Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Eve Massingham, Senior Research Fellow, Law and the Future of War, The University of Queensland

In September, Boeing announced it would design and build a new military aircraft in Queensland, a first in Australia for over 50 years.

The “Loyal Wingman” is an uncrewed craft that flies in teams with other crewed and uncrewed aircraft to provide surveillance and reconnaissance support to a mission. But it could also be fitted with weapons. It completed its first test flight in March and plans are to have the production facility up and running in just a few years.

Although a lot of defence forces have used uncrewed aircraft (including drones) for a long time, they have primarily been remotely piloted from the ground. The test of the Loyal Wingman involved pre-programmed flying with human oversight.

However, the Loyal Wingman is ultimately being designed to use artificial intelligence to complete flights without real-time human oversight.

This raises questions of whether our laws are adequate to protect us from a host of concerns involving health, safety and data collection when autonomous aircraft systems are in the skies.

What are the advantages of autonomous aircraft?

Defence forces around the world are investing heavily in these types of artificial intelligence technologies.

Unlike remotely piloted systems that require sizeable teams on the ground, these craft can be deployed in large numbers by small teams. This could exponentially increase the size of a country’s air force – an invaluable thing.

Further, these uncrewed aircraft are a fraction of the cost of one flown by a human crew. So, while they are not designed to be disposable (they still cost a few million dollars each), they are ultimately expendable in return for the right military advantage.

Although current spending on autonomous projects in Australia is small in relation to the overall defence budget, it is increasing.

Defence leaders are increasingly becoming aware of both the opportunities these systems present to the Australian Defence Force (ADF), as well as the challenges posed by other militaries exploiting them.

Legal questions about autonomous craft

The Loyal Wingman test flight took place at the remote South Australian Woomera Range Complex. The new drone test facility at Cloncurry, Queensland, will also likely host test flights in the future. That facility is specifically designed to support the testing of new autonomous military technologies.

But what happens when the crafts need to move beyond these specially equipped facilities in remote areas? What does this mean for everyday Australians?

Occasionally, we see tanks and other military vehicles on our roads. We see warships in our ports and hear fighter jets in our skies. We know that while these military vehicles have a war-fighting role, they also need to exist safely in our communities. This allows the ADF to train with them or move them between military bases, as well as to training or conflict zones.

There are a number of legal considerations for the design and deployment of any uncrewed autonomous military aircraft in our skies. These include privacy, noise, occupational health and safety, the environment and public liability.

For instance, our defence aviation safety regulations, set by the Defence Aviation Safety Authority in the Department of Defence, would need to be amended to allow these types of craft to be flown over Australia (currently only remotely piloted craft can be) and to determine whether they could be weaponised.

Although amending the regulations is a relatively simple process – they are updated every six months – such a significant policy shift cannot be undertaken lightly or without consideration of the wider implications of allowing autonomous devices in our skies.

Read more:
The self-driving trolley problem: how will future AI systems make the most ethical choices for all of us?

Then there’s the personal data these craft could inadvertently collect through their surveillance and reconnaissance sensors while in the sky.

The Australian privacy principles outlined in the Privacy Act 1988 cover incidentally collected information such as this. Although this is also an issue for crewed aircraft, the sheer volume of data that could potentially be collected from a large number of uncrewed, autonomous aircraft rings alarms bells.

This could require the ADF to report data breaches to those whose information is collected, and even pay compensation.

There are also environmental concerns, such as the possibility of an uncrewed autonomous aircraft unintentionally starting a bushfire on the ground.

In Germany, strict aviation rules contributed to the abandonment of one very expensive, autonomous, military drone project because the craft could not obtain clearance to fly in civil aviation airspace due to safety concerns.

Australia is only starting to consider these issues. For example, a current project is working on new standards for designing, testing and operating autonomous aircraft safely in the skies. This is primarily focused on commercial drones, but could set best practices for all autonomous craft.

The ADF and the law

The military is not always covered by the same rules as the rest of us. There are lots of exclusions for ADF members from the general application of Australian laws.

This means military vehicles and technologies can be excluded from certain government inquiries. For example, the recent federal government review into aircraft noise did not cover military drones.

Read more:
Six ways robots are used today that you probably didn’t know about

New civilian technologies in Australian skies have already faced a host of questions. For example, the Google Wing delivery drone designers have had to take measures to deal with noise concerns (and swooping ravens)) in the Brisbane and Canberra suburbs where they are currently operating. Safety concerns have also had to be carefully considered.

The law is constantly being updated to keep pace with technology. For instance, a court recently set an important precedent by ruling that artificial intelligence systems can be legally recognised as an inventor in patent applications.

It’s not unreasonable to imagine circumstances could require a change to some defence safety aviation rules to allow for greater use of artificial intelligence in our skies.

Over the coming years, much thought will need to go into ensuring the ADF can safely and effectively get their autonomous craft to the starting line in a way that is workable under the Australian legal system and for the Australian public.

The Law and the Future of War research group at the University of Queensland receives funding from the Australian Government through the Defence Cooperative Research Centre for Trusted Autonomous Systems. The views and opinions expressed in here are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Australian Government or any other institution.

– ref. An AI-flown military aircraft is being designed in Australia. Are our laws equipped to protect us? – https://theconversation.com/an-ai-flown-military-aircraft-is-being-designed-in-australia-are-our-laws-equipped-to-protect-us-169725

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Candice Harris, Professor of Management, Auckland University of Technology

Internationally, and especially within the US, there has been a lot of talk about the so-called “great resignation” – the trend seeing large numbers of workers leaving their jobs during the COVID-19 pandemic, having reevaluated their priorities or simply because there are more opportunities than ever before.

While there isn’t enough firm data to confirm this is happening in New Zealand yet, there is little doubt a chronic skills shortage has given workers more bargaining power. Perhaps not surprisingly, research shows more and more workers are at least thinking about either changing or quitting their jobs since last year.

But this phenomenon – defined as “turnover intentions” – could also fuel what we’re calling the “great recruitment”. After all, as physics teaches us, for every action there is a reaction.

Calling it the great recruitment is obviously related to the sheer volume of recruitment activity that logically follows a great resignation. But it is also a reference to the related importance of a positive – great – recruitment experience for potential employees.

Not a negative trend

Classic supply and demand principles tell us that if more workers are seeking greener employment pastures, there will be more ready-to-hire talent in the marketplace. For that reason alone, we urge organisations not to consider the great resignation a negative trend in the job market.

Of course, to be successful the great recruitment must be supported by businesses that prioritise the recruitment process, from candidate care to the vetting and hiring team, to the use of technology and protecting the organisation’s reputation and brand.

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However, there are many practices that not only undermine but entirely defeat the positive potential of a great recruitment, including:

• “ghosting”, where candidates apply for a role but get no response or experience a sudden silence part way through the process

• posting vague or corny job descriptions – “customer services expert” anyone? – that do nothing to excite or provide context for potential applicants

• relying too heavily on quasi-scientific personality profile tests and asking questions that are at best tokenistic, at worst discriminatory.

Making recruitment great

We also see recruitment processes stumble at the last hurdle by engaging in Game of Thrones-style salary negotiations, where candidates feel like they’re challenging a noble family. This is particularly disadvantages women and ethnic minorities.

How then to ensure your organisation is capturing the talent potential released by the great resignation and maximising the employment potential of the great recruitment? Here are our top 10 tips:

1. Choose your words carefully: write inspiring, authentic job advertisements. If your recruitment team can’t do it, get someone who can.

2. Be realistic: create reasonable candidate specifications – wanting extreme levels of skill, attitude and experience is likely put off good candidates.

3. Canvas others: when designing employee value propositions, get input from recruiters and current employees.

4. Remember glass houses: recognise there is no such thing as perfect behaviour when using behavioural-based interview questions, especially given the organisation itself may be questionable in some of its conduct.

5. Consider the context: give due consideration to reference check results – if a candidate’s last boss says he or she was disconnected in the end, perhaps it’s because they were already in a high state of turnover intention.

6. Go back to the future: be open to hiring past employees. Initiatives such as alumni programmes can be used to connect with and recruit former employees.

7. Know your team: be open to conversations about the attributes and attitudes of the person a successful candidate will be reporting to, and the team they will be working with.

8. Be technology wise: use automated recruitment technology (such as SnapHire, JobAdder or QJumpers) to enhance – not replace – an integrated people-oriented recruitment experience.

9. Provide clear pay ranges: if an applicant knows what the pay is from the outset, it saves everyone valuable time and energy.

10. Be gracious: formally thank all candidates for applying – this can help ensure you retain them as future applicants and/or customers.

Read more:
The ‘great resignation’ is a trend that began before the pandemic – and bosses need to get used to it

Great expectations

With more talent in the market, those in recruitment will need to sharpen their games. Given much recruitment activity is outsourced and many recruiters will be booming in the current climate, organisational clients should have great expectations of recruitment professionals, too.

Employees face enough challenges in their working lives without having to endure a recruitment experience that is anything less than great.

Finally, the great recruitment must also account for future talent. Before we know it, the Roblox generation will be hitting the workforce, already adept at digital creation and collaboration, and expecting similar things from recruiters.

If we get it right, the great recruitment is a chance for employers to recast the great resignation as an opportunity for everyone to do better – now and into the future.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. 10 ways New Zealand employers can turn the ‘great resignation’ into a ‘great recruitment’ – https://theconversation.com/10-ways-new-zealand-employers-can-turn-the-great-resignation-into-a-great-recruitment-172952

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Terry Goldsworthy, Associate Professor in Criminology, Bond University

Recent high-profile criminal cases, such as the suspected death of William Tyrrell and the abduction of Chloe Smith, have captured the attention of the media and the public.

As a former detective inspector, I investigated and managed more than 25 homicide investigations and many other major crimes during 28 years with the Queensland Police Service.

So what happens behind the scenes in a major crime investigation. And how does the investigation of major crime differ from volume crime?

The difference between major crime and volume crime

Homicides are the most obvious type of major crime, but it can also include robbery, rape and other serious offences such as organised crime.

The Queensland Crime and Corruption Commission’s list of major crime offences includes drug trafficking, fraud, money laundering, criminal paedophilia and homicide.

The Australian Institute of Criminology defines volume crime as offences that account for the largest proportion of crime recorded by the police. These include unlawful entry, assaults, motor vehicle theft and theft.

There is a difference between the way major crime and volume crime are investigated. Major crime investigations can take years for some cases, such as the murder of 13-year-old Daniel Morcombe, which took 11 years to reach a conviction.

In major crime, there is a clear division of labour rather then just one officer doing everything, as is usually the case in volume crime investigations. Assigned roles include the investigation manager, the arrest team, other investigators, an intelligence cell and specialist support staff.

Major crimes such as homicides involve dedicated taskforces or operations containing large teams of detectives, conducting parallel lines of inquiry.

Usually, a major incident room is set up.

Read more:
Cleo Smith case: how ‘cognitive interviewing’ can help police compile the most reliable evidence

Clear up rates for major crime

This ability to put greater investigative effort and specialist support into major crime investigations contributes to much higher “clear-up rates” – when a suspect is identified and proceedings are begun – for these types of offences.

A New South Wales study showed that, from 2007 to 2016, 65% of murders were cleared by police within 90 days. The same study noted clear-up rates for property offences were much lower than for violent offences, including murder. In Queensland, 96% of murders reported in 2019–20 were cleared.

Australia’s clearance rates for homicide compare well to the rest of the world. The United Nations Global study on homicide indicates clearance rates range between 50% and 90%.

The hunt for information

Most major investigations are a process of moving from having little information about the crime to having a lot. It is essentially an exercise in information management. Investigators need to acquire information to build a plausible account of what has happened.

Investigators do this by identifying, interpreting and assembling information into a form that shows whether a crime has been committed, and who is responsible for that crime. Sources of information can include crime scene material, intelligence databases, witnesses, victims and the media.

An investigative model

There is no standardised investigative process or model. The United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime provides some guidance on how to progress through a generic reactive investigation in its crime investigation toolkit.

In the United Kingdom, the College of Policing provides guidance on the investigative process. However, it notes that every investigation is different, and so may require a different path to solving the case.

In 2001, as part of a research project in conjunction with the Queensland Police Service, I developed an investigative model. It outlined several stages:

• crime scene
• initial assessment
• investigation
• target
• arrest.

In the course of an investigation, police can return to any stage and begin a new line of inquiry. We have seen this occur with the disappearance of William Tyrrell, with police returning to the original crime scene some seven years later after receiving new information.

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No matter what model is used, there are decisions that the management team of the investigation will need to make as it moves through the stages:

• knowledge decisions are concerned with how particular information should be interpreted and treated by the investigative team

• tactical decisions relate to what should be done, when and by whom

• logistical decisions concern the operational supports and resources to be dedicated to an investigation

• legal decisions need to be made to ensure any actions taken by the investigative team are legal and admissible in a court case.

The role of media and technology

The media are a great investigative tool and can be used to apply tactical pressure to suspects and drive the search for information from the public. The extensive coverage of high-profile cases, such as that of William Tyrrell, is an example of this. The use of the media can also coincide with covert policing strategies, such as listening devices, designed to target potential suspects.

Technology is now also playing a much larger role in major investigations. We all leave digital footprints, be they passive (your mobile phone searching for a signal from a cell tower) or active (using your phone to pay for fuel at a geographic location).

In one triple-murder investigation that I managed, the offenders were tracked up and down the eastern seaboard of Australia, and to the murder scenes, using their mobile phone data.

One thing that hasn’t changed over time is the importance of the investigative effort in the early stages of any major crime, but particularly murders. I have seen first-hand how putting the effort in early in terms of long hours and adequate resources can result in solving major crime.

Terry Goldsworthy does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Explainer: how do police undertake major crime investigations? – https://theconversation.com/explainer-how-do-police-undertake-major-crime-investigations-172610

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tanya Hill, Honorary Fellow of the University of Melbourne and Senior Curator (Astronomy), Museums Victoria

The Sun hasn’t set in Antarctica since October. Earth’s southernmost continent is currently experiencing a long summer’s day, one that stretches from mid-October until early April.

But on Saturday December 4, darkness will sweep across the ice of West Antarctica. The Moon will pass directly in front of the Sun, blocking its light and producing a total solar eclipse.

The path of totality crosses the Argentine, British and Chilean Antarctic Territories (which consist of overlapping regions), as well as the unclaimed territory known as Marie Byrd Land. Areas along the path will experience almost 2 minutes of darkness in the otherwise months-long stretch of daylight.

Meanwhile, the southern tips of South America, Africa, Australia and New Zealand will see a fairly minor partial eclipse. For South America and Africa, the eclipse will be in the early morning; for Australia and New Zealand it will happen as the Sun is setting.

The Moon’s goodnight kiss

As the Sun sinks towards the horizon the Moon will appear to kiss the top-left of the Sun. Of all Australia’s capital cities, Hobart will see the largest eclipse, but even so only 11% of the Sun’s area will be covered. For Melbourne, this drops to just 2%, while in Canberra it’s hardly visible – the Sun is crossing the horizon as a tiny eclipse occurs.

It’s a similar situation in New Zealand. Invercargill will see 4% of the Sun obscured by the Moon, with the Moon passing by the Sun’s left side. But move further north to Queenstown and the eclipse is barely visible for the setting Sun.

In fact, if you weren’t aware of it, you wouldn’t even know the eclipse was happening. It’s not until about 80% or more of the Sun is obscured before we notice any change in daylight.

Star light, star bright

Solar eclipses are one astronomical event that require special care to observe. Most importantly, never look at the Sun directly – even when it’s low on the horizon.

Be sure to protect your eyes by using specially designed eclipse glasses. These glasses also allow you to see any sunspots that might be active. The Sun is currently moving from a quiet phase to an active one, as part of a cycle that repeats every 11 years. You can check websites such as Spaceweather to see what’s happening on the Sun’s surface right now.

Read more:
Explainer: what is a solar eclipse?

Normally, the projection method is a great way to observe solar eclipses. This involves making a small hole in the bottom of a plastic cup or piece of cardboard. Then, with your back to the Sun, hold the cup so the sunlight passes through the hole onto a flat surface such as a piece of paper or a wall, projecting an image of the Sun on the surface.

But because this is such a minor eclipse and it will happen at sunset in eastern Australia, it may be hard to focus the Sun’s image in this way.

The rarity of totality

Solar eclipses are relatively rare experiences, because the Moon’s orbit is tilted by 5 degrees relative to Earth’s orbit around the Sun, so they don’t quite move in the same plane. However, roughly every six months the orbits align to produce a pair of eclipses – a lunar eclipse at Full Moon, followed by a solar eclipse at New Moon (as we are experiencing now), or vice versa.

Read more:
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Lunar eclipses are seen by more people because everyone on the night side of the Earth during a lunar eclipse will see the event. Solar eclipses happen just as often, but they are seen by far fewer people because the shadow created by the Moon passing in front of the Sun covers a much smaller fraction of the Earth.

Furthermore, partial solar eclipses are difficult to observe and they pale in comparison to the experience of a total solar eclipse. While total solar eclipses happen roughly every 18 months being able to see totality is rarer still.

The Moon’s shadow as it crosses the Earth is only 100-260km wide, and you have to be located within that narrow path to see the totally eclipsed Sun. This is why eclipse-chasers travel the world to be in the right place at the right time. But when totality occurs in a remote location like Antarctica it’ll be mainly the penguins who get to see it.

The next total solar eclipse visible from Australia will happen in April 2023. The band of totality will just clip Australia near Exmouth at the tip of the North West Cape in Western Australia.

But many more Aussies and New Zealanders will get to see a total solar eclipse on July 22 2028. Totality will stretch across Australia, from the top of WA down through New South Wales, passing directly over Sydney. It will also cross the South Island of New Zealand, passing through Queenstown and Dunedin.

Tanya Hill does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Total solar eclipse will bring 2 minutes of darkness to Antarctica’s months of endless daylight – https://theconversation.com/total-solar-eclipse-will-bring-2-minutes-of-darkness-to-antarcticas-months-of-endless-daylight-172159

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bill Hare, Director, Climate Analytics, Adjunct Professor, Murdoch University (Perth), Visiting scientist, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research

The controversial Scarborough gas project off Western Australia will cause a substantial rise in greenhouse gas emissions at a time when the world must rapidly decarbonise, new analysis released today shows.

The A$16 billion plan by Woodside Petroleum has been described as Australia’s biggest new fossil fuel investment in nearly a decade. The report, produced by Climate Analytics, a research organisation I help lead, is the first to examine the full climate impact of the entire expansion project.

The Morrison government has put the gas industry at the heart of its economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. But as the Scarborough example shows, such projects makes it less likely the world will meet the goals of the Paris Agreement.

The sheer scale of emissions from the expansion, and projects linked to it, will make achieving 2030 emissions targets much harder for Western Australia and, by extension, Australia and the world.

Emissions worse than we thought

Woodside’s expansion proposal involves developing the Scarborough offshore gas field 375 kilometres off Australia’s northwest coast. It also includes a new pipeline to the company’s onshore Pluto processing facility on the Pilbara coast, and expansion of that facility.

Woodside last week announced it had approved the final investment decision on the developments. Chief executive Meg O’Neill said the project “supports the decarbonisation goals of our customers in Asia”.

Our study examines the full emissions implications of the expansion and associated projects, including domestic gas supply and a proposed project converting gas to hydrogen.

Estimates of the entire projects’ greenhouse gas implications are spread across several reports and documents. This report assembles these for the first time. The research was commissioned by the Conservation Council of Western Australia.

Read more:
‘Unjustifiable’: new report shows how the nation’s gas expansion puts Australians in harm’s way

We examined the emissions from the gas facilities themselves, and emissions that will, or are likely to, occur as a result of the project. This second group of emissions includes locked-in domestic demand for natural gas and overseas export markets burning its product for energy.

We estimate that by 2055, the expansion and associated projects will emit 1.37 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases. Almost 20% is projected to be emitted in Western Australia and the rest would be emitted overseas where the exported gas will be burnt.

