited concern, with the poll taken after the circulation of videos including police forcibly removing a woman from her car and arresting a pregnant woman in her home for promoting protests on social media. Community support for restrictions is also fraying.

Read more: WHO is right: lockdowns should be short and sharp. Here are 4 other essential COVID-19 strategies

Deterrence, permission, resistance

Laws are necessary, but philosophers since Plato have told us that societies only function when people comply with social norms when no one is looking. It is impossible to maintain social order solely through the deterrent effect, by detecting and punishing wrongdoers.

Gary Becker, winner of the Nobel prize for economics in 1992, was the first to apply economic theory to why people obey or break laws. In his seminal 1968 paper Crime and Punishment: An Economic Approach, he explained how a “rational” individual weighs up the expected gains or losses from committing a crime and compares them to gains or losses of not committing a crime. That calculation includes judging the probability of being caught.

This framework assumes most people have an aversion to risk and that penalties (such as a large fine) therefore have a deterrent effect.

The problem is humans aren’t necessarily rational. Driven by feelings rather than cognitive assessments, most of us inaccurately assess probabilities. Behavioural research suggests 80% of us are prone to optimism bias when assessing personal risk. We tend to underestimate the likelihood of experiencing bad events such as divorce, being in a car accident, contracting a disease or getting caught breaking the rules.

While it’s impossible to know the motivations of the more than 20,000 Victorians so far fined for breaking lockdown rules, the anecdotal evidence suggests most have simply underestimated the chance of being caught, such as breaking the 5 km travel limit to buy a PlayStation controller, or curfew to buy cigarettes.

The limits of perception

Yet as the Victorian government moves to relax its restrictions, its main solution to ensuring adherence to the more complicated rules for “COVID-normal” social interactions appears to be increasing penalties for breaches. The fine for breaching social gathering restrictions, for example, has been increased from A$1,652 to A$4,957.

While these will have some effect, research suggests “deterrence perceptions” depend on an individual’s pre-existing “crime propensity”. That is, most people have no inclination to commit crimes like theft, vandalism and assault, so “deterrence perceptions are largely irrelevant”.

This make Victoria’s next stage of norm-enforcement highly problematic, given behaviour now outlawed isn’t criminal per se, but what used to be normal socialising. As questions asked at Victorian premier Danial Andrew’s press conference on Sunday indicate, there’s a much greater likelihood of confusion about rules – and therefore breaches.

Encouraging intrinsic motivation

The big question is how to move beyond external (or extrinsic) incentives and encourage intrinsic motivations. According to psychologists Richard Ryan and Edward Deci, who studied extrinsic and intrinsic motivations in school students:

Because extrinsically motivated behaviours are not inherently interesting and thus must initially be externally prompted, the primary reason people are likely to be willing to do the behaviours is that they are valued by significant others to whom they feel (or would like to feel) connected, whether that be a family, a peer group, or a society.

Economists Raymond Fisman and Edwards Miguel illustrate the power of non-punitive “nudges” to encourage these motivators in their book Economic Gangsters (2010). A classic example comes from Bogota, the capital of Columbia, where in the 1990s new mayor Antanas Mockus decided to tackle crime and problems such as traffic fatalities using “cultural persuasion” rather than more law enforcement.

Rather than employing more police to patrol the roads, the city instead employed hundreds of mime artists to mimick and ridicule drivers and pedestrians doing the wrong thing. As Mockus explained:

The idea was that instead of cops handing out tickets and pocketing fines, these performers would “police” drivers’ behaviour by communicating with mime – for instance, pretending to be hurt or offended when a vehicle ignored the pedestrian right of way in a crosswalk. Could this system, which boiled down to publicly signalled approval or disapproval, really work?

The evidence is it did. Within a decade traffic deaths were halved. Other novel strategies helped cut Bogota’s homicide rate by 70%.

Finding a new normal

These are obviously long-term results. They don’t provide a perfect template for governments seeking immediate society-wide adherence to new COVID-safe behavioural norms. There are no easy solutions, particularly given a small segment of the population is convinced flouting the rules is a noble stand against tyranny.

Read more: Melbourne is almost out of lockdown. It’s time to trust Melburnians to make their own COVID-safe decisions

But with Victorian courts already facing a huge backlog of unpaid or contested fines, and the high likelihood we will need to practice “COVID-safe” behavioural norms for at least a year, it’s time to start thinking about other ways to promote social cooperation other than the long arm of the law.

– ref. Beyond the police state to COVID-safe: life after lockdown will need a novel approach – https://theconversation.com/beyond-the-police-state-to-covid-safe-life-after-lockdown-will-need-a-novel-approach-144205

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Philip C. Almond, Emeritus Professor in the History of Religious Thought, The University of Queensland

In the history of the West over the last 2000 years, there has never been a time when someone hasn’t been predicting the end of the world.

And now, with a seemingly insoluble climate crisis, pandemic surges, savage wildfires and hurricanes, and a renewed nuclear arms race, seems no time to stop.

Many of us feel, as poet John Donne put it in The Anatomy of the World in 1611, “Tis all in pieces, all coherence gone”.

The Christian tradition tells us to be on the lookout for the Antichrist, who will appear shortly before the big finish. Vast amounts of Christian ink have been used to try and work out when he will come and just how we might identify him when he does.

Here, then, are five things to know just in case:

1. He is the Son of Satan

The Antichrist was the perfectly evil human being because he was completely opposite to the perfectly good human being, Jesus Christ.

Just as Christians came to believe that Jesus Christ was the Son of God, so they thought that the Antichrist was the Son of Satan. Jesus was born of a virgin. So the Antichrist would be born of a woman who was apparently a virgin, but was really a whore. Where Christ was God in the flesh, the Antichrist was Satan in the flesh.

In The Christian New Testament there are only three passages that mention the Antichrist, all in the letters of John (I John 2.18-27, I John 4.1-6, 2 John 7). They suggest the end of the world should be expected at any moment.

Over the first several centuries of the Christian tradition, the scholars of the early Church started to pore over an array of other Biblical characters finding references to the Antichrist within them: the “abomination of desolation” in the books of Daniel and Matthew; “the man of lawlessness” and “the son of perdition” in a letter of Paul.

The book of Revelation describes a singular figure as “the beast from the earth” and “the beast from the sea” whose number is 666.

Read more: 5 things to know about the traditional Christian doctrine of hell

2. He is an earthly tyrant and trickster

By the year 1000, the main outlines of the first of two narratives about the Antichrist was in place thanks to a noble-born Benedictine monk and abbot named Adso of Montier-en-Der (c. 920-92) who wrote a treatise on the subject.

