Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dr Federica Caso, Sessional Lecturer in Peace and Conflict Studies, The University of Queensland

In recent years, Australia has put an emphasis on bringing more women into its defence, foreign affairs and diplomacy ranks. But a new global index shows the country still has work to do to improve gender equality and promote women in security.

The recently released #SHEcurity Index measures women’s participation and representation in politics, diplomacy, military, police, international missions, and security, comparing data from more than 100 countries. It also discusses the inclusion of LGBT+ communities and people of colour.

Australia only features in the top 10 on one list. This is in the number of women in foreign affairs committees of national parliament – Australia has 50% of female representation (ranking seventh globally), albeit with a male chair.

This is a step in the right direction, but the representation of Australian women across other portfolios varies. The Lowy Institute finds women make up only a third of senior management in Australia’s intelligence agencies and the foreign affairs and defence departments.

By comparison, women make up two-thirds of foreign affairs committees in New Zealand’s parliament, with a female chair. New Zealand is also in the top ten countries in the #SHEcurity Index on number of female ambassadors.

In other fields, it’s hard to gauge how Australia compares with the rest of the world due to lack of data.

Australia provided most of the requested data to the first #SHEcurity index in 2019, but didn’t provide statistics in 2020 for many areas, including ambassadors, diplomatic services, foreign ministry staff, military, and police.

Australia’s commitment to women in defence and security

Statistics compiled by other organisations show that Australia has made progress in some areas, but not others.

At the highest level, Australia has made some major achievements in the past decade. After Julia Gillard became the country’s first female prime minister in 2010, Julie Bishop was named the first female foreign minister in 2013 and Marise Payne followed as the first female defence minister in 2015.

The Morrison government maintained this positive trend by appointing Payne to succeed Bishop as foreign minister, with Linda Reynolds now defence minister.

In April, Australia also renewed its commitment to support women in conflict and disaster zones with a new national action plan on women, peace and security. To enable this, Australia has pledged to increase the participation and leadership of women in the security and foreign policy sectors. However, no targets were set and no budget defined.

Data compiled by the Lowy Institute shows the number of women in the Australian diplomatic workforce has been steadily increasing since 2016. In 2021, 49 of the 118 Australian heads of mission abroad (such as ambassadors, consuls-general and high commissioners) are women, representing 40% of overall appointments.

The number of women in the military has also gone up, but hasn’t reached similar figures. The defence annual report for 2020-21 shows that women comprise just 19% of the Australian Defence Force and represent only 31 of 171 star-ranked officers.

A recent study by the Australian Civil-Military Centre reveals a consensus among women in the ADF about the need to create more opportunities for women to achieve career progression and ultimately rise to senior positions.

Australia is tracking better than other countries in this regard. According to the #SHEcurity Index, the ratio of women’s representation in militaries globally is at just 11.4%. Yet, the index estimates it will still take more than 50 years for Australia to reach gender equality in its military ranks.

Read more:
Julia Banks’ new book is part of a 50-year tradition of female MPs using memoirs to fight for equality

The value of women’s participation

The benefits of increasing the numbers of women in foreign policy and security cannot be overstated.

Gender equality is not just about organisational balance and diversity in the workforce. The presence of women in traditionally male-dominated spheres, such as diplomacy and defence, can change leadership styles that prioritise force and aggression. It can also challenge organisational cultures that objectify women.

The inclusion of women also improves results. The representation of women in peace negotiations, for instance, has been shown to improve the durability of peace agreements after civil wars. Female soldiers are also needed in modern conflicts in which civilian women are increasingly targeted.

But to truly reap the benefits of gender equality in foreign policy and security, we must move beyond a focus on women’s participation alone.

Read more:
Diplomacy and defence remain a boys’ club, but women are making inroads

We must also address the factors that prevent their full engagement and progression to positions of power. This includes confronting entrenched sexism in these sectors, including deficiencies in the promotion process for women, a lack of female mentors, and the disproportionate impact of child care on women.

We must also develop a stronger understanding of what security means for women of diverse races, sexualities and abilities, both domestically and abroad.

This involves addressing the root causes of conflict and non-traditional security threats, such as climate disasters, which disproportionately affect women and girls, and how to help women and girls recover from these crises.

Read more:
Sexism in the military: more women needed in senior roles to force cultural change

Shannon Zimmerman is affiliated with Women In International Security (WIIS) – Australia and has received funding from the Australian Department of Defense for the project “Bridging the Gap: New Voices in Australian National Security”.

Dr Federica Caso 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. Women play a critical role in diplomacy and security, so why aren’t more in positions of power? – https://theconversation.com/women-play-a-critical-role-in-diplomacy-and-security-so-why-arent-more-in-positions-of-power-170875

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Barbara Allen, Senior Lecturer in Public Management, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington

New Zealand has a reputation for being transparent and free from corruption – but how true is this really? Recent events suggest there could be cause for concern, especially at a time when government agencies are engaged in urgent and large-scale procurement processes to combat COVID-19.

A report from the Office of the Auditor-General (OAG) early in November was highly critical of the Ministry of Health’s contracting for saliva testing, raising serious issues with the way the ministry dealt with potential conflicts of interest.

Nor was this the first time questions have been asked about the ministry’s COVID-19 procurement processes, with complaints in October about how the ministry procured the software to handle vaccination records. While the OAG eventually found no fault, how the government manages such complex and urgent deals deserves greater scrutiny.

These issues extend beyond the purely commercial, too. Kāinga Ora (the crown agency providing rental housing for New Zealanders in need) is under investigation over a sponsored media story it commissioned featuring Arena Williams. She was then a community advocate but had informed the agency of her intention to run for parliament (she is now a Labour MP).

Emails released by the parliamentary opposition showed officials were aware of her intentions but decided to “proceed as though we didn’t know about her impending announcement”. At issue was the possibility the articles could be perceived as electioneering before Williams announced her candidacy. Agreeing to an investigation, Public Service Commissioner Peter Hughes said:

Political neutrality and trustworthiness are bottom lines for the public service. The matters that have been raised go to trust and confidence in a key public service agency.

These cases raise questions about the rigour of ethical procedures, and about whether individuals can or should speak up, even if the wider organisation or agency has signed off on a course of action.

Warning from Britain

To the casual observer, these stories may not seem that serious – it is hard to point to genuine policy mistakes that have flowed directly from any alleged ethical breeches.

Nonetheless, there are patterns of behaviour that should be of public concern – especially in light of recent events in Britain, where former politician Owen Paterson was found by the parliamentary standards commissioner to have broken the rules around paid lobbying while still a Conservative MP.

Read more:
The handling of the Owen Paterson case is a danger to the entire fabric of British politics

Paterson had been highly paid to lobby on behalf of two companies, including Randox, which was offering COVID-19 testing and tracing solutions, and which was eventually given multi-million-pound contracts without any competitive bidding process.

Following the commissioner’s report the Conservative government even attacked the standards committee and attempted to form an alternative committee to investigate disciplinary processes for MPs. Widespread outrage saw the government eventually back down.

Defenders of Paterson argued the investigation was unfair as it had not taken into account testimonials as to his “noble” motives. While attempts to curb the powers of the House of Commons standards committee came to nothing, the debate in Britain about MPs and lobbying continues.

The ‘noble narrative’ problem

While nothing in New Zealand has reached these extremes, there are elements of the Paterson scandal that serve as a reminder of the need for good pandemic procurement procedures and robust scrutiny of possible conflicts of interest.

Such scrutiny needs to be mindful of what might be called the “noble narrative defence”. Paterson claimed witnesses to another enquiry would support the notion he was acting out of altruism. Kāinga Ora reportedly wanted to capitalise on the success of Williams as a community advocate to promote the agency’s own work.

Read more:
Learning from COVID: how to improve future supplies of medical equipment and vaccines

But good intentions are not enough, so are there ways to ensure firmer policing of ethical standards and procedures?

In 2018 and again in 2020, the international anti-corruption and transparency agency Transparency International (TI) recommended the New Zealand government take immediate steps to improve transparency in state procurement. In particular, TI raised questions about data quality in the Government Electronic Tenders Service (GETS) and incomplete reporting for COVID-19 related procurement.

These are worthy goals, but stronger institutions and rules can’t be the only solution. Individuals in government (and business for that matter) must also embrace the principles of transparency and anti-corruption.

Read more:
A useful guide for CEOs on how to make ethical decisions in business

A good starting point would be the OAG’s “Integrity Town” quiz, which presents a variety of realistic scenarios dealing with conflicts of interest. Similarly, the Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply has short ethical modules that all members are encouraged to pass each year.

Understanding how poor practice becomes embedded or normalised in organisational operations needs further study. During a global pandemic, when the state enjoys greatly expanded powers, this is arguably more urgent than ever.

Barbara Allen is affiliated with the Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply as a member of the Wellington Committee.

James Gluck’s PhD originally received funding from the Institute of Governance and Policy Studies at Victoria University of Wellington

– ref. Ethics and avoiding conflicts of interest are vital in the public service – can New Zealanders be confident in the system? – https://theconversation.com/ethics-and-avoiding-conflicts-of-interest-are-vital-in-the-public-service-can-new-zealanders-be-confident-in-the-system-172752

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tauel Harper, Senior Lecturer, Media and Communication, UWA, The University of Western Australia

When Martin Forsey was presented with a proposal for change at his workplace that lacked a logical argument and used flawed data, he brought a case to the Fair Work Commission. The associate professor at the University of Western Australia argued that such a flawed proposal could not be used as the basis of “genuine consultation” about structural reform, as required under his enterprise agreement.

However, the commission has ruled the university was under no obligation to provide data, let alone accurate data, to justify its proposal. Staff had been given the opportunity to respond to the proposal, the commission said in its judgment. This meant UWA had clearly fulfilled its remit to provide “genuine consultation”, despite having created a proposal using incorrect enrolment data and then ignoring the vast majority of responses.

The term “genuine consultation” was included in the enterprise agreement. Presumably, this was done to imply that consultation will not be based on a cursory or misleading representation of the justification for change. However, while the commission assumed the university had included data that was “proven to be incorrect” because “it believed this data was persuasive”, it did not see this as an indication that the consultation could not be genuine.

The problem with this ruling does not sit necessarily in its adherence to the Fair Work Act. The problem is it simply doesn’t pass the pub test of common sense. In spelling out its finding, the commission outlined the dictionary definition of data “figures, statistics, etc”, but overlooked the dictionary definition of “genuine”:

truly what something is said to be, authentic; sincere.

In the real world, if your manager produced false data to justify the end of your career and called that “consultation”, would you understand that consultation to be authentic or sincere?

No, the manager wants you out, and out you’ll go – regardless of the consultation. That surely means the consultation can’t be authentic or sincere – or genuine. At least as far as the common person would understand it.

Why does being genuine and authentic matter?

In his vast body of work on communicative ethics, democracy and law, philosopher Jurgen Habermas repeatedly states that real authenticity has its own, inherent power. If something is correct, genuine or true, it can analysed almost endlessly because that truth is inherent and can easily be explained. As Habermas writes:

“The democratic procedure is institutionalised in discourses and bargaining processes by employing forms of communication that promise that all outcomes reached in conformity with the procedure are reasonable.”

The process of questioning as a way of finding truth is how democratic systems ensure their legitimacy. According to Habermas, in a legitimate system all claims should withstand scrutiny and interrogation – because they are true!

Our reality is defined by what we can all agree upon by “redeeming claims to truth”, as Habermas put it. So we have courts of law organised around the principle that people will be questioned and questioned again until the truth comes out. Our government is organised around the principle that if enough people can present their arguments, with enough scrutiny of those arguments, then the outcome of those debates should be legitimate.

Only by opening decisions up to cross-examination is it possible to present an outcome that stands up to public scrutiny.

The concern for our society is that Habermas always understood that these mechanisms of democratic legitimacy were embedded in a broader democratic public that would oppose illegitimacy and understand and act upon the inherent value of broad social truths. If this weren’t the case, he states in Between Facts and Norms, “then the experts’ perception of problems will prevail at the citizens’ expense”.

Habermas was an optimist in this respect. He believed democratic opinion and will formation were in some sense guaranteed in liberal democracy. Free speech, a free press and adversarial political parties should ensure some accountability in public statements.

‘Post-truth’ world challenges that optimism

To be accountable is to have to answer for one’s action and be responsible for the consequences. But as people with intimate experience of Australia’s federal politics and employment law are often finding out, this belief in a general demand for accountability seems mislaid.

Instead, politicians and employers bank on the notion that they won’t be asked to redeem their claims to truth and will not be held accountable if they lie or fail to deliver what they promised. This is what it means to be in a “post-truth” world.

The problem then is that people lose faith in democratic institutions that ought to be able to “redeem their claims to truth” but are not able to do so. In this way, our “democratic institutions” too often betray the trust citizens place in them. If enough citizens give up on believing in the legitimacy of our political and legal institutions, we end up in a vicious cycle of spin, deceit and manufactured ignorance.

Following this Fair Work Commission ruling on Forsey’s case, UWA has put sweeping changes in place. These changes have decimated UWA’s critical and social research capacity and ended the careers of many academics who would have legitimately criticised such decisions and their implications. A team of people who have made their careers out of questioning faulty logic have essentially had their life-long contribution to public knowledge curtailed by faulty logic. As a result, more faulty logic will go unquestioned.

At a time when Prime Minister Scott Morrison has called on universities to focus more on priorities such as the defence industry and less on critical research, Australians should not take our democracy for granted.

Tauel Harper is an employee at UWA Social Sciences whose reserach career is also threatened as a result of the proposal for change discussed in this article.

Jeannette Taylor is an employee at UWA Social Sciences whose research career is also threatened as a result of the proposal for change discussed in this article.