The total emissions we calculate is far more than the 878 million tonnes Woodside says the project will emit.

In a statement to The Conversation, a Woodside spokeswoman said its emissions figure was “correct and has been accepted by the federal regulator NOPSEMA”.

However the NOPSEMA report covers only the emissions that come from gas derived from the Scarborough gas field and not the emissions from the entire Pluto expansion. In contrast, Woodside’s greenhouse gas action plan is based on the entire Pluto expansion, including all aspects of the project we included in our calculations.

Woodside said Scarborough gas, used to generate electricity, could power ten cities the size of Perth for 30 years and the emissions would be around half those for the same electricity generated from coal.

However, we found that introducing Scarborough-Pluto gas into electricity grids of countries decarbonising in line with the Paris Agreement would raise greenhouse gas emissions by several hundred million tonnes between 2026 and 2040.

Questionable emissions reduction plan

Woodside says its “greenhouse gas abatement program” shows how the company will offset a substantial amount of emissions. We believe that plan, approved by the WA government, is questionable on several counts.

For example, a Woodside project approved in 2006 at 12 million tonnes of LNG per year was later scaled down. However, Woodside’s plan for emissions reduction plan comes off the earlier high-emissions baseline.

Woodside proposes to reduce emissions reductions using carbon offsets (removing CO₂ from the atmosphere in one place to compensate for emissions made elsewhere). But there appears to be no guarantee these offsets would not have occurred as part of Woodside’s usual business operations.

Woodside says it plans to abate all emissions from the project by 2050. But most of this emissions reduction will not occur until after 2040, and depends on factors such as the availability of technology, government policy and the availability of carbon offsets for purchase.

Woodside has also not accounted for expected global increases in the price of carbon offsets. We calculate that by 2050, the cost of offsets could comprise between 21% and 71% of Woodside’s export revenue for liquified natural gas.

Read more:
Big-business greenwash or a climate saviour? Carbon offsets raise tricky moral questions

Bad news for net-zero

In May this year, the International Energy Agency said no new oil and gas fields can be developed if the world is to meet the goal of net-zero emissions by 2050 and avert catastrophic global warming.

This, in our view, includes the Scarborough-Pluto expansion. Introducing gas from the project into electricity grids of importing nations would slow global decarbonisation efforts.

Big buyers of Australian gas, such as South Korea and Japan, are moving away from fossil fuels and towards green hydrogen and renewable energy. This suggests a softening, or even collapse, in demand for LNG this decade – a trend consistent with assessments by the International Energy Agency and Australia’s Reserve Bank.

For Woodside, the Scarborough-Pluto expansion is increasingly looking like a stranded asset. And the WA government’s support for the project, and the broader gas industry, means it’s missing out on massive, and growing, opportunities in renewable energy and green hydrogen exports.

Read more:
International Energy Agency warns against new fossil fuel projects. Guess what Australia did next?

Bill Hare receives funding from the European Climate Foundation, Bloomberg philanthropy and the Climate Works Foundation. The research upon which this article is based was funded by the Conservation Council of Western Australia

– ref. Australia’s biggest fossil fuel investment for a decade is in the works – and its greenhouse gas emissions will be horrifying – https://theconversation.com/australias-biggest-fossil-fuel-investment-for-a-decade-is-in-the-works-and-its-greenhouse-gas-emissions-will-be-horrifying-172955

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lucy Montgomery, Program Lead, Innovation in Knowledge Communication, Curtin University

The COP26 meeting has sharpened the world’s focus on climate change. To adapt and thrive in a world of reduced emissions, Australian businesses and communities need access to the technologies and innovation made possible by the nation’s researchers. But most Australian research is locked behind publisher paywalls.

Open access to research has become an important strategy to speed innovation. Making COVID-19-related research and data publicly accessible to fast-track the development of vaccines, treatments and policies is one example.

Given the gravity of the global climate emergency, it seems reasonable also to use open access to help speed green innovation.

Read more:
All publicly funded research could soon be free for you, the taxpayer, to read

But, as Prime Minister Scott Morrison recently noted, research systems driven by a “publish or perish mindset” do little to spur innovation. Scholarly communication models that lock research behind paywalls slow the flow of new knowledge from researchers into real-world innovation.

Australian universities pay hundreds of millions of dollars in subscription fees each year for access to publications by Australian researchers. Businesses, policy advisers, think-tanks and private individuals who don’t have access to a university library must either pay separately for access or miss out.

This is despite the fact Australia invests an estimated A$12 billion of taxpayer money each year in research and innovation, according to Chief Scientist Cathy Foley. Action is needed to ensure this publicly funded research can be translated into innovation for the wider economy.

Read more:
Making Australian research free for everyone to read sounds ideal. But the Chief Scientist’s open-access plan isn’t risk-free

How does Australia compare to the world?

International research communities are already using open-access strategies to maximise the impacts of climate-related research. Our analysis of publication data* shows between 2011 and 2020 the proportion of research on climate change that is open access rose from 30% to 50%. This is consistent with an accelerating international shift towards “public access to publicly funded research”.

But Australia has lagged behind the rest of the world in making research open access.

More than half of the Australian research on climate change published in the past decade is behind a paywall. This puts Australia on par with the US and Canada – but well behind our nearest neighbour Indonesia, as well as most of Europe.

Australia’s low rates of open access have implications for communities in need of information about how to adapt to a warming world.

Read more:
2020 locked in shift to open access publishing, but Australia is lagging

Australia’s research sector is pushing back

The Council of Australian University Libraries (CAUL) is leading the push for open access to Australian research. So-called “transformative agreements” are one aspect of its strategy. These are deals with publishers that cover both subscription access to articles that are still behind paywalls and open-access publishing rights for articles by Australian researchers.

In 2021 the CAUL signed transformative agreements with five major publishers.

Foley argues that a “gold” route to open access (paying publishers not to lock articles behind paywalls) is likely to cost less than Australian universities already pay for subscription access: between A$460 million and A$1 billion.

Foley wants a sector-wide approach that would result in all Australian research being published in open access, and all Australians able to access the journals that universities subscribe to.

Read more:
Science publishing has opened up during the coronavirus pandemic. It won’t be easy to keep it that way

What more needs to be done?

So will the latest transformative agreements make it easier to access research needed to tackle climate change?

The short answer is “yes, but we need to do more”.

A few big commercial publishers dominate scholarly publishing.

So far CAUL has signed deals with only two of the largest publishers of climate-related research: Wiley and Springer Nature. The Springer Nature deal excludes many of its most prestigious titles, including the journal Nature.

If the deals with Springer Nature and Wiley had applied to all 2020 publications, our analysis suggests they would have made up to 200 more articles immediately accessible on publication.

Deals with the Big Five publishers will create a step change in the amount of Australian climate change research that is freely accessible. But there is a danger they will further lock in the monopolies of a few players.

Australian researchers could make a bigger difference to open access by making their work available through other online sharing platforms. Discipline platforms like arXiv, Pubmed Central or university systems like QUT’s ePrints are examples.

Our analysis found less than 40% of Australia’s 2019 research output is accessible through these platforms. Australian researchers could make 1,400 articles on climate change more accessible by depositing them in a free open access repository today.

Tackling climate change and improving access to research are both complex and controversial issues. In each case, thinking through the implications in the short, medium and long term will be key to helping Australia achieve its goals.

* Data statement: data were obtained from Crossref metadata, Unpaywall, Microsoft Academic and the Global Research Identifier Database, via the data infrastructure developed by the Curtin Open Knowledge Initiative, Curtin University. “Climate change” is a topic category available from Microsoft Academic and this was supplemented by a search for terms associated with UN Sustainable Development Goal 7, “clean energy” and “net zero”.

Lucy Montgomery has received funding from Springer Nature for research relating to Open Access. She is also affiliated with a number or organisations involved in Open Access scholarly communication, including as a recipient of funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; and as a member of the Scientific Committees for the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) and the OAPEN Open Access Books Toolkit. Montgomery is non-executive director of the not-for-profit consultancy Collaborative Open Access Research and Development (COARD).

Cameron Neylon has received funding from Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Springer Nature, the Arcadia Fund, Arnold Foundation, Open Society Foundations, Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and other organisations for research relating to Open Access. He is also affiliated or has an advisory role with a number or organisations involved in Open Access scholarly communication, including as part of the Initiatives for Open Citations and for Open Abstracts, an Advisory Board Member of Open Book Publishers, and others. Neylon is a non-executive director of the not-for-profit consultancy Collaborative Open Access Research and Development (COARD).

Karl Huang does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. What can we gain from open access to Australian research? Climate action for a start – https://theconversation.com/what-can-we-gain-from-open-access-to-australian-research-climate-action-for-a-start-171821

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard Holden, Professor of Economics, UNSW

The Australian Labor Party is set to announce its target for cutting greenhouse gas emissions today.

At the 2016 and 2019 elections, Labor promised net zero emissions by 2050 and a cut of 45% on 2005 levels by 2030. Among the promises it adopted to get it there in 2019 was a target of 50% renewable energy by 2030.

But it lost those elections. So up to now Labor has refused to say what policies it will take to the 2022 election. We should know by the end of the day.

The Coalition’s position is clear – sort of.

Formally the government is sticking with its long-settled position of delivering a cut of 26-28% on 2005 levels by 2030 (as well as net zero by 2050).

But Prime Minister Scott Morrison is having a bet each way, by also saying the government will do better. As he said on November 15:

We are going to achieve a 35% reduction in emissions by 2030. That is what we’re going to achieve. That is what actually matters. What matters is what you actually achieve. We are well above our target.

This leaves Labor, which has consistently taken a stronger stance than the Coalition, with three broad options.

Targets, predictions, safeguards

Option 1 is to match the 35% reduction but make it a formal target, not a prediction.

Option 2 is to go a little higher with a prediction – say 40% – and claim this is achievable given announced Labor policies such as electric vehicles and upgrading the electricity grid (“rewiring the nation”).

Option 3 is set a more ambitious target – perhaps 45%, as Labor did at the last election, along with a change to the so-called “safeguard mechanism” introduced by the Coalition in 2016 as part of its alternative to a price on carbon.

The safeguard mechanism requires Australia’s largest greenhouse gas emitters to keep their net emissions below a certain cap.

À lire aussi :
​The government’s net-zero modelling shows winners, we’ve found losers

At the 2019 election Labor proposed to cut the eligibility threshold for the cap from 100,000 to 25,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, and extend it to more emitters.

The difference between now and 2019 is that this time the business community is behind the approach.

In fact, the Business Council of Australia’s climate plan, published in October 2021, is to do exactly this.

Pitfalls abound

Each one of these options have pitfalls. Option 1 looks weak, and gives the government a free pass on climate. It’s hard for Labor politicians to campaign on the government not doing enough if they aren’t willing to do more themselves.

Option 2 (perhaps the most likely) is a hedge: Labor will do more because it cares about the planet, but not too much more because, you know, politics.

Option 3 is the bravest of the likely targets. It’s a bigger number that would make for more meaningful change. It also now has air cover from the Business Council of Australia.

But it’s also the option taken to the last election, which Labor lost. Maybe that was due to other reasons, such as the retiree tax, but it still seems politically risky.

No talk about a carbon price

One option you can bet Labor will not adopt is a price on carbon.

That’s the best way to balance what’s good about emissions (economic growth and development) with what’s bad about emissions (climate change).

This has been off the table with Labor since it lost government in 2013 – in no small part due to Tony Abbott exploiting the issue with his “great big tax” campaigning.

But a funny thing has happened on the way to the 2022 election. A few months ago the Coalition inserted a price on carbon into its own plan.

As The Conversation’s Peter Martin put it, the plan assumed emissions reductions “the same as what would be expected if Australians faced a carbon price (or tax) that climbed to A$24 per tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent by 2050”.

If Energy Minister Angus Taylor is trying to hide this, he is not being particularly stealthy about it.

À lire aussi :
How government modelling found net-zero would leave us better off

Page 6 of the government document outlining the modelling and analysis behind the plan acknowledges it models voluntary emissions reductions “as an abatement incentive which is taken up across the economy and rises to $24/t CO2-e in 2050”.

It says behaving “as if” there was a carbon price of A$24 per tonne in place would get emissions down by 85%.

To get them down further to net zero would require an even higher carbon price: about A$80 per tonne on the model’s logic.

Labor could take its cue from the Coalition

So why doesn’t Labor do what it knows to be right – announce a price on carbon? It could say it will start at the government’s own figure of $24/tonne, and take any needed subsequent increases to future elections.

That won’t happen on Friday. Or any time soon. We should reflect on why.

Richard Holden is President of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia.

– ref. Vital Signs: Albanese to come clean on emissions targets, but a carbon price is still hush-hush – https://theconversation.com/vital-signs-albanese-to-come-clean-on-emissions-targets-but-a-carbon-price-is-still-hush-hush-172974

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gaye Sculthorpe, Curator & Section Head, Oceania, The British Museum

Readers are advised this article contains content relating to violent colonial practices and deceased Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, which some may find distressing.

Ancestors of Indigenous Australians are represented in Britain not only by the objects they made. The Ancestral Remains of Aboriginal people still lie in museums or in graves, marked and unmarked.

A number of Aboriginal people who travelled to Britain in the late 18th and 19th century died there. These include Yemmerrawanne, who visited with Bennelong in 1793; William Wimmera, whose mother was killed by colonists in northwest Victoria and who was subsequently brought by the Reverend Septimus Lloyd Chase to Reading, where the lad died in 1852; and Bripumyarrimin, “King Cole”, a member of the 1868 Aboriginal cricket team who died in London in the same year.

Indirect evidence of Aboriginal visitors to Britain and their agency in collecting specimens is also evident in some museum collections. The Natural History Museum, for instance, has plant specimens collected by botanist George Caley in New South Wales. His field collecting was greatly assisted by “Dan”, referring to Daniel Moowattin, an Aboriginal man from the Parramatta region, who came to London with Caley in 1810–11 to work on naturalist Joseph Banks’s collection.

The collecting of Ancestral Remains was a practice that began in the earliest days of the colony in Sydney and continued well into the 20th century. A number of the remains collected were of well-known individuals killed in frontier violence, whose heads became trophies. Throughout most of the 19th century, there was a particular interest in obtaining Tasmanian Aboriginal remains as the people were then believed to be becoming “extinct”.

Both their bones and hair were keenly sought after. While there are large numbers of unidentified Ancestral Remains in British collections, traces of named individuals can be found.

Collectively, they illustrate the violence of the colonial frontier and the wide-ranging medical and other networks of 19th-century collectors reaching from Britain to Australia.

Heads lost and found

Joseph Banks, who visited Australia once as part of Cook’s first voyage, used his extensive contacts in Sydney to seek out both Aboriginal artefacts and Aboriginal human remains. In the early 1790s, Governor Arthur Phillip sent Banks two Aboriginal skulls from “New Holland”, that were destined for Johann Friedrich Blumenbach at the University of Göttingen, Germany.

In ensuing frontier violence, the resistance of Pemulwuy, from the Botany Bay region, resulted in Governor Philip Gidley King issuing an order for his capture in November 1801, and in June 1802 Pemulwuy and another man were shot dead. Pemulwuy’s head was preserved in spirits and was among the “desiderata” sent back by King to Banks in the ship Speedy.

In 1802, the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons in London noted a gift of “two heads” at that time, although erroneously labelled as coming from Tahiti. Banks’s acquaintance with surgeon John Hunter (whose collections were the foundation of the museum) was likely why the heads arrived at the Royal College of Surgeons.

In August 1818, British artist James Ward, a prolific painter of people and animals, was granted permission by the College of Surgeons to “make Drawings from the two heads in the Museum of Natives of New South Wales”. His journal (October 24 1818) notes: “Begin a study at the College of Surgeons from 2 heads of Botany Bay men”.

Ward’s sketches were exhibited at his house in Newman Street, London, in 1822, and described as:

No. 8. A Native of New South Wales. This order of men is considered as the lowest of human species. The head from which this specimen is taken is preserved in spirits in Surgeon’s College. He was a distinguished chief of a tribe of troublesome marauding predators, a kind of Three-fingered Jack of Botany Bay, which rendered it necessary to put a price upon his head. No. 32 is another view of the same head, with another of the same tribe.

In 1829, these works appear to be listed for sale again in an auction catalogue from Christie’s. In recent decades, numerous attempts have been made to find Pemulwuy’s remains but without success.

The Royal College of Surgeons was bombed in World War II and the head, which had been preserved in spirit and so perhaps kept only as a skull, may have been destroyed then.

Heads of recently and naturally deceased Aboriginal people were also obtained through institutions’ and surgeons’ interests. John Shinall (c.1809–39) lived much of his life with a white family near Hobart in Tasmania and worked as a farm labourer. After his death his body was mutilated and his severed head preserved in alcohol.

Dr John Frederick Clarke, Inspector General of Hospitals in Hobart, presented it to the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons in Dublin about 1845–6. It was later photographed and published in 1899 in Henry Ling Roth’s The Aborigines of Tasmania. After tracking it down and seeing it displayed in Dublin in 1985, the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre negotiated to have Shinall’s head returned and he arrived home in 1990.

Yagan was a Nyungar man from the Swan River (Perth) region of Western Australia who, like Pemulwuy on the other side of the continent, had resisted the settlers. He was once captured but escaped from custody. In 1833, a price was offered for his head after two settlers were killed following the shooting of a group of his own Nyungar people.

Yagan was subsequently killed and his head was taken to England in the luggage of Lieutenant Robert Dale, who tried to sell it. It was displayed for 12 months by Thomas Pettigrew, a surgeon and antiquarian interested in phrenology. Dale later gave it to the Liverpool Royal Institution, in the town where he lived.

In 1964 it was disposed of, among other remains, as it was badly deteriorated. Following decades of searching by Nyungar people, in 1993 it was identified in an unmarked grave in Liverpool and eventually returned by Aboriginal Elders to WA in 1997.

A ‘trophy’

The Bunuba people of the Wunaamin Milliwundi Ranges (previously named the King Leopold Ranges) region of northwestern WA are still looking for Jandamarra. In the 1890s, he worked for some time as a tracker for the police but later led a rebellion against European colonists. He was eventually tracked down and killed with help from another Aboriginal man in 1897.

As Bunuba woman June Oscar stated in 2015, the carnage of Aboriginal people at that time devastated Bunuba society. After his death, Jandamarra’s head was taken to England, and was last seen in the 1960s, displayed as a trophy in Greener’s gun factory in Birmingham, which had a museum housing birds, animals and objects relating to shooting.

The factory subsequently relocated and the whereabouts of Jandamarra’s skull today remains unknown.

An anonymous cranium, likely that of a prisoner from the East Kimberley region of WA, was among the collection of 38 Aboriginal objects obtained by Dr James Albert Wetherell of Stokesley and donated to the Dorman Museum in Middlesbrough in 1904. The skull has a handwritten label attached stating

Skull of West Australian aboriginal Native. Observe contracted low, retreating forehead denoting diminished intellectual faculties.

Born in Middlesbrough in 1862, Wetherell trained in medicine at Edinburgh, graduating in 1886. He arrived in WA in 1892 and registered as a doctor, working at Bridgetown and Bunbury before being appointed in June 1892 as a justice of the peace and resident magistrate of the East Kimberley. As Chris Owen has discussed in his book Every Mother’s Son is Guilty, this was an era when police could be disciplined for not shooting Aborigines.

In early 1893, in his capacity as resident magistrate, Wetherell sent out an expedition to punish “savage outlaws” after the attempted spearing of a policeman. He resigned in late 1894 and eventually returned to live in Hull. Newspapers reported that he failed to take care of prisoners in the gaol with many dying, the food he provided being unfit for consumption.

Those released from prison were forced to walk over 200 kilometres home to their country without provisions, some dying on the road. Newspaper accounts relate that Wetherell performed autopsies just outside the gaol in view of the prisoners and kept portions of bodies as curios.