According to him, the Antichrist would be a Jew from the tribe of Dan and born in Babylon. He would be brought up in all forms of wickedness by magicians and wizards. He would be accepted as the Messiah and ruler by the Jews in Jerusalem. Those Christians whom he could not convert to his cause, he would torture and kill.

He would then rule for seven years before being defeated by the angel Gabriel or Christ and the divine armies, prior to the resurrection of the dead and the Final Judgement.

Read more: Is God good? In the shadow of mass disaster, great minds have argued the toss

3. Past popes have been accused

By the year 1400, another narrative of the Antichrist had arisen. Now he was no longer the tyrant outside of the Church but the deceiver within it. In short, he was the Pope or even the institution of the papacy and the Church themselves.

As the English religious radical John Wycliffe (c. 1329-84) put it,

… the Pope may obviously be the Antichrist, and yet not just that sole single individual… but rather the multitude of popes holding that position … along with the cardinals and bishops of the church.

This was the position on the Antichrist adopted by Protestants at the time of the 16th century Reformation. Martin Luther (1483-1546) was convinced that he was living in the last days. For him, the Pope fitted all the criteria for the Antichrist. The Pope, he declared, “is the true end times Antichrist who has raised himself over and set himself against Christ”.

Read more: Apocalypse Now: why the movies want the world to end every year

4. He is one and many

Within conservative Christianity over the last century, Antichrists have multiplied. “The Antichrist” has become a general category available for application to an array of individuals, collectives, and objects as the demonic “other”.

Generally, predictions of a tyrant outside the church now dominate the idea of a deceiver within it.

American presidents are well represented When it comes to accusations of being the Antichrist, usually from the conservative religious right, Ronald Reagan, John F. Kennedy, and Barack Obama have all been mentioned. Donald Trump is gaining popularity as a worthy candidate with ethics scholar D. Stephen Long suggesting he represents: “not a single person but a political pattern that repeats itself by taking on power to oppress the poor and the just”.

American evangelist Jerry Falwell, known for his controversial views on apartheid, homosexuality, Judaism, climate change and the Teletubbies, once said: “The Antichrist will be a world leader, he’ll have supernatural powers”.

Hilary Clinton is, to the best of my knowledge, the only female candidate. US Republican politician Ryan Zinke who was US Secretary of the Interior in the Trump Administration from 2017 until his resignation in 2019, threw the accusation in 2014. She later reassured him, at Trump’s inauguration, that she wasn’t.

Osama bin Laden was a favourite until his death, as was Saddam Hussein.

Marks of the beast have even been discerned by some in supermarket barcodes and pet microchips.

Read more: Fact over fiction on the ‘apocalyptic’ super blood moon

5. He dies in the end

According to the Christian tradition, the Antichrist will finally be defeated by the armies of God under the leadership of Christ with the Kingdom of God (on earth or in heaven) to follow.

So, in spite of current appearances, Christianity holds firmly to the hope that evil will be finally overcome and that goodness will ultimately prevail.

The core idea of the Antichrist — of evil at the depths of things — lays upon all of us the ethical imperative to take evil seriously. Whether the end is nigh or not, we should work to minimise harm and maximise the good in the here and now.

– ref. Five things to know about the Antichrist – https://theconversation.com/five-things-to-know-about-the-antichrist-148172

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Janine Dixon, Economist at Centre of Policy Studies, Victoria University

In the absence of an official analysis of the impact of the budget by gender the National Foundation for Australian Women has this morning published its own gender analysis of the budget, across multiple dimensions.

It finds the government has invested heavily in things that will mainly benefit men, including apprenticeships and traineeships (two-thirds of which are taken by males), the construction of physical infrastructure, and tax breaks for the purchase of assets that will primarily assist the male-dominated industries of mining and manufacturing.

The female-dominated care sector was largely overlooked, despite the Royal Commission into Aged Care and the Disability Royal Commission highlighting shortcomings in the current system.

Childcare workers were among the first to lose JobKeeper.

The extra funding injected into the aged care following tragic impacts of COVID was insufficient to bring the sector to a four star quality rating.

The experts believe the budget is a lost opportunity to maximise employment growth, to invest in the (social) infrastructure that will most boost the economy and to address the problems with female-dominated paid and unpaid work exposed by COVID-19.

Care boosts employment

Published with the National Foundation for Australian Women’s analysis is new modelling by the Victoria University Centre of Policy Studies on government investment in the care sector.

It examines what would happen if the government increased funding enough to boost the wages of personal and child care workers and to lift capacity to the point where it met unmet demand.

More than 900,000 Australians who provide unpaid care to the elderly, disabled, and children aged under five say they would like more hours in paid employment.

Read more: Labor’s childcare plan may get more women into work. Now what about quality and educators’ pay?

The modelling finds that the investment in the care economy needed to enable each of these unpaid carers to work an extra 10 hours a week in paid employment has a significant economic payoff, increasing labour supply by 2 per cent.

By 2030 the extra labour supply would be fully absorbed into employment. Annual GDP per person would be $1,270 higher, or more than $30 billion in aggregate.

Women’s paid employment would be 3.75 per cent greater than it would have been if no action had been taken. Men’s employment would be more than 0.75 per cent above the no-action base case.

Employment and labour supply impacts of modelled extra spending on care

The average incomes of both women and men would be higher, although women’s incomes would be higher by a greater margin.

A boost would almost pay for itself

The budgetary cost of the policy would be largely offset by increased economic growth which would underpin greater revenue collection from income taxes and the goods and services tax.

When fully running, the net cost to the budget would be less than one fifth of the direct cost.

Government investment in physical infrastructure helps in two ways – it provides construction jobs and a useful piece of infrastructure to support future economic activity.

Read more: High-viz, narrow vision: the budget overlooks the hardest hit in favour of the hardest hats

Investment in care helps in three ways:

It stimulates jobs and better conditions in the care sector, a worthy outcome in itself.

It provides economic stimulus to all sectors by freeing people up to participate in the labour market, an impact that cannot be achieved by providing stimulus to other sectors, such as manufacturing, for example.

And it addresses female economic disadvantage by reducing the wage gap and changing the circumstances that often set limits on what women can achieve in their careers.

There’s a new budget around the corner

While the analysis shows the population on average would be better off with an expanded care sector, it says nothing about how to reform access to subsidised or government-funded care.

The system is complicated, as are the (dis)incentives to work resulting from the present tax and charging arrangements.

Read more: Politics with Michelle Grattan: economist Danielle Wood on Australia’s ‘blokey’ budget

However charged for, extra spending on childcare, aged care and disability care would produce an bigger bang for the buck than most of the extra spending announced in the budget, as well as producing better outcomes for women.