– ref. Low bar for ‘genuine consultation’ set by UWA case feeds into crisis of legitimacy for Australian institutions – https://theconversation.com/low-bar-for-genuine-consultation-set-by-uwa-case-feeds-into-crisis-of-legitimacy-for-australian-institutions-172480

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Lowe, Emeritus Professor, School of Science, Griffith University

Radioactive waste from nuclear medicine facilities around Australia will be trucked to and buried near the South Australian town of Kimba, the federal government announced this week.

The site, Napandee, comprises 211 hectares of government-acquired land, with radioactive waste set to be stored for over 100 years in deep trenches. The announcement comes after six years of consultation with the local community – but, as resources minister Keith Pitt noted, the problem of managing radioactive waste has been on the national agenda for 40 years.

There is a good reason it has taken so long: storing radioactive waste is a complex issue. Radioactive waste is extremely hazardous to people and the environment as it emits radiation, which can pollute water, kill wildlife and cause a number of deadly health issues such as cancer. Even waste with low potency levels needs to be stored away for centuries, so the community should be assured the repository is well designed and properly managed.

Read more:
Japan plans to dump a million tonnes of radioactive water into the Pacific. But Australia has nuclear waste problems, too

Currently, radioactive waste – which results from the radiation needed to perform diagnostic imaging and cancer treatment – is scattered in dedicated storage facilities in hospitals across the country, but the majority is secured safely at Lucas Heights in Sydney.

While Pitt is celebrating what he regards as a resolution, there are three reasons this announcement is premature.

1. Legislative and regulatory hurdles

Twenty years ago, The Olsen government of SA passed legislation to prevent radioactive waste being brought into the state. When the Howard government proposed storing radioactive waste in SA soon after, the subsequent SA Rann government strengthened that legislation.

This means the new proposal will require the current SA government to repeal or amend the current law. This will be difficult, as Premier Steven Marshall runs a minority government and, with an MP defecting in October, he’s likely to struggle to get the support he needs.

There is also a regulatory hurdle. A proposal such as this needs the approval of the regulator, the Australian Radiation Protection And Nuclear Safety Authority (ARPANSA), which will assess the proposal to determine whether it ensures the safety of people and the natural environment.

ARPANSA took the previous proposal by the Howard government very seriously. The process included public hearings at which the Director of ARPANSA was assisted by two scientists – I was one and the other was a Canadian expert in radioactive waste management.

It became clear in the assessment process that the federal government had made no attempt to calculate the risk of transporting radioactive waste from the various sites where it’s now stored to the more secure centralised facility. It simply asserted that the risk was minimal.

ARPANSA was not impressed by this data-free approach. Faced with opposition by the state government and questions raised by the regulator, the federal government withdrew the proposal.

Read more:
Curious Kids: why does the world store nuclear waste and not just shoot it into the Sun or deep space?

2. The waste is more dangerous

The second serious hurdle is that “intermediate level” waste from a nuclear reactor temporarily stored at Lucas Heights will be sent there.

The new Napandee facility will mostly store the comparatively benign “low-level waste”. This includes residues from nuclear medicine, scientific research and industrial applications. Once buried in deep trenches, this poses relatively little risk to humans or wildlife.

Intermediate level waste is much nastier and demands much greater levels of security. It contains long-lived radioactive isotopes that need t
o be isolated and contained for periods of thousands of years – effectively permanent disposal. This is generally seen as requiring engineered underground containment facilities, rather than the near-surface repositories used for low-level waste.

No such facility to safely, and permanently, house this waste has been built in Australia, and the regulator will undoubtedly require assurances it could be safely constructed and managed.

It will also be much more difficult to justify transporting this waste along the roads of three states, given it’s now securely held at Lucas Heights. Transporting nuclear waste comes with risks of accidents or possible theft by terrorists of the dangerous material.

There seems to be no point moving intermediate waste from its temporary storage in Lucas Heights, to temporary storage in Napandee.

3. No consent from Traditional Owners

The third hurdle for the proposal is the opposition of the Barngarla Traditional Owners, who have made clear they do not support the proposal for radioactive waste to be stored on their land.

After the consultation process in SA, a ballot showed 60% of the local residents supported the proposal. But the the Barngarla people say they have not been included in consultations.

In previous decades, our governments have ridden roughshod over the wishes of Traditional Owners and imposed developments they did not want. Today, the Australian public is generally more respectful of the wishes of Traditional Owners.

There will certainly be legal challenges to the government’s scheme. But even if the Barngarla people don’t have the law on their side, they have the moral authority. It will be politically difficult for any government to justify going ahead with a scheme that is totally opposed by the relevant Indigenous group.

Read more:
Uranium mines harm Indigenous people – so why have we approved a new one?

The storage of radioactive waste is the extreme example of an issue that demands long-term thinking. Finding a site must involve serious discussion with Traditional Owners as well as current landholders. There is no need to rush, as the intermediate-level waste is securely held in temporary storage at Lucas Heights.

Prof. Ian Lowe was for twelve years a member of the Radiation Health and Safety Advisory Council, which advises the regulator ARPANSA.

– ref. 3 reasons the announcement to dump radioactive waste in South Australia is extremely premature – https://theconversation.com/3-reasons-the-announcement-to-dump-radioactive-waste-in-south-australia-is-extremely-premature-172766

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sonya Suares, Guest Lecturer, WAAPA, Edith Cowan University

What did Stephen Sondheim mean to me? This is an attempt to bring order to the chaos.

My first encounter with his work is a re-run of the 1962 film adaptation of West Side Story (1957). I am about 7 or 8. It has an immediate effect on me – the lyrics and book especially. The translation of the familial divide in Romeo and Juliet to a story exploring social disadvantage, racial tensions and violence. It is thrilling, young as I am.

At 16, I see a live performance of Into The Woods (1986). I learn theatre can be playful and cerebral and ironic and emotionally compelling all at once. It resonates deeply with me as a passionate and bewildered teenager aching for guidance. Not only does it frame my understanding of theatre, it shapes the way I think about the human condition.

I am 26 and we are performing Merrily We Roll Along (1981) for our final production at drama school. “How will it all unfold for us?”, we can’t help but wonder.

It is a show I revisit over and over as an artist, including with the company I founded, Watch This, in 2017. When a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic has us all locked inside our homes, I play Sondheim’s incredible overture and soundtrack for my kids. We spend mornings dancing around and singing along:

Some roads are soft
And some are bumpy
Some roads you really fly
Some rides are rough
And leave you jumpy
Why make it tough
By getting grumpy?
Plenty of roads to try

Sometimes life rolls you into a ditch and you just have to lie there until you can crawl out. I lean on Sondheim’s music and lyrics to convey this difficult truth to my children.

Realising Sondheim

In 2011, I embark on the project of establishing a Sondheim repertory company Watch This. It staggered me Australia didn’t have one.

It was a singularly daunting thing to set my cap at realising such a weighty body of work with an independent company and all the constraints that entails. You want to do his work justice.

In inviting an audience to see a Sondheim show, I always try to be clear-eyed about how it speaks to us here and now.

In 2014, when we produced Pacific Overtures (1975), it was an election year and much of the political rhetoric was about “stopping the boats”.

Pacific Overtures is set in Japan after 200-odd years of deliberate seclusion from the world, at the moment of Western incursion. It was important for us to ensure the Japanese characters were centred in the narrative rather than being exoticised, with our audience positioned squarely as “the foreigners”.

We see the story unfold from a Japanese perspective, via our two heroes who are sent to the water’s edge to quite literally stop the boats and hold back the tide of history.

We staged Company (1970), a musical about relationships and intimacy, during the national marriage equality debate.

In a twist of fate, we programmed Into the Woods, a story about a motley collection of characters who must band together to confront an existential crisis, in 2020.

In 2019, I was lucky enough to co-direct Sunday in the Park with George (1983) with Dean Drieberg and an extraordinary team. It was an absolute career highlight.

It’s worth pausing for a moment here.

Often, people approach this musical as if it is all about George, the auteur-artiste. But Dot, his lover and muse, is equally important. She makes a stunningly difficult decision to prioritise a future for their child. Her choice is what propels us into act two.

George chooses a vertical eternity: he dedicates himself to “finishing the hat” so his experimental masterpiece may be suspended forever in a gallery. Dot’s choice extends horizontally across the axis of time: she lives on in the generations that follow her.

It is a show about legacy and mortality. Children and art.

An industry in mourning

It is a strange and disorienting thing to grieve for a person you’ve never met. I didn’t expect it to hit me as hard as it has. When you spend a decade inside someone’s works diving deeper and deeper into different worlds and myriad complex ideas, it is an incredibly intimate relationship.

I know I’m not alone in this feeling. Many people all over the world are experiencing a profound sense of loss. The grief within the theatre community is like an electric current. I cried on the phone to a longtime collaborator, because it is hard to explain to anyone outside our community: it feels so unbelievably personal.

Read more:
Here’s to the ladies who lunch: one of Sondheim’s greatest achievements was writing complex women

In a 1988 interview with 60 Minutes, Sondheim was asked if he would have liked to have children. You can see the regret streak across his face. “Yes” he replies, but adds: “art is the other way”.

It is. There are generations of theatre-makers and audiences who have an immensely personal relationship with Sondheim’s work. That is his legacy. His musicals – even those that are 40 or 50 years old – still speak so directly to my own generation and those younger. His works are porous, allowing constant reimagining and immediate, contemporary connections.

Sondheim revolutionised the American musical and changed us along with it. He absolutely changed me. His career is testament to an artist’s need to take risks and transform, to get “through to something new”. And his works refract the beauty and terror and exquisite pain of being alive.

The fact that we reach for his lyrics and music as the very tools for processing his death points to Sondheim’s impact on the world he has departed. It is a giant’s footprint.

Sonya Suares 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. Stephen Sondheim showed me the beauty, terror and exquisite pain of being alive – https://theconversation.com/stephen-sondheim-showed-me-the-beauty-terror-and-exquisite-pain-of-being-alive-172768

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dr Julie Ji, Postdoctoral research fellow, School of Psychological Science, The University of Western Australia

Reports about the latest COVID variant of concern, Omicron, have exploded all over the news. No sooner had we learned its name, it had arrived in Australia.

Waves of familiar dread are washing ashore for many, just when there was fresh hope we would soon put all this behind us. Will there be masks and lockdowns again? Will we need booster shots? What about border closures?

Some will be worrying about getting refunds for their interstate Christmas holiday trips. Many others may be grappling with a sense of déjà vu and hopelessness – wondering how they will get their life and mental health back on track, again.

In August, calls to the 24-hour crisis support service Lifeline Australia peaked at 3,505 calls per day – the hightest number of daily number of calls in its 57-year history. Since the start of this year, 694,400 distressed Australians have called Lifeline for help, often for issues relating to economic hardship, relationship breakdowns, loneliness, and self harm. The call numbers in September stayed just as high, and were 30% higher than the same time last year.

The latest report from Australia’s Mental Health Think Tank shows COVID has compounded emotional, social and financial pressure for already vulnerable groups, including children and young people, Aboriginal communities, women, health care workers, those who are in insecure jobs or unemployed, and those with existing mental or physical illnesses.

As we continue to live in uncertain times, there are things we can do to boost our mental immune system to help us stay as resilient as we can, for whatever 2022 may bring.

Read more:
Delayed graduations, no formals — the class of 2021 has had a hell of a year. They need mental health support, and quickly

1. Focus on nutritious brain food

Pay attention to what information your brain has consumed today – has it been fed a diet of doomscrolling and bad news about things largely outside our control?

Uncertainty makes us feel anxious and fearful, which leads us to pay more attention to negative information in our environment, interpret ambiguous situations as threatening, and worry about how things could go wrong. Our mood shapes what comes to mind, and what comes to mind also influences how we feel. So when we feel bad, negative things come to mind easily, which makes us feel bad – forming a negative loop.

On top of this, if our brains are flooded with negative pictures and information from news and social media, then when we think of our future, our minds will easily be filled with compelling yet distorted negative images and thoughts. This can fuel a negative cycle of anxiety and despair, making us feel hopeless and helpless.

My own research asked people to track how often their mind wandered during a computer task, what they were imagining and feeling. We found people who were less likely to imagine positive aspects of the future when mind wandering were also less optimistic about the future, which was in turn linked to low moods, sadness and anxiety.

Read more:
The shifting sands of COVID and our uncertain future has a name — liminality

2. A daily dose of rewarding activities

When we feel out of control, it can be hard to muster the energy to do things that are pleasurable or that are hard work but ultimately make us feel proud of ourselves. Yet we know this is precisely the time we must keep doing rewarding activities.

Whether it’s cooking, working in the garage, going for a jog, or listening to music, doing things we find rewarding and that absorb our attention can boost our positive emotions, recharge our energy, and even treat depression.

If motivation is lagging, evidence shows imagining ourselves engaged in activities we want to do more of, but keep putting off, can make it more likely we’ll will do them.

3. Connecting with and helping others, helps us

Humans are social animals who need to feel connected to others. A study of loneliness during lockdown last year found those who maintained frequent social interaction with people they felt close to experienced lower levels of loneliness. This was particularly true for those already experiencing elevated depression symptoms.

Helping others greatly benefits our own mental and physical well-being and builds a buffer against negative stress.

We can help others or give them the gift of helping us because it’ll likely make them feel better too.

4. Build a mental toolkit

The right time to boost mental resilience is now – but it can be hard to navigate all the information available. Look for information that’s evidence-based and resources that have been checked by experts. The Head to Health site is a good place to start.

COVID has seen a rise in telehealth and online counselling. If you think counselling or therapy might be useful, you could try an evidence-based cognitive-behavioural therapy course online, such as This Way Up.

Orygen’s Moderated Online Social Therapy for 15–25 year olds aims to support young people while they’re waiting for face-to-face care. It is available in Victoria and will soon be available in Queensland. The Black Dog Institute provides evidence-based digital mental health tools and resources.