As the other objects in his collection came from the Kimberley region, the cranium likely originated in the Wyndham police district and possibly from an autopsy he carried out. In 2019, the Dorman Museum took steps to initiate its return to the Kimberley.

Fanny Smith’s hair

In mid-to late 19th-century Britain, issues of racial origins and human evolution were hotly debated. In this context, not only human remains but also hair samples of different peoples were valued specimens for study and exchange.

Samples from Tasmania were highly sought after, particularly after the death of Trukanini (or “Truganini”) in 1876, who was then often erroneously referred to as “the last Tasmanian”. A hair sample from an unknown Tasmanian was bought by Dr Malcolm of the Wellcome Historical Medical Museum in London from Dr Richard Berry in Bristol for £25 in 1930.

Read more:
Friday essay: Truganini and the bloody backstory to Victoria’s first public execution

Written in ink on the label of the container is “V Luschan”, indicating an association with Vienna-based doctor and ethnographer Felix von Luschan, who amassed a large collection of human remains.

Trained in Edinburgh, Berry also had a huge collection of Aboriginal Ancestral Remains and while at the University of Melbourne had studied crania robbed from graves in Tasmania, before moving to work in Bristol in 1930.

There he was associated with the eugenics movement, proposing a lethal chamber for “low grade defectives”. The hair sample he sold to the Wellcome Museum has since been returned to Tasmania, as part of a long campaign by the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre for the return of Ancestral Remains.

The skeleton and hair of my grandmother’s grandmother, Fanny Smith, were objects of desire for anthropologist and collector Henry Ling Roth of Halifax while she was still alive. In the 1880s and 1890s, it was debated whether Fanny was in fact the “last” Tasmanian Aborigine, and she was particularly noted for her recording of Aboriginal songs on wax cylinders.

Ling Roth sought help in Tasmania from Quaker James Backhouse Walker and Edinburgh-born photographer and antiquarian James Watt Beattie of Hobart to obtain a photograph of Fanny and a lock of her hair.

Backhouse Walker wrote to Ling Roth on December 20 1891 indicating he “believes Fanny Cochrane Smith is a ‘half-caste’” and advising he might be able to get photographs of her and would ask for a sample of hair, but added, that he “doubts her husband would allow her dissection in the event of her death”.

Fanny lived at a distance from Hobart and there was ongoing difficulty in obtaining the photograph and hair, which was not given up by Fanny until 1894. It was then dispatched by Beattie to Ling Roth.

In 1908, at the request of anatomist Sir William Turner of the University of Edinburgh, Ling Roth sent this sample to him where its physical appearance was discussed along with hair samples from Trukanini and others in a paper concerning “the classification of races based on the colour and characteristics of the hair”.

In the 1990s, following much correspondence between the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre and the Anatomical Museum at the University of Edinburgh, which had told the centre to “desist from further correspondence”, the hair sample was eventually located and returned.

Traces of Australian ‘kings’: ‘King’ McIntyre and ‘King’ Tiger

As Aboriginal societies had important leaders but no “kings” or singular “chiefs”, European settlers and officials sometimes gave breastplates or “king” plates to chosen individuals in their district, as a means of enlisting their help in dealing with other Aboriginal people.

The earliest example noted was given to Bungaree in Sydney in 1815, and by the 1820s they were in common use. Due to the history of collaboration with settlers, such “king” or “queen” plates elicit mixed feelings among Aboriginal people today.

Perhaps surprisingly, few such plates are in British collections. National Museums Scotland in Edinburgh has one given to “Sandy, King of Coringori Australia” and another in Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery belonged to “King” McIntyre, a senior man of the Manilla region in northern NSW.

A newspaper account in 1874 suggests the reason McIntyre was given the plate was due to his twice saving the life of Mr Thomas Hoskisson of Bareeba Station. He and his family were consequently “made life pensioners, to the extent of a full ration daily”.

“Tiger, King of Mines Lawn Hills” was a senior man living at or near Lawn Hills Station, a place of copper mining inland from Burketown in northwest Queensland in the early 1900s.

One report suggests he died circa 1930 when he was about 60 to 70 years old by drinking water from a can once containing poison. Subsequently his grave was desecrated and breast plate removed by the station owner of Gregory Downs.

His skull and his king plate were sent to the Wellcome Historical Medical Museum in 1935 by Agnes Dorothy Kerr, matron of the Burketown Hospital. Born in England, Kerr had trained as a nurse and worked in New Zealand before serving in the first world war in Egypt and Serbia.

Interested in anatomy from her nursing training she sent a number of human remains from northwest Queensland to Sir Henry Wellcome for his collection in London. In 1936, she received a letter indicating Sir Henry would be very glad to have this plate, making a valuable addition to his collections.

The theft of Tiger’s cranium and breastplate and associated correspondence with Kerr was the inspiration for an artwork and publication titled “skullduggery” by Waanyi artist Judy Watson in 2021, bringing attention to the Ancestral Remains and artefacts still abroad.

The return to Country of Ancestral Remains is a continuing aspiration for Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islanders across Australia. Some museums in Britain still retain Aboriginal human remains but work to return them is ongoing.

Two cremation ash bundles from Tasmania were returned by the British Museum in 2006; it still retains two modified crania requested by Torres Strait Islanders but refused for return by the museum trustees in 2012.

This work is emotionally difficult for those Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islanders involved, but programs of repatriation continue, albeit sometimes slowly.

This is an edited extract of an essay published in Ancestors, artefacts, empire: Indigenous Australia in British and Irish Museums, edited by Gaye Sculthorpe, Maria Nugent and Howard Morphy (British Museum Press).

Gaye Sculthorpe receives research funding from the Australian Research Council through an agreement with the Australian National University and the British Museum. The British Museum is the publisher of the book in which the full version of this article appears.

– ref. Friday essay: Indigenous afterlives in Britain – https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-indigenous-afterlives-in-britain-171479

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

In a sensational end to a grotty final 2021 sitting week, former Liberal staffer Rachelle Miller’s claim a minister had acted violently towards her was carefully timed to underline Kate Jenkins’ scathing indictment of the parliamentary workplace.

Education Minister Alan Tudge was forced to stand aside after Miller – who returned to Parliament House to make her statement – accused him of kicking her out of bed when her phone rang at 4am.

She said it happened during a 2017 work trip, when she and Tudge were in a hotel in Kalgoorlie, where then-PM Malcolm Turnbull was also staying.

Miller was Tudge’s media adviser. The two had what Miller has described as a consensual affair, but now says was more complicated. “It was [an] emotionally and on one occasion, physically abusive relationship.”

It’s notable how different Scott Morrison’s reaction has been to this Miller allegation, compared with her earlier complaints about Tudge, made last year on the ABC’s Four Corners.

Morrison pushed those aside, dismissing them as history that had been dealt with. In this instance, he immediately referred the matter to an investigation, to be conducted by Vivienne Thom, former inspector-general of intelligence and security.

Admittedly Miller has now gone a step further in accusing Tudge – who flatly denies the claim – of violence.

But the political difference is the timing. Miller’s allegation follows all that has come out this year about bad behaviour in Parliament House, triggered by Brittany Higgins’ allegation she was raped in 2019, and now documented in the 452-page Jenkins report.

On issues relating to women, Morrison walks among landmines. Thursday’s Miller claim showed how dangerously and unexpectedly one can detonate.

It’s hard to know the extent to which Morrison’s so-called “women’s problem” will cost him votes at the election. But one seat where woman power might be significant is the Sydney marginal electorate of Wentworth, where independent candidate Allegra Spender (the late Carla Zampatti’s daughter) is being backed by female corporate high-flyers including Christine Holgate, the former Australia Post boss.

Holgate accused Morrison of bullying with his extraordinary parliamentary attack on her over rewarding employees with Cartier watches. What goes around comes around.

The Sex Discrimination Commissioner’s description of a noxious political workplace was on show at every turn this week.

Immediately after Tuesday’s release of her report, opposition and government indulged in mutual sledging in question time.

In the Senate, Victorian Liberal David Van was accused of making dog noises when independent Jacqui Lambie was speaking. He apologised for interjecting but denied he’d made any animal sound.

On Wednesday Greens senator Lidia Thorpe made a particularly offensive remark to NSW Liberal Hollie Hughes, saying during an altercation, “at least I keep my legs shut”.

Hughes on Thursday said she took from this “that had I kept my legs shut, I wouldn’t have a child with autism”. Thorpe, who’d apologised, denied the suggestion she was referring to Hughes’ family.

Hughes told Sky: “Everyone – MPs, senators, staffers, everybody – needs to hold themselves to account. We’re adults. This is a professional working environment and people should behave that way.”

To which one might say, “If only.” And, more to the point, one might ask: “Well, why don’t they?”

Read more:
Tudge stands aside while claim of kicking former staffer investigated

The Jenkins report has multiple recommendations, based on a forensic review of the culture of the parliamentary workplace.

Both government and opposition loudly lamented the situation she documented, but neither has committed to full implementation of what she has proposed.

Jenkins digs down to the many drivers and risk factors contributing to bullying and sexual harassment, which she identifies as including power imbalances, gender inequality, lack of accountability, bad leadership, confusion about standards, long hours, stress, alcohol, travel and a work-hard-play-hard mentality.

Miller’s account of the Kalgoorlie night appears to have involved a number of these.

But explanations are not excuses, and it’s hard to go beyond a very basic point.

While many parliamentarians – who are at the centre of the Parliament House “ecosystem” – behave well, too many simply don’t believe they need to follow the standards the community has the right to expect of them.

If they conducted themselves properly as well as setting high standards for their staff, Parliament House would be on its way to becoming a half-decent workplace.

One point that’s been made is that politicians, in taking on staff and running their offices, are their own small businesses, but they don’t have the skill set to run these businesses.

That task might be unfamiliar for them, but surely not that hard to get on top of. At least that might be the view of many small-business people around the country, who have to confront their own (albeit different and often more difficult) challenges.

And as for the bad conduct in the chambers, there is just no excuse. It shows massive disrespect to those who pay the parliamentarians’ salaries.

For Scott Morrison the past fortnight has been deeply frustrating, as well as politically risky.

Coalition rebels helped stymie the government’s legislate program, such as it was.

A House of Representatives vote on the Religious Discrimination Bill had to be put off to prevent a revolt by moderate Liberals. This bill will now face two inquiries over the summer.

Read more:
View from The Hill: A study in contrast, Porter and Hunt to leave Parliament

The government’s promise to introduce legislation for an integrity commission has been turned into a farce by the PM. On the back of the ICAC investigation of former NSW premier Gladys Berijiklian, Morrison has dug in behind the unrevised model, indicating he won’t bring in the legislation because Labor won’t agree to that model, which is widely criticised as flawed.

After everything that has happened this week, and what hasn’t been able to happen, you’d wonder why the government would want parliament to sit again before the election.

Sittings never work politically for this government, and unless it could get its two rebel senators and the two Hanson senators to lift their boycotts on government legislation – they are protesting against the refusal to override state vaccine mandates – and calm other rebels, legislation that was contested wouldn’t get through.

Queenslander Liberal Gerard Rennick, asked on Thursday whether he would continue his boycott into next year, said it would depend on what the federal government did on the mandates between now and then. Hanson’s spokesman had a similar message.

The draft sitting calendar for 2022, issued this week, has parliament returning in February, and a March 29 budget. Morrison can always tear this up in favour of a March election but he’d obviously prefer a budget to set him up for a May poll.

But Health Minister Greg Hunt and former minister Christian Porter were taking no chances, this week both announcing they are not running again.

It might have been a momentous week – in a bad way – but the conversation will abruptly change on Friday, when Labor finally releases its much-awaited climate policy.

It’s stating the obvious to say this is a big day for the opposition, which has had an internal debate over whether to make the policy small target (only a little different from the government’s) or go for something bolder, to amp up the differentiation on the climate issue.

On Sunday Anthony Albanese will hold a rally, with a likely further policy announcement.

“We will make sure we are kicking with the wind in the fourth quarter,” Albanese likes to say. Between now and mid-December, when he is intending to go on holidays, the crowd will be watching how well the opposition leader connects boot and ball.

Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Grattan on Friday: Allegation against Alan Tudge hits Morrison government where it hurts – https://theconversation.com/grattan-on-friday-allegation-against-alan-tudge-hits-morrison-government-where-it-hurts-173077

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Krystian Seibert, Industry Fellow, Centre for Social Impact, Swinburne University of Technology

The final two sitting weeks of parliament this year have provided both good and bad news for Australian charities.

Last week provided the good news, with new government regulations that would have curtailed the ability of charities to engage in protest disallowed by the Senate, meaning they will not take effect.

Charities were relieved to see this, as many faced the prospect of having to pull back on certain advocacy activities.

But this week brought the bad news, with changes to electoral laws passed by parliament that will impose more regulation on charities and other organisations that engage in the electoral process.

Despite intense lobbying by a coalition of charities, a last-minute deal between the Morrison government and the opposition led to the bill’s passage, albeit with some amendments that slightly lessen its negative impact.

What the new law does

One of the main changes in the new law is the introduction of a lower threshold for organisations having to register as a so-called “political campaigner”.

Previously, an organisation had to register as a political campaigner if it exceeded $500,000 in electoral expenditure (money spent on campaigns, advertising and any other advocacy work seeking to influence voters in an election) in any of the past three years. The bill sought to lower this threshold considerably to $100,000.

As part of the deal between the government and opposition, this threshold was changed to $250,000 in the final version of the bill that was passed. This is an improvement on the original proposal of $100,000, but it still means many charities will be captured by the change.

More charities will now be required to register as political campaigners and be subject to the additional reporting obligations this entails, including identifying their larger donors.

Opponents of the bill fear it will act like a spending cap, with charities stepping back from campaigning to not trigger the additional requirements that come with being a political campaigner.

In addition to lowering the threshold, the bill also broadens the type of expenditure that is relevant for determining if an organisation is subject to any reporting and other obligations.

Now, any expenditure related to “preparing for, or participating in, an election” must be counted, but there is no guidance as to what this actually means. This is a significant source of uncertainty for charities, and again may lead many to be more cautious when engaging in the democratic process.

Another problematic element of the bill is the fact it will apply retrospectively to money already spent by an organisation. Charities will have to look back at their spending and see if it constitutes an “electoral expenditure” using the more vague definition now in place, and determine whether this places them in the category of a political campaigner.

Pages and pages of legal advice will be needed, but lawyers won’t have much to go on given the scant detail provided in the bill.

One positive outcome, however, is that “political campaigners” will actually no longer be referred to by this name – the term will change to “significant third parties”.

This is a welcome change, given the term “political campaigner” could lead to people conflating charities and other organisations with political parties – despite the fact they are not seeking elected office and focus on issues-based campaigning.

Advocacy by charities is important and already regulated

Ultimately, the bill is a problem because it will hinder the advocacy activities of charities. And advocacy is one of the key ways that charities can address the root causes of the social and environmental challenges they seek to ameliorate. This often requires changing government policy.

Charities can lobby and campaign to do this – provided they stop short of endorsing and supporting particular parties or candidates.

Advocacy activities can still take place in the context of an election, though. For example, charities can take out advertisements outlining or critiquing the positions of different political parties on issues as diverse as climate change or the amount of JobSeeker payments.

Charities are already regulated when they incur “electoral expenditures”, with the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 imposing various obligations on them (and any other organisations similarly involved in the electoral process).

Read more:
The government is clamping down on charities — and it could have a chilling effect on peaceful protest

They may be classified as a “third party” organisation or need to register as a political campaigner“.

A certain level of such regulation is necessary, in the interests of promoting transparency and integrity in elections. The problem with the bill is that it takes things too far.

A poor process leads to a poor outcome

Otto Von Bismarck is believed to have once said, “Laws are like sausages. Better not to see them being made.”

The statement rings true given the developments this week. The changes to electoral laws were rushed through parliament, without even being referred to a committee inquiry to examine the details of the bill and its implications.

Read more:
Infographic: a snapshot of charities and giving in Australia

A last-minute deal saw some of the problematic elements of the bill wound back, but what was passed remains deeply flawed.

More charities will now be subject to additional reporting and other obligations under the electoral laws, and there is now more uncertainty about what spending counts as “electoral expenditure”.

This may mean charities will be more reluctant to engage in advocacy, especially where any link can be made between their work and an election. This would lead to less debate about the various social and environmental challenges we confront as a nation.

We need more engagement in our democratic process in Australia, not less, and this bill represents a setback in that regard.

Krystian Seibert was an adviser to a former Australian Assistant Treasurer between 2012 and 2013, where he oversaw the establishment of the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission and its regulatory framework, including the Charities Act 2013. He has provided advice and support to Hands Off Our Charities, an alliance of charities that opposed the bill.

– ref. Are charities being silenced? Why a new law is alarming activists and could scuttle their election campaigns – https://theconversation.com/are-charities-being-silenced-why-a-new-law-is-alarming-activists-and-could-scuttle-their-election-campaigns-173056

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

Education minister Alan Tudge has stood aside from his portfolio while a claim by his former staffer Rachelle Miller that he abused her in their relationship, including kicking her out of bed, is investigated.

Miller, who revealed her consensual affair with Tudge on the ABC Four Corners last year, returned to parliament house on Thursday – the final day of the parliamentary year – to make a fresh sensational allegation.

She told of an incident when she and Tudge were in Kalgoorlie in 2017 with then Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to announce the cashless welfare card. After a long day Miller, who was media adviser, and Tudge “drank a lot until very late”. About 4am “my mobile phone started ringing. I woke up in the pitch black dark and reached for my phone” to take a call from a media producer about a story that had been lined up for that day.

The producer was seeking an interview with Tudge and “I started to talk to her to arrange a time but I was still half asleep. Then I felt someone kicking me on the side of my hip and leg as I tried to sit up in bed.

“It was the minister – he was furious, telling me to get the fuck out of his bed.”

Miller said she told the producer she’d call back. “Then I realised I was completely naked. He continued to kick me until I fell off the side of the bed and ended up on the floor. I searched around in the dark for my clothes. He was yelling at me that my phone had woken him up. He needed to get some more sleep.

“He told me to get the fuck out of his room and make sure that no one saw me.”

Miller said she had no idea where her room key was, and had to ask reception to cut her a new key.

“I asked him to remind me where my room was,” she said.

When she got to her room, “I sat at my desk in yesterday’s clothes and started answering and making phone calls and emails to arrange the media for the minister that day.

“We had to meet the PM’s team in the foyer in an hour or so. The PM was in the hotel that night.

“I could not remember a single thing from the night before. I don’t remember how we ended up in his room. I don’t remember leaving the bar. I don’t remember if we had sex. I don’t remember if we used protection. I still don’t and I was too afraid to ask if he remembered.”

The next day, after she and Tudge arrived in Melbourne late at night, Tudge did not wait for her or offer her a lift in his car to her hotel. “No thanks. No goodbye,” she said, adding that she had been “completely shattered” by what had happened. She said her allegation was “not about revenge. it has never ever been about that. I still sometimes feel sorry for him. It’s about ensuring that no one else goes through this in this workplace ever again,” Miller said.

“This relationship was defined by significant power imbalance. It was emotionally and on one occasion, physically abusive relationship.”

She looked forward to the people in his seat of Aston “holding minister Tudge to account at the election. Or perhaps the prime minister might show some leadership before that, for it’s his job to hold his ministers to account for their unacceptable behaviour.”

Read more:
Buying silence: we can’t stop workplace sexual harassment without banning non-disclosure agreements

Tudge immediately rejected the allegation. “I completely and utterly reject Ms Miller’s version of events. Ms Miller and I had a consensual affair in 2017 as both of us have publicly acknowledged. This is something I deeply regret,” he said.

In parliament before question time Morrison said that Tudge would stand aside while there was an inquiry.

Morrison said the issues raised were “deeply concerning,” and distressing for Miller, Tudge, and the families affected.