There’s a budget update around the corner, in December, and a new budget due in May. If extra spending is needed, there’s an opportunity to do it in a way that would really help and almost pay for itself.

– ref. New modelling finds investing in childcare and aged care almost pays for itself – https://theconversation.com/new-modelling-finds-investing-in-childcare-and-aged-care-almost-pays-for-itself-148097

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Timothy Baker, Associate Professor and Director, Centre for Rural Emergency Medicine, Deakin University

At the start of the pandemic, health services in regional cities and small towns braced for a tsunami of cases. Many worried the patient transport system between hospitals would fail, and each hospital would be left to fend for itself. Small hospitals planned makeshift intensive care departments with improvised long-term ventilators. And health-care teams drilled themselves in how they would manage a COVID-positive patient who was deteriorating.

Fortunately, in Australia, these dire predictions were wrong (at least for now). But they could have been right. Rural areas are not immune to COVID-19. In the United States, the current rural infection rate is higher than has ever been recorded in metropolitan areas. A Louisiana hospital described exactly the makeshift intensive care scenario we feared in Australia. Rural patients are more vulnerable too, as the community is older with more chronic health problems.

Read more: Rural America is more vulnerable to COVID-19 than cities are, and it’s starting to show

In rural Australia, dealing with the pandemic has been more like whack-a-mole than an overwhelming wave. Outbreaks occurred around meatworks, local hospitals, and super-spreaders travelling from hotspots.

So, what have we learned so far about the impact of COVID-19 on rural health, and how can we maintain effective rural health care as tourism ramps up?

We must work together

A pandemic lays bare pre-existing structural problems. It exposes the lack of formal channels for rural clinicians to communicate across disciplines and across regions. It reveals the barriers between clinicians in the hospitals and bureaucrats in regional and city offices.

But it also provides an opportunity to connect these groups. During the pandemic, health services across different regions and states shared local solutions. Public health, hospital, community care and inter-hospital services created joint protocols. New communication channels must be maintained and ready for activation if cases increase.

Local knowledge remains important. Embedding local health workers in contact-tracing teams is a strength of NSW’s pandemic defences.

As the Victorian town of Shepparton discovered last week, local outbreaks cause an immediate and massive demand for testing. Using local media to keep rural communities up to date enhances the remarkable support already shown for quarantine measures.

Teleconferencing between clinicians has expanded, as it has between clinicians and patients. It is best and most geographically equitable when it adds to face-to-face local care.

But it may also detract from enabling the best care when it replaces clinicians on the ground. One possible example is that of a woman who died in the emergency department of a regional NSW hospital in September. No doctors were present in person, having been replaced by telehealth treatment outside business hours.

Read more: Where did Victoria go so wrong with contact tracing and have they fixed it?

Self-reliance and silent hypoxia are a bad combination

Identifying patients before they become critically ill is crucial to rural acute care. This is true for COVID-19. The disease has a reasonably predictable path of early fever, improvement, and then a sometimes rapid deterioration in the second week. For all but large regional centres, this means COVID-19 is managed in the community. Deteriorating patients need to be transferred early.

Unfortunately, COVID-19 has a horrible trick. It can cause extremely low levels of blood oxygen without a patient feeling unwell or breathless, or realising their oxygen levels are critically low. This is called silent hypoxia.

It’s a problem everywhere, but it may be worse in rural areas. Patients often visit regional hospitals at a later stage of their illness due to self-reliance, distance to care, and a poorer understanding of the health system. By the time a rural COVID-19 patient thinks they are unwell enough to attend, they may already be close to dying.

Rural health services have had to adopt policies of regular local and remote checking-in for COVID-19 patients, especially in the second week. Telephone and internet connections are not always enough, so many hospitals have bought oxygen-monitoring tools for patients to use at home.

Maintaining normal services is difficult

COVID-19 need only infect a few staff at regional hospitals to make service delivery impossible. In northwest Tasmania, Australian Defence Force members had to replace infected and quarantining staff in mid-April.

Even without an outbreak, COVID makes it difficult to maintain normal operations. Health services relying on fly-in fly-out staff have struggled when staff can no longer travel freely across quarantine lines from the city or across state borders. Exemptions were given but the approval process was slow and many staff still had to do periods of self-quarantine, meaning many staff found it too difficult. Mechanisms to replace or increase staff may still be needed for regions with outbreaks.

Although rural hospitals have been spared the overwhelming numbers of COVID-19 seen in Melbourne hospitals, the extra precautions required to manage patients who could potentially have COVID-19 are draining. Maintaining services reliant on supplies at the end of the supply and logistics chain is slower and challenging. Like metropolitan staff, rural staff are feeling fatigued and requiring extra mental health support.

This is a problem as people move to rural areas for holidays and business. Even in normal years, health services in coastal and other tourist towns are busiest when the population swells in summer. With bookings of holiday accommodation booming in many areas, rural health services may be facing their busiest and most tiring part of the pandemic. If holidaymakers feel leaving the city means leaving behind the risk of infection and the need to socially distance, the results in some rural towns may be catastrophic.

– ref. As holidaymakers arrive, what does COVID-19 mean for rural health services? – https://theconversation.com/as-holidaymakers-arrive-what-does-covid-19-mean-for-rural-health-services-148183

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kevin John Brophy, Emeritus Professor of Creative writing, University of Melbourne

Review: The Time of Our Lives: Growing older well, By Robert Dessaix, Brio Books

How does one grow old well? Perhaps only by starting to do it early. But who wants to prepare for old age in their youth? I didn’t, and I suspect no one I knew then was doing that either.

The question only really gets going and demands attention when one actually reaches old age (if one does, and whenever that is) — and one begins to look around, often bewildered, at oneself. And ask those questions that really matter.

In his mid-70s, Robert Dessaix has produced a genial, brilliantly stylish and possibly essential companion book for those of us who find ourselves in our 70s or 80s, and suddenly wanting to know what life might be about.

Dessaix’s special skill is to be able to ask the deepest and most complex questions while appearing to be chatting amiably with you, all the while performing for you the literary equivalent of an enchanting dance. By the end you don’t really want such a book to end, which I guess is the sign of a thoroughly well-judged work.

The Time of Our Lives might be a collection of personal essays in the tradition of Montaigne, or it might be a memoir, or a self-revealing, quasi-fiction of the kind Karl Ove Knausgaard has made so compelling, or it might be a series of meditations.