Hang in there

Living through a pandemic is testing our resilience and challenging our coping abilities in ways they’ve never been challenged before. But new tools, expert advice and support is available.

If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call Lifeline on 13 11 14.

Julie Ji receives funding from the Forrest Research Foundation, the Raine Medical Foundation, and the WA Department of Health.

– ref. Not again … how to protect your mental health in the face of uncertainty and another COVID variant – https://theconversation.com/not-again-how-to-protect-your-mental-health-in-the-face-of-uncertainty-and-another-covid-variant-172847

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Garnett, Professor of Conservation and Sustainable Livelihoods, Charles Darwin University

Up to 216 Australian birds are now threatened – compared with 195 a decade ago – and climate change is now the main driver pushing threatened birds closer to extinction, landmark new research has found.

The Mukarrthippi grasswren is now Australia’s most threatened bird, down to as few as two or three pairs. But 23 Australian birds became less threatened over the past decade, showing conservation actions can work.

The findings are contained in a new action plan released today. Last released in 2011, the action plan examines the extinction risk facing the almost 1,300 birds in Australia and its territories. We edited the book, written by more than 300 ornithologists.

Without changes, many birds will continue to decline or be lost altogether. But when conservation action is well resourced and implemented, we can avoid these outcomes.

The numbers tell the story

The 216 Australian birds now at risk of extinction comprise:

• 23 critically endangered
• 74 endangered
• 87 vulnerable
• 32 near-threatened.

This is up from 134 birds in 1990 and 195 a decade ago.

We assessed the risk of extinction according to the categories and criteria set by the International Union for Conservation of Nature in its Red List of threatened species.

As the below graph shows, the picture of bird decline in Australia is not pretty – especially when compared to the global trend.

What went wrong?

Birds are easily harmed by changes in their ecosystems, including introduced species, habitat loss, disturbance to breeding sites and bushfires. Often, birds face danger on many fronts. The southeastern glossy black cockatoo, for example, faces no less than 20 threats.

Introduced cats and foxes kill millions of birds each year and are considered a substantial extinction threat to 37 birds.

Land clearing and overgrazing are a serious cause of declines for 55 birds, including the swift parrot and diamond firetail. And there is now strong evidence climate change is driving declines in many bird species.

A good example is the Wet Tropics of far north Queensland. Monitoring at 1,970 sites over 17 years has shown the local populations of most mid- and high-elevation species has declined exactly as climate models predicted. Birds such as the fernwren and golden bowerbird are being eliminated from lower, cooler elevations as temperatures rise.

As a result, 17 upland rainforest birds are now listed as threatened – all due to climate change.

The Black Summer bushfires of 2019-20 – which were exacerbated by climate change – contributed to the listing of 27 birds as threatened.

We estimate that in just one day alone – January 6, 2020 – about half the population of all 16 bird species endemic or largely confined to Kangaroo Island were incinerated, including the tiny Kangaroo Island southern emu-wren.

Some 91 birds are threatened by droughts and heatwaves. They include what’s thought to be Australia’s rarest bird, the Mukarrthippi grasswren of central west New South Wales, where just two or three pairs survive.

Climate change is also pushing migratory shorebirds towards extinction. Of the 43 shorebirds that come to Australia after breeding in the Northern Hemisphere, 25 are now threatened. Coastal development in East Asia is contributing to the decline, destroying and degrading mudflat habitat where the birds stop to rest and eat.

But rising seas as a result of climate change are also consuming mudflats on the birds’ migration route, and the climate in the birds’ Arctic breeding grounds is changing faster than anywhere in the world.

Read more:
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The good news

The research shows declines in extinction risk for 23 Australian bird species. The southern cassowary, for example, no longer meets the criteria for being threatened. Land clearing ceased after its rainforest habitat was placed on the World Heritage list in 1988 and the population is now stable.

Other birds represent conservation success stories. For example, the prospects for the Norfolk Island green parrot, Albert’s lyrebird and bulloo grey grasswren improved after efforts to reduce threats and protect crucial habitat in conservation reserves.

Intensive conservation efforts have also meant once-declining populations of several key species are now stabilising or increasing. They include the eastern hooded plover, Kangaroo Island glossy black-cockatoo and eastern bristlebird.

And on Macquarie Island, efforts to eradicate rabbits and rodents has led to a spectacular recovery in seabird numbers. The extinction risk of nine seabirds is now lower as a result.

There’s also been progress in reducing the bycatch of seabirds from fishing boats, although there is much work still to do.

Read more:
Australia’s smallest fish among 22 at risk of extinction within two decades

Managing threats

The research also examined the impact of each threat to birds – from which we can measure progress in conservation action. For 136 species, we are alarmingly ignorant about how to reduce the threats – especially climate change.

Some 63% of important threats are being managed to a very limited extent or not at all. And management is high quality for just 10% of “high impact” threats. For most threats, the major impediments to progress is technical – we don’t yet know what to do. But a lack of money also constrains progress on about half the threats.

What’s more, there’s no effective monitoring of 30% of the threatened birds, and high-quality monitoring for only 27%.

Nevertheless, much has been achieved since the last action plan in 2010. We hope the new plan, and the actions it recommends, will mean the next report in 2030 paints a more positive picture for Australian birds.

Read more:
Australia’s threatened species protections are being rewritten. But what’s really needed is money and legal teeth

Stephen Garnett receives funding from the Australian Research Council and was a Director of the Threatened Species Recovery Hub of the National Environment Science Program. He coordinates the Threatened Species Committee of BirdLife Australia

Barry Baker is a Fellow of BirdLife Australia, was a Board member until May 2021, and current Chair of the Australasian Seabird Group. He currently works as an environmental consultant and has been contracted by the Australian government over the last 20 years to provide expert advice on a range of environmental issues.

– ref. More than 200 Australian birds are now threatened with extinction – and climate change is the biggest danger – https://theconversation.com/more-than-200-australian-birds-are-now-threatened-with-extinction-and-climate-change-is-the-biggest-danger-172751

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hannah Della Bosca, PhD Candidate and Research Assistant at Sydney Environment Institute, University of Sydney

In the rocky upland wilderness of Wiradjuri Country two hours west of Sydney lies a new protected area with a nine-decade-long history of dogged environmental activism: the Gardens of Stone.

Last month, the New South Wales government officially recognised the Gardens of Stone as a State Conservation Area within the National Parks estate. First proposed in 1932 and with a small portion of the area designated as National Park in 1994, this decision will see more than 30,000 hectares finally protected.

The government has also earmarked the region for ecotourism. With its epic gorges, the globally unique hanging swamps of Newnes Plateau, craggy cliff ravines and slot canyons, this 250-million-year-old geological landscape is a paradise for adventurers.

But more than anything, the Gardens of Stone is, as stalwart campaigner Julie Favell puts it, a “storybook of nature”. This is no simple story, but one of a generational mining community on the brink of social change and an often thankless, hard-won battle for ecological recognition in the heart of coal country.

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Sandstone towers and rare wildlife

Towering sandstone and iron-banded pagoda formations are what you’d most likely find on a Gardens of Stone postcard. These intricately weathered structures breach the eucalyptus canopy and cluster on a cliff, like a cross between the temples of Angkor Wat and a massive beehive complex.

For close and curious observers, there are also smaller, less dramatic icons. Rare wildflowers abound, including countless native orchids and the pagoda daisy, which grows only in rocky crags. In fact, the park is home to more than 40 threatened species, including the regent honeyeater and the spotted-tail quoll.

A humble jewel of the Gardens of Stone is its endangered upland peat swamps. Resembling a meadow clearing, up close these swamps form watery spongescapes that function as both kitchen and nursery to hundreds of local species. Inhabitants include the endangered Blue Mountains water-skink and giant dragonfly.

These upland swamps on sandstone are found nowhere else in the world, and they play a critical role in regional water and climate resilience, as they store carbon and mediate flooding and drought.

A rocky battle

The environmental features of the Gardens of Stone are so intertwined with local, state and national conservation efforts that to tell the story of one is to tell the story of the other.

Local environment groups have worked relentlessly to demonstrate the geological heritage of the pagodas in the face of open cut mining. They have documented the impacts of mining on swamps and waterways, tried to hold companies accountable for their destruction, and recorded the presence of many hundreds of previously undocumented plant and animal species in an effort to have the area’s value formally recognised.

This long campaign has also been the subject of legal battles in the courts of NSW. The last two decades in particular have seen, for example, countless petitions, public events, environmental testing and monitoring projects, and the task of sifting through technical mining documents with each new mining proposal.

Two mines are currently in operation within the conservation area, with an extension to an existing site proposed. The most significant impacts from mining in recent decades have been sandstone cracking, causing swamps to dry out and die, and disruptions to upland water flows and regional water quality.

Conserving the Gardens of Stone has been an uphill battle in overcoming indifference and opposition.

At the local level, environmental impacts from mining were derided as inconsequential in the face of mining employment, with campaigners bearing the brunt of distrust and hostility from pro-coal locals towards their perceived interference.

At the state level, hard-won environmental protections were overthrown in favour of mining approvals. In 2017, the NSW government weakened laws to allow mining extensions that impacted Sydney’s drinking water quality, with likely damage to legally protected swamps within the Gardens of Stone not addressed.

Due to existing mining developments, the extended Gardens of Stone isn’t officially designated as a National Park, but is instead a “conservation area”. This means any new developments, such as extensions to mines, must use processes that support conservation requirements.

Transitioning away from coal

Hopefully, encouraging responsible developments will avoid further ecological damage and help enable a smoother economic transition away from coal in the coming decades.

Despite Australia’s national climate strategy remaining entrenched in coal, local coal prospects are winding down. This seems heralded by last week’s demolition of Wallerawang Power Station just outside the new conservation area.

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

The new conservation area comes with a A$50 million investment, and will see hundreds of thousands of visitors flocking to explore a range of proposed new attractions. Chief among these will be the Lost City Adventure Experience, featuring Australia’s longest zipline and an elevated canyon walk, as well as a rock-climbing route and a six day wilderness track. These attractions are expected to create an extra 200 jobs.

This new pivot towards ecotourism provides an example of a strategic and environmentally just transition pathway for the coal community in practice.

The Gardens of Stone victory may reflect a new dawn of negotiation that could mark an end to the often antagonistic view of conservation as a threat to local livelihoods in this area.

This victory and vision belongs squarely with its environmental campaigners, some of whom have given over 30 years of sustained and dedicated effort to make it a reality.

As the world’s attention is increasingly turned towards climate action, the success of this campaign may provide the surge of momentum we need for a more sustainable future.

Read more:
The Blue Mountains World Heritage site has been downgraded, but it’s not too late to save it

Hannah Della Bosca grew up in Lithgow within a coal mining family and is a supporter of the Lithgow Environment Group, a founding member of the Gardens of Stone Alliance. She has no official role within the organisation nor any campaign associated with the proposal, but has conducted associated research in this area since 2016.

– ref. Breathtaking wilderness in the heart of coal country: after a 90-year campaign, Gardens of Stone is finally protected – https://theconversation.com/breathtaking-wilderness-in-the-heart-of-coal-country-after-a-90-year-campaign-gardens-of-stone-is-finally-protected-172503

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kristina Nicholls, Director, Academic Integrity, Torrens University Australia

When students use a commercial contract cheating service, getting caught by their lecturers is just one of many serious consequences that could damage them and those who trust them. They also expose themselves to blackmail and extortion. Despite these risks, one in ten students at Australian higher education institutions have used a commercial cheating service to complete an assessment, according to survey findings presented at the inaugural Australian Academic Integrity Network Forum 2021 (AAIN) hosted by Torrens University.

Read more:
1 in 10 uni students submit assignments written by someone else — and most are getting away with it

With sophisticated artificial intelligence and indeed sinister forces coming into play, there is a growing urgency for higher education institutions to act on this increasing threat to academic integrity. The threat isn’t just to the reputation of institutions. It also places students at risk.

When students fill in their credit card number to complete a purchase from a contract cheating service, they are doing business with unscrupulous gremlins. They risk heading down a sinister black hole of extortion and blackmail using the threat of exposure to their university or employer.

Services have found a new income stream

Extortion is the new name of the game. Contract-cheating gremlins have turned to blackmail as an ongoing source of income from students. They threaten to tell the university the student has bought an assignment unless the student pays up.

Students can be blackmailed even after finishing their degrees when the gremlins threaten to expose their cheating behaviour to employers.

If the student refuses to pay up, then the gremlins get to work on destroying their credibility. The university can revoke the degree the student “earned”. The student loses their qualification and potentially their career and suffers reputational damage and financial loss.

Contract cheating starts off as a rational approach to getting an assignment done quickly and easily. As the student descends the morality ladder, the lines between right and wrong become blurred. The student who engages in academic misconduct is laying the foundations for unethical conduct in the workplace.

There is strong evidence that cheating as a student can lay the foundations for unethical behaviour in life and as members of society.

When the US audit watchdog fined KPMG Australia A$615,000 following major cheating in its workplace, it revealed the dangers of the normalisation of these practices in society. Similarly, ASIC is suing the ANZ Bank for breaching the Credit Act by allegedly paying commissions to unlicensed third parties who referred borrowers to the bank for loans. Bank representatives overlooked these actions in an attempt to achieve sales targets for bonuses.

Gremlins are smart. They advertise their services as assignment help and tutors 24/7, in an attempt to normalise the practice of cheating.

Students then unknowingly open themselves up to a raft of offences, including misrepresentation, fraud, forgery and financial advantage from crime. When a student submits a bought assignment and completes the cover sheet stating that it’s their own work, it could be considered fraud because they are making a false or misleading statement. The financial advantage from this action would be the avoidance of retaking a subject and saving on course fees.