He had discussed Miller’s statement with Tudge who “refuted the allegations”.

Morrison said given the seriousness of the claims, it was “important these matters be resolved fairly and expeditiously”. The issues would be looked at by the prime ministers department through an independent process, using Vivienne Thom, former Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security

The Prime Minister said the inquiry would enable the department to advise him “regarding any implications for the ministerial standards”. Stuart Robert will be acting education minister.

In a subsequent statement Tudge said, “I have accepted responsibility for a consensual affair that should not have happened many years ago. But Ms Miller’s allegations are wrong, did not happen and are contradicted by her own written words to me.

“I regret having to say these things. I do not wish Ms Miller ill but I have to defend myself in light of these allegations, which I reject.

“The contradictory written evidence will be referred to a full, independent review. I welcome such a process and will make available both myself and all materials, and co-operate in every way.

“I would note that a previous set of claims were also considered and rejected through an independent investigation.”

Last year Miller made a formal complaint about Tudge’s behaviour, alleging he acted in ways that made her feel humiliated and belittled. The finance department investigation, with which she did not participate on legal advice – found insufficient to substantiate claims of inappropriate behaviours.

Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Tudge stands aside while claim of kicking former staffer investigated – https://theconversation.com/tudge-stands-aside-while-claim-of-kicking-former-staffer-investigated-173064

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adam Taylor, Early Career Research Leader, Emerging Viruses, Inflammation and Therapeutics Group, Menzies Health Institute Queensland, Griffith University

Researchers around the world are trying to work out whether existing COVID vaccines protect us from the latest variant, Omicron.

The worst-case scenario is the virus has mutated so much in the crucial parts of its genome that it can escape COVID vaccines designed to protect us from earlier versions of the virus – with devastating consequences globally.

But it’s too soon to panic. And vaccines may end up protecting us against Omicron after all, as they have done with earlier variants.

The World Health Organization (WHO) says it will take us another two to four weeks to figure out what’s going on. Here’s what scientists around the world are racing to find out.

Read more:
Not again … how to protect your mental health in the face of uncertainty and another COVID variant

Why the concern?

The reason Omicron has caused global alarm is due to the number of new mutations throughout the genome of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID.

This data, coupled with real world data on the rapid rise in Omicron cases in South Africa, prompted the WHO to designate Omicron a “variant of concern” on November 26.

Omicron has now been detected in several other countries around the world.

We’ve already seen some Omicron mutations in other variants.

Individually, some of these mutations have been associated with resistance to neutralising antibodies. In other words, these mutations help the virus evade recognition by an immune system primed with a COVID-19 vaccine.

Some of these individual mutations have also been linked with increased transmissibility of the virus from one person to another.

However, Omicron has many unique mutations. For instance, on the spike protein, the protein used in many current vaccines, Omicron has about 30 mutations compared with the virus that came out of Wuhan. Delta has only ten mutations in its spike protein. So you get an idea of the scale of change.

Read more:
Omicron: why the WHO designated it a variant of concern

Investigating the way these multiple mutations interact with one another, rather than individually, will be key to understanding how Omicron behaves compared with other variants.

Looking at these interactions will tell us more about Omicron’s ability to infect cells, cause disease and escape vaccines. And experiments are under way to investigate these mutations and their impacts.

Read more:
Will omicron – the new coronavirus variant of concern – be more contagious than delta? A virus evolution expert explains what researchers know and what they don’t

While we wait for the results, we heard this week from some of the vaccine manufacturers. Moderna said its vaccine would be less effective against Omicron than against Delta. Meanwhile, Pfizer/BioNTech said its vaccine would still protect against severe disease. Both companies said they could produce tweaked booster vaccines, if needed.

Why will it take weeks to get answers?

Here’s what researchers around the world are working on and why we won’t have answers for a few weeks.

Growing the virus

Researchers are taking samples of Omicron from infected people and growing the virus in laboratories. This gives them working stocks of the virus to conduct experiments. This can take time as you’re often starting with tiny amounts of virus from a swab.

This process also relies on access to the right types of cells to grow the virus in.

Finally, this needs to be done in laboratories that offer a high level of biosafety, to contain the virus. Not all researchers have access to these facilities.

Make your own ‘virus’

Researchers can also use genetic tools to produce the virus in the laboratory, requiring only the genome sequence of SARS-CoV-2 to begin production. This removes the reliance on patient samples.

They can also produce genetically engineered viruses, called pseudotyped viruses, in the laboratory. These carry only the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2.

Researchers can also express small portions of the spike protein on the surface of other organisms, such as yeast.

All of these options take time to set up, optimise and be used in the types of studies outlined below.

Both methods are useful

Initial studies will look at how Omicron’s mutations impact the fitness of the variant – its transmissibility and ability to evade vaccine-induced immunity.

For instance, initial experiments will look at Omicron’s ability to infect cells. These studies will tell us how well Omicron’s spike protein interacts with the ACE2 receptor, the gateway to infecting our cells. Further studies will investigate how well Omicron can replicate in cells after gaining entry.

Neutralisation studies will investigate how well antibodies – induced by current SARS-CoV-2 vaccines – can neutralise Omicron, or prevent it from infecting cells. Such studies rely on access to serum from vaccinated people and are likely to compare the neutralising capacity of Omicron against other SARS-CoV-2 variants.

Studies are also likely to investigate the effect of vaccine booster regimes and earlier SARS-CoV-2 infection on how well antibodies neutralise Omicron.

So what can we expect? Until we get the results of these experiments, it’s difficult to say for certain.

Studies of how effective COVID-19 vaccines are against other variants show they are generally less able to induce the type of antibody response we’d like to see (neutralising antibodies). However, when previous variants have emerged, vaccines have continued to protect against severe disease.

Vaccine protection is not all or nothing. We are unlikely to get a perfect neutralising antibody response against Omicron, or no response, rather something in between.

Read more:
How well do COVID vaccines work in the real world?

We’ll also know more as we see more cases

Continued monitoring of real-world data will also be essential to determine how Omicron impacts the broader pandemic.

Whether Omicron is able to spread from seeding events around the world or compete with Delta are questions to be answered in the coming weeks.

Whether infection with Omicron causes less or more serious disease also remains unclear. Monitoring hospitalisation rates will be key here.

We still need to tackle Delta

Currently fewer than 200 genetic sequences of Omicron have been compiled compared with more than 2.8 million Delta sequences. Delta remains the most dominant variant. So we should continue to use vaccines and therapies we know work against Delta.

It’s also essential we continue with public health measures, such as wearing masks and social distancing, alongside continued vaccination, to combat the spread of SARS-CoV-2 and the emergence of further variants.

Read more:
Wealthy nations starved the developing world of vaccines. Omicron shows the cost of this greed

Adam Taylor receives funding from the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council.

– ref. Omg, Omicron! Why it’s too soon to panic about COVID vaccines and the new variant – https://theconversation.com/omg-omicron-why-its-too-soon-to-panic-about-covid-vaccines-and-the-new-variant-172949

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kai Riemer, Professor of Information Technology and Organisation, University of Sydney

“Tik-a-Tok-a-Who?”, was Adele’s response to her management’s suggestion to promote her music to younger audiences on Tiktok, the video-sharing platform owned by Chinese company ByteDance.

“If everyone’s making music for the TikTok, who’s making music for my generation?”, she asked.

Adele might resist, but the platform has nonetheless been popularising and promoting her song Easy on me, with creators using it in almost one million videos in the first month after its release, making it viral on the app alone.

That’s because creator culture on TikTok is changing the way hits are made, how music is promoted, and how the world discovers music, even for those artists who choose not to engage with it.

TikTok makes hits

In early 2019, an unknown 19-year-old college drop-out from Atlanta, Georgia, made headlines around the world.

Living at his sister’s house and feeling bit lonely, in December 2018 he had bought a simple beat for US $30, recorded a song, half country and half rap, and posted it on Soundcloud and social media. The artist made news because Billboard magazine had removed the song from its country charts, after it took off in popularity, entering both the country and general Hot 100 charts.

The artist’s name was Lil Nas X and the song Old Town Road, which has since become the most successful song of all time, the first ever song to reach 15 times platinum. Much of this success can be credited to the song becoming an early TikTok “meme”, picked up by millions of users.

Old Town Road has become the origin story for a remarkable series of viral musical successes on TikTok. In each case artists have shot to popularity, because their songs were used by millions of TikTok users in their videos.

Virality on TikTok is powerful yet unpredictable. Some of 2021’s biggest global hits gained little traction when they were initially released to small audiences. Africa’s most successful pop song ever, CKay’s Love, Nwantiti, was released in 2019, but shot to fame only in 2021 and has now been used in more than 7 million TikTok videos.

Similarly, Australia’s Masked Wolf found himself in the spotlight in 2021, making Barrack Obama’s summer playlist and having been nominated for five ARIA awards. While his song Astronaut in the Ocean became a global hit more than a year into the COVID-19 pandemic, it was released two years prior by a small Australian label. It has since been used in more than 18 million TikTok videos.

And while many artists, like Lil Nas X, create for virality on TikTok, others go viral even when unaware of the platform. We spoke to Masked Wolf who admitted:

I never made Astro to be on TikTok. I didn’t even know what TikTok was when I released Astronaut.

But it is not just new songs. Old songs are making remarkable comebacks with entirely new audiences. When a man named Nathan Apodaca went viral after he posted a video of himself gliding down a highway on his long board, casually drinking cranberry juice from a bottle, he was lip-syncing to Dreams, the 1977 Fleetwood Mac hit. Dreams was subsequently used by millions of TikTok creators and re-entered the Billboard Hot 100 more than 40 years after its original release.

How it works

Videos created on the TikTok app are short. Most videos are less than 15 seconds long (though videos of up to 60 seconds are possible). Music plays a big part in these videos, many show dance moves or lip syncing, though there are others where users talk, even giving financial advice. When users create their videos, they will usually choose a song and select a short clip, often the catchiest bits of a song, like the chorus or beat drop.

Users can upload their own sound clips, but the app will detect copyrighted material that its owners do not allow on the platform and mute the sound. Instead, the app has in recent years put together an extensive catalogue of music authorised by big music labels, who have come on board due to TikTok’s role in producing global hits.

Behind this virality are so-called challenges, in which often millions of users create their own versions of a visual story or dance move set to the same music clip, and promoted by the platform using hashtags. For example, in the #yeehaw challenge that brought Old Town Road to fame, people dressed in normal clothes and danced until the beat changed in the clip, when they would instantly transform into cowgirls or cowboys.

But videos on TikTok do not directly contribute to chart success. However, there is a direct correlation between a song going viral on TikTok and it gaining in popularity on music streaming platforms such as Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube, all of which in turn contribute to the Billboard charts.

Read more:
‘OK Boomer’: how a TikTok meme traces the rise of Gen Z political consciousness

What it means for artists, listeners and the music industry

In our research, we spoke to Ole Obermann, Global Head of Music for TikTok and ByteDance, about the impact for artists, the music industry and music lovers. Ole points to the diversity of music on TikTok and new opportunities for finding music far beyond one’s usual taste.

He also stresses TikTok’s role in discovering artists from all corners of the globe: “I do see a pretty profound impact on the global nature of music as a result of TikTok but also music streaming overall. It’s so much more possible for a song that comes out of Australia or India or Korea or Japan or Saudi Arabia. To end up becoming a global hit and to be listened to by audiences all over the world.”

The recent successes of Love Nwantiti and Astronaut in the Ocean are just two examples to make this point.

TikTok is an excellent platform for listeners to gain exposure to new and different music. TikTok’s self-learning algorithm serves up new videos as a seemingly endless stream, allowing users to be exposed to a large amount of new music quickly, given videos are very short. When a user likes a particular song, with a simple tap they can instantly watch more videos set to the same clip.

The music industry is also coming on board, convinced by the viral success the platform produces. Ole Obermann again:

I think the acceptance has come now because that’s what the fans want. And it’s a way to create more engagement with the music, but there was a lot of resistance for many years, because it was just not the way that the music industry has traditionally worked.

The initial resistance is not surprising, given TikTok presents a significant shift from the industry’s understanding of recorded music as something to be listened to, to be passively consumed. Engagement with music on TikTok is very different, because music becomes a material for creation, for creative expression.

Importantly, what we see today is likely only the beginning, both in terms of new forms of creative expression, and promoting and marketing music in new ways.

But success also attracts investment, and creating on TikTok will likely become more commercialised over time. So far much of the virality has happened organically. But music labels increasingly hire professional influencers to use their music, or work with consultants to make songs more “TikTokkable”, in an attempt to engineer the next viral trend.

It remains to be seen if this will crowd out organic creativity, or if artists will feel pressure to create for TikTok virality, as foreshadowed by Adele.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Love it or hate it, TikTok is changing the music industry – https://theconversation.com/love-it-or-hate-it-tiktok-is-changing-the-music-industry-171482

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

As Australia braces for another bushfire season, new research from Edith Cowan University has revealed how our volunteer firefighters are still reeling from the effects of the catastrophic 2019/20 bushfires.

Of the nearly 65,000 responders who helped during the Black Summer bushfires in NSW, 78% were volunteers. In our study, 58 of the responding volunteer firefighters shared how the experience had impacted their mental health.

Nearly half reported living with post-traumatic stress symptoms such as flashbacks, nightmares, and anxiety. Some 11% had been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). And 5.5% revealed they had made suicide plans. One described a suicide attempt.

Our findings support other Australian research that found 4.6% of volunteers who responded to the Black Summer bushfires had seriously considered ending their life in the year following the fires.

Yet many don’t seek help. As one volunteer firefighter said:

If the organisation don’t care enough to ask, why am I going to tell them?

A cumulative mental toll

Volunteer firefighters described the cumulative impact of repeated exposure to bushfire.

It was a prolonged period of nothing but fire activity, nothing but focusing on that next deployment, that next fire, with very little time to rest and recover. And with each new fire, I noticed that my mental state was taking a bigger hit.

The subsequent challenges associated with the COVID pandemic further eroded resilience and led to a drop in volunteer firefighter numbers.

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare recently reported that in the aftermath of the 2019–20 bushfires, more than half of Australian adults felt anxious or worried about the bushfires and there was a 10–15% increase in calls to the Lifeline crisis support hotline.

But despite the clear impact on well-being among the volunteer firefighters we spoke to, less than half had sought mental health support in the year following the fires. This reveals a lack of progress in supporting the mental health and well-being of emergency responders. One firefighter expressed a feeling of hopelessness:

I haven’t thought about suicide. But I also don’t really care if I live.

Employee assistance isn’t enough

Experience from the 2009 “Black Saturday” bushfires in Victoria showed the mental health impact on those who respond to major bushfire events is often complex and protracted.

Firefighters and other support personnel were at increased risk of developing PTSD, depression, anxiety and complicated grief compared to the general public and when these issues were inadequately treated, they carried an increased risk of suicide.

Yet some ten years later, firefighter volunteers are still dealing with the same problems.

We saw it with Black Saturday. We saw it again with Black Summer. How many more times do we need to see it? How many more of us need to be injured? How many more of us need to lose our jobs? Our families? Our lives? What will it take for our them [the organisations] to actually value us?

The majority of volunteer firefighters we spoke to felt their organisation hadn’t provided enough of the “right type” of support, with many simply providing a link to an Employee Assistance Program.

While such programs have a role to play, they risk being seen as tokenistic; especially when they are outsourced away from responders who share similar experiences. The duration of access was also a problem; many volunteers reported they could only access three free counselling sessions before having to seek alternative support.

A toxic masculine culture is also associated with many emergency service organisations. Seeking help for mental health is still seen as weak, career-limiting, or even career-ending.

The one time I did actually admit I was struggling, I was told by someone in a leadership position that if I couldn’t hack it, I should hand in my uniform.

There is a perceived need for firefighters to be impervious to the impact of trauma exposure. Only 15% of the volunteers we spoke to who sought help did so via their organisations.

Read more:
Fires review: new ABC drama helps teach important lessons about the realities of bushfires in Australia

The power of peer support

When we asked what would be most helpful for supporting well-being, the message was clear: volunteer firefighters wanted to talk about what they had gone through with someone who “got it”.

The sharing of lived experience offers a different kind of support for many responders who had not benefited from more traditional counselling programs.

The idea of peer support is to harness people’s own lived experience to support others. Peer support has long been provided informally by friends and family and through community support groups and grassroots organisations.

But in recent years, we’ve seen lived experience shared through more formal methods such as clinical settings and community suicide prevention. Research has shown patients supported through the sharing of lived experience are less likely to be readmitted to hospital following acute mental health issues.

A key lesson from the Black Summer bushfires is the need to empower local communities and volunteer organisations to safely and effectively provide peer support.

Read more:
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Feeling safe

Leaders need help too, so they can confidently build mental health understanding and foster a psychologically safe culture in their workplace or organisation.

Part of building a psychologically safe environment is reflected in how people show up for one another. For volunteer organisations to be healthy and equitable places where everyone can thrive and feel valued, leaders must focus on creating an environment that reflects these values.

The Emergency Services Foundation recently completed a pilot program called Leading for Better Mental Health, which helps volunteer firefighters stop fearing negative consequences of seeking help for their mental well-being.

Bushfires will continue to have a devastating impact on our natural environment in the summers to come. We must work to ensure those responding to them don’t suffer the same fate.

Read more:
As bushfire season approaches, we need to take action to recruit more volunteer firefighters

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. ‘I was told if I couldn’t hack it, I should hand in my uniform.’ Volunteers share suicidal thoughts after fighting bushfires – https://theconversation.com/i-was-told-if-i-couldnt-hack-it-i-should-hand-in-my-uniform-volunteers-share-suicidal-thoughts-after-fighting-bushfires-171486

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Graeme Beardsmore, Senior Fellow in Crustal Heat Flow, The University of Melbourne

About 650 metres beneath the Latrobe Valley, the heart of Victoria’s coal country, lies a little-known, naturally hot 65℃ pool of water in an enormous aquifer.

This aquifer is a source of geothermal energy – a renewable source of heat or electricity that is, so far, being used to heat an aquatic centre in the town of Traralgon. They chose it – over natural gas, coal-fired power or even emissions-free solar and wind – because geothermal energy is now the cheapest option for heating.

The hot aquifer was first reported as long ago as 1962, when government geologist J.J. Jenkin noted many “occurrences of high temperature waters in East Gippsland”. We now know the hot water underlies about 6,000 square kilometres of Gippsland, from Morwell in the west to Lakes Entrance in the east, and holds the equivalent of A$30 billion of heat at today’s natural gas price.

But with natural gas flowing from Bass Strait, and vast reserves of brown coal in the Latrobe Valley, there has been little incentive to develop alternative energy sources. With the coal era now drawing to a close, it’s time we made better use of this vast, clean source of energy to help cut national emissions and ease the energy transition.

Geothermal energy around the world

The core of the Earth is about the same temperature as the surface of the sun. That vast internal heat is like a hotplate warming natural groundwater from below. Beneath the Latrobe Valley, thick coal layers act like a blanket, which makes the underlying aquifers hotter than aquifers in other locations.

The result is unusually hot natural water without needing to burn any fossil fuels – emissions free. At deeper depths we can capture natural steam, and use it to turn turbines for a generator.

In many parts of the world, natural hot water already provides sustainable, low emissions heat to a wide range of residential and industrial consumers.

In carrying out a recent global scan of energy production from hot aquifers, I learned large parts of suburban Paris are heated by geothermal energy from a hot (56–85℃) aquifer between 1,600 and 1,800m beneath the city.

In the Netherlands, industrial scale greenhouses are replacing their natural gas heating systems with geothermal heat from aquifers, 1,800-2,200m below the surface.

Beijing is one of the world’s leading urban centres using geothermal energy. Wells as deep as 2,600m produce up to 70℃ water for many industrial purposes, from winter heating for hotels and factories, to greenhouse cultivation, to public geothermal bathing pools visited by as many as 50,000 people per day.