Read more: Guide to the classics: Michel de Montaigne’s Essays

Whatever it is, it can be enjoyed on several levels at once, and though it reads easily, it’s not a book to churn through in one sitting because in its pages you will come across Epicurus, Lucretius, Prokofiev, Hafiz, Sarah Day, Diana Athill, Giotto, the Indonesian language, Javanese anthropology, Bertrand Russell and many others you might want to Google as you go, testing Dessaix’s references and losing or finding yourself in the fun of these digressions.

‘The life of the mind’

It’s a richly detailed read from a writer determined to reveal to you his inner world. In fact, a richly patterned inner world (“an intricately configured life of the mind”) is the secret this book reveals as the key to growing old well.

There, I’ve told you what the message of the book is, so perhaps you don’t need to read it after all. This would be a big mistake. What do we think a rich inner life is? And how might it be performed in front of our eyes by a writer of such rich cultural heritages, a writer who has spent a lifetime honing the skill of skating intricate figures on the thin ice of the blank page?

I am in awe of a writer who takes the time to notice in a Javanese village, that the “ducks scurry about like tiny startled nuns”. On a personal note, we become witnesses to Dessaix’s desire to understand what it might mean for a (childless) gay man to grow old and have his friends tell him the best thing about getting old is getting to play with the grandchildren.

Dessaix’s friends are peppered through the book as if characters in a lightly told picaresque novel that turns out to be as intriguingly shapeless as lived lives are.

All but two of the friends are women. There is Rita (dying in an aged care home), Sarah, Katharina, Barbara (an academic who knows how to be playful) and others, all old, all articulate, and all willing to talk of the deepest matters at the drop of a hat, or climb a stupa with Robert, or join him at a Javanese dance.

Dessaix sketches these friendships with real affection, though he brings his companions into his sometimes cruelly clever and often ironic circle of wit and worry and inquisitiveness about what it feels like to be alive.

It is deliciously enjoyable to sit alongside him and his companions as they go about their lives, not being sure, as you read, if they will enjoy seeing themselves in print in this way, and wondering how personal he can make it before he might have gone too far.

Things that matter

The matter of the rich inner life of the mind is approached from a number of directions. It is, as I understand, a kind of third way, a way neither of the body nor of the soul, but a bulwark against the constant splintering of meaning in our lives, and an easing of anxiety about an ageing body. It is an antidote to emptiness.

Read more: Friday essay: on reckoning with the fact of one’s death

It amounts to an ongoing conversation with yourself about things that matter. It involves the art of never quite growing up, and in later years, it means allowing time to pool, and perhaps engaging in that de-cluttering the Japanese call Yutori.

And importantly, a rich inner life has to do with a commitment to creativity of some sort (“being held together in the nothingness by art” — a message perhaps for the current government, which has relegated the arts to the Department of Transport).

There are two moments of personal epiphany in the book. One takes place in a Chinese restaurant in Gundagai, and offers a take on “life” that is remarkably similar to the insights Hans Castorp arrives at in Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain in the strange chapter titled “Research” (a book about dying well).

The second epiphany arrives at the end, and leaves us with an image of dancing that refracts the whole of what we have read. It is well worth the meandering journey to arrive at this event.

Of course there is much that is contentious throughout these essays, or chapters, or episodes, and times when Dessaix’s perceptions might be too narrowed by prejudice or impatience or lack of experience, but not agreeing with everything argued for here is as much part of the fun of reading it as finding such fresh insights along the way.

It’s a book you might come to love to keep by you as you make your way through or into your 70s in these strange and dangerous and wondrous times.

– ref. Review: Robert Dessaix on growing older well — a genial journey through a rich inner world – https://theconversation.com/review-robert-dessaix-on-growing-older-well-a-genial-journey-through-a-rich-inner-world-148092

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tony Naar, Facilitator, Australian Paralympic History Project, The University of Queensland

In sport, timing can be everything. The 2000 Sydney Paralympic Games, which started 20 years ago this week, came at a time when the Paralympic movement was growing and becoming more visible.

And the Sydney Games left a legacy that has forever changed the way the games are run and how Paralympic athletes train and prepare.

The first official Paralympic Games were held in Rome in 1960, a week after the Rome Summer Olympics.

Four years later, the Tokyo Paralympics also followed the Olympics in the Japanese capital, but it would be another 24 years before the summer Paralympics and Olympics were held in the same city again — the 1988 games in Seoul, South Korea.

In Barcelona in 1992, the Paralympics were organised by the same committee as the Olympics and attracted huge crowds and had a celebratory atmosphere. The 1996 Atlanta Paralympics were widely seen as an organisational failure, but brought in US$39 million in corporate sponsorships.

Read more: A brief history of the Paralympic Games: from post-WWII rehabilitation to mega sport event

New way to attract crowds

The Sydney Paralympic Organising Committee (SPOC) sought to build on this legacy when it appointed experienced sport events organiser Lois Appleby as its CEO.

Appleby was aware the Olympics and Paralympics would have to “peak twice” in 2000 if the games were to be successful. She assiduously worked with the Sydney Olympic Organising Committee to ensure this and maximise the limited resources available to SPOC.

The use of the same venues as the Olympics and the retention of the Olympic sport managers and event staff was key. This led to a seamless event with the same quality of presentation as the Olympics.

Another goal was to replicate the crowds and atmosphere of Barcelona. However, unlike the Barcelona organisers, SPOC also needed income from ticket sales to balance its budget.

To attract big crowds to the events, the organisers introduced a “day pass” of A$15 per ticket. This ensured crowds at even minor sports and queues outside the popular events. In the end, the games attracted 1.16 million spectators, almost 400,000 over pre-games predictions.

The “day pass” system proved so successful, it was used by the next two Paralympic hosts, Athens and Beijing.

Building awareness and TV audiences

To boost awareness and support for the games, SPOC also created a Paralympic national education program and delivered it to schools around Australia. A central component of the program linked athletes to schools as “pen pals” and through school visits.

By increasing awareness about the Paralympics in schools, the games attracted some 340,000 schoolchildren from every state and territory.

In 2012, London modelled its education program on Sydney’s. And recently, the organisers of the Tokyo Paralympics — in collaboration with the International Paralympic Committee — developed a global Paralympic education program.

Read more: Into the spotlight: media coverage of the Paralympic Games has come a long way

The Sydney Games also resonated with millions of Australians through TV. When the Olympic broadcaster, Channel 7, decided not to broadcast the Paralympics, ABC stepped in with a team of experienced commentators.

The opening ceremony was a ratings hit and the response to the daily highlights package was so great, the ABC scrambled to increase its coverage.