It’s potentially an act of forgery when a student submits a fabricated assignment and the university considers it to be original work, legitimately created by the student. So far no students have been charged with fraud for submitting a contract-cheated assessment in Australia.

Read more:
Artificial intelligence is getting better at writing, and universities should worry about plagiarism

What is being done about cheating?

The Australian government’s introduction of anti-cheating laws in 2020 offers some hope of reining in the gremlins. The first successful prosecution by the higher education regulator, the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA), resulted in the blocking of two illegal cheating websites.

The new law also makes the promotion and selling of contract cheating services illegal. Penalties include up to two years’ jail and a fine of $110,000.

By their very nature, these services are not exemplars of integrity and ethical behaviour. They blackmail their customers and exploit the so-called “academic” writers they employ. They are now also recruiting students to on-sell their services, exposing them to the risk of a criminal record.

Read more:
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Individuals make a significant investment in their education. But if they turn to cheating, their actions can have far-reaching consequences for their lives. They also harm those around them – their families, partners, employers and society in general.

While the AAIN Forum identified some strategies to encourage students to rethink cheating, it is critical that we create a robust culture of academic integrity across our institutions. Appreciating the true value of a well-earned degree will be just as important as the law in keeping the cheat gremlins at bay.

Let the student buyer beware!

Kristina Nicholls 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. Students who cheat don’t just have to worry about getting caught. They risk blackmail and extortion – https://theconversation.com/students-who-cheat-dont-just-have-to-worry-about-getting-caught-they-risk-blackmail-and-extortion-172403

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Miles Pattenden, Senior Research Fellow, Institute for Religion and Critical Inquiry/Gender and Women’s History Research Centre, Australian Catholic University

Giovanni di Lorenzo de’ Medici, who died 500 years ago today, has a claim to be one of the most miscast popes of all time.

Perhaps the youngest pontiff of the last thousand years, he was the last non-priest to be elected as pope – and he remains the only pope to have kept a pet elephant.

Giovanni’s reign as Leo X (1513-21) marked the highest point of the Renaissance’s flowering in Rome. However, it also saw the birth of the Reformation, the greatest rupture in Christianity since the East-West Schism of 1054.

History has not always been kind to Leo. Protestant divines railed against his decadence and corruption. Catholic scholars drew attention to his patronage of supreme artistic accomplishments yet still lamented his fecklessness in not anticipating the import of what was going on around him.

Read more:
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The young pope

Born on December 11 1475, like many second sons of the elite, Giovanni was destined for a career in the Church. And they made clerics young in Renaissance Italy: he went to Rome to be a cardinal aged just 13.

Yet Giovanni’s first decades at the papal court were quiet ones. His family lost power in Florence at the start of the Italian Wars in 1494, which diminished his clout. Only in 1512, when the Medici regime was restored, did his star rise.

A valued lieutenant to Julius II – the Warrior Pope who drove French armies out of Italy – Giovanni was rewarded in the papal election that followed Julius’ death in 1513.

In agony with an anal fistula, he needed to be carried into the Vatican on a sedan chair and was operated on during the conclave.

Maybe out of sympathy for his discomfort, or perhaps because they thought his ailments precluded a long pontificate, the other cardinals surprised many by voting for him.

His unlikely candidacy carried the day.

Vain, capricious and cruel

As pope, Leo X was an enigmatic figure. Full of outward generosity and congenial friendliness, he loved music and is notable for his role in building up the papal choir. But Leo could also be vain, capricious and cruel.

In 1517, he sentenced a 26-year-old cardinal, Alfonso Petrucci, to death on spurious charges. The case shocked because it had no real precedent and the Petrucci were Medici rivals in Tuscan politics, not Catholicism’s religious opponents.

Leo read voraciously and could take a joke about himself. When the satirist Pietro Aretino mocked him mercilessly, both for his excessive love of luxury and for his improper sexual tastes, Leo rewarded him.

Leo took a particular interest in a 16-year-old boy, Marcantonio Flaminio, whom he tried to shower with gifts (the boy’s father would have none of it). But Leo was not so diligent with his liturgical duties. Why should he have been, when he had not yet been consecrated as a priest, let alone bishop, when he became pope?

His rise through the Church’s ranks – rushed through in just a few days in the lead up to his coronation – remains one of the fastest in history and attests to the very different mores of the age.

Giovanni’s elephant

Besides being the first pope to kill a cardinal, Leo is also renowned for his pet elephant Hanno.

A gift from King Manuel I of Portugal, Hanno lived in an enclosure in the Vatican’s Belvedere courtyard from 1514. Leo commissioned art and poems to celebrate their friendship:

In the Belvedere before the great Pastor
Was conducted the trained elephant
Dancing with such grace and such love
That hardly better would a man have danced:
And then with its trunk such a great noise
It made, that the entire place was deafened:
And stretching itself on the ground to kneel
It then straightened up in reverence to the Pope,
And to his entourage.

Hanno died aged seven, after being fed a laxative mixed with gold. Leo was distraught. He buried Hanno in the Vatican and personally composed an epitaph for his tomb.

Hanno did not live to see what historians now see as the most significant event of Leo’s papal reign: the day in October 1517 when an obscure German friar called Martin Luther appended his Ninety-Five Theses to a church door in Wittenberg.

Leo was an early target of Luther’s criticisms. He was the one who had given permission for the sale of so-called “indulgences” which Luther targeted. These financial instruments were claimed to give those who purchased them remission from doing time in Purgatory to atone for their sins.

Luther found that proposition theologically suspect and morally obscene.

Leo responded cautiously to Luther at first, encouraging debate. Yet he lost patience and excommunicated Luther on January 3 1521. By then, Luther had branded Leo as the Antichrist.

Read more:
Revisiting the Reformation: how passions sparked a religious revolution 500 years ago

Leo’s legacy

Luther never succeeded in persuading all Christian Europe to abandon its support for the papacy, but nor did Leo’s successors contain the movement he created. For many, Luther’s teachings became a spiritual equivalent to the laxative which Leo had so unwisely fed to Hanno. They purged the Church of adulterations which they came to feel Leo himself embodied.

For Catholics, Leo’s reign has come to be understood as a turning point when the papacy’s worldly predicaments reached their unfortunate crescendo.

Half a millennium on, Leo’s story, a giddy tale of ostentation, hubris, intrigue, and superfluous vice, still entertains – not least because it reminds us ecclesiastical oddities and papal scandals are nothing new.

We should remember Leo as a man who bore witness to, and helped shape, key developments in European History. He was also an unusually emblematic figure for a rich Renaissance culture whose legacies still resonate around us today.

Miles Pattenden has previously received research funding from the British Academy, the European Commission, and the Government of Spain.

– ref. The ostentatious story of the ‘young pope’ Leo X: his pet elephant, the cardinal he killed and his anal fistula – https://theconversation.com/the-ostentatious-story-of-the-young-pope-leo-x-his-pet-elephant-the-cardinal-he-killed-and-his-anal-fistula-171499

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

The Morrison government is setting up a parliamentary inquiry to put big tech companies “under the microscope” over dangers posed to people’s wellbeing by toxic material on their sites.

In its latest strike against big tech, Scott Morrison said the move built on the weekend announcement that the government would legislate “to unmask anonymous online trolls”.

“Mums and dads are rightly concerned about whether big tech is doing enough to keep their kids safe online,” he said.

The House of Representatives select committee on social media and online safety will be chaired by Lucy Wicks, MP for the NSW seat of Robertson. It will begin hearings in December and report in mid February.

In political terms, the government believes it is tapping into strong community concerns about the conduct of big tech and the risks posed to children.

The inquiry is expected to invite evidence from Tayla Harris, Adam Goodes and Erin Molan, who have been victims of trolling.

Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen will also be invited. A former employee of Facebook, Haugen earlier this year left the company taking a massive trove of documents, including research reports, which she provided to the media. She later outing herself as the source.

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She said: “The thing I saw at Facebook over and over again was there were conflicts of interest between what was good for the public and what was good for Facebook. And Facebook, over and over again, chose to optimise for its own interests, like making more money.”

She has provided material to officials bodies in the US, and given evidence to British and European parliamentary hearings as well as congresssional hearings.

Communications Minister Paul Fletcher said, “The troubling revelations from a Facebook whistleblower have amplified existing concerns in the community”.

He said organisations and individuals would have an opportunity through the inquiry “to air their concerns” and big tech would have the opportunity “to account for its own conduct”. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok will be asked to take part.

Australia had led the world in regulating social media, Fletcher said. It had established the world’s first dedicated online safety watchdog in 2015. This year the Online Safety Act had been passed to give the eSafety Commissioner stronger powers to direct the removal of online abuse.

Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister for Mental Health and Suicide Prevention, David Coleman, accused social media platforms of putting profits ahead of children’s safety.

He said even before COVID, in Australia there had been an increase in signs of distress and mental ill health among young people. Social media was part of this problem.

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“In a 2018 headspace survey of over 4000 young people aged 12 to 25, social media was nominated as the main reason youth mental health is getting worse. And the recent leak of Facebook’s own internal research demonstrates the impact social media platforms can have on body image and the mental health of young people.

“We know that we can’t trust social media companies to act in the best interests of children, so we’re going to force them to,” Coleman said.

Under its terms of reference the inquiry will look at the range of harms that may be faced by Australians on social media and other online platforms, including harmful content and harmful conduct.

It will investigate the potential harm to mental health and wellbeing, and the extent to which algorithms used by platforms permit, increase or reduce harm.

Also under scrutiny will be identity verification and age assurance policies, and the effectiveness and takeup of industry measures to keep people, especially children, safe online, and to give parents the tools for protecting their children.

An exposure draft of the anti-trolling bill will be released on Wednesday.

Under this legislation, social media platforms would have to reveal the identity of those posting defamatory material anonymously.

Morrison said earlier this week, “The online world should not be a Wild West where bots and bigots and trolls and others are anonymously going around and can harm people and hurt people”.

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. Parliamentary inquiry to put behaviour of ‘big tech’ under scrutiny – https://theconversation.com/parliamentary-inquiry-to-put-behaviour-of-big-tech-under-scrutiny-172878

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

As well as Michelle Grattan’s usual interviews with experts and politicians about the news of the day, Politics with Michelle Grattan now includes “Word from The Hill”, where all things political will be discussed with members of The Conversation’s politics team.

This week they discuss the just-released Jenkins Report on workplace culture in Parliament House. This was commissioned after allegations of rape by former Liberal staffer Brittany Higgins.

At a Tuesday news conference, Scott Morrison deplored what had been found and promised action, but it will take more than promises to change this culture.

Immediately afterwards in parliament, there was a lot of bad behaviour.

Omicron, the new Coronavirus variant, has arrived in Australia just as the country was about to open its borders to workers and students (now delayed). Although the government is reacting cautiously to Omicron, saying it needs more information, Morrison’s message is that we don’t want more lockdowns, we want to continue to open up and not go backwards.

The provisional 2022 parliamentary calendar, issued this week, includes a March budget. Scott Morrison believes an election framed by a budget is the best electoral course, although the March poll option has its supporters.

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. Politics with Michelle Grattan: Politicians condemn bad behaviour, and then behave badly – https://theconversation.com/politics-with-michelle-grattan-politicians-condemn-bad-behaviour-and-then-behave-badly-172876

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

As well as Michelle Grattan’s usual interviews with experts and politicians about the news of the day, Politics with Michelle Grattan now includes “Word from The Hill”, where all things political will be discussed with members of The Conversation’s politics team.

This week they discuss the just-released Jenkins Report on workplace culture in Parliament House. This was commissioned after allegations of rape by former Liberal staffer Brittany Higgins.

At a Tuesday news conference, Scott Morrison deplored what had been found and promised action, but it will take more than promises to change this culture.

Immediately afterwards in parliament, there was a lot of bad behaviour.

Omicron, the new Coronavirus variant, has arrived in Australia just as the country was about to open its borders to workers and students (now delayed). Although the government is reacting cautiously to Omicron, saying it needs more information, Morrison’s message is that we don’t want more lockdowns, we want to continue to open up and not go backwards.

The provisional 2022 parliamentary calendar, issued this week, includes a March budget. Scott Morrison believes an election framed by a budget is the best electoral course, although the March poll option has its supporters.

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. Word from The Hill: Politicians condemn bad behaviour, and then behave badly – https://theconversation.com/word-from-the-hill-politicians-condemn-bad-behaviour-and-then-behave-badly-172876

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sonia Palmieri, Gender Policy Fellow, Australian National University

In the wake of Brittany Higgins’ shocking allegations about being raped in a ministers’ office by a colleague, Prime Minister Scott Morrison initiated multiple inquiries.

Arguably, the most significant was the independent review into parliamentary workplaces, headed up by Sex Discrimination Commissioner Kate Jenkins and supported by Labor and the crossbench.

The review has been underway since March, speaking to current and former MPs and employees at parliament house and its associated workplaces – such as electorate offices and the press gallery. On Tuesday, the 450-page report, Set the Standard, was released.

As Jenkins observed, parliament house should be something “Australians look to with pride”.

This report represents a wholesale change strategy, and calls for leadership and accountability across a diverse parliamentary “ecosystem”. This new roadmap is grounded in the testimony and experiences of more than 1,700 contributors, including 147 former and current parliamentarians.

What did the report find?

The report included a survey of current parliamentarians and people currently working at parliament house (such as staffers, journalists and public servants). More than 900 people responded.

It found more than 37% of people currently in parliamentary workplaces have personally experienced bullying in a parliamentary workplace. As one interviewee noted:

Frequently, like at least every week, the advice was go and cry in the toilet so that nobody can see you, because that’s what it’s like up here.