Read more:
How to transition from coal: 4 lessons for Australia from around the world

On a smaller scale, a town in Hungary circulates natural hot water (64–72℃ from 1,450–1,700m depth) through a network of distribution pipes. And Perth, Western Australia, uses natural hot water (40–52℃ from 750–1,150m) to heat at least 14 leisure and aquatic centres.

Importantly, in almost every case, the water itself is returned to the aquifer after delivering its heat. In other words, water is not consumed in the production of geothermal energy, making it renewable and sustainable.

When compared to geothermal systems around the world, it’s obvious natural hot water beneath the Latrobe Valley, at only 650m depth, is a truly world class geothermal energy resource that has, until now, been largely overlooked.

A cheaper alternative to gas

It’s a lot cheaper to drill a 650m bore than a 1,500m or deeper bore. This means it’s cheaper to produce geothermal energy in the Latrobe Valley than many places where geothermal energy already provides economic advantage.

In fact, geothermal heat is very likely a much cheaper alternative to natural gas. Since Australia began exporting liquified natural gas out of Queensland in 2015, the wholesale price of natural gas in eastern Australia has roughly tripled and is projected to rise further and remain high.

The higher price of natural gas affects the economy across the whole of Australia. The federal government estimates 40% of energy Australian households use is for heating and cooling, and a further 23% is for water heating. A 2019 report commissioned by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency found 52% of energy used by the nation’s industrial sector is consumed as heat.

But there are other long-term benefits the geothermal energy resource could deliver to the Latrobe Valley.

Victoria’s heavy reliance on natural gas for heat also presents a huge challenge for the state to meet its legislated greenhouse gas emission reduction targets of net zero by 2050.

Under this plan, the remaining coal-fired power plants in the Latrobe Valley are all scheduled to close in the coming years and decades, requiring support for workers to be reskilled.

Producing geothermal energy from hot aquifers can help on both fronts: by avoiding greenhouse-gas emissions and by reemploying skilled workers into new industries.

Read more:
Climate explained: why does geothermal electricity count as renewable?

What’s next?

I’m working closely with a number of stakeholders – including the Latrobe City Council, the Latrobe Valley Authority, the Geological Survey of Victoria, local businesses and community groups – to help realise the potential of this massive, undervalued source of clean energy.

We seek to better understand and sustainably develop this resource to help Australia meet it’s emissions reduction targets, and to bring the price of energy down.

This includes projects such as mapping, investigating the potential for power generation from deeper hotter rocks, and identifying and clearing policy and regulatory barriers.

The lessons we learn in the Latrobe Valley will carry across to other parts of Victoria and Australia – such as the Mornington Peninsula, Otway coast, and the Great Artesian Basin spanning NSW, Queensland and South Australia – where hot water is known to lie deeper, but still very accessible.

Read more:
A tale of two valleys: Latrobe and Hunter regions both have coal stations, but one has far worse mercury pollution

Graeme Beardsmore is a Director of the Australian Geothermal Association and Secretary of the Asia Western Pacific Regional Branch of the International Geothermal Association. He has previously received funding from Regional Development Victoria and the Latrobe Valley Authority to research the geothermal energy potential of the Latrobe Valley.

– ref. There’s an enormous geothermal pool under the Latrobe Valley that can give us cheap, clean energy – https://theconversation.com/theres-an-enormous-geothermal-pool-under-the-latrobe-valley-that-can-give-us-cheap-clean-energy-166829

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Camilla Nelson, Associate Professor in Media, University of Notre Dame Australia

The final days of parliament for 2021 have been marked by a spate of floor crossings.

This includes Tasmanian Liberal Bridget Archer who backed Independent Helen Haines’ integrity commission bill and conservative Coalition MPs voting in favour of a One Nation bill against vaccine mandates. Meanwhile, a group of moderate Liberals spoke out against the the religious discrimination bill, to support LGBTIQA+ rights.

The media have seized on these incidents as a sign of worrying political instability, or rather “a state of chaos”, in a “rudderless” nation.

But this wasn’t always the case. Elected officials crossing the floor on matters of principle used to be seen as a reassuring sign of the health of Australian democracy. What happened?

Missen in action

As part of research I am doing on children rights, I came across former Liberal Alan Missen, who sat in the Senate from 1974 to 1986.

Missen crossed the floor on no less than 41 occasions, mostly in support of civil liberties and human rights, during his parliamentary career.

This was reported matter-of-factly, with headlines reading “6 cross floor” or “3 cross floor”. Floor crossing in 1977 over “immoral and illogical” policy on East Timor was also soberly reported.

In media accounts of these debates, floor crossing was not equated with instability – as “shambolic”, as one journalist wrote last week. The media assumed elected officials only crossed the floor on questions of principle.

Or as Archer put it, “I don’t take this decision lightly at all. I take this decision very seriously”.

Floor crossing has declined

According to a 2020 study by the Parliamentary Library, there has been a recent decline in floor crossing. In the last 15 years, crossing the floor has not changed the outcome of a single bill or resolution.

Between 1950 and 2019, approximately 23% of MPs and senators crossed the floor at some point in their parliamentary careers, including 295 individual floor crossers. This includes 185 individual Liberals, and 80 Nationals. Only 29 Labor politicians crossed the floor in the period covered by the study, which is perhaps unsurprising, given Labor actively discourages the practice.

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Who decides when parliament sits and what happens if it doesn’t?

The last Labor MP to cross the floor was Harry Quick, who (although a division had not been called), asked that his name be recorded in Hansard as dissenting to draconian anti-terrorism laws in 2004. In the Hawke years, two Labor MPs crossed the floor. Both were promptly suspended from the party.

Harold Holt saw the greatest number of floor crossings compared to any recent Australian prime minister – with 11% of all divisions featuring single or multiple crossings of the floor. Holt is followed by prime ministers John Gorton (7% of divisions) and Robert Menzies (5% of divisions).

In a candid interview in 2005, Fraser told the ABC that even when the Liberals had the numbers in the Senate, they couldn’t be counted on as an “automatic majority”.

What happened?

Floor crossing fell into political disrepute in tandem with John Howard’s rise to power. Though Howard pictured himself as an heir to Menzies, this picture did not include Menzies tolerance for dissent in the ranks of his own party.

Under Howard, MPs crossed the floor in only nine divisions, or 0.3%. In comparison, 0.6% crossed the floor under Tony Abbott, and 3% under Malcolm Turnbull.

This shift was largely a product of the infamous “kneecapping” pre-selections of the late 1980s and 90s, with the right pushing out the so called “wets” or moderates.

Perhaps the most famous of these revolts were those led by Ian Macphee – who crossed the floor in support of the Hawke government’s non-discriminatory immigration policy in 1988. As Macphee later recounted: “most of us [who crossed the floor] lost our party preselection the following year”.

From then on, floor crossing was largely confined to maverick right-wingers and Nationals, such as Barnaby Joyce and Bob Katter.

Perhaps this is how media perceptions of dissent changed. Floor crossing appeared to be a madcap stunt, rather than an ethical stance.

Until principled MPs such as Archer decided they would cross the floor on questions of integrity.

Camilla Nelson receives funding as EG Whitlam Research Fellow at the Whitlam Institute.

– ref. A sign of healthy democracy or a ‘rudderless’ nation? How crossing the floor has changed – https://theconversation.com/a-sign-of-healthy-democracy-or-a-rudderless-nation-how-crossing-the-floor-has-changed-172849

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Chen, Research Fellow at Koi Tū: The Centre for Informed Futures, University of Auckland

When New Zealand switches to the COVID-19 Protection Framework tomorrow, people will have to present vaccine passes to access many public spaces and venues.

At this point, more than 2.4 million people have downloaded their official vaccine passes, which represents almost 70% of the 3.6 million people who are fully vaccinated.

The transition will likely exacerbate inequities that have already emerged during the vaccine rollout itself, and discriminate against vaccinated but “digitally excluded” people who have limited access to email or phone apps to carry a vaccine pass. People can now get their passes in person at some pharmacies, which helps but does not fully solve the problem.

Another major concern is the integrity of how we use and verify vaccine passes. Businesses and venues have different choices in how strongly they verify the legitimacy of the pass itself and whether or not they request an ID to verify the identity of the vaccine pass holder. This can make all the difference in how effective the system will be in reducing the spread of the virus.

Verifying vaccine passes

Last week, the government passed legislation under urgency to enact a “traffic light” system, which places regions under certain settings. Under red and orange settings, many venues will only be open to fully vaccinated people who can present proof of vaccination.

The vaccine pass includes a QR code which can be presented on paper or on a smartphone. So far, the government has said the minimum requirement is only to visually check the pass. The next level of verification would be for staff to use the official NZ Pass Verifier app to scan the QR code to ensure the pass is legitimate, and that the details printed on the pass match the details encoded in the QR code.

But the highest level of verification is to ask for a photo ID to make sure the person carrying the pass is the person named on it. Taking all three steps provides the highest confidence the person is vaccinated.

Understandably, some venues will consider this too much hassle or impractical. Requiring a photo ID will also discriminate against people who are fully vaccinated but may not have an ID (such as under-18s or people who have no need for one) or those who may not have a photo ID in their preferred name.

In my opinion, venues that are required to check for vaccine passes need to scan the QR code to lift confidence that the pass is legitimate. Otherwise, it is simply too easy to fake a vaccine pass.

Read more:
How far should compulsory proof of vaccination go — and what rights do New Zealanders have?

QR Codes and data privacy

Another challenge is that individuals also need to continue scanning in with their contact-tracing app (preferably NZ COVID Tracer). These apps are generally designed as anonymous systems and all of the data stays on the user’s device.

The vaccine pass verifier app inherently needs to know the identity of the person, and it operates on the venue’s device, which doesn’t store any of the data and works offline. This is why the two apps and functionalities cannot be combined into one.

Inevitably, people will have to provide a vaccine pass and possibly a photo ID to confirm they are allowed to enter. Then the visitor will also have to scan in to keep their own record for contact tracing. It might be annoying, but that’s what we have to do to keep ourselves safe.

The official pass verifier app does not store any data, but there might be some exceptions in which certain businesses create their own apps.

Examples include ticketing, where a person’s vaccination status may have to be verified at the time of purchase rather than entry to the venue. Businesses with repeat customers, such as gyms, may also want to keep a record of their customers’ vaccination status to avoid having to check their pass each time they enter.

The COVID-19 protection framework legislation includes privacy protection that ensures information about people’s vaccination status can only be collected, used or disclosed for the purposes of managing COVID-19, with heavy penalties for breaches.

Are vaccine passes effective?

One major question is whether the passes actually mitigate the risk to public health.

Evidence from other jurisdictions suggests vaccinated people transmit COVID-19 less than unvaccinated people, hence the effort to prevent unvaccinated people from entering venues to avoid the spread of the virus. But in a New Zealand context, it remains to be seen whether or not the vaccine passes are effective at suppressing the reproduction rate.

Read more:
No, vaccinated people are not ‘just as infectious’ as unvaccinated people if they get COVID

The government has been using vaccine passes as an incentive for people to get vaccinated by preventing unvaccinated people from accessing venues they might otherwise want to enter. But this motivation expires when we reach a sufficient percentage of people who are vaccinated – and simply aiming for a vaccination percentage raises ethical issues.

We should keep coming back to the public health reasons for why we need people to be vaccinated and why we separate vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals. And to uphold that, we have to make sure vaccine passes are used effectively.

This means, at the very least, scanning the QR code to check the passes are legitimate. And we have to reduce the barriers for people to get their vaccine pass so they aren’t excluded for the wrong reasons.

Read more:
To be truly ethical, vaccine mandates must be about more than just lifting jab rates

Vaccine passes come at a cost. It’s a cost financially to the government and taxpayers in developing the system. But there’s also a cost socially in terms of exacerbating inequities, and a cost ethically in terms of privacy and restrictions on people’s freedom of movement.

If we were to weaken the system to the extent that people can easily fake a vaccine pass, then we aren’t separating vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals effectively and make no progress towards mitigating public health risk. That would mean the existence of vaccine passes is not justified.

Andrew has provided independent advice to the Ministry of Health and the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet as an academic but is not paid by them.

– ref. Verification will be essential as New Zealanders start using vaccine passes — to stop fraud and the spread of COVID – https://theconversation.com/verification-will-be-essential-as-new-zealanders-start-using-vaccine-passes-to-stop-fraud-and-the-spread-of-covid-172940

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Westaway, Australian Research Council Future Fellow, Archaeology, School of Social Science, The University of Queensland

Rio Tinto’s destruction of the 46,000 year old Juukan Gorge rock shelters has led to recommendations by the Parliamentary Inquiry on how Australia can better conserve Aboriginal heritage sites.

Around the time the recommendations were made, Queensland’s Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Act faced an important test when a pastoralist who cleared 500 hectares of bushland at Kingvale Station in Cape York was charged with failing to protect Aboriginal cultural heritage.

The charges were eventually dismissed but the prosecution, the first of its kind in Queensland, highlights weaknesses in the law.

Like related legislation in other Australian states and territories, Queensland’s law requires landholders to conserve Aboriginal heritage sites or risk prosecution.

But the law has been criticised by many Aboriginal people and heritage specialists for allowing destructive development by removing any ability for government to independently assess how proposed clearing would affect Aboriginal heritage.

Under the “duty of care” provisions in the Act, Aboriginal heritage must be protected even if it is not known to landholders. However, as the Kingvale clearing case heard, if Aboriginal heritage is not known, how can it be shown to have been lost?

Read more:
Australia’s coastal waters are rich in Indigenous cultural heritage, but it remains hidden and under threat

What we learned from the Kingvale clearing case

In 2013, the former Newman government in Queensland removed protection for the environment by introducing the Vegetation Management Act which enabled clearing of what they deemed as “high value agricultural projects” in Cape York.

The World Wildlife Foundation argued this would see large areas of forest and bushland destroyed. Advocates for the new Act argued primary producers are “acutely aware of their responsibility to care for the environment”.

In opening up new areas of Cape York to clearing, this legislation posed new threats to heritage sites. In this context the landholder of Kingvale decided he did not need to assess cultural heritage when clearing 500 hectares.

At the conclusion of the hearing into this case, Judge Julie Dick of the Cairns District Court instructed the jury to return a not-guilty verdict, exonerating the landholder, as the offence could not be proved beyond reasonable doubt.

The landholder’s legal team noted in the media if their defendant had been found guilty, every landholder (including freeholders) who had cleared land, built a fence or firebreak, ploughed a paddock, or built a road or airstrip since 2003 would potentially be guilty of a criminal offence.

The defendant argued the ramifications of the legal case were significant

for the rest of Queensland […] anyone who mowed a lawn or cut down a tree since 2003 would be automatically liable.

In our view, this is hyperbole. Section 21 of the Act makes explicit a person’s right to enjoy the normal and allowed use of their land to the extent they don’t harm Aboriginal heritage.

Further, a person doesn’t commit an offence if they take into account the nature of the activity and the likelihood of it causing harm. Mowing the lawn is quite different to clearing 500 hectares of native vegetation.

The setting of this activity is also important. Kingvale Station is located 100 kilometres west of the national heritage listed Quinkan Country. Heritage studies in similar landscapes across Cape York have identified scarred trees, artefact scatters, stone arrangements and cultural burial places.

Based on our heritage experience across Queensland, it would be surprising not to find Aboriginal heritage sites at Kingvale.

To reduce heritage risks, we assess the potential impacts of an activity, and talk with relevant Aboriginal groups about their sites and heritage values. Archaeologists and anthropologists also develop models to predict where unknown sites are likely to be found.

Can farming and the conservation of Aboriginal heritage co-exist?

The best way to conserve heritage is for Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians to work together to identify, document, and protect places. An important example is the discovery of human remains from a mortuary tree west of St George, southern Queensland.

The site was discovered during fence clearing by the landholder, who contacted the police. We worked with the landholder who has supported the Kooma nations people to conserve the mortuary tree and enable it to remain on country.

A further example from Mithaka Country saw a spectacular stone arrangement discovered by a pastoral station manager, who notified the native title holders.

All are now engaging with researchers to investigate the site’s history.

Dozens of other examples around the state illustrate collaborative approaches to heritage conservation. But more effective legislation is urgently needed in response to Kingvale’s failed prosecution.

How can we improve cultural heritage protection?

The Juukan Gorge case highlighted how Australia has a problem protecting its Aboriginal cultural heritage. The final report of the parliamentary inquiry into the disaster made several recommendations that could help pave a way forward.

Instances like Kingvale emphasise more work needs to be done. The Queensland government needs to act now to address the glaring problem with its heritage legislation.

Heritage management investment will also help. Victoria provides an example of how to improve Aboriginal heritage management. A standout action is the roll-out of a Certificate IV in Aboriginal cultural heritage management, with over 500 Aboriginal graduates to date.

This program is decentralising heritage management and empowering Aboriginal people across Victoria, building a level of professionalism rarely seen in other states.

Establishing treaties and agreements similar to those in Canada and New Zealand could go a long way to enable First Nations people in Australia to authoritatively protect their respective cultural heritage sites.

Read more:
The Wet Tropics’ wildlife is celebrated worldwide. Its cultural heritage? Not so much

Heritage conservation will remain challenging, particularly in resource-rich states like Queensland. But we can do better.

Judge Dick’s ruling, while frustrating for the effort to conserve heritage, is crucial as it highlights weaknesses in the law.

This trial, along with the Juukan Gorge incident, may represent a critical tipping point in the struggle to protect Aboriginal cultural heritage in Queensland and across Australia.

Michael Westaway receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Joshua Gorringe is Mithaka Traditional owner and General Manager of Mithaka Aboriginal Corporation RNTBC. Mithaka has received funding from NIAA and QLD Caring for Country Grants. He is affiliated with Mithaka Aboriginal Corporation RNTBC.

Kelsey M. Lowe receives funding from University of Queensland Strategic Research Investment.

Richard Martin receives funding from the Australian Research Council. Richard also receives funding from a range of Aboriginal groups across Queensland relating to native title claims and cultural heritage protection.

Ross Mitchell Kooma Chairperson currently receives funding from NIAA for IPA Ranger Program Murra Murra and Bendee Downs Station owned by Kooma Traditional Owner association Inc

– ref. Australia has a heritage conservation problem. Can farming and Aboriginal heritage protection co-exist? – https://theconversation.com/australia-has-a-heritage-conservation-problem-can-farming-and-aboriginal-heritage-protection-co-exist-170956

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Geordie Williamson, Professor of Mathematics, University of Sydney

Research in mathematics is a deeply imaginative and intuitive process. This might come as a surprise for those who are still recovering from high-school algebra.

What does the world look like at the quantum scale? What shape would our universe take if we were as large as a galaxy? What would it be like to live in six or even 60 dimensions? These are the problems that mathematicians and physicists are grappling with every day.

To find the answers, mathematicians like me try to find patterns that relate complicated mathematical objects by making conjectures (ideas about how those patterns might work), which are promoted to theorems if we can prove they are true. This process relies on our intuition as much as our knowledge.

Over the past few years I’ve been working with experts at artificial intelligence (AI) company DeepMind to find out whether their programs can help with the creative or intuitive aspects of mathematical research. In a new paper published in Nature, we show they can: recent techniques in AI have been essential to the discovery of a new conjecture and a new theorem in two fields called “knot theory” and “representation theory”.

Machine intuition

Where does the intuition of a mathematician come from? One can ask the same question in any field of human endeavour. How does a chess grandmaster know their opponent is in trouble? How does a surfer know where to wait for a wave?

The short answer is we don’t know. Something miraculous seems to happen in the human brain. Moreover, this “miraculous something” takes thousands of hours to develop and is not easily taught.

The past decade has seen computers display the first hints of something like human intuition. The most striking example of this occurred in 2016, in a Go match between DeepMind’s AlphaGo program and Lee Sedol, one of the world’s best players.