While the Sydney Paralympics reached a relatively small global TV audience, its broadcast success in Australia led to a global jump of 1.7 billion viewers in 2004 and more than 4 billion for the 2016 Rio Games.

Australia builds a program for success

Australia dominated the Sydney Paralympics, winning the most golds (63) and overall medals (149).

The foundation of this success was the establishment of the Australian Paralympic Federation in 1990 and the new approach it adopted for the training, preparation and selection of its teams.

This involved shifting from a disability-specific approach to a sport-specific approach — rather than athletes training with others with the same type of disability, they trained with others in their sport of choice.

Paralympic athletes had to make do with less, though. They received very little government funding compared to athletes in Olympic sports.

In the two years leading up to Sydney, the Australian Sports Commission provided just under A$4 million to Paralympic athletes out of its total “Olympic Athlete Program” budget of A$140 million, while the Australian Paralympic Committee spent A$5.6 million on supporting its Paralympic programs from 1999-2000.

Even though funding was limited, the Australian team had the largest support staff ever assembled for the Paralympics, which was crucial to the team’s success. The ambition was to replicate the best of Australia’s able-bodied, high-performance programs for every Paralympic sport.

As such, there were almost 100 more support staff with the Australian team in Sydney than in Atlanta four years earlier. Coaching was a key element to this, with nearly double the number of coaches in 2000 compared to 1996.

Chris Nunn, head coach of the athletics team, later expressed his delight in the way the Australian plan was realised. He told the National Library of Australia’s Australian Paralympic History Project,

My only disappointment was, we couldn’t take on the universe.

‘A new standard of professionalism’

Kurt Fearnley, who won three Paralympic gold medals in wheelchair racing, said the greatest legacy of the Sydney games was that it raised Paralympic sport to a “new standard of professionalism”.

Where the Games had once been about participation, they were now driven by competitive excellence. Before Sydney, the athletes who were professionally dedicated to their sport were the exception; after Sydney, the weekend warrior became the rarity.

Indeed, this legacy continues today. Research commissioned by the APC after the games showed the vast majority of Australians viewed Paralympians as elite athletes who deserved the same funding opportunities as their able-bodied equivalents.

After Sydney, other countries with much greater budgets, such as the UK and China, also adopted a high-performance sport approach.

Australia would never again finish at the top of the medal table, but by building on the programs it put in place for Sydney, it has finished in the top five at each of the four subsequent Paralympics — and has high hopes for Tokyo in 2021.

Read more: The Paralympics is more popular than ever – but what’s it for?

– ref. Why the 2000 Sydney Paralympics were such a success — and forever changed the games – https://theconversation.com/why-the-2000-sydney-paralympics-were-such-a-success-and-forever-changed-the-games-146400

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard Shaw, Professor of Politics, Massey University

Even as the results rolled in on election night there were mutterings that a parliamentary majority controlled by one political party is somehow inconsistent with the spirit of MMP. The magnitude of the Jacinda Ardern-led Labour Party’s victory will no doubt encourage that view.

Wrong. In at least three respects the election result is exactly what electoral reform was about.

The mandate

For the better part of the 20th century single-party majority governments in Aotearoa New Zealand were formed by parties that won a minority of the popular vote. The best example (or worst, depending on your view) was in 1993, when Jim Bolger’s National Party wound up with a manufactured parliamentary majority based on just 35% of the vote.

You need to go all the way back to 1951 to find the last time a governing party won a majority of the vote.

But you can’t get away with this under MMP. Ardern has already racked up Labour’s highest share of the vote since the 51.3% Peter Fraser’s Labour Party won in 1946. It’s also the best performance of any party under MMP.

Read more: New Zealand’s new parliament turns red: the 2020 election results at a glance

She’s done it at a time when voting for a party other than Labour or National is both possible and pretty normal. If, once special votes have been counted, Labour clears 50% of the vote Ardern will have achieved something no prime minister has done in 70 years.

MMP was designed to accurately translate people’s votes into parliamentary seats — and that is exactly what it has done.

Policy moderation

Ardern is a centrist, a self-avowed consensus politician. Her single-party majority government will not behave as the Labour and National administrations of the 1980s and 1990s did.

New Zealanders changed the electoral rules because they were sick of radical swings of the policy pendulum driven by single-party majority governments ruling on the basis of a minority of the vote.

Read more: Jacinda Ardern and Labour returned in a landslide — 5 experts on a historic New Zealand election

If MMP was designed to do anything it was to lock in policy moderation. In fact, in the early 1990s, the Treasury was concerned to implement its favoured neo-liberal reforms before the electoral system changed, precisely because it knew policy radicalism would be next to impossible under MMP.

Where the David Lange-led Labour and Bolger-led National governments of the late 20th century were doctrinaire and divisive, Ardern will be pragmatic and focused on results. For better or worse, she knows exactly where the median voter lives.

Diversity of representation

For reasonable people, one of the purposes of an electoral system is to produce legislatures that broadly reflect the people who choose them. On at least one count MMP is heading in the right direction.

In 1996, the first MMP parliament doubled the presence of women in the House of Representatives. By 2017 the proportion of women parliamentarians stood at 40%. That figure got another bump on Saturday, pushing the number of women in the 120-member legislature from 49 to 56.

Read more: With a mandate to govern New Zealand alone, Labour must now decide what it really stands for

Nearly half (46.5%) of all parliamentarians are now women, the vast majority of them — 73% — members of the Labour or Green parties. This lifts New Zealand from 20th on the international league table to ninth (two spots behind Sweden).

MMP was the winner

This election will change the way politics is done, discussed and practised in Aotearoa NZ due to three significant developments:

• Labour has won big in the towns and in the country. National can no longer claim to be the party of rural people, and Labour can no longer be painted as the party of urban élites. In fact, the fundamental question confronting National now is: what kind of party are we?

• Once special votes are counted, it is possible Labour will have over 50% of the vote. Not only will it be the first time this has happened since 1951, it will also mean most New Zealanders have chosen a politics of communitarianism over a politics of individualism.

• For the first time in our history more people voted before polling day than on the day itself (a lot more — 70% of votes were cast early this year). The very nature of elections has changed, meaning the laws banning political activity on polling day need to be revised. (In the process, the problem of setting an election date to avoid an All Blacks Test might be avoided.)

There is more to be digested, including that this parliament contains no small-party tail to wag the big party’s dog. But right now one thing is clear: MMP gets two ticks for its performance this year. It has done exactly what it was designed to do.