It also found 33% of people currently in parliamentary workplaces have personally experienced sexual harassment in a parliamentary workplace. As one interviewee reported:

Aspiring male politicians who thought nothing of, in one case, picking you up, kissing you on the lips, lifting you up, touching you, pats on the bottom, comments about appearance, you know, the usual. The point I make with that… was the culture allowed it, encouraged it.

The report notes a devastating impact on people as a result of these experiences. This included an impact on their mental and physical health, confidence and ability to do their job, as well as their future career, “these experiences also caused significant distress and shame”.

The drivers behind this behaviour

A critical part of the report looks at the drivers which contribute to misconduct in parliamentary workplaces. Participants also described risk factors which interact with these drivers to endanger their workplaces.

The drivers include:

• power imbalances, where participants described a focus on the pursuit and exercise of power as well as insecure employment and high levels of power and discretion in relation to employment
• gender inequality, including a lack of women in senior roles
• lack of accountability, including limited recourse for those who experience misconduct
• entitlement and exclusion, or “a male, stale and pale monopoly on power in [the] building”

The risk factors include:

• unclear standards of behaviour, leading to confusion about the standards that apply
• a leadership deficit, such as a prioritisation of political gain over people management
• workplace dynamics, a “win at all costs” and high-pressure and high-stakes environment
• social conditions of work, including “significant” alcohol use and a “work hard, play hard” culture.
• employment structures and systems, such as a lack of transparent and merit-based recruitment.

Recommendations

There are 28 recommendations in the report.

They include a statement of acknowledgement from parliamentary leaders, recognising people’s experiences of bullying, sexual harassment and sexual assault in parliamentary workplaces, targets to increase gender balance among parliamentarians and a new office of parliament staffing and culture.

The report also wants to see the professionalisation of management practices for parliamentary staff and a code of conduct for parliamentarians and their staff. An independent commission would enforce these standards.

The report also calls for a new parliamentary health and well-being service.

Where to from here

Two key press conferences – from Morrison and Jenkins – accompanied the release of the Set the Standard report. But the change expected by the report requires much more than words – it requires concerted action.

Parliament now needs to endorse and implement a number of key accountability mechanisms to ensure that, as an institution, it ensures all building occupants are safe and respected at work. These include the office on parliamentary staffing and culture and independent parliamentary standards commission.

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

In addition, the report calls on the parliament itself to continue reflecting and thinking through appropriate changes. For example, the parliamentary work schedule is shown to drive a workplace culture that values “presence and endurance” over remote working and flexibility. Sitting in the chamber at 9pm does not necessarily equal productivity, particularly when it is propped up – among political staffers – with alcohol.

There is no simple solution here. Some argue long hours in parliament house mean longer periods away from parliament, in the electorate, with families. Others argue the work day should end – as it does in other workplaces – before dinner. Jenkins recommends parliament does its own review of the sitting schedule. Hopefully this will create “buy in” from parliamentarians, but reviews like this have been undertaken before (and have not led to cultural change).

For this report to lead to meaningful change, everyone in all the many, varied parliamentary workplaces has to take responsibility for the systemic inequality that drives toxic workplace behaviour in the building.

Responsibility is not equally distributed though. Morrison may call for a bipartisan approach, but he currently leads the government responsible for instigating the inquiry and implementing its recommendations.

His challenge will be in convincing the electorate he means it when he says he wants to fix this “very, very serious problem”.

If you or someone you know is impacted by sexual assault, family or domestic violence, call 1800RESPECT on 1800 737 732 or visit www.1800RESPECT.org.au. In an emergency, call 000. International helplines can be found via www.befrienders.org.

Sonia Palmieri provided expert advice and contributed to the Review.

– ref. The Jenkins review has 28 recommendations to fix parliament’s toxic culture – will our leaders listen? – https://theconversation.com/the-jenkins-review-has-28-recommendations-to-fix-parliaments-toxic-culture-will-our-leaders-listen-172858

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Cecile Paris, Chief Research Scientist, Knowledge Discovery & Management, CSIRO

Whether it’s athletes on a sporting field or celebrities in the jungle, nothing holds our attention like the drama of vying for a single prize. And when it comes to the evolution of artificial intelligence (AI), some of the most captivating moments have also been delivered in nailbiting finishes.

In 1997, IBM’s Deep Blue chess computer was pitted against grandmaster and reigning world champion Garry Kasparov, having lost to him the previous year.

But this time, the AI won. The popular Chinese game Go was next, in 2016, and again there was a collective intake of breath when Google’s AI was victorious. These competitions elegantly illustrate what is unique about AI: we can program it to do things we can’t do ourselves, such as beat a world champion.

But what if this framing obscures something vital – that human and artificial intelligence are not the same? AI can quickly process vast amounts of data and be trained to execute specific tasks; human intelligence is significantly more creative and adaptive.

The most interesting question is not who will win, but what can people and AI achieve together? Combining both forms of intelligence can provide a better outcome than either can achieve alone.

This is called collaborative intelligence. And this is the premise of CSIRO’s new A$12 million Collaborative Intelligence (CINTEL) Future Science Platform, which we are leading.

Read more:
Work is a fundamental part of being human. Robots won’t stop us doing it

Checkmate mates

While chess has been used to illustrate AI-human competition, it also provides an example of collaborative intelligence. IBM’s Deep Blue beat the world champion, but did not render humans obsolete. Human chess players collaborating with AI have proven superior to both the best AI systems and human players.

And while such “freestyle” chess requires both excellent human skill and AI technology, the best results don’t come from simply combining the best AI with the best grandmaster. The process through which they collaborate is crucial.

So for many problems – particularly those that involve complex, variable and hard-to-define contexts – we’re likely to get better results if we design AI systems explicitly to work with human partners, and give humans the skills to interpret AI systems.

A simple example of how machines and people are already working together is found in the safety features of modern cars. Lane keep assist technology uses cameras to monitor lane markings and will adjust the steering if the car appears to be drifting out of its lane.

However, if it senses the driver is actively steering away, it will desist so the human remains in charge (and the AI continues to assist in the new lane). This combines the strengths of a computer, such as limitless concentration, with those of the human, such as knowing how to respond to unpredictable events.

There is potential to apply similar approaches to a range of other challenging problems. In cybersecurity settings, humans and computers could work together to identify which of the many threats from cybercriminals are the most urgent.

Similarly, in biodiversity science, collaborative intelligence can be used to make sense of massive numbers of specimens housed in biological collections.

Laying the foundations

We know enough about collaborative intelligence to say it has massive potential, but it’s a new field of research – and there are more questions than answers.

Through CSIRO’s CINTEL program we will explore how people and machines work and learn together, and how this way of collaborating can improve human work.
Specifically, we will address four foundations of collaborative intelligence:

1. collaborative workflows and processes. Collaborative intelligence requires rethinking workflow and processes, to ensure humans and machines complement each other. We’ll also explore how it might help people develop new skills that might be useful across areas of the workforce

2. situation awareness and understanding intent. Working towards the same goals and ensuring humans understand the current progress of a task

3. trust. Collaborative intelligence systems will not work without people trusting the machines. We must understand what trust means in different contexts, and how to establish and maintain trust

4. communication. The better the communication between humans and the machine, the better the collaboration. How do we ensure both understand each other?

Robots reimagined

One of our projects will involve working with the CSIRO-based robotics and autonomous systems team to develop richer human-robot collaboration. Collaborative intelligence will enable humans and robots to respond to changes in real time and make decisions together.

For example, robots are often used to explore environments that might be dangerous for humans, such as in rescue missions. In June, robots were sent to help in search and rescue operations, after a 12-storey condo building collapsed in Surfside, Florida.

Read more:
An expert on search and rescue robots explains the technologies used in disasters like the Florida condo collapse

Often, these missions are ill-defined, and humans must use their own knowledge and skills (such as reasoning, intuition, adaptation and experience) to identify what the robots should be doing. While developing a true human-robot team may initially be difficult, it’s likely to be more effective in the long term for complex missions.

Cecile Paris receives funding from various departments of the Australian Government. She is an Honorary Professor at Macquarie University.

Andrew Reeson has received funding from various departments of the Australian Government and is involved in research collaborations with nbn co and TAFE Queensland.

– ref. What’s the secret to making sure AI doesn’t steal your job? Work with it, not against it – https://theconversation.com/whats-the-secret-to-making-sure-ai-doesnt-steal-your-job-work-with-it-not-against-it-172691

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Zoë Hyde, Research Fellow, The University of Western Australia

Australia’s vaccination rollout got off to a slow start, but we’ve since become one of the most vaccinated countries in the world. More than 86% of Australians aged over 16 have received two doses, and 75% of adolescents have had their first dose. This is a fantastic achievement, but younger children are missing from this picture.

The majority of parents want to vaccinate their children. But kids aren’t yet eligible for vaccination in Australia, despite vaccines being approved for children overseas.

It’s therefore not surprising schools have become a major driver of community transmission, with unvaccinated children making up about one-third of recent cases in New South Wales.

Despite this, some state governments plan to further dismantle public health measures keeping the virus in check. In NSW, this will include scrapping mandatory mask rules.

It’s not the right time to do this while our children remain unprotected.

Additionally, the emergence of the Omicron variant, which might be more transmissible and reduce the effectiveness of our vaccines, shows Australia needs to take a much more cautious approach to easing restrictions.

COVID is not always a mild illness for kids

Adults are much more likely to experience serious illness than children, but kids are still at risk.

During the first year of the pandemic, it’s estimated that approximately one in every 400 children in the United Kingdom who got infected became sick enough to need to go to hospital, and between one in 20,000 and one in 50,000 infections were fatal.

These figures represent the infection hospitalisation rate and the infection fatality rate, and they capture the full toll of the virus, because they are based on all infections, including the asymptomatic ones that don’t get detected.

However, these estimates pre-date the emergence of the Delta variant, which causes more severe illness. Preliminary evidence from Canada suggests the Delta variant is 2.5 times more likely to lead to hospitalisation in children.

This year in Australia, 2% of detected cases in children aged 5-11 years resulted in hospitalisation, although some of these were for social reasons. These include cases in which parents were hospitalised with COVID and were temporarily unable to care for their children.

Read more:
No, we can’t treat COVID-19 like the flu. We have to consider the lasting health problems it causes

Kids can also be left with persistent symptoms (long COVID) after infection. It’s unclear how often this occurs, but in the UK, an estimated 3,000 children have been living with self-reported long COVID for at least one year.

How many children are at risk in Australia?

Because the virus that causes COVID is so contagious, almost everyone will get infected eventually if they aren’t vaccinated.

Even though only a small proportion of cases in children are severe, we can still expect a large number of children to get seriously unwell because there will be so many infections.

There are 3.8 million children in Australia. If we didn’t offer them a chance to get vaccinated, based on the estimated severity of the original strain, we could eventually expect around 9,000 children to be hospitalised and 76 to 191 deaths. If we do these same calculations for the Delta variant, there could be approximately 22,000 hospitalisations in children.

The period over which this occurred would depend on the number of public health measures kept in place. COVID spread rapidly through schools in England after restrictions were lifted. By mid-October, 8% of high school students and 4% of younger children were testing positive.

Read more:
COVID-19 cases rise when schools open – but more so when teachers and students don’t wear masks

This year in Australia, 13 children and 22 adolescents have been admitted to an intensive care unit for COVID (and many more to a general hospital ward), and one child and one teenager died.

It’s unclear how many children could develop long COVID, but England’s National Health Service has had to open 15 long COVID clinics for children.

How does COVID compare to other diseases?

COVID is more risky for children than some other diseases that we already vaccinate against.

Today, children are routinely vaccinated against varicella (chickenpox) in Australia. Prior to the introduction of the vaccine, there were around five to eight deaths per year from this disease.

COVID also poses a bigger risk to children than influenza. During the 2009 H1N1 (swine flu) influenza pandemic, more than 1,000 children were hospitalised and 11 died.

It’s statistics like these that were behind the United States’ Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s decision to recommend COVID vaccination for children.

How can we keep children safe?

Australia should follow the lead of countries that have already started to vaccinate children against COVID, such as the United States and Canada. However this is unlikely to happen until mid-to-late January next year.

This delay means public health measures will be vital to keep COVID under control in the community. As the experience of England has shown, high adult vaccination levels aren’t sufficient to protect children and prevent the virus from spreading in schools.

States that have planned to further ease restrictions should pause those plans until children have had the chance to be vaccinated.

We also need to do more to protect our schools. COVID is an airborne disease, meaning the virus drifts through the air like cigarette smoke. Masks and ventilation can help protect us, but ventilation involves much more than just opening a window.

As the OzSAGE independent scientific advisory group explains, we need a comprehensive package of measures, including the use of HEPA air cleaners, to keep our schools safe.

Even after all of Australia’s children have had the chance to be vaccinated, we’ll need to keep some basic public health measures, such as improved ventilation, in place.

Read more:
COVID doesn’t need to run rampant. Here are 6 ways to keep cases low in the next year

COVID vaccines are very effective at preventing severe disease, but they’re not perfect and don’t completely prevent transmission. Their effectiveness may also diminish in the face of new variants of the virus.

As the sudden emergence of the Omicron variant has shown, the pandemic won’t end until global vaccination levels are much higher. Australia can do our bit by vaccinating as much of our population as possible, while also donating vaccines and manufacturing technology to developing countries in the region.

Dr Zoë Hyde is a member of the OzSAGE independent scientific advisory group.

– ref. We shouldn’t lift all COVID public health measures until kids are vaccinated. Here’s why – https://theconversation.com/we-shouldnt-lift-all-covid-public-health-measures-until-kids-are-vaccinated-heres-why-172625

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Deborah Gleeson, Associate Professor in Public Health, La Trobe University

We don’t yet know how dangerous the new Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 will turn out to be. Early evidence suggests it may be more transmissible than other variants, and the World Health Organization has raised concerns about its potential to spark another global surge in infections.