AlphaGo won 4–1, and experts observed that some of AlphaGo’s moves displayed human-level intuition. One particular move (“move 37”) is now famous as a new discovery in the game.

Read more:
AI has beaten us at Go. So what next for humanity?

How do computers learn?

Behind these breakthroughs lies a technique called deep learning. On a computer one builds a neural network – essentially a crude mathematical model of a brain, with many interconnected neurons.

At first, the network’s output is useless. But over time (from hours to even weeks or months), the network is trained, essentially by adjusting the firing rates of the neurons.

Such ideas were tried in the 1970s with unconvincing results. Around 2010, however, a revolution occurred when researchers drastically increased the number of neurons in the model (from hundreds in the 1970s to billions today).

Traditional computer programs struggle with many tasks humans find easy, such as natural language processing (reading and interpreting text), and speech and image recognition.

With the deep learning revolution of the 2010s, computers began performing well on these tasks. AI has essentially brought vision and speech to machines.

Training neural nets requires huge amounts of data. What’s more, trained deep learning models often function as “black boxes”. We know they often give the right answer, but we usually don’t know (and can’t ascertain) why.

A lucky encounter

My involvement with AI began in 2018, when I was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. At the induction ceremony in London I met Demis Hassabis, chief executive of DeepMind.

Over a coffee break we discussed deep learning, and possible applications in mathematics. Could machine learning lead to discoveries in mathematics, like it had in Go?

This fortuitous conversation led to my collaboration with the team at DeepMind.

Mathematicians like myself often use computers to check or perform long computations. However, computers usually cannot help me develop intuition or suggest a possible line of attack. So we asked ourselves: can deep learning help mathematicians build intuition?

With the team from DeepMind, we trained models to predict certain quantities called Kazhdan-Lusztig polynomials, which I have spent most of my mathematical life studying.

In my field we study representations, which you can think of as being like molecules in chemistry. In much the same way that molecules are made of atoms, the make up of representations is governed by Kazhdan-Lusztig polynomials.

Amazingly, the computer was able to predict these Kazhdan-Lusztig polynomials with incredible accuracy. The model seemed to be onto something, but we couldn’t tell what.

However, by “peeking under the hood” of the model, we were able to find a clue which led us to a new conjecture: that Kazhdan-Lusztig polynomials can be distilled from a much simpler object (a mathematical graph).

This conjecture suggests a way forward on a problem that has stumped mathematicians for more than 40 years. Remarkably, for me, the model was providing intuition!

Read more:
How explainable artificial intelligence can help humans innovate

In parallel work with DeepMind, mathematicians Andras Juhasz and Marc Lackenby at the University of Oxford used similar techniques to discover a new theorem in the mathematical field of knot theory. The theorem gives a relation between traits (or “invariants”) of knots that arise from different areas of the mathematical universe.

Our paper reminds us that intelligence is not a single variable, like the result of an IQ test. Intelligence is best thought of as having many dimensions.

My hope is that AI can provide another dimension, deepening our understanding of the mathematical world, as well as the world in which we live.

Geordie Williamson is a Professor at the University of Sydney, and a consultant in Pure Mathematics for DeepMind, a subsidiary of Alphabet.

– ref. Mathematical discoveries take intuition and creativity – and now a little help from AI – https://theconversation.com/mathematical-discoveries-take-intuition-and-creativity-and-now-a-little-help-from-ai-172900

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Maria O’Sullivan, Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, and Deputy Director, Castan Centre for Human Rights Law, Monash University

One major problem uncovered in “Set the Standard”, the landmark report on sexual harassment and bullying in the parliament workplace is that secrecy and silence conceal toxic workplace culture.

The report conducted by Sex Discrimination Commissioner Kate Jenkins shows that serious harms, particularly gender-based harassment and bullying, have been normalised within the our own national parliament – and the victims have been unable to speak out until now.

Central to this practice of concealment is the increased use of non-disclosure agreements, or NDAs, in Australia.

These agreements have become a focus of public debate since the #MeToo movement began in the US. Their harmful effects were demonstrated after it was revealed Harvey Weinstein systematically used NDAs to prevent his victims from talking about his conduct.

But the silencing effect of these agreements has not yet received the same attention in Australia.

That has now changed with the release of Jenkins’ Respect@Work Report last year and the new Set the Standard report released this week.

Both have recommend changes to the use of NDAs in relation to sexual harassment and bullying cases. The time has come for a serious re-evaluation of these agreements.

What is an NDA?

NDAs are restrictive confidentiality arrangements. They can have a legitimate role in, for instance, protecting company secrets, such as patents or intellectual property. Such agreements are designed to ensure a person or organisation who gets access to sensitive and often valuable information does not disclose it to a third party.

However, these agreements have been exploited and their use extended far beyond their original limited function.

NDAs are now increasingly used against employees who make complaints about discrimination and harassment. Organisations often settle these matters by compensating and then terminating the employment of the person who made the complaint, but on the condition that person signs an NDA forbidding them from disclosing the bullying or harassment.

Read more:
Who’s to blame for keeping Time’s #MeToo ‘silence breakers’ silent?

Indeed, lawyers say NDAs have become standard practice for employers dealing with sexual harassment complaints in Australia.

The widespread use of NDAs is also reflected in a statement made by the union representing public sector employees to the Jenkins’ inquiry. It said it is common

[…]once a complaint has begun to be aired for the process to become about getting the worker a payout or moving them on in a way that limits damage to their employer. In some cases, employees will be required to sign nondisclosure agreements on termination of their employment.

The problem with this practice is the offending conduct is never formally “known about” by senior leaders in the organisation – or the public.

Oftentimes, the perpetrator stays at the organisation and is promoted. Or they move on to another organisation where the offending conduct continues. Meanwhile, senior managers and human resources simply deny knowledge of the problem.

In contrast, the victim-survivor is stigmatised and condemned to silence in perpetuity, unable to defend themselves or even to talk about what happened.

What did the Jenkins’ report say about NDAs?

In the report, the Human Rights Commission has reiterated its serious concerns with the use of NDAs in Australia.

It says these agreements “should not be made a condition of settlement of complaints” because

NDAs been criticised as ‘covering up’ or ‘shutting down’ issues while protecting respondents.

Instead, the report says, NDAs should be optional for the complainant as a way of protecting their privacy, rather than a “blanket condition of settlement”.

Read more:
The Jenkins review has 28 recommendations to fix parliament’s toxic culture – will our leaders listen?

What, then, can be done about this?

California has set the best practice in this regard, passing a law in 2018 that bans the use of NDAs in sexual harassment cases.

More recently, the state has built on this by passing the “Silenced No More Act” in October this year. This legislation will protect workers who want to speak out about harassment and discrimination, even if they have signed a non-disclosure agreement. It also extends to workplace harassment or discrimination on any basis, not just sex.

In supporting the legislation, California Senator Connie Leyva said,

It is unconscionable that an employer would ever want or seek to silence the voices of survivors that have been subjected to racist, sexist, homophobic or other attacks at work.

How can the law be reformed in Australia?

It is clear NDAs have a chilling effect on people’s willingness to speak out against harassment and bullying. Significantly, these agreements not only silence those coerced into signing them, but also discourage openness and suppress transparency and accountability in workplaces.

They also have a detrimental, systemic effect by signalling to other employees they must self-censor if they experience similar workplace harms, rendering them fearful of speaking out.

The Set the Standard report – and the broader #MeToo movement – send a clear message: every workplace and organisation in Australia can, and must, do better to prevent an epidemic of bad behaviour.

It is, therefore, time for Australia to ban the use of NDAs in situations involving harassment or bullying.

Read more:
Can the government get its workplace harassment laws right? Its bill is a missed opportunity

We note others in Australia have also made such a recommendation. The Australian Law Alliance, for instance, has called for banning the use of NDAs in all harassment and discrimination cases, except when requested by survivors.

Now that Jenkins has released not one, but two significant reports on workplace protections – both of which show the true extent of workplace harassment and silencing – we must take a step toward protecting victims by introducing laws to reform the use of NDAs in Australia.

Maria O’Sullivan previously received funding from the Commonwealth Attorney-General’s Department and currently serves as a legal adviser on the Human Rights Panel with Queensland Parliamentary Services.

Judith Bessant does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Buying silence: we can’t stop workplace sexual harassment without banning non-disclosure agreements – https://theconversation.com/buying-silence-we-cant-stop-workplace-sexual-harassment-without-banning-non-disclosure-agreements-172856

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Philip Britton, Senior lecturer, Child and Adolescent Health, University of Sydney

Very high vaccination rates in Australia are ensuring community COVID transmission is decreasing.

Vaccines markedly reduce severe disease and death. Our health-care systems are more able to cope because fewer new cases are requiring admission to hospital and ICU.

But, children under 12 years of age aren’t yet eligible for vaccination and some people are asking whether children are going to become a reservoir of infection.

Are children now a major risk for COVID transmission? Should we worry about exposure to COVID in places that kids and their families frequent, such as schools, pools, cinemas, and sporting and recreational facilities?

The short answer to those questions is – no. Evidence suggests kids aren’t major drivers of COVID spread, so it’s only fair to let kids get back to their normal activities.

Aren’t kids the main ones getting COVID?

Children are gradually making up a higher proportion of COVID infections. This was expected as older age groups are vaccinated and their rates of infection have declined.

But overall, infection numbers in kids haven’t increased. In fact, the number of infections in children in NSW remained roughly the same after lockdown ended as it was in the weeks before.

This confirms what was known from evidence overseas – young children are not major drivers of COVID, especially with the mitigation measures currently in place in schools.

Read more:
Why do kids tend to have milder COVID? This new study gives us a clue

It depends on where you’re exposed

The risk of children transmitting the coronavirus is different in different settings.

In the home, we know the Delta strain is easily transmitted among household members, regardless of whether a child or adult is the first infected case.

Yet at school, the risk of catching COVID is much lower, even with the Delta variant.

This low risk likely also holds true in outdoor public spaces, such as sports grounds, parks and swimming pools.

Can I still catch COVID from an unvaccinated child even if I’m vaccinated?

Recently vaccinated adults have a 70-90% lower chance of getting COVID, irrespective of the vaccine they’ve received, according to a recent pre-print of a study yet to be peer reviewed. Vaccinated adults are also 30-60% less likely to transmit the virus onwards.

COVID vaccines are even more effective (greater than 90%) at keeping adults and young people out of hospital and potentially dying.

Being a vaccinated adult reduces the risk of severe disease and hospitalisation tenfold, compared to unvaccinated adults.

What’s more, children are less likely to transmit to others than adults.

Reassuringly, despite the reopening of schools and the restarting of childhood activities, hospitalisation and ICU admission rates have gone down in NSW.

This indicates vaccines are successfully preventing moderate and severe COVID in adults.

This data is with the Delta variant, and we don’t yet know whether the new Omicron variant will be any different.

Read more:
Your unvaccinated friend is roughly 20 times more likely to give you COVID

Why haven’t we vaccinated kids yet? Wouldn’t that help stop any risk of transmission?

While the vaccines developed for COVID are safe, we know children are not simply little adults.

Vaccine programs typically evolve over time. Experts initially monitor for side effects following widespread vaccination in adults before a vaccine is administered to younger age groups.

Children’s immune responses differ to those in adults. It takes time to ensure the right dose and timing between vaccinations has been considered carefully in kids.

Given the very low risk of severe COVID in children, weighing up the benefits of COVID vaccination for them is complex.

That’s why the experts from Australia’s Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI) are being careful and considered in their advice regarding vaccination in young children.

It’s safe and beneficial for kids and families to get out and about

The pandemic has impacted children’s lives significantly.

School closures and lockdowns have affected their education and social interaction with friends. Community sport and other activities that give children a strong sense of belonging and enhance self-esteem have been cancelled.

All this has impacted the mental health of children and young people.

Read more:
Do kids get long COVID? And how often? A paediatrician looks at the data

Vaccines work and measures such as COVID-safe guidelines, QR-code check-ins, physical distancing and masks are still in place in many settings. Enhanced hygiene is still encouraged.

Vaccinated adults should feel comfortable to move about and socialise.

Children have sacrificed their personal well-being largely to protect adults from COVID. We now have high levels of adult vaccination and stable or reducing community transmission.

Children need to be given the opportunity to return to public spaces, play sport, and engage in other recreational and social activities.

It’s time children and families are given the opportunity to resume normal activities to ensure their health and well-being.

Philip Britton receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council and from the Commonwealth department and NSW Ministry of Health.

Phoebe Williams receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council.

Archana Koirala does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. No, we shouldn’t worry too much about getting COVID from young kids – https://theconversation.com/no-we-shouldnt-worry-too-much-about-getting-covid-from-young-kids-172232

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Chelsea Jarvis, Research fellow, University of Southern Queensland

After years of punishing drought in some areas, many farmers in Australia’s east were hoping the newly declared La Niña event would bring them good rains.

Many are now rejoicing, with the wettest November experienced in Australia for more than two decades. But for some farmers, heavy and prolonged rain is causing a new set of problems.

Last year’s La Niña delivered good rainfall in some areas – while leaving others drier than they would have been under an El Niño, with many areas in southern Queensland missing out. In La Niña years, the cattle farming town of Roma receives an average of 247mm from November to the end of January. Last year they only got half that.

This year’s La Niña has already delivered rain to many areas left dry last year. Roma, for example, has received more than 200mm in November 2021 alone. These large rainfall events and seasons are required after ongoing drought to recharge the moisture in the soil.

But continued rain will be less welcome in newly waterlogged areas along the Queensland and NSW border and the Northern Rivers region, given it may lead to further flooding.

Read more:
Climate change is likely driving a drier southern Australia – so why are we having such a wet year?

What does La Nina mean for farmers?

Seasonal forecasts give a greater than 60% chance of rainfall above the median for much of eastern Australia from now to the end of March.

If this summer of rain eventuates, it will be welcome news for many farmers in eastern Australia who have had below-median rainfall for three or more years.

Farmers usually welcome La Niña with open arms, given plentiful rainfall can boost production and profits.

Still, a boon for one industry can be a burden for another, with heavy or prolonged rainfall able to damage fruit and delicate crops as well as delaying harvests or making them more challenging. Flooding can wash away entire fields and damage roads and other infrastructure.

For the sugar industry, increased rainfall associated with La Niña can mean sugarcane has to be harvested at lower sugar content levels, or be delayed in harvesting. The cane can be knocked over by heavy rain, which makes harvesting difficult and reduces yield, all of which reduce profitability.

For the grains industry, the bumper grain crop predicted for 2021 has already been downgraded in areas like New South Wales due to flooding, with losses expected to be in the billions.

By contrast, the beef industry in Queensland relies on grass, so a La Niña summer with above average rain can increase pasture growth and regeneration as well as cattle weight gain and market prices.

This double-edged sword – too much rain or not enough – is nothing new to Australian farmers.

Understanding how La Niña and other ENSO (El Niño-Southern Oscillation) events impact different regions and industries is critical to take advantage of good years, minimise losses in poor years, and make sound decisions based on the best possible information.

What does that look like? In La Niña years, cattle farmers may decide to move their cattle out of flood prone regions or rest a paddock to allow it to regenerate with the extra rain, which will provide more grass in the following season.

For grain farmers, La Niña means keeping a close eye on both three-month seasonal climate forecasts and the daily weather forecasts to decide if it’s worth the risk to plant a big crop and if they are likely to be able to harvest it before any big rainfall events occur.

Read more:
Yes, Australia is a land of flooding rains. But climate change could be making it worse

Can we predict La Niña rainfall?

La Niña events usually bring average to above average rain to much of Australia’s east. Unfortunately, no two La Niñas occur in the same way.

Because of this variability, it is important for farmers to understand how La Niña events impact their area so that they can plan for likely conditions.

Australia’s east coast climate is heavily influenced by the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), a naturally occurring phenomenon centred in the tropical Pacific that consists of three separate phases: La Niña, El Niño, and a neutral or inactive phase.

La Niña years occur around 25% of the time, with El Niño years also at 25%, and neutral years making up 50%. ENSO is not fully predictable, and moves irregularly between these phases. While it is unusual to have back-to-back La Niñas it is not unprecedented.

During these La Niña events, surface water in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific cools and the ocean to the north of Australia tends to warm.

Changes in the ocean drive changes in the atmosphere over the Pacific. Like a rock thrown in a pond, however, this Pacific phenomenon ripples outwards, causing atmospheric changes in places like Australia and Chile.

In Australia, La Niña tends to bring more rain and lower temperatures across much of the country, while we see increases in heavy rain, flooding, and severe tropical cyclones making landfall.

What does the future hold? While most La Niña events are projected to produce less rainfall in many regions, projections suggest the wettest La Niña years will tend to be just as wet or wetter that they were in the past.

Australia’s farmers will continue to face the challenges of floods and droughts brought by La Niña and El Niño, but as farmers learn more about these events and how they impact their area and industry, they can become more resilient.

Chelsea Jarvis receives funding from the Northern Australia Climate Program, which is funded by Meat & Livestock Australia, the Queensland Government, and the University of Southern Queensland. She is affiliated with (a member of) the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society (AMOS).

Professor Scott B. Power, Dip. Ed. does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Do La Niña’s rains mean boom or bust for Australian farmers? – https://theconversation.com/do-la-ninas-rains-mean-boom-or-bust-for-australian-farmers-172511

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ruth Boyask, Lead Researcher, Children’s Reading for Pleasure Study, Auckland University of Technology

Summer’s here and the school holidays are coming. For many parents, of course, it’s all a bit academic – pandemic lockdowns and other disruptions have blurred the line between home and school, with no guarantee things will return to normal in 2022.

The good news for parents and whānau is that relief can be as simple as turning a page. Encouraging children to read for pleasure – which is different from it being a school task – has all kinds of benefits, as highlighted in the first comprehensive review of reading for pleasure in Aotearoa New Zealand.

The review is one of three reports commissioned from AUT by the National Library as part of its Pūtoi Rito Communities of Readers initiative. The researchers looked at international and national research on reading for pleasure, finding very little on the topic in New Zealand. What research there has been has had little influence on policy.

The review’s main conclusion is that reading for pleasure is a beneficial social activity where everyone has a role to play in distributing those benefits.

Parents should feel reassured, however, that this doesn’t mean they need to be “teachers”. Simply supporting their children’s enjoyment of reading is relatively easy to do and has been shown to be very good for children’s overall development and health.

Various studies have shown children’s enjoyment of reading is related to a longer life, better mental well-being and healthier eating. Fiction reading is related to better performance at school.

But reading for pleasure is also good for communities because readers tend to be good at making decisions, have more empathy and are likely to value other people and the environment more.

Gaps in the research

We should be making more of these benefits. Because while most younger children enjoy reading in their early years at school, their level of enjoyment seems to drop off as they move into adolescence.

Time spent reading also declines as children get older. In New Zealand a lot of attention is focused in research and policy on developing children’s reading literacy at school, but there is little focus on supporting their enjoyment of reading – especially outside school hours.

Read more:
Five ways that reading with children helps their education

There has been some attention to the importance of reading picture books and telling stories to very young children at home or in libraries. But older children and young people tend to value reading more as a functional skill that will help them with future education or employment.

There are very few well-researched studies of the reading habits and reading enjoyment experienced by children and young people beyond the school gates. Nor has there been enough research into how best to encourage them to read for pleasure.

Read more:
You could be putting your child off reading – here’s how to change that

Reading as shared experience

From our review of international literature we conclude that creating a culture of enjoyable reading needs to be approached from various angles.

One of the most important motivations for children learning to enjoy reading for pleasure comes from the people around them. When other readers share their enthusiasm for reading with children it rubs off.

Read more:
If you can only do one thing for your children, it should be shared reading

Obviously this begins at home, but it can also occur in youth or religious groups, on marae, with peer groups or even online. In a major UNESCO report on “fostering a culture of reading and writing”, it’s even suggested doctors can prescribe reading together for younger parents of small children.