– ref. Labour’s single-party majority is not a failure of MMP, it is a sign NZ’s electoral system is working – https://theconversation.com/labours-single-party-majority-is-not-a-failure-of-mmp-it-is-a-sign-nzs-electoral-system-is-working-148328

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Larissa Sandy, Senior Lecturer in Criminology & Justice Studies, RMIT University

The Victorian government has just received a landmark review into the state’s sex work laws.

This is the first large-scale review of Victorian sex work laws since 1985 and presents a huge opportunity for change.

With the Victorian Labor Party platform in favour of sex work decriminalisation, the current review is considering how, not if, that can be done.

But the path there is not straightforward. The only way to adequately protect the health, safety and dignity of sex workers is to introduce full decriminalisation.

This would make Victoria the world’s first jurisdiction to do so.

What is the review?

Announced last year, the review is led by Reason MP and sex worker advocate Fiona Patten.

The Andrews government asked Patten to make recommendations

on the preferred options for legislative reform needed to achieve decriminalisation of sex work in Victoria, including reform to legislation concerning health, safety, planning and criminal matters.

The review was completed last week week and has not yet been made public. The Andrews government is not expected to respond with a bill until next year at the earliest.

How is sex work regulated in Australia?

Australia has three regulatory approaches to sex work: legalisation, criminalisation and decriminalisation.

Victoria , the Australian Capital Territory and Queensland, have legalised certain aspects of sex work under licensing schemes. This means that sex work is only legal if it takes place within licensing and registration frameworks.

In Victoria, for example, this has resulted in a two-tiered system made up of a “legal” sector, with licensed brothels and agencies and registered workers, with the rest of the industry unlicensed and criminalised.

Read more: How the ‘National Cabinet of Whores’ is leading Australia’s coronavirus response for sex workers

South Australia, Western Australia and Tasmania have full or partial criminalisation. In Tasmania for example, private sex work is legal, but brothels and street-based work are not.

There are different approaches again in New South Wales and the Northern Territory. NSW decriminalised sex work in 1995 and last year, the NT became the third jurisdiction in the world to decriminalise sex work, after New Zealand.

Different models of decriminalisation

Decriminalisation means removing laws that criminalise sex work.

As the Network of Sex Work Projects explains, this covers laws that criminalise sex workers, clients, third parties (like business owners, managers and receptionists) as well as families, partners and friends living off any earnings.

So, decriminalisation can mean different things in different places.

In NSW, sex work is recognised as a job and is then regulated by existing occupational health and safety legislation and council zoning policies.

But it is not fully decriminalised. While street-based sex work is legal, there are restrictions on where workers can work, how they can solicit and whether they can work with another person. There have also been issues with local councils refusing applications for brothels, undermining efforts to regulate sex work.

The New Zealand model is a mix of decriminalisation and legalisation, involving “operator certificates” for business operators and managers. But the use of licensing here is unnecessarily restrictive and sends the signal that some businesses are undesirable.

What is happening overseas?

Denmark has partially decriminalised sex work in a different way. While buying and selling sex isn’t criminalised, it is illegal for other people to profit off sex work as a third party. In theory, this is to stop pimping, but it makes it harder for sex workers to work safely, as

some sex workers have struggled to rent apartments because landlords fear they could be charged with profiting off of sex work as a third party.

This model maintains stigma and discrimination, and does not give sex workers the same rights and access to justice and social benefits as other working people.

In other countries, such as France, Sweden, Norway and Iceland, selling sex is legal but paying for it is not. Finland introduced a partial ban making it legal to buy and sell sex, as long as the person is working by themselves and has not been forced or coerced.

According to Amnesty International, these sort of approaches do little to respect, protect and fulfil sex workers’ rights.

Research from Norway and Sweden shows these “reforms” have led to increased violence from the police, immigration authorities and clients as well as stigma and discrimination.

Read more: The stigma of sex work comes with a high cost

As Scarlet Alliance, the peak body for sex workers in Australia, says,

when you criminalise our clients, you criminalise us.

What approach does Victoria need to take?

Victoria has a chance to be a world leader here, as it would be the first jurisdiction to implement full decriminalisation.

Only full decriminalisation — including sex work at home and on the street — will reduce risks to sex workers’ health and safety.

Read more: New report shows compelling reasons to decriminalise sex work

Other jurisdictions have stopped short of this, often citing trafficking and forced sex work, but there are also political reasons and misguided ideas about what is “best” for sex workers.

However, sex work is work. A decriminalisation model should not equate sex work with sexual violence or violence against women. This ignores the diverse sexualities and genders of sex workers and their clients.

Don’t confuse trafficking with sex work

In Australia, human trafficking is often incorrectly conflated with sex work.

Victoria’s approach needs to be clear about the differences. Criminalising migrant sex work in the hope of preventing trafficking (like in New Zealand) would push migrant sex workers further underground and create unsafe work environments.

Victoria needs to heed the 2011 advice from the UN Special Rapporteur on Trafficking in Persons, which said Australia needs to develop strong pathways for safe and legal migration. This includes pathways for sex workers.

In Victoria, some migrant sex workers already work lawfully in the sex industry. But many do not.

Apart from the broader problems with the existing system, there are visa restrictions around age and the number of hours people can work.

In order to adequately protect against trafficking, full decriminalisation would ensure migrant sex workers can work safely. This could see the inclusion of sex work on the Australian government’s skilled occupation lists. This would allow sex workers to be sponsored for longer-term visas with work rights.

This is ultimately a federal decision, but it needs to be supported by full decriminalisation of sex work at the state level.

Time to listen

Victoria has the chance to finally get it right and be the first jurisdiction in the world to fully decriminalise sex work.

This involves taking bold steps, such as creating new visa options for migrant sex workers, to guarantee the safety and dignity of all sex workers.

Sex workers have every right to live and work without stigma and discrimination and have been calling for this since 1985. It is time we listened.

– ref. Will Victoria be the first place in the world to fully decriminalise sex work? – https://theconversation.com/will-victoria-be-the-first-place-in-the-world-to-fully-decriminalise-sex-work-146751

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By TaeWoo Kim, Lecturer, UTS Business School, University of Technology Sydney

Social media algorithms, artificial intelligence and our own genetics are among the factors influencing us beyond our awareness. This raises an ancient question: do we have control over our own lives? This article is part of The Conversation’s series on the science of free will.

Have you ever used Google Assistant, Apple’s Siri or Amazon Alexa to make decisions for you? Perhaps you asked it what new movies have good reviews, or to recommend a cool restaurant in your neighbourhood.

Artificial intelligence and virtual assistants are constantly being refined, and may soon be making appointments for you, offering medical advice, or trying to sell you a bottle of wine.