If currently available vaccines continue to protect us from severe disease and death, which seems likely at this stage, vaccinated people in developed countries should be able to breathe a sigh of relief.

But with a yawning gap between vaccination rates in high- and low-income nations, Omicron could present a major problem for the world. It could cause a further wave of preventable disease and premature death in developing countries, and exacerbate poverty in parts of the world that are already struggling with the pandemic.

And unless governments take urgent action to correct these inequities, we risk the emergence of further variants, some of which may evade vaccines.

Read more:
The best hope for fairly distributing COVID-19 vaccines globally is at risk of failing. Here’s how to save it

Inequities in access to COVID-19 vaccines

By the end of November, around 54.2% of the global population had received at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose. For low-income countries, however, the rate was just 5.8%.

The gap in vaccination coverage between high-income and upper-middle-income countries on one hand, and low-income countries on the other, is particularly stark.

Vaccination rates in Africa are particularly concerning. About 40 or so countries still have less than 10% of their populations fully vaccinated, the vast majority of which are in Africa.

Experts have warned about the inequitable distribution of COVID-19 vaccines since the beginning of the pandemic, so why is there still a problem?

Failure of COVAX to realise its promise

First, COVAX, the global program for purchasing and distributing COVID-19 vaccines, has struggled to secure enough vaccine doses since its inception..

Nearly 100 low-income nations are relying on the program for vaccines. COVAX was initially aiming to deliver 2 billion doses by the end of 2021, enough to vaccinate only the most high-risk groups in developing countries. However, its delivery forecast was wound back in September to only 1.425 billion doses by the end of the year.

And by the end of November, less than 576 million doses had actually been delivered.

This predictable failure is largely due to wealthy countries mopping up more than half of the first 7.5 billion vaccine doses developed through pre-purchase agreements, leaving only crumbs for COVAX.

Chronic under-investment in COVAX (in terms of both doses and funds), and further hoarding of vaccine doses in wealthy nations for boosters, have continued to starve COVAX of supplies to distribute to those most in need.

Read more:
Are new COVID variants like Omicron linked to low vaccine coverage? Here’s what the science says

Failure to deliver on promised vaccine donations

Wealthy countries have been shamed into making pledges to donate large numbers of doses to low- and middle-income countries. But few of these pledges have yet translated into vaccines in arms.

By October 25, more than 1.3 billion vaccine doses had been pledged, but only around 10% had been delivered.

Meanwhile, many high-income countries have ignored pleas from the WHO to hold off on providing booster vaccinations until the rest of the world catches up. Even after boosters have been administered, Médecins Sans Frontières estimates that ten high-income countries will be sitting on more than 870 million excess doses by the end of the year.

Take Australia as one example. It has pledged 60 million doses for developing countries in the Indo-Pacific region, but so far, less than 9.3 million have been delivered. None of these doses are slated for equitable distribution through COVAX, however, and none are currently committed for Africa.

Meanwhile, the Australian government has invested more than A$8 billion (US$5.7 billion) in pre-purchase agreements for 280.8 million vaccine doses for Australians. This is equivalent to more than 10 doses per person.

Failure to agree on temporary changes to trade rules

Some wealthy countries have also continued to oppose a proposal to temporarily suspend trade rules that protect the monopolies of pharmaceutical companies on COVID-19 health products and technologies.

Initially proposed by India and South Africa in October 2020, the so-called TRIPS waiver would enable companies around the world to freely produce COVID-19 products and technologies without fear of litigation over possible infringements of intellectual property rights.

It is now co-sponsored by 63 countries and supported by well over 100 of the World Trade Organization’s 164 member states. The US signalled its support for a waiver in May (limited to vaccines), but it hasn’t formally co-sponsored the proposal. The European Union, the UK and Switzerland continue to oppose it, with Germany a particularly staunch opponent.

The TRIPS waiver, if adopted in the form sponsored by the 63 countries, would cover all health products and technologies needed for preventing, treating and containing COVID-19, including vaccines, treatments, diagnostic tests, medical devices and personal protective equipment.

It would waive rules in the WTO’s Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) that apply to patents, undisclosed information (such as information submitted to regulatory agencies or protected as trade secrets), copyright and industrial designs. And it would last for at least three years from the date the waiver is adopted, and then be reviewed annually.

However, more than a year after the waiver was proposed, discussions at the WTO remain deadlocked.

Read more:
US support for waiving COVID vaccine IP is a huge step

The EU insists it will be sufficient to tweak existing provisions in the TRIPS Agreement that allow for compulsory licensing – exploitation of the subject matter of a patent without the permission of the patent holder. This, however, doesn’t cover undisclosed information, which is needed for manufacturing vaccines.

Many countries, including the UK, EU, China and Australia, are now supporting a separate proposal at the WTO which addresses other trade-related issues, such as export restrictions and customs procedures. However, it fails to lift the intellectual property rights that maintain monopolies on COVID-19 products.

To delay matters even further, the emergence of the Omicron variant has resulted in postponement of the WTO ministerial council meeting this week, where these proposals were to be discussed. While debate will continue in the TRIPS Council in December, momentum to reach a decision in the near-term may have been lost.

Urgent action is needed

Wealthy countries have hoarded vaccines, starved COVAX of funds and doses, released promised donations at a slow dribble, and stalled agreement on a global agreement to lift barriers to wider manufacturing of vaccines in the developing world.

We must do better. The Omicron variant illustrates that clearly the world can’t afford to wait any longer.

Deborah Gleeson has received funding in the past from the Australian Research Council. She has received funding from various national and international non-government organisations to attend speaking engagements related to trade agreements and health. She has represented the Public Health Association of Australia on matters related to trade agreements and public health

– ref. Wealthy nations starved the developing world of vaccines. Omicron shows the cost of this greed – https://theconversation.com/wealthy-nations-starved-the-developing-world-of-vaccines-omicron-shows-the-cost-of-this-greed-172763

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 1980s 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 about our lives – https://theconversation.com/gdp-is-like-a-heart-rate-monitor-it-tells-us-about-life-but-not-about-our-lives-172762

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bronwyn Carlson, Professor, Indigenous Studies and Director of The Centre for Global Indigenous Futures, Macquarie University

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this article includes names and images of people who have died.

I opened #Blackfulla Twitter to find my feed awash with tributes to the life of David Dalaithngu and a deep shared sadness for his passing. As I scrolled, I witnessed a wave of grief and mourning – but also a commemoration of his life and the absolute joy his performances brought.

A member of the Mandjalpingu clan, Dalaithngu was raised on Country in Ramingining Arnhem Land. For many, he was the first Indigenous person we saw on the television or big screen.

To lose him, at only 68 years old, we are reminded how fragile our existence is and how short our lives can be as Indigenous people.

A rich and varied career

Growing up in the 1970s, seeing Indigenous people on the television was rare. I remember the first time I saw Dalaithngu in the film Walkabout (1971). The storyline was indicative of the era, and Dalaithngu’s name was misspelt in the credits.

Regardless, his performance was brilliant.

He next played Billy in Mad Dog Morgan (1976) and Fingerbone Bill in Storm Boy (1976). He was lauded by his Storm Boy co-stars for his ability to perform as if there were no cameras at all. It would be fair to say for many non-Indigenous people during this era, in Australia and internationally, their only exposure to Indigenous culture was through his performances.

In 1977, he starred in The Last Wave. A sci-fi drama drawing on mysticism and the dichotomy of urban vs “tribal” identities, it is not a film without problems. But it sparked for me a love of sci-fi I still have today.

In 1986, Dalaithngu starred in Crocodile Dundee showing his comedy chops playing alongside Paul Hogan.

His sense of humour was second to none. He often mocked the stereotypes about who we are or who we are imagined to be by white folk.

His performance in Crocodile Dundee secured him as a household name across Australia, and, in 1987, he was made a Member of the Order of Australia for his services to the arts.

A political actor

As Dalaithngu matured, so too did the Australian film industry. He increasingly took on weighty and political roles.

In 2002, he featured in Mimi, from the then little-known director Warwick Thornton, poking fun at white art collectors who purchase Indigenous art for its investment potential.

Also in 2002, he starrted in Phillip Noyce’s Rabbit Proof-Fence and, in his first collaboration with Rolf de Heer, The Tracker, for which Dalaithngu won multiple acting awards.

Later, he starred in notable films including The Proposition (2005), Ten Canoes (2006) and Charlie’s Country (2014).

Charlie’s Country, which Dalaithngu wrote with de Heer, captures the complexities of living in a settler society and the often violent and discriminatory policies and practices Indigenous people face here.

Set in Dalaithngu’s own Country in Ramingining, in one scene, Charlie and his bestie “Black Pete” (Peter Djigirr) kill a wild buffalo to eat.

They live without adequate finances to buy food from shops. This is a very real situation for many Indigenous communities in Australia.

The local policeman confiscates Charlie’s gun: it is not registered; he doesn’t have a license for hunting on his own Country. Charlie, who describes himself as a hunter, then makes himself a spear. The police also confiscate the spear, claiming it is a “dangerous weapon.”

For this performance, Dalaithngu won one of the world’s most prestigious acting awards, the Cannes Film Festival’s Un Certain Regard for Best Actor.

A true leader

Dalaithngu paved the way for Indigenous actors in the industry, and was unforgettable. He was an actor who could not be constrained. Your eye was drawn him in every role he took on.

In 2019, in recognition of his contributions as an actor, and to the wider Indigenous screen industry, mob awarded him a NAIDOC Lifetime Achievement Award.

Sadly he was too sick to attend so he recorded a message for us all. He said,

Never forget me. While I am here, I will never forget you.

Although incredibly sick, Dalaithngu wanted to make one more film, and he did. The documentary, My name is G (2020), is an intimate story of his own life.

He reflects on the end of his life and tells us, “my spirit will return back to my Country”. So it has.

From all of us mob, Vale Uncle.

Bronwyn Carlson 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. His spirit will return to Country. Vale David Dalaithngu, the actor who shaped Australian cinema – https://theconversation.com/his-spirit-will-return-to-country-vale-david-dalaithngu-the-actor-who-shaped-australian-cinema-172860

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Roslyn Petelin, Course coordinator, The University of Queensland

In a break from the usual tradition, Macquarie asked the public to choose their word of the year in advance of the committee’s decision. The pundits were betting on a COVID-19 inspired word and the shortlist certainly contained possibilities related to the pandemic: “Delta”, “shadow pandemic”, and “strollout”. And they were right!

Macquarie’s other 16 possibilities included more obscure choices such as “humane washing” to describe “the misleading marketing of a product sourced from animals, deceptively giving the impression that the animals have been treated humanely” and “dry scooping” to describe the “practice of ingesting powdered pre-workout supplements or protein powder without mixing with water or milk as directed”.

Many of the wordsmiths I shared the list with had not heard of most of them. Neither had I. For example, “brain tickler” instead of nose swab.

Nor could we see ourselves using such terms as “hate-follow” (of sites whose content we disagreed with) or “front-stab” (as opposed to back-stab). We were offended by “menty-b” for mental breakdown and not that curious about “sober curious”.

And I’m too fond of proper baking to prepare a “dump cake” by combining the ingredients directly in the cake tin in which the cake is to be baked.

Macquarie has just announced the result of the committee’s AND the people’s choice: both chose “strollout”, defined as a “blend of rollout and stroll”, the word refers to the “perceived lack of speed” in Australia’s vaccine rollout.

Strollout was mostly used in media coverage to criticise the government for Australia’s initially slow rollout of the vaccination program over the past year.

The Australian National Dictionary Centre had already chosen “strollout”, which originated here and later featured on American media.

Oxford Dictionaries had chosen “vax”, which would have been my choice, had it been on Macquarie’s list. Was “strollout” as ubiquitous as “vax”?

Avoiding the COVID-19 direct expressions such as “Delta”, Cambridge had also gone for a subtler but still pandemic-inspired word of the year with “perseverance”, which we can all relate to.

Other words of the year

Collins Dictionary chose the non-COVID “NFT” (non-fungible token), which WAS on Macquarie’s list. An NFT is an ownership certificate for a chunk of digital data such as an image, a domain name, a tweet, or a video. It’s a one-off, not fungible or replaceable by any other piece of data. Christies sold a digital artwork for £50 million earlier this year.
Merriam-Webster hasn’t announced its choice yet. Nor has the American Dialect Society, the first body to launch a Word of the Year competition in 1990. It announces its choice after the end of the year.

You may be surprised that Cambridge has chosen the abstract word “perseverance”. Doesn’t the Word of the Year have to be a neologism like “strollout”?

Well, no! Macquarie usually chooses newly coined words like the whimsical “milkshake duck”, and “mansplain”, which was chosen as Macquarie’s word of the decade.

Read more:
Cancel culture, cleanskin, hedonometer … I’m not sure I like any of Macquarie Dictionary’s words of the year

What criteria do the authorities base their choice on?

As Rose Wild asks in The Times, does a word of the year mean:

a word we perceive to be most used, abused or overused? Or is it one that encapsulates something unique to this year’s mood or events — or can it be both? What’s the point of it?

How is the decision made? Who gets to choose?

Merriam-Webster bases its decision on the frequency of words that are “looked up” in their online dictionary. As does Cambridge. Collins tracks word usage in its corpus database that covers social media and print publications such as newspapers, and uses its team of editors, lexicographers, and marketing and publicity staff.

The American Dialect Society’s choice is determined by a vote of independent linguists. The Australian National Dictionary Centre’s editorial staff chooses words that have been prominent in the Australian social and cultural landscape during the year, though the word is not always one that has originated in Australia.

Macquarie lists on its website a committee of language experts to make the choice.

Read more:
When we needed a new word, Twitter gave us ‘milkshake duck’

Beyond the Word of the Year

The American Dialect Society takes its mission seriously. It goes beyond Word of the Year to Word of the Decade; for the 2010s, it was the singular “they”. Its Word of the 20th Century was “Jazz” (Yay!), and its word of the past millennium was “she”.