But while there are many good examples of people and organisations working in partnership to achieve these aims, often the focus is on improving school literacy rather than simply increasing children’s enjoyment of reading. Libraries taking a lead could change this.

Building a culture of reading

At its best, reading for pleasure is about engaging with other people in enjoyable ways – not as a solitary activity, as it is often portrayed. Practical steps anyone can take include:

• finding reading material that connects to children’s wider interests

• choosing books that more than one person enjoys to encourage discussion and sharing of ideas

• asking librarians, perhaps from the school library, or other readers for recommendations to help find the right books

• using public libraries, including their e-book catalogues, which can be downloaded to mobile devices

• trying audio books as a way to encourage and engage readers with different reading levels or busy schedules

• encouraging discussion among peers about reading through digital and social media.

Creating a reading culture based on individual and shared enjoyment is everyone’s responsibility, not just the domain of teachers and schools. Nor does sharing the benefits of reading for pleasure mean acting like a teacher.

But it will pay dividends in improved school performance, thinking ability, well-being and sense of belonging – all especially important during these uncertain and disrupted times.

The AUT School of Education research team received funding for the research reported here from Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa National Library of New Zealand.

The AUT School of Education research team received funding for the research reported here from Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa National Library of New Zealand.

– ref. Kiwi kids who read for pleasure will do well in other ways – it’s everyone’s responsibility to encourage them – https://theconversation.com/kiwi-kids-who-read-for-pleasure-will-do-well-in-other-ways-its-everyones-responsibility-to-encourage-them-171947

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Darryl Dymock, Adjunct Senior Research Fellow in Education, Griffith University

Lorna Prendergast was 90 years old when she graduated with a master’s degree from the University of Melbourne in 2019. She said her message to others was, “You’re never too old to dream.”

Nor, obviously, too old to learn.

In the same year 94-year-old David Bottomley became the oldest person in Australia to graduate with a PhD from Curtin University. The great-grandfather said he wasn’t yet finished. “I have a great deal yet to work out,” he said, perhaps making him the ultimate lifelong learner.

Prendergast’s and Bottomley’s achievements are examples of the levels of learning some older adults are capable of. In 2019-20, around 73,000 Australian adults aged 60 or more were enrolled in vocational training, community education and university courses. That’s enough to populate a mid-size Australian city.

But the term “lifelong learning” has increasingly tended to focus on the period of compulsory education and training across working lives – that is, before retirement.

Professor of adult education, Stephen Billett, argues the concept of lifelong learning has come to be associated with lifelong education, which is more about the institutional provision of learning experiences.

Instead, he says, it should go back to its roots. Lifelong learning is a personal process based on the sets of experiences people have had throughout their lives.

Learning after retirement

According to David Istance, the nonresident senior fellow at the OECD’s Center for Universal Education, a result of this foreshortened view of lifelong learning is to downplay the considerable amount of formal learning taking place after retirement. This means learning like that done by Prendergast and Bottomley. Although much learning also happens in non-institutional settings.

For example, a Scottish study tracked the learning activities of almost 400 Glaswegians aged 60 or over. Using a broad definition of “learning”, researchers discovered an “active ageing” subset in the sample.

This active ageing group was:

socially and technologically engaged … “learner-citizens”, participating in educational, physical, cultural, civic and online activities.

Such findings are particularly significant for a country like Australia where the population is ageing, due to sustained low fertility and increasing life expectancy. The result is proportionally fewer children and a larger proportion of people aged 65 and over.

Read more:
Australian universities need to be more age-friendly — what does that look like in practice?

Over the past two decades, the population aged 85 and over has also increased, by 110% (more than doubled) compared with total population growth of 35%. In mid-2020 there were more than half a million of these “older olds” in Australia.

The nation could have 50,000 centenarians by 2050.

A lifetime of complex cognitive activity

Brain researcher Perminder Sachdev says surviving into older age relies partly on “a lifetime of good effort”. Some of that effort is a solid education in our formative years and then ongoing purposeful learning.

Sachdev believes this builds better cognitive reserves and sets us up for a lifetime of more complex cognitive activity.

But what is “purposeful learning”? A Swedish review found older adults do formal learning to maintain or increase quality of life, including through learning new things and sharing knowledge, and to connect through social networks. They also see classes and courses as a means of developing coping skills that enhance individual autonomy, and as a way of stimulating their cognitive abilities to help stave off mental decline.

Read more:
What is ‘cognitive reserve’? How we can protect our brains from memory loss and dementia

But numerous studies in recent decades have shown formal education is just the tip of the adult learning iceberg.

As the Glasgow study reveals, many older adults are continuing their learning in guises other than through formal courses. Communal examples include sewing groups, men’s sheds, bird-watching clubs, travel groups, and musical jam sessions.

Few of the participants are likely to perceive their activities in explicit learning terms, yet all four reasons for learning the Swedish study identified can be discerned within such groups.

As in the Glasgow research, the proportion of older people engaged in purposeful learning is likely to be a subset of the larger population. Nevertheless there needs to be official and community acknowledgement that a segment of older people has both the motivation and capacity to continue to learn, including into their 90s. These people are “active agers”.

According to Sachdev, the key to maximising healthy ageing is improving the quality of initial and ongoing education because this impacts positively on our brains.

Read more:
Contested spaces: we need to see public space through older eyes too

This is not to say older adults should feel obliged to engage in “purposeful learning”. After all, they’re not a homogeneous group, and some may decide it’s not something they want to do.

David Istance intimates some may also subscribe to the outmoded mindset that “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks”.

For older people who do want to continue to engage with the wider world and have the capacity to do so, however, we need to ensure “active ageing” is part of any “lifelong learning” agenda.

Let’s continue to promote older learning champions like Prendergast and Bottomley, not as outliers but as shining lights in a broader expanse of long-twinkling stars.

Darryl Dymock does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. You actually can teach an old dog new tricks, which is why many of us keep learning after retirement – https://theconversation.com/you-actually-can-teach-an-old-dog-new-tricks-which-is-why-many-of-us-keep-learning-after-retirement-170379

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Quiggin, Professor, School of Economics, The University of Queensland

The Morrison government has shelved its plan to make Australians produce identification before casting their vote. Yesterday it withdrew the Electoral Legislation Amendment (Voter Integrity) Bill 2021 it had hoped to pass in time for the 2022 election.

The reason is political. The announcement came hours after Tasmanian independent senator Jacqui Lambie said she would vote against the bill.

With rebel Coalition backbenchers in both the House of Representatives and Senate vowing to vote against all legislation in a bid to force the Morrison government’s hand on vaccine mandates, it reportedly did a deal with the Opposition to drop the bill in return for Labor supporting another bill, to oblige charities to reveal donors.

But it should have dropped the bill as a matter of good policy.

There are various ways in which such proposals might be analysed, but an economic framework of cost-benefit analysis would be a useful starting point. As the name implies, the aim is to weigh up the potential benefits of a policy to determine if they outweigh the costs.

The Australian government says it is “committed to the use of cost–benefit analysis to assess regulatory proposals in order to encourage better decision making”. Had it done a cost-benefit analysis of the bill, it’s hard to see how it could have introduced it in the first place.

Benefits of identification

Let’s start with the benefits.

The strongest argument for voter ID is to prevent impersonation – one person voting in the name of another. In Australia, however, voting is compulsory, which makes impersonation hard to accomplish.

About 95% of registered voters normally vote in elections.

To effectively impersonate another voter without producing an apparent double vote, a fraudster would have know who the non-voters were. There is some anecdotal evidence that people do sometimes vote on behalf of a friend. But while this is illegal, such proxy votes are unlikely to change the result.

Because of votes are checked against the electoral roll, we have good evidence on the extent of multiple voting in Australia.

After the 2016 election, the Australian Electoral Commission identified 18,343 instances where a name had been crossed off twice – about 0.12% of the 14.89 million votes cast.

Investigating a sample of these, the AEC found nearly 80% were most likely errors by it own staff, such as crossing off the name above or below the correct one on the electoral roll.

Another 10% were mistakes by voters, who might have been mentally ill, confused because of language issues, or who simply forgot they had already voted.

That left about 1,800 votes (0.012% of votes cast) where there was no obvious explanation. But also no compelling evidence of deliberate multiple voting.

The strongest evidence came from 59 cases where three votes were cast under the same name, including one person who apparently voted 16 times.

A requirement to show ID would not prevent someone from voting multiple times if they chose to do so. But it might facilitate prosecution by making it impossible for a multiple voter to claim that someone else voted in their name.

However, the AEC’s data suggest the total number of excess votes here amounts to two or three per electorate. With about 100,000 voters per electorate, this is nowhere near enough to make any real difference.

Voter ID would prevent someone from voting on behalf of another with their consent. There is anecdotal evidence that this happens, but not on a large scale, and we would expect the real voter would choose someone who they trust to lodge a vote according to their wishes.

Now let’s look at the costs.

Administrative costs

A voter ID proposal has two kinds of costs.

First, there are the costs of ID checking: administrative costs for the electoral commission and the compliance cost for voters who have to ensure they have ID.

Australia’s only previous experience with voter ID laws is in Queensland. The Liberal National Party government led by Campbell Newman introduced an ID requirement in 2014. This was in force for the 2015 state election, in which the LNP was narrowly defeated. The incoming Labor government repealed it.

In that election, the Electoral Commission of Queensland mailed every voter a card they could use to vote. This was the predominant method used, and made compliance easier. But presumably it cost hundreds of thousand of dollars in postage and administration.

Moreover, since the cards had no photo they didn’t provide any security against consensual vote impersonation. There was nothing to stop someone who didn’t feel like voting giving their card to a friend.

The big cost, though, lies in the possibility that some people would be discouraged from voting or would be refused a vote because of inadequate ID. Even if the Queensland card scheme is emulated, there’s a chance of voters failing to receive their card or misplacing it.

Turnout fell at the Queensland 2015 election, but we can’t necessarily draw any sharp conclusions about the role ID laws may have played because there was a further decline in 2017. The likelihood of these laws disenfranchising the poor, homeless and vulnerable, however, does appear quite high.

Read more:
Why voter ID requirements could exclude the most vulnerable citizens, especially First Nations people

Effects on trust

Beyond these direct costs and benefits, it is important to consider the effects of ID laws on our political culture as a whole.

Some proponents of ID laws have argued they will increase public confidence in the electoral system.

That might be the case if there were widespread concern about closely contested elections. A 2017 study by University of Sydney and Harvard researchers found about one in four Australian believe fraud occurs “usually” or “always” in elections. But there’s no real evidence to suggest voter ID laws would ease these doubts.

Confidence in the AEC’s ability to conduct an election

Under current circumstances, voter ID laws are more likely to undermine public confidence than to enhance it.

The push for voter ID laws in Australia are modelled on similar efforts by the US Republican Party, which are widely seen as an attempt to suppress voting, particularly by poor and minority voters more likely to vote for the Democratic Party.

Read more:
No mail-in votes, proof of citizenship: the long history of preventing minorities from voting in the US

Moreover, many of the staunchest advocates of voter ID, such as Fox News host Tucker Carlson, have supported the false claims that the 2020 election was stolen – a direct assault on confidence in the system.

An attempt to impose new requirements for voting, introduced at the last minute by a government trailing in the polls, looked more like political desperation than a considered attempt to improve the working of the electoral system.

It was always best to proceed only with broad multi-party support. Which there isn’t.

John Quiggin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Good riddance: the costs of Morrison’s voter ID plan outweighed any benefit – https://theconversation.com/good-riddance-the-costs-of-morrisons-voter-id-plan-outweighed-any-benefit-172874

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Maria Nugent, Co-Director, Australian Centre for Indigenous History, Australian National University

Campaigns for the repatriation of certain objects in prominent museums dominate media reporting on the fraught legacies of historical collections. The Parthenon (Elgin) Marbles, Benin Bronzes, and the “Gweagal” shield are among the most conspicuous examples.

Regularly discussed in books, featured on podcasts like Stuff the British Stole, and cited by journalists and commentators, these high-profile, highly charged objects encapsulate many of the issues at stake in how museums should go about redressing the violent colonial histories that contributed to the creation of their collections and ongoing injustices.

In Australia, the federal government has funded the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies to pursue the repatriation of collections in international museums

The program was funded initially as part of its commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the Endeavour voyage led by Lieutenant James Cook – an expedition that marks the beginning of a long history of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander material culture being taken from Country to Britain and Europe where it entered public and private institutions.

Read more:
A failure to say hello: how Captain Cook blundered his first impression with Indigenous people

During the same period this program was identifying collections for repatriation, we were researching Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander material culture in UK and Irish museums. For three years, we carried out a survey, led by Gaye Sculthorpe, Curator and Section Head, Oceania at The British Museum, and assisted by Indigenous research fellows Dr Jilda Andrews and Michael Aird to answer the question: “What Indigenous Australian material culture actually exists in museums in the UK and Ireland now?”

Much of the discussion about the future of collections proceeds without a clear sense of what has survived – and misunderstandings about what does. Between 2016 and 2019, Sculthorpe visited over 45 museums in the UK to look at their collections. Indigenous Australian objects identified number about 38,400 in institutions across the UK and about 600 in Ireland. The total number includes around 16,000 stone tools from Tasmania.

The material includes bags and baskets, wooden artefacts like clubs, boomerangs and shields, shell items such as fishing hooks and decorative shellwork, as well as contemporary art.

There is a mammoth task to rebuild knowledge about these objects and collections widely distributed in the UK and Ireland. Over time, knowledge has dissipated, and documentation and information lost. In many cases historical and contextual details for objects are scant, unreliable, illegible, or replete with misnomers, if not missing altogether.

Deserving serious attention

Today’s bland and stubborn characterisations of museums as nothing other than engines of colonial theft, trickery and violence, as well as irredeemable essences of empire, are often easily unsettled and complicated by close and critical examinations of the objects they hold.

Contemporary critiques tend to focus on 19th-century attitudes, shaped at a time when museums imagined they were collecting from cultures and peoples facing extinction. Even then, however, interactions between cultures were transforming objects, object-making and other art practices.

Read more:
Friday essay: 5 museum objects that tell a story of colonialism and its legacy

Some Indigenous people collaborated with anthropologists in gift exchanges and in making collections of material culture, both to provide a resource for future generations to access and as an assertion of the value of their ways of life.

Three boomerangs in Paisley Museum, near Glasgow in Scotland, were made by Kirwallie Sandy, one of the best known Aboriginal men in the Moreton Bay region. He sold them for a shilling each on 15 December 1875 at Sandgate near Brisbane to traveller and naturalist James W. Craig.

Craig documented these details in his journal, although this information was not included in the museum records or exhibition labels. Michael Aird, with his deep knowledge of Brisbane’s Aboriginal people and history, has reconstructed the boomerangs’ story with Kirwallie Sandy at the centre.

Trade, purchase, exchange, gifting, commissions and agency – as well as theft, exploitation, violence and trauma – were all in evidence for the objects we researched, and sometimes in respect to the same one.

Partnerships

Working in partnership with Indigenous people and organisations to better understand the multiple meanings of surviving material culture is the foundation on which the future development and building of collections is taking place.

Some of the least documented objects are potentially of the most interest to contemporary people. For instance, a single, shell-worked bootie of the kind long made in Aboriginal settlements on the New South Wales south coast and at La Perouse in Sydney was identified by Sculthorpe in a box of undocumented, unidentified objects handed to her by a curator at Warrington Museum & Art Gallery near Liverpool in England.

This baby shoe was one of the first pieces of shell work identified in collections outside Australia. It was likely bought at auction after being exhibited – perhaps in a missionary exhibition or a display of women’s work.

A shield at National Museums Scotland in Edinburgh was labelled only as “Australia”, but its form and the travels of its collector, Admiral John Elphinstone Erksine, in the mid-1800s suggest a NSW, possibly greater Sydney, origin.

The shield, remarkable for its intricate designs, has not (yet) garnered the attention it warrants.

If scholarship on Britain’s colonisation of Australia from the late 18th century onwards has produced anything it is an insistence on the plurality of encounters, experiences, and legacies.

This is due not only to the diversity of imperial travellers and colonial immigrants. There is growing recognition that Indigenous groups were diverse and distinct, sometimes as different from each other as they were to outsiders. The surviving material record is a testament to this; and its significance for expanding understanding and challenging conventional thought cannot be overestimated.

What emerged as we shared information about objects and collections with – and learnt from Indigenous people and “communities” in turn – was that repatriation was only one of several options they were interested in pursuing.

And this is only when there is certainty about details regarding where objects came from, the conditions under which they had been acquired, the pathways by which they travelled, and the conditions under which and into which they would return.

Recent experience of the repercussions of misinformation, leading to senior people being excluded from discussions, as Noeleen Timbery from the La Perouse Local Aboriginal Land Council in Sydney has explained, makes some groups cautious about how to proceed.

The La Perouse Aboriginal Land Council and other local groups are interested in working with overseas museums to ensure access to collections for educational and other purposes.

A new collaborative Australian Research Council-funded project with the Australian National University, the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge, and The British Museum is working with them towards this aim.

It is vital to get things right. And getting things right takes time and resources. A concern for care, diligence, caution and time to work through the emotions that collections provoke – as well as to take charge of the decision-making about what should happen – are at the forefront of people’s minds when they learn of the objects in international museums their ancestors made.

This book Ancestors, artefacts, empire: Indigenous Australia in British and Irish Museums, edited by Gaye Sculthorpe, Maria Nugent and Howard Morphy (British Museum Press) will be launched at the National Museum of Australia in Canberra on December 2.

Maria Nugent receives funding from the Australian Research Council through a Linkage Grant involving the Australian National University and The British Museum, which published the book ‘Ancestors, artefacts, empire: Indigenous Australia in British and Irish Museums’ from which this article derives.

Gaye Sculthorpe receives funding from the Australian Research Council through a Linkage Grant involving the Australian National University and The British Museum, which published the book ‘Ancestors, artefacts, empire: Indigenous Australia in British and Irish Museums’ from which this article derives.

Howard Morphy received funding from the Australian Research Council through a Linkage Grant involving the Australian National University, the National Museum of Australia, the Museum of the Riverina and The British Museum. The British Museum are the publishers of the book ‘Ancestors, artefacts, empire: Indigenous Australia in British and Irish Museums’ from which this article derives.

– ref. We identified 39,000 Indigenous Australian objects in UK museums. Repatriation is one option, but takes time to get right – https://theconversation.com/we-identified-39-000-indigenous-australian-objects-in-uk-museums-repatriation-is-one-option-but-takes-time-to-get-right-172302

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

One will depart from parliament a deeply disappointed man, dragged down by scandal, with hopes for a brilliant career dashed by an allegation surfacing from his youth.

The other will leave with a solid record of performance, despite some criticism and ambition for higher things unfulfilled.

Christian Porter, 51, on Wednesday announced he will not run again for his Western Australian seat of Pearce. It was a surprise to no one.
Health Minister Greg Hunt, 56, is also set to quit at next year’s poll, with his announcement due on Thursday.

Both had previously said they were recontesting their seats.

Porter – subject of a historical rape allegation (that he strongly denies) – had little practical alternative but to quit.

His political career was effectively over. His guilt or innocence could never be proven, because the woman is dead.

His statement on Wednesday contained a note of bitterness. “There are few, if any, constants left in modern politics.” he said. “Perhaps the only certainty now is that there appears no limit to what some will say or allege or do to gain an advantage over a perceived enemy.”

After a high-flying career in state politics, Porter entered federal parliament at the 2013 election, rising to the pinnacle of attorney-general, before the rape allegation began a fall that happened in slow motion.

First he was moved to another portfolio, while remaining in cabinet. Later he was forced to go to the backbench after refusing to disclose secret donors to his legal costs in his defamation action against the ABC.

In terms of his political fortunes, his decision to launch the defamation case was a massive misjudgement, all the stranger given his legal expertise. If he hadn’t done so, he’d likely still be in cabinet, because he would not have needed the money from the secret donors.