Although AI technology has miles to go to develop social skills on par with ours, some AI has shown impressive language understanding and can complete relatively complex interactive tasks.

In several 2018 demonstrations, Google’s AI made haircut and restaurant reservations without receptionists realising they were talking with a non-human.

It’s likely the AI capabilities developed by tech giants such as Amazon and Google will only grow more capable of influencing us in the future.

But what do we actually find persuasive?

My colleague Adam Duhachek and I found AI messages are more persuasive when they highlight “how” an action should be performed, rather than “why”. For example, people were more willing to put on sunscreen when an AI explained how to apply sunscreen before going out, rather than why they should use sunscreen.

We found people generally don’t believe a machine can understand human goals and desires. Take Google’s AlphaGo, an algorithm designed to play the board game Go. Few people would say the algorithm can understand why playing Go is fun, or why it’s meaningful to become a Go champion. Rather, it just follows a pre-programmed algorithm telling it how to move on the game board.

Our research suggests people find AI’s recommendations more persuasive in situations where AI shows easy steps on how to build personalised health insurance, how to avoid a lemon car, or how to choose the right tennis racket for you, rather than why any of these are important to do in a human sense.

Does AI have free will?

Most of us believe humans have free will. We compliment someone who helps others because we think they do it freely, and we penalise those who harm others. What’s more, we are willing to lessen the criminal penalty if the person was deprived of free will, for instance if they were in the grip of a schizophrenic delusion.

But do people think AI has free will? We did an experiment to find out.

Someone is given $100 and offers to split it with you. They’ll get $80 and you’ll get $20. If you reject this offer, both you and the proposer end up with nothing. Gaining $20 is better than nothing, but previous research suggests the $20 offer is likely to be rejected because we perceive it as unfair. Surely we should get $50, right?

Read more: Do social media algorithms erode our ability to make decisions freely? The jury is out

But what if the proposer is an AI? In a research project yet to be published, my colleagues and I found the rejection ratio drops significantly. In other words, people are much more likely to accept this “unfair” offer if proposed by an AI.

This is because we don’t think an AI developed to serve humans has a malicious intent to exploit us — it’s just an algorithm, it doesn’t have free will, so we might as well just accept the $20.

The fact people could accept unfair offers from AI concerns me, because it might mean this phenomenon could be used maliciously. For example, a mortgage loan company might try to charge unfairly high interest rates by framing the decision as being calculated by an algorithm. Or a manufacturing company might manipulate workers into accepting unfair wages by saying it was a decision made by a computer.

To protect consumers, we need to understand when people are vulnerable to manipulation by AI. Governments should take this into account when considering regulation of AI.

We’re surprisingly willing to divulge to AI

In other work yet to be published, my colleagues and I found people tend to disclose their personal information and embarrassing experiences more willingly to an AI than a human.

We told participants to imagine they’re at the doctor for a urinary tract infection. We split the participants, so half spoke to a human doctor, and half to an AI doctor. We told them the doctor is going to ask a few questions to find the best treatment and it’s up to you how much personal information you provide.

Participants disclosed more personal information to the AI doctor than the human one, regarding potentially embarrassing questions about use of sex toys, condoms, or other sexual activities. We found this was because people don’t think AI judges our behaviour, whereas humans do. Indeed, we asked participants how concerned they were for being negatively judged, and found the concern of being judged was the underlying mechanism determining how much they divulged.

It seems we feel less embarrassed when talking to AI. This is interesting because many people have grave concerns about AI and privacy, and yet we may be more willing to share our personal details with AI.

But what if AI does have free will?

We also studied the flipside: what happens when people start to believe AI does have free will? We found giving AI human-like features or a human name could mean people are more likely to believe an AI has free will.

This has several implications:

• AI can then better persuade people on questions of “why”, because people think the human-like AI may be able to understand human goals and motivations

• AI’s unfair offer is less likely to be accepted because the human-looking AI may be seen as having its own intentions, which could be exploitative

• people start feeling judged by the human-like AI and feel embarrassed, and disclose less personal information

• people start feeling guilty when harming a human-looking AI, and so act more benignly to the AI.

We are likely to see more and different types of AI and robots in future. They might cook, serve, sell us cars, tend to us at the hospital and even sit on a dining table as a dating partner. It’s important to understand how AI influences our decisions, so we can regulate AI to protect ourselves from possible harms.

– ref. Hey Google … what movie should I watch today? How AI can affect our decisions – https://theconversation.com/hey-google-what-movie-should-i-watch-today-how-ai-can-affect-our-decisions-141783

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tony Walker, Adjunct Professor, School of Communications, La Trobe University

Speculation China may be seeking to lower the temperature in its fractious dealings with Australia appears to be premature.

This follows confirmation that Chinese customers have been advised to defer orders of Australian thermal and metallurgical coal.

On top of this, Australian cotton exporters have been advised exports will be cut next year, a blow to a business worth about $2 billion annually.

Australian mining giant BHP has received “deferment requests” for its coal shipments, according to the company’s chairman, Ken MacKenzie.

On the face of it, this is the most damaging trade reprisal by Beijing against what it perceives to be Australia’s hostile attitudes to it in tandem with its security partner, the United States.

It seems more than coincidental that just days after Australia took part in a meeting in Tokyo of the Quad (previously known as the Quadrilateral Strategic Dialogue and involving Japan, Australia, India and the US), China took such action.

To put this in perspective, China has targeted Australia’s third-largest export commodity to the Chinese market behind natural gas and iron ore.

Read more: It’s hard to tell why China is targeting Australian wine. There are two possibilities

In 2018-19, Australia’s exports to China of thermal coal for power stations and metallurgical coal for steel-making reached A$14.1 billion.

The Quad session left no doubt about its purpose. It was squarely aimed at furthering a China containment strategy, and perhaps outlining an Asian NATO.

“Asian NATO” is the description Chinese propagandists apply to the Quad.

Australia finds itself in a grouping that includes a hawkish US Trump administration, a Japan that is understandably anxious about tensions in its own region, and an India that recently found itself in armed conflict with China on its Himalayan border.

In all of this big-power manoeuvring, Australia is the minnow. So it is more vulnerable to Chinese reprisals, trade and otherwise.

In a statement following the Quad, Foreign Minister Marise Payne avoided specific mention of China, but her message was clear. Australia was not hesitating to align itself with its Quad partners in confronting China. The statement said:

Ministers reiterated that states cannot assert maritime claims that are inconsistent with international law, particularly the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).

This was aimed at China’s refusal to accept a mediation ruling under UNCLOS that contradicts its territorial claims in the South China Sea.