The American Dialect Society also chooses words in several intriguing sub-categories. Some previous choices include most useful “they” (as a gender-neutral pronoun); most unnecessary “manbun”; most outrageous “gate rape” (airport patdown); most euphemistic “scooping technician” (a person whose job it is to pick up dog pooh); most productive “shaming” (as in “fat-shaming”); most likely to succeed “binge-watch” (many of us can confess to that), and most unlikely to succeed “sitbit” (a device that rewards a sedentary lifestyle), which is, of course, a pun on Fitbit. Some of us may be guilty of “sitbit”.

My favourite category is the most creative word. Apparently, the Milwaukee Mitchell International Airport provides a “recombobulation area” for passengers who have passed through security screening, so that they can get their clothes and belongings back in order.

Having been prevented from international travel by COVID-closed borders for nearly two years, oh, how I long to be recombobulated again, though not necessarily at the Milwaukee Mitchell International Airport.

Roslyn Petelin 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. ‘Strollout’ has gathered pace, romping home as the Macquarie word of the year. I’d have gone for ‘vax’ if on the list – https://theconversation.com/strollout-has-gathered-pace-romping-home-as-the-macquarie-word-of-the-year-id-have-gone-for-vax-if-on-the-list-172759

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anne Twomey, Professor of Constitutional Law, University of Sydney

Complaints have been ringing out about how few days the federal parliament is proposed to sit in the first half of next year.

The parliamentary sitting calendar for 2022 has just been released. This includes ten days of sittings in the first three months of the year.

Who decides when parliament sits, how often must it sit and what are the consequences of reduced sitting periods?

What does the Constitution say?

The Constitution largely leaves parliament’s sitting timetable for parliament to decide. There are some limitations. First, section 5 requires parliament to meet within 30 days of the day appointed for the return of the election writs after an election.

Second, section 6 says the period between two sessions of parliament must not be 12 months or longer. This means parliament cannot be “prorogued” (formally suspended, with its session ended) for a year or more. But it is more often the case that when parliament isn’t sitting, it is simply adjourned during a session, rather than prorogued. There is no express constitutional limit upon how long or how often parliament may be adjourned.

There is, however, a practical limit. The government cannot spend money unless parliament passes budget bills to fund its annual operations. Parliament must therefore sit at least annually to pass a budget. In practice, it is also needed to sit to pass laws from time to time.

Who decides when parliament sits?

In the House of Representatives, the government effectively decides the sitting timetable. Since 2008, however, that timetable is formally approved by the House under standing order 29. The Senate determines its own sitting timetable, but for practical reasons, both houses usually sit at the same time, except, for example, when the Senate is holding estimates hearings.

The practice, since 1994, has been to have three different sitting periods within a year. There are the autumn sittings that run from February to April, the budget sittings from May to June, and the spring sittings from August to December. The general pattern is two sitting weeks in Canberra followed by two weeks without sittings. Ordinarily, parliament does not sit in January or July.

From 1901 to 2016, the House of Representatives sat, on average, for 67 days each year spread over 20 sitting weeks. The pandemic has recently disrupted the sitting patterns and reduced sitting times. The holding of an election also results in a reduced number of sitting days in a year, as the following table shows.

Why doesn’t parliament sit all the time?

As parliament sits in Canberra, which is a long way from the homes of the vast majority of MPs, it sits in staggered two-week blocks. This means politicians spend time in their electorates, so they can properly represent them and meet and aid their constituents. It gets them out of the hot-house of parliament and back into the real world. It also means that they can spend time at home with their families.

But if parliament rarely sits, doesn’t that mean that politicians hardly work at all?

People often think politicians aren’t working if they are not sitting in the chamber. But attending and speaking in the chamber is only a tiny part of the work of a politician.

Read more:
Politics with Michelle Grattan: Christmas can’t come too soon for Morrison

Backbench MPs spend most of their time working in their electorates, attending public events and working on parliamentary committees, which still operate when parliament is not sitting.

Ministers spend the vast bulk of their time outside parliament administering their departments and other government agencies, developing policy and legislative proposals, fulfilling their statutory functions and participating in cabinet.

Whether a politician is lazy or hard-working has no relationship with how often parliament sits.

Is next year’s proposed sitting timetable unusual?

Yes, it does seem that there are fewer proposed sitting days in February and March than normal, but it is hard to judge against recent years due to COVID-19 disruptions and elections.

The proposed 2022 sitting calendar has seven sitting days for the House of Representatives in February and three in March. The four proposed sitting days in April, eight in May and eleven in June will likely be lost due to the next federal election. This is why people are suggesting that there will be only ten sitting days in the first half of 2022.

That is comparable with the last election year of 2019, in which there were seven sitting days in February, none in March and only four in April leading up to a May election. It is fewer, however, than in the non-election year of 2020, in which there were eleven sitting days in February and five in March, before COVID-19 disruptions occurred, and in 2021 when there were eleven sitting days in February and eight in March.

Overall, it does appear the 2022 sitting calendar is loaded in such a way as to limit parliamentary sitting days in the lead-up to an election, but it is not completely disproportionate to other years, particularly when there was an election in the first half of the year.

What is the effect of fewer sitting days?

If parliament sits for fewer days in the first half of next year, it will reduce the number of opportunities to question the government in question time and raise issues of public importance. It will reduce the opportunities for the houses to disallow delegated legislation, such as any controversial regulations made by the government. It will also reduce the opportunities for parliamentary committees to table and debate their reports, although committees can continue to undertake hearings and scrutinise government action while parliament is adjourned.

Read more:
VIDEO: Michelle Grattan on a crazy week in Canberra

From the point of view of a government with a slim majority and fractious members, the fewer the sitting days, the less the risk of its own members voting against it, and the possibility of being defeated on bills, as the Morrison government was in 2019 on the Medevac bill .

It also provides an excuse not to introduce promised bills or to let controversial matters languish without resolution prior to an election.

Finally, the absence of parliamentary sittings sucks out the oxygen of publicity for independents and parliamentary rebels who lose their parliamentary stage before the people. One can see why the idea of fewer sitting days would be attractive to the government and opposed by the opposition.

Anne Twomey has received funding from the Australian Research Council and occasionally does consultancy work for governments, Parliaments and inter-governmental bodies.

– ref. Who decides when parliament sits and what happens if it doesn’t? – https://theconversation.com/who-decides-when-parliament-sits-and-what-happens-if-it-doesnt-172861

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nina Hall, Assistant Professor of International Relations, Johns Hopkins University

To understand the agreement states reached at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow earlier this month, it’s important to explore how climate activism has grown and changed since the Paris Agreement in 2015.

Climate activists have played a pivotal role. They have kept the pressure on governments to implement their Paris pledges and to increase their ambition in the coming years.

Two new and powerful climate groups — Fridays for Future and Extinction Rebellion — have been particularly important. Our research suggests they have championed new models and tactics of activism, and also grappled with racism in their own ranks.

The distinctiveness and evolution of these two groups tells us a lot about contemporary climate activism and the direction it is likely to take.

New models, new tactics

Fridays for Future and Extinction Rebellion have ushered in a new era of climate dissent by challenging conventional patterns of protest.

Fridays for Future have successfully mobilised millions of people across the world. Our research shows they have continued to mobilise people, albeit online rather than on the streets, during COVID lockdowns.

Extinction Rebellion have normalised direct action and the use of economic disruption through civil disobedience by occupying spaces in London, Dar es Salaam, Mexico City and Rome. Recently, they glued themselves to the steps of the New Zealand parliament to protest against New Zealand’s lacklustre climate policies.

These two groups exemplify the changes in climate activism over the last decade. Digital technologies enable distributed digital activism — organising which happens around a central goal but allows local activists to develop messages and tactics most relevant to their local context.

Read more:
What lies ahead for Fridays for Future and the youth climate movement

Going digital

The climate change group 350.org pioneered this form of digital organising in 2009 with their global climate action days. This decentralised structure meant anyone could be involved, anywhere.

Distributed organising has also allowed climate activist groups to become more inclusive. Interviews we conducted with Fridays for Future activists suggest the group includes a spectrum of political views among young people who share a passion for protecting the environment and holding governments accountable to the Paris Agreement.

In introducing these new tactics, Fridays for Future and Extinction Rebellion have not only renewed the climate movement, but also accelerated climate action. Germany’s outgoing chancellor Angela Merkel has acknowledged Fridays for Future expedited the nation’s response to climate change.

Read more:
Greta Thunberg emerged from five decades of environmental youth activism in Sweden

Climate activists now have a powerful role to play in ensuring governments implement the Glasgow Climate Pact. They may not only force change from the outside. Governments and businesses are increasingly engaging and hiring young activists to help with their climate strategies.

The new Biden administration, for instance, has invited 19 year-old Black climate activist Jerome Foster II to serve on the White House environmental justice advisory council. Foster spent 58 weeks protesting outside the White House for climate action, and now he’s on the inside.

While this represents a win for activists in their efforts to gain mainstream legitimacy, it remains unclear whether working within firms and governments will drive radical climate policy.

With inclusivity comes greater responsibility

The Movement for Black Lives (M4BL) protests during the northern hemisphere summer of 2020 prompted soul searching within many climate activist groups, particularly as racism has dogged climate groups in the US, UK, Germany and beyond.

In the US, many established environmental non-governmental organisations were dominated by white staffers and had only 22% non-white senior staff, even though non-white ethnic groups make up around 40% of the total US population.

Our interviews suggest the Black Lives Matter protests prompted many environmental groups to look inwards and to diversify who they hired and promoted to leadership positions. Extinction Rebellion had to reconsider its use of direct action tactics in which activists deliberately aim to be arrested as these were more dangerous for activists of colour.

However, institutionalised racism has sometimes proved impossible to resolve. In one instance, a New Zealand chapter of Fridays for Future disbanded because it had, in its own words, become a “racist, white-dominated space” which “avoided, ignored and tokenised BIPOC [Black, Indigenous and Peoples of Colour] voices and demands”.

Not all climate activists have transformed their tactics, hiring practices or organisations. Yet, many increasingly supported the climate justice movement, and have acknowledged the limitations of middle-class “lifestyle environmentalism”. Some climate activists have also recognised the need to place more emphasis on the multiple, intersecting identities of those within the climate movement.

Indigenous communities have long demanded climate justice. Māori climate activist India Logan O’Reilly spoke powerfully at the opening plenary of Glasgow climate summit, urging leaders to “learn our histories, listen to our stories, honour our knowledge and get in line or get out of the way”. We can only hope that states will heed this call and internalise calls for intersectional climate action.

Nina Hall is a member of the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand and on the steering committee of New Zealand Alternative, an independent, progressive think tank.

Charles Lawrie is a member of the UK Labour Party and DiEM25, a pan-European political movement.

Sahar Priano 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. Climate activism has gone digital and disruptive, and it’s finally facing up to racism within the movement – https://theconversation.com/climate-activism-has-gone-digital-and-disruptive-and-its-finally-facing-up-to-racism-within-the-movement-172481

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Luke Daly, Lecturer in Planetary Geoscience, School of Geographical and Earth Sciences, University of Glasgow

Water is vital for life on Earth, and some experts say we should all drink around two litres every day as part of a healthy lifestyle. But beyond the tap, where does our water come from?

It flows from local rivers, reservoirs and aquifers. But where has that water originated from? Over geological time, Earth cycles water through living organisms, the atmosphere, rivers, oceans, the rocks beneath our feet, and even through the planet’s deep interior.

But what about before that? Where did Earth get its water in the first place? Scientists have long searched for answers to this question.

We studied tiny pieces of an asteroid to find out – and we think a rain of protons from the Sun may be producing water all the time on rocks and dust throughout the Solar System. In fact, up to half of Earth’s water may have been produced this way and arrived here with falling space dust.

The water puzzle

We know Earth’s water likely came from outer space early in our Solar System’s history. So, what was the primordial delivery service that gave Earth its water?

Water-rich asteroids are currently the best candidates for the delivery of water, as well as carbon-hydrogen compounds, which together make possible our beautiful habitable blue planet teeming with life.

Read more:
Water, water, everywhere in our Solar system but what does that mean for life?

However, water from asteroids contains a specific ratio of ordinary hydrogen to a heavier kind, or isotope, called deuterium. If all of Earth’s water were from asteroids, we would expect it to have this same ratio – but Earth water has less deuterium, so there must also be some other source of water in space with less deuterium.

However, the only thing we know of in the Solar System with lots of hydrogen but a lower ratio of deuterium than Earth is the Sun itself. This puts us in a bit of a pickle, as it’s hard to see how the hydrogen in Earth’s water could have come from the Sun.

Excitingly, we might finally have an answer to this conundrum.

Tiny pieces of asteroid

Back in 2011, the Japanese Space Agency (JAXA) sent the Hayabusa mission to take samples of the asteroid Itokawa and bring them back to Earth. In 2017, we were lucky enough to be allocated three extremely rare mineral particles from the sample, each about the width of a human hair.

Our aim was to study the outer surfaces of these dust particles in a brand new way to see if they have been affected by “space weathering”. This is a combination of processes which are known to affect all surfaces exposed in space, such as harmful galactic cosmic rays, micrometeorite impacts, solar radiation and solar wind.

We worked in a huge team involving experts from three continents, using a relatively new technique called atom probe tomography which analyses tiny samples at an atomic level. This let us measure the abundance and positions of individual atoms and molecules in 3D.

Near the surface of the Itokawa particles, we found a layer rich in hydroxide molecules (OH, containing one oxygen atom and one hydrogen) and, more importantly, water (H₂O, containing two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen).

This discovery of water was very unexpected! By everything we knew, these minerals from the asteroid should have been as dry as a bone.