Porter was a competent attorney-general, much more qualified than his successor Michaelia Cash. He saw himself as a future prime minister, and many observers and colleagues regarded him as potentially competitive for the leadership.

Read more:
Government shuts down move to refer Christian Porter’s secret funds to privileges inquiry

One wonders, if Porter had remained attorney-general, whether the government would have progressed further on an integrity commission. He prepared the original model, from which the prime minister now won’t budge. If Porter had still been in the job, he might have had the authority to persuade Morrison to accept some necessary changes.

Politically, Porter seemed to have it all, until he had nothing at all, and Liberal tacticians were weighing up whether he would be a liability in his electorate, which is on a 5.2% margin. The seat is a worry for the government but sources believe it will be easier with a fresh candidate.

In contrast Hunt, who lacks the lofty intellect of Porter, will have the legacy of his part (shared with others, including the states) in Australia’s strong health record in managing COVID, despite some negatives on the ledger.

Hunt has been indefatigable in a difficult, uncertain and rapidly changing pandemic world, where advice is necessarily always changing and the outlook often uncertain.

One of his tools of trade, in his public presentations, has been a command of numbers, which gush out in his press conferences and interviews. He’s the positive spinner. Mistakes are not admitted.

On the downside, however, were the missteps in vaccine ordering and the slow rollout that had the government on the back foot for months. Hunt’s health department came under increasing criticism and a military man was appointed roll-out surpremo.

Earlier, the nation had been shocked by the 2020 wave of deaths among aged care residents. Although multiple factors were involved, aged care is a federal responsibility, coming under the health department, and what happened showed the vulnerabilities and lack of preparedness in the sector.

The pandemic catapulted Hunt into the centre of federal government decision-making over the past two years. His prospects had looked very different when, in the leadership turmoil of 2018, he was trounced for the deputy Liberal leadership by his good friend Josh Frydenberg.

Read more:
Grattan on Friday: Assertive Liberal moderates give Scott Morrison curry

That vote demonstrated he would rise no further in the Liberal hierarchy, and if it hadn’t been for COVID he’d have been in the ministerial background.

His decision to leave parliament has been rumoured for some time. His Victorian seat of Flinders is on 5.6% and the Liberals are not particularly worried about it.

Hunt came from a political family – his late father Alan was a Victorian government minister. Elected in 2001, Hunt became a parliamentary secretary in the Howard government.

In opposition, he was spokesman on climate change and environment, which involved some slick footwork when Malcolm Turnbull was replaced by Tony Abbott, given the two leaders’ totally different views on climate policy.

In government, as environment minister Hunt put into place the Coalition’s minimalist climate policy. After a brief time in the industry portfolio he was shifted to health in early 2017.

He’s been very attuned to the retail politics of the portfolio, often announcing drugs added to the pharmaceutical benefits list with a news conference, sometimes accompanied by a beneficiary.

In personal terms, Hunt is a volatile character, liable to blow up at people. His then departmental head, Martin Bowles, formally complained about him after one incident a few years ago. Bowles wasn’t the only senior bureaucrat to find him difficult to deal with.

Hunt, who in his youth had a plan for his life, will move on easily and seamlessly to the next stage, whatever it is. For Porter, who will return to the law, rebuilding will be a hard slog, and the thought of what might have been will never leave him.

Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. View from The Hill: A study in contrast, Porter and Hunt to leave Parliament – https://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-a-study-in-contrast-porter-and-hunt-to-leave-parliament-172969

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jumana Abu-Khalaf, Research Fellow in Computing and Security, Edith Cowan University

Mining magnate Clive Palmer created controversy last week when he claimed on ABC Radio that 500,000 people had attended the COVID “freedom” protest in Melbourne on Saturday November 20. Maverick MP Craig Kelly opted for the marginally more modest “tens of thousands of people as far as the eye could see”. The official police estimate was 20,000.

Crowd sizes have often been bones of contention. Donald Trump’s US presidency was bookended by competing claims over the size of his inauguration crowd in January 2017, and the number of rioters who stormed Capitol Hill after his electoral defeat four years later.

Read more:
It is difficult, if not impossible, to estimate the size of the crowd that stormed Capitol Hill

But why are crowd sizes so apparently open to interpretation? And what’s the most accurate way to estimate them?

Modern crowd-size estimation techniques are typically based on the Jacobs Method, invented by Herbert Jacobs in the 1960s. Jacobs, who was a journalism professor at the University of California, Berkeley, was watching Vietnam War protesters outside his office window, and noticed they were standing on a paved pattern of repeating squares. He counted the students in a few squares, and calculated the average number of students per square, or crowd density. Then he simply multiplied the number of squares by the density to estimate the size of the crowd.

From his observations, he found that in a light crowd each person takes up about 10 square feet (0.93 square metres), whereas in a denser crowd each person occupies less than half this space. In the most densely packed crowds, each person occupies just 2.5 square feet (0.23 square metres) – referred to by researchers as “mosh-pit density”.

This is considered an upper limit to crowd density, because it is not physically possible for a person to occupy less space. Hence, any crowd estimate that assumes a density higher than that of a mosh pit can be safely discarded.

This basic principle is used by some online tools to estimate and factcheck the number of people standing in a given area. Instead of counting squares, the total area is multiplied by the density to calculate the crowd size estimate. For example, the crowd size in the highlighted section of the Melbourne map below is estimated to be 26,050, based on a density of two people per square metre (we’ll come to how to estimate crowd density in a moment).

Although these tools give a decent rough estimate of the total crowd size, they assume a uniform distribution of a crowd across an area, which is not realistic. This method also fails to take into account the space taken up by street furniture, cars, trees, or other spaces not occupied by people.

People can bunch together or spread out for different reasons, including seeking shade on hot days or avoiding windy areas in colder months. This can be dealt with by assigning various probable densities to different sections on a map with the help of aerial photos. Some consulting firms claim this method allows them to estimate crowds numbering in the tens of thousands to within 10%.

Estimating crowd density

Estimating crowd density is crucial to producing a good overall estimate, but this technique is naturally prone to human error. In urban areas, CCTV footage can be used, or digital counting systems such as thermal cameras, although these are expensive if covering a large area. Crowd size can also be indirectly inferred from public transport usage, phone location data, mobile data networks, and social media activity, although this may depend on being able to access companies’ proprietary data.

Aerial photography is perhaps the best way to estimate crowd density and size. While ground-based images provide limited views, aerial images offer a literal overview. Images can be collected via satellites, helicopters, balloons or drones (although drones can only be operated by authorised entities in such public spaces). A military satellite image was used to estimate that 800,000 people were present at Barack Obama’s presidential inauguration in 2009.

Having collected aerial images or video stills, there are various ways to estimate how many people are within the frame, depending on the image quality and resolution.

AI algorithms can count people by recognising and counting the distinctive shape of humans, or even just their heads in denser crowds. Statistical methods can also be used to detect the independent motion of the people in the crowd. Or, if the crowd is too packed to count individuals, groups of people can be tracked.

Marchers on the move

It’s harder to estimate the size of a mobile crowd than a static one. The crowd density of a political march can vary significantly as people join and leave at various points along the route, and banners or placards can make people effectively invisible to crowd-detection algorithms.

Some researchers suggest using on-ground inspection points where people are counted. The best estimates are likely to involve multiple complementary methods, such as direct counting, aerial and map-based imagery, and public transport data.

Of course, knowing the size of a crowd is about more than just earning bragging rights for politicians. It is a crucial part of crowd management and safety monitoring at large events such as sports fixtures and music concerts.

Aerial monitoring can also spot dangerous crowd congestion or unexpected behaviour, and first responders can be provided with an estimate of the number of people who may need help or treatment in the case of an emergency.

Read more:
Astroworld tragedy: here’s how concert organisers can prevent big crowds turning deadly

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. 500,000 or 20,000? How to estimate the size of a political rally properly – https://theconversation.com/500-000-or-20-000-how-to-estimate-the-size-of-a-political-rally-properly-172867

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

The most revealing graph presented in Wednesday’s September quarter national accounts is one showing what has happened just beyond the end of the September quarter, in the one we are in now.

Melbourne’s lockdown ended on October 27.

The graph uses anonymised bank account data to show what happened to spending in Victoria as soon as the lockdown was lifted.

Selected Victorian spending data

Spending on clothing, furnishings, recreation, transport and restaurants and hotels surged.

As happened after last year’s lockdowns, Victorians returned to spending pretty much what they had before.

Read more:
GDP is like a heart rate monitor: it tells us about life, but not our lives

The September quarter national accounts released on Wednesday are a statement of their time – they show what things were like when NSW, Victoria and the ACT were locked down.

Australia’s gross domestic product shrank 1.9% in the three months to September, after climbing for four consecutive quarters following the record hit of 6.8% from the first wave of COVID and last year’s lockdowns.

Australian quarterly gross domestic product

The biggest hit to GDP came from household spending, down 4.8% in the quarter.

National spending on hotels, cafes and restaurants fell 21.2%, spending on recreation and culture fell 11.8%, and spending on transport fell 40.8%.

Household final consumption expenditure

But the decline was anything but national.

Whereas spending in hotels, cafes and restaurants collapsed 33% (or more) in each of the states that were locked down, in the states that weren’t, it barely suffered.

Aggregate spending shrank 6.5% in NSW, 1.4% in Victoria and 1.6% in the ACT, while climbing strongly in the states that weren’t locked down, surging an impressive 4% in the Northern Territory and 4.2% Tasmania.

State final demand, September quarter

Nationally, personal saving soared, with the jump centred in the lockdown states as those households whose income hadn’t taken a hit saved more because of concern about the future and fewer opportunities to spend.

The national household saving rate bounded back up to an extraordinary 19.8% of household income from the 11.8% it fell to in March, after hitting an all-time high of 23.3% in the first wave of lockdowns.

Household saving ratio

The bank-sourced data on post-lockdown spending in the lockdown states suggests household saving is already on the way down.

At his parliament house press conference, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg spoke of the unusually high saving rate as a source of future spending.

“Not all of it is going to be spent,” he said. “But it’s a lot of damn money that’s been accumulated”.

Read more:
Four GDP graphs that show how well Australia was doing, before Delta

If household spending had been the only thing driving changes in gross domestic product, it would have been down 2.5%. Working in the other direction this quarter was a jump in net exports and a jump in government spending. Neither business investment nor housing construction changed much.

How much economic activity does rebound will be revealed in the December quarter figures to be released on Wednesday March 2, a month ahead of a pre-election budget set down for Tuesday March 29.

Peter Martin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Sure, the national accounts show GDP going backwards, but look at what’s to come – https://theconversation.com/sure-the-national-accounts-show-gdp-going-backwards-but-look-at-whats-to-come-172950

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Berle, Associate professor, University of Technology Sydney

Naming Grace Tame the 2021 Australian of the Year was a belated but important acknowledgement of the extraordinary courage of many sexual assault and child sexual abuse survivors in adjusting to life and processing trauma following sexual assault.

On ABC’s Australian Story last week, Tame highlighted the importance of accessing emotional support after trauma and said she had been diagnosed with complex post-traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD).

Tame’s advocacy has also prompted others to seek help for CPTSD, a variant of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

So what is CPTSD?

First, let’s look at PTSD

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can arise after exposure to a traumatic event, with symptoms falling into four clusters:

1. upsetting and intrusive re-experiencing of the trauma (memories and nightmares)

2. avoiding reminders of a trauma

3. profound changes to mood and beliefs following the traumatic experience

4. heightened reactivity to and vigilance for danger.

However, there are a multitude of ways PTSD symptoms can manifest. For some, the highly distressing re-experiencing of trauma memories is most prominent, whereas for others, a persistent hypervigilance for danger and threat may be the most difficult aspect.

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

PTSD was first codified as a diagnosis in 1980. By the 1990s, there was an increasing push to acknowledge trauma survivors sometimes experienced difficulties across a much broader range of domains than the initial criteria suggested.

What makes complex PTSD complex?

There hasn’t always been agreement about what characterises a more complex version of PTSD, or even if there is any use in such a diagnostic label at all.

Previous efforts to describe a more complex version of PTSD focused on the nature of the traumatic event(s), for instance, that people with CPTSD may have experienced their trauma in childhood. This may lead to a more pervasive set of difficulties in adulthood.

Others argued repeated or prolonged exposure to trauma throughout one’s life was the key feature.

Yet others suggested particular types of trauma experience, such as torture, were the most reliable way of distinguishing CPTSD.

Another line of research has focused on the consequences of trauma exposure. In this respect, prominent feelings of detachment and “dissociation” (loss of orientation to time and place) were proposed to be reliable features of a more “complex” clinical presentation.

Now there is a consensus of sorts about CPTSD, which acknowledges the wide range of psychological consequences that can follow from the above types of trauma. This is recognised by the inclusion of CPTSD in the International Classification of Diseases 11th Revision (ICD-11), which is based on a series of studies that identified a broader set of difficulties than those typically seen in PTSD alone.

So what are the broader difficulties?

A person with CPTSD is considered to have all the signs of standard PTSD, but also:

1. difficulties regulating emotions, for instance, feelings of anger may seem overwhelming and difficult for the person to manage

2. a negative sense of self, with feelings of guilt and worthlessness

3. interpersonal difficulties. The person may describe feeling disconnected from others, and struggle to feel close to others in their relationships.

It makes sense childhood trauma might put a person at risk of CPTSD. Childhood traumas are often experienced before the person has had the opportunity to develop a secure sense of self, or to learn skills to regulate emotions and maintain meaningful relationships.

However, other types of trauma which fundamentally undermine a person’s sense of safety in the world or trust in others may also precipitate CPTSD. This includes sexual trauma and traumas involving betrayal by a parent, family member or trusted authority.

How common is CPTSD?

Community surveys conducted in the United States and Germany suggest between 0.5% and 3.8% of the population experience CPTSD at any given time.

Some 7.3% of people are estimated to develop CPTSD during their lifetime.

How is PTSD treated?

There are well established treatments for PTSD, such as trauma-focused therapies. These approaches involve a systematic recall of the trauma memory in a safe and controlled way.

Read more:
Treating post-traumatic stress disorder: confronting the horror

However, trauma-focused therapy can be stressful. Not everyone gets better. It also remains unclear whether trauma-focused therapies are as beneficial for CPTSD as PTSD.

For this reason, psychological therapies for CPTSD often include additional modules to support the person in achieving stability in their emotions and their relationships before focusing on the traumatic experiences themselves.

One such approach, which has an emerging evidence base, is Skills Training in Affective and Interpersonal Regulation (STAIR).

Discussions about diagnoses can seem far removed from the lived experience of people who have experienced trauma. Diagnostic systems are based on research, but they are products of committees of stakeholders with a wide range of viewpoints.

Nonetheless, despite all the limitations of diagnostic labels, with CPTSD there is an important validation of the profound challenges trauma exposure can bring.

What should I do if I think I have CPTSD?

If you think you might have CPTSD, a GP or other health professional should be able to provide a referral to a clinical psychologist.

There are also online referral resources that can assist in finding someone with experience and expertise in treating CPTSD. The BlueKnot Foundation also provides resources and referral information.

Read more:
Does the government’s new national plan to combat child sexual abuse go far enough?

If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call Lifeline on 13 11 14.

David Berle has previously received funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), Australian Research Council, Defence Health Foundation and Fortem Australia.

– ref. What is complex PTSD and how does it relate to past abuse and trauma? – https://theconversation.com/what-is-complex-ptsd-and-how-does-it-relate-to-past-abuse-and-trauma-172497

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

How much cash would you need to be paid to agree to live without a smartphone for a year?

If you are like the typical American, the answer is US$10,000 – which is far, far more than what we are actually charged for having and using smartphones.

How much would you need to be paid to live without a computer?

According to the same research, just published by Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, a typical American would want US$25,000 to live computer-free for a year.

For the GPS system that lets us map where we are on all our devices, the answer is US$3,000; for streaming services such as Netflix the answer is another US$3,000.

For refrigeration the answer is US$10,000; for air conditioning, another US$10,000; and for running water US$50,000.

The point of this study, by economist Tim Kane, is that if we add up the worth to us of everything the economy produces each year, we get much, much more than the gross domestic product – even though GDP is meant to be a summation of the prices paid each year.

Not a day goes by when we don’t get astounding value for money: on Kane’s estimate, about 20 times what we pay.

GDP monitors changes, not our lives

It’s a useful perspective to bear in mind ahead of the latest Australian gross domestic product figures, being released on Wednesday.

Those figures will show Australia spent less, earned less and produced less in the lockdown-affected September quarter months of July, August and September than in the three months before – about 3% less on private estimates.

It won’t be a “recession” because in Australia that’s generally taken to mean two consecutive quarters of those things going backwards. And we already know spending, earning and production all started climbing as soon as the lockdowns ended at the beginning of the quarter we are in now.

The GDP has the same relationship to life as a heart rate monitor has to health.

There’s more to GDP than you might think

Behind the headline figure you hear about are actually three different measures.

GDP(P) is a measure of everything that’s produced in the quarter. The Bureau of Statistics has the unenviable job of adding up most things that are produced at market prices (and having a stab at trying to infer market prices where they are not apparent) in industries as diverse as mining, financial services and education.

It tries to count each thing only once, which is difficult because some things are used as inputs to others. Its work is made harder by relying partly on surveys and partly on complete sets of data from organisations such as the Tax Office.

Ask whether it uses guess work, you will be told it uses “informed judgement”.

Read more:
Four GDP graphs that show how well Australia was doing, before Delta

GDP(E) is a totalling of government and household expenditure to buy those products. After adjusting for imports and exports it ought to equal GDP(P), but imperfections in measurement mean it usually doesn’t.

Then there’s GDP(I), which is a measure of the income households and businesses get from working and selling those products. Again, it ought to equal the other two, but it usually doesn’t.

After trying to get the three measures nearer each other (perhaps there was something somebody missed) the technicians in the bureau simply average the three, producing GDP(A). That’s what goes up on the ABS website at 11:30am AEDT Wednesday, followed by a Treasurer’s press conference and loads of analysis.

It needn’t indicate an underlying condition

Just as a heart rate monitor needn’t tell us much about health, because even in healthy people hearts beat slower while sleeping and faster while awake, GDP needn’t tell us that much about the condition of our lives.

A lot of the economy went to sleep during this year’s and last year’s lockdowns and is now waking up. The GDP will show that, but at least on Wednesday it won’t tell us more than that.

As it happens, economic growth has been weakening over time. Annual GDP growth is no longer the 3-4% it typically was between the early 1990s recession and the 2008 financial crisis. In the decade leading up to COVID it has been much lower, rarely touching 3%.

Annual financial year GDP growth

Put starkly, for little-understood reasons unrelated to quarterly fluctuations or COVID, we are getting better off more slowly than we were.

There are always people who say this doesn’t matter, we should be happy with what we had (and as I noted, much of what we’ve had isn’t counted in the GDP).

There is an underlying condition nonetheless

But it matters a good deal, because ever since economic growth took off in the 1870s we’ve grown used to things continually getting better, and have come to expect it.

US economic historian Brad Delong uses an 1880s science fiction book to illustrate how much we’ve come to regard improving living standards as a birthright.

In Looking Backward, Edward Bellamy purports to look back from the year 2000.

At one point a hostess asks if he would like to hear some music. Instead of playing the piano, she merely touched one or two screws and “immediately the room was filled with the music of a grand organ”, one of four she could dial up by landline.

It appeared to him that

if we could have devised an arrangement for providing everybody with music in their homes, perfect in quality, unlimited in quantity, suited to every mood, and beginning and ceasing at will, we should have considered the limit of human felicity already attained, and ceased to strive for further improvements.

He got it wrong.

Peter Martin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. GDP is like a heart rate monitor: it tells us about life, but not our lives – https://theconversation.com/gdp-is-like-a-heart-rate-monitor-it-tells-us-about-life-but-not-our-lives-172762