Read more: China-Australia relations hit new low in spat over handling of coronavirus

However, even if Australia wanted to detach itself from a hard-edged American position on China, it would be difficult given the sort of rhetoric emanating from Washington.

For example, in a statement issued by US Secretary Mike Pompeo after his meeting with Payne, he said they had discussed “China’s malign activity in the region”.

Australia’s circumspect foreign minister would not have said this publicly.

The Pompeo remarks play into a Chinese narrative that Canberra is Washington’s appendage. In the conduct of its regional diplomacy in close co-ordination with the US, Australia tends not to challenge this narrative.

In an interview with Nikkei Asia, Pompeo said the Quad would enable participants to “build out a true security framework”. This will not have gone unnoticed in Beijing.

Nor would his description of the Quad as a “fabric” that could “counter the challenge that the Chinese Communist Party presents to all of us”.

Payne would not have gone this far.

In the wake of the Quad meeting, China’s strident mouthpiece, the Global Times, accused Canberra of using the gathering to “promote its own global status”. It asked:

[…] how much strength does Australia own with its limited economy and population? Moreover, if Canberra is bent on infuriating China, Australia will only face dire consequences.

This sort of bombast can be dismissed as simply another case of Beijing letting off steam at the expense of a country that is more vulnerable to Chinese pressures than other Quad members.

On the other hand, Australia’s vulnerability to trade penalties invites the question. What will come next? Will it be Australian wine exports to China worth more than A$1 billion a year, or will gas be the next target?

China has been picking off Australian exports over the past year as relations have soured.

It has slapped tariffs on barley, making the Australian commodity uncompetitive in the Chinese market. It has used non-tariff measures to stifle beef imports from five abattoirs. It has told Chinese students to look elsewhere for education opportunities. It has also discouraged Chinese tourists from visiting Australia.

The latter is moot, since the COVID-19 pandemic means inbound tourism has been stopped.

However, a series of trade reprisals should be deeply concerning for the Australian government as it wrestles with an economy hit hard by recession.

The last thing Australia needs in this environment is for its trading relationship with China to fall off a cliff.

The trade numbers underscore Australia’s unhealthy dependence on China.

In 2018-19, more than one-third, or A$134.7 billion worth, of Australia’s total merchandise exports went to China. On top of that Australia’s services business with China, mainly education, totalled A$18.5 billion.

In the first six months of this year, Australia’s exports to China neared 50% of total exports, mainly due to increased iron ore prices.

This level of business may be advantageous to Australia from a short-term perspective, but in the longer term such heavy reliance on a single market is highly undesirable.

It gives China the option of penalising Australia if Canberra’s policies do not correspond with Beijing’s wishes.

This is precisely what is happening now.

In the circumstances, it is hard to reach any other conclusion than that Beijing is targeting Australia as a means of conveying its displeasure that a regional united front appears to be forming to contain China’s ambitions.

In this context it is worth noting that despite a sometimes acrimonious “trade war” between the US and China, Beijing has, for the most part, refrained from penalising American business.

Of course, China exports far more to the US than it imports.

In the lead-up to the US election on November 3, Australia should be hoping for a Biden victory on the grounds that a more normal diplomatic environment will enable a reset of our relations with Beijing.

The alternative is further nasty surprises weighing on a critical trading relationship.

– ref. Hopes of an improvement in Australia-China relations dashed as Beijing ups the ante – https://theconversation.com/hopes-of-an-improvement-in-australia-china-relations-dashed-as-beijing-ups-the-ante-147989

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

The United States has registered the largest fall in relative regional power of any country in the Indo-Pacific during the last year, according to the Lowy Institute’s Asia Power Index.

The index, started in 2018, ranks 26 countries and territories according to the power they wield in the region. It uses multiple indicators across military capability and defence networks, economic resources and relationships, diplomatic and cultural influence, and resilience and future resources.

While the US is still the most powerful country in the region, it has gone from a 10 point lead over China two years ago to five points in 2020, scoring a rating of 81.6.

“Despite its continuing pre-eminence, US standing has waned in all but one of the eight Index measures,” the report says.

It says the closing power disparity with China suggests America, “far from being the undisputed unipolar power, can more correctly be described as the first among equals in a bipolar Indo–Pacific”.

The US lost the most points in measures where China is ahead – economic relationships, economic capability, and diplomatic influence.

Despite the US’s significant advantages, “the current US administration’s unilateral inclinations mean the United States is an underachiever in its ability to wield broad-based power in Asia. In addition, the coronavirus has contributed to a loss of US prestige.

“America has suffered the largest reputational hit in the region for its domestic and international handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

The report says while China has been “diplomatically diminished” by COVID it is “holding ground in its overall power”.

“In conditions where most countries are less powerful than a year ago, China’s fast economic rebound from COVID-19 will widen the power differentials between itself and the rest of the region.”

China, which ranks second at 76.1 on the regional power index, has an unchanged score.

“China leads in four of the eight measures of power: economic capability, diplomatic influence, economic relationships and future resources. But the country delivers inconsistent results in the other measures, with stark strengths and weaknesses. By contrast, US performance in the Index still appears more rounded.”

Australia and two other middle powers – Vietnam and Taiwan – were the only countries to gain in comprehensive power in 2020.

“Their competent handling of the COVID-19 pandemic was a necessary, but not sole condition for improving their regional standing.”

Australia ranks number 6 on the index with an overall rating of 32.4. It was previously 7th and has overtaken South Korea. Its greatest improvement was in cultural influence.

“Australia’s comparative advantages as a middle power are most evident in its defence networks, where it ranks second behind the United States. Despite a far more modest military capability, Australia is ranked ahead of the United States for its defence diplomacy with non-allied partners.

“Canberra has led the way in forging variable geometry — bilateral, trilateral, quadrilateral and ‘quad plus’ — defence partnerships with a diverse range of countries, including India, Japan, Indonesia and Vietnam. Australia carries less ‘great power baggage’ and has demonstrated it can be far nimbler in Southeast Asia than its US ally.”

But the report warns of the effect of the contraction of migration to negative levels.

“Dropping out of the demographic ‘Goldilocks zone’ will have adverse implications for Australia’s fundamentals as a young and growing middle power. The failure to reverse this trend in the next few years would result in a smaller, poorer and ultimately less secure nation.”

The report also concludes that Japan will take much of the next decade to recover economically from COVID. It says that of all the countries, “India’s economy has lost the most growth potential through the damage inflicted by the pandemic”.

– ref. United States’ standing wanes on Lowy Asia power index – https://theconversation.com/united-states-standing-wanes-on-lowy-asia-power-index-148317