How solar wind makes water

The most likely source of the hydrogen atoms required to form this water later is the solar wind: hydrogen ions (atoms with a missing electron) streaming through space from the Sun, then lodging in the surfaces of the dust particles.

We tested this theory in the lab by firing heavy hydrogen ions (deuterium) to simulate those in the solar wind at minerals like those in asteroids, and found that these ions react with the mineral particles and steal oxygen atoms to produce hydroxide and water.

Read more:
Plumbing the depths: the search for water in our solar system and beyond

Water created by the solar wind represents a previously unconsidered reservoir in our Solar System. And what’s more, every airless world or lump of rock across the galaxy could be home to a slowly renewed water resource powered by their suns.

This is fantastic news for future human space exploration. This life-giving water resource could potentially also be split into hydrogen and oxygen to make rocket fuel.

Back down to Earth

So how does this revelation relate to the origin of Earth’s water?

When Earth and its oceans were forming, the Solar System was teeming with objects from kilometre-wide asteroids to micrometre-scale dust particles. These objects have been falling onto our planet (and others) ever since.

Scaling up from our small space-weathered grain, we estimated that a cubic meter of asteroid dust could contain as much as 20 litres of water. So with all the space dust that has fallen to Earth over the aeons, a lot of water from the Sun (with less deuterium) would have arrived alongside the heavier water from larger asteroids.

We calculated that around a 50:50 mix of water-rich dust and asteroids would be a perfect match for the isotopic composition of Earth’s water.

So, while sipping your next glass of water, ponder the curious thought that Earth derived up to half its water from the Sun.

Read more:
How did the Earth get its water? Asteroid sample gives a surprising answer

Luke Daly receives funding from the UK Science Technology Facilities Council (STFC). He is affiliated with University of Glasgow, University of Oxford, and University of Sydney.

Professor Martin R. Lee receives funding from the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)

Nick Timms and Phil Bland do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Up to half of Earth’s water may come from solar wind and space dust – https://theconversation.com/up-to-half-of-earths-water-may-come-from-solar-wind-and-space-dust-172753

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hamish McCallum, Director, Centre for Planetary Health and Food Security, Griffith University

These are very early days in terms of our understanding the Omicron variant. What is known is that it has a large number of mutations, particularly in the spike protein and it appears to be rapidly spreading in specific parts of the world.

Very early indications from Africa suggest it does not cause particularly severe disease (though the World Health Organization has urged caution given the limited data available).

At this point, it isn’t clear whether it has any greater capacity to evade vaccines than other SARS-CoV-2 strains such as Delta.

It is very common for viruses to become less virulent (that is, cause less severe disease) once they become established in a population. The classic example is myxomatosis, which killed 99% of rabbits when first introduced into Australia, but which now causes much lower mortality.

Some experts have predicted COVID will also become less severe as it transitions to an endemic level of disease – settling into a predictable pattern of infections in a given location. It’s possible the Omicron variant may be the first step in this process.

Read more:
Is COVID-19 here to stay? A team of biologists explains what it means for a virus to become endemic

Why some variants become dominant

Evolutionary biology suggests variants are more likely to thrive if they increase more rapidly in the human population than current strains. This means two things: strains with a higher R number (the basic reproduction number, or the average number of people an infectious person will likely infect) will replace those with a lower R number.

Additionally, strains that lead to the host being infectious earlier will replace those that take longer to become infectious. So strains with a shorter incubation period replace those with a longer incubation period. This appears to be the case with Delta, which has a shorter incubation period than the strains before it.

Viral strain evolution needs to be considered in the particular population in which the variant appears. Disease evolution is expected to work differently in a population with low levels of vaccination compared to one with higher levels of vaccination.

In a largely unvaccinated population, like South Africa where roughly 25% of the population is vaccinated and the Omicron variant was first detected, strains with a high R number will stand a better chance of taking hold. But in a highly vaccinated population, strains that are better able to evade the vaccine will be more likely to dominate, even if they have a lower R number in unvaccinated people.

Less severe symptoms may fuel spread

So, would you expect a variant with less severe COVID symptoms to thrive? It really depends on the trade-offs between symptoms and transmissibility.

If symptoms are less severe, people are less likely to come forward to be tested and therefore are less likely to isolate. Some may not realise they have COVID at all. Therefore, a strain with low virulence (meaning it has a lower ability to cause severe symptoms in the body) may be better able to transmit to more people than highly virulent strains.

On the other hand, as appeared to be the case for Delta, some variants can cause higher viraemia than others – meaning higher levels of the virus within infected people’s bodies. The more virus present, the more likely the person is to be able to successfully transmit the disease. This is because of the dose-response relationship – the higher the infective dose, the more likely it is an infection will result.

Again, all things being equal (without yet knowing the details of exactly how specific mutations behave), higher levels of viraemia are likely to lead to more severe symptoms.

It is not clearly understood yet why Omicron is apparently highly transmissible at least in the African context, so at this stage we don’t know whether it produces higher levels of viraemia than other strains. Viral transmission is a complex multistage process, so many things may be responsible for Omicron’s high transmission rate.

Read more:
COVID will likely shift from pandemic to endemic — but what does that mean?

Watch and wait

What happens next is yet to be determined. Experts will look for more information on the transmissibility of Omicron, the level of viraemia it generates and the extent to which it is capable of evading either the existing vaccines or immune responses resulting from previous infection.

Omicron may well behave quite differently in a highly vaccinated population – such as we now have in Australia – compared with a population with very low levels of vaccination as is the case in most of sub-Saharan Africa. Nevertheless, the emergence of this new variant emphasises an effective vaccination effort worldwide is necessary to overcome the COVID pandemic.

Hamish McCallum receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the US National Science Foundation and DARPA

– ref. It looks like Omicron causes milder illness – is this how COVID becomes endemic? – https://theconversation.com/it-looks-like-omicron-causes-milder-illness-is-this-how-covid-becomes-endemic-172754

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dion O’Neale, Lecturer – Department of Physics, University of Auckland; Principal Investigator – Te Pūnaha Matatini, University of Auckland

Despite the emergence of the new Omicron variant, New Zealand will move to a new COVID-19 Protection Framework this Friday, with a traffic light system to mark the level of freedoms for each region.

Auckland and other parts of the North Island that are battling active outbreaks or have low vaccination rates will start at red, which means hospitality and businesses will be largely open only for fully vaccinated people. The rest of the country will be in orange, which allows for larger gatherings but restricts access for those who remain unvaccinated.

From December 15, the Auckland boundary will lift and Aucklanders will be free to travel around the country, despite the ongoing community outbreak in which 23% of cases have been children under 12 and 14% were fully vaccinated.

To travel outside the Auckland boundary, anyone aged 12 or over will need to be fully vaccinated or have had a negative COVID-19 test within three days of departure. This will reduce the number of infected people leaving Auckland, but cases will spread across the country as people travel to see whānau and go on holidays.

As part of our research to build a population-based contagion network, we used electronic transaction data from previous years to derive movement patterns across the country. We show that during weeks without public holidays, just over 100,000 travellers left Auckland to visit one or more other regions.

For the summer period of 2019-2020, close to 200,000 people left Auckland each week, with travel peaking over the Christmas and New Year period. The most common destinations for these trips were Thames-Coromandel (30,000 people), Tauranga (17,000 people) and Northland (15,000 people).

Read more:
New Zealanders are super-connected. When restrictions lift in Auckland, it won’t take much to amplify Delta’s spread

Vaccination remains the best protection

While full (two-dose) vaccination levels in Auckland are almost at 90% — remembering that 90% of eligible people means only about 75% of the total population, with lower rates for Māori — rates are much lower in many places Aucklanders like to visit over summer. This provides much less protection, against both illness and transmission, and any outbreak would be larger and more rapid.

Vaccination coverage in these areas is increasing but is unlikely to be at 90% before Christmas. Holiday destinations also have health infrastructure designed for the much lower local population and face additional pressures if visitors get sick.

New Zealand’s outdoor summer lifestyle might be an advantage; transmission is greatly reduced outdoors with good air movement. But people should remain mindful anytime they move into an environment with less ventilation, such as using the toilet at the beach or sharing a car. A good rule of thumb is if you can smell perfume in the air then there’s a transmission risk.

COVID-19 is passed on through the air we breathe, which is why masking remains important, as long as the mask fits properly.

People planning to travel should reduce their risk of exposure during the two weeks before a trip.

• Skip the office party (especially if they are held indoors)

• consider postponing meetings until after the holidays rather than having them during the days before people are likely to travel around the country

• if you decide to go ahead, make sure gatherings and parties are outdoors

• avoid alcohol as it can increase the likelihood of risky behaviour

• limit yourself to one meeting per week (if someone is infected, you’ll have a better chance to find out and self-isolate before passing it on)

• use your contact tracer app, always

• shop online

• wear a mask anywhere there is a crowd, even outdoors.

Protecting people in regions with lower vaccination rates

Vaccination is the best step to reduce spread and symptom severity. But it’s not perfect. The risk of “breakthrough” infections depends on the intensity of exposure – short exposure to an infected person is less likely to result in infection and meeting indoors poses a higher risk.

When people are vaccinated, we’d expect to see most transmission happening in dwellings where people are together for long periods of time. For anyone with a breakthrough infection, vaccination approximately halves the chance of transmitting the virus.

Vaccination also reduces the risk of developing symptoms, and greatly reduces the risk of needing hospitalisation. But having milder symptoms can make it harder to detect cases, which means it remains important to get tested.

Read more:
Vaccine mandates for NZ’s health and education workers are now in force – but has the law got the balance right?

The most popular places New Zealanders like to visit over summer are remote and people living there haven’t had the same easy access to vaccination as those living in bigger cities.

Nearly a third of Northland’s eligible population remains unvaccinated, the East Cape is only 65% fully vaccinated and parts of the Coromandel Peninsula are also sitting well under ideal vaccination rates.

These places also have fewer testing facilities, which could mean outbreaks become harder to detect and manage. Many rural communities aren’t connected to town supply, so wastewater testing won’t be as useful, and emergency medical attention is harder to access.

Planning to manage COVID infections

Many residents in these remote towns, including iwi leaders, are asking holiday makers to stay away, regardless of vaccination status. Māori are already disproportionately represented in our COVID-19 statistics and have more young people who can’t be vaccinated yet.

By travelling to areas with low vaccination rates among the Māori population we risk compounding tragedy in places where health services would not cope with the level of illness.

Anyone choosing to go on holiday after weighing these factors should have a plan for what they’ll do if they or someone on their group develops COVID-like symptoms while away from their usual health support systems.

Questions to ask include:

• Where will you go to get a test?

• What will you do while you wait for test results?

• Will it be possible for you to self-isolate while you wait for a test result?

• Where is the closest medical centre? Do they operate after hours?

• Is there an ambulance service and how far is the nearest hospital?

• Is there good phone reception? If not, what will you do in a health emergency?

• How would you manage an outbreak in your holiday accommodation?

Campers should take extra precautions by wearing masks in shared kitchens and bathrooms and using their own cleaning and hygiene products. They should keep good social distance wherever possible and minimise contact with people they don’t know.

Family gatherings will also bring together different generations, with elders who may be more vulnerable and younger people who are more mobile and more likely to be infected. A group of New Zealanders who experienced COVID-19 put together a management kit with a list of things anyone travelling will find useful.

We would like to acknowledge the contribution of Kylie Stewart, a member of the team at Te Pūnaha Matatini and the HRC-funded project Te Matatini o te Horapa — a population-based contagion network for Aotearoa New Zealand.

Dion O’Neale receives funding from the Health Research Council and the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet to provide research and advice on the spread of COVID-19 in Aotearoa, including the equity impacts of contagion. He is a Principal Investigator in Te Pūnaha Matatini.

Andrew Sporle runs a research consultancy which receives funding from the Health Research Council, MBIE (via research projects at the Universities of Otago, Victoria and Auckland), The University of Auckland and Ministry of Social Development, Oranga Tamariki. He is a executive member of Te Mana Raraunga and the Virtual Health Information Network.

Emily Harvey receives funding from the Health Research Council and the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet to provide research and advice on the spread of COVID-19 in Aotearoa, including the equity impacts of contagion. She is a Principal Investigator in Te Pūnaha Matatini, and Senior Researcher at ME Research.

Steven Turnbull receives funding from the Health Research Council and the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet to provide research and advice on the spread of COVID-19 in Aotearoa, including the equity impacts of contagion. He is a Research Fellow in Te Pūnaha Matatini.

– ref. As Aucklanders anticipate holiday trips, Māori leaders ask people to stay away from regions with lower vaccination rates – https://theconversation.com/as-aucklanders-anticipate-holiday-trips-maori-leaders-ask-people-to-stay-away-from-regions-with-lower-vaccination-rates-172682

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ben Corey, Adjunct Research Associate, Charles Darwin University

Environmental scientists see flora, fauna and phenomena the rest of us rarely do. In this series, we’ve invited them to share their unique photos from the field.

Native small mammals such as bandicoots, tree-rats and possums have been in dire decline across Northern Australia’s vast savannas for the last 30 years – and we’ve only just begun to understand why.

Feral cats, livestock, wildfires, and the complex ways these threats interact, have all played a crucial role. But, until now, scientists have struggled to pinpoint which factor was the biggest threat.

Our new research points to fire. In the most comprehensive study of small mammals and the threats they face in northern Australia, we found the length of time a habitat is left unburnt determines the number of different mammal species present, and their abundance.

This is important because Northern Australia’s tropical savanna is one of the most fire-prone regions on the planet. Our findings suggest we need to change the way we manage wildfires so we can help native wildlife come back from the brink.

The last mammal stronghold

The remote and breathtakingly beautiful Northern Kimberley is the only place in mainland Australia where there have been no mammal extinctions. Instead, it’s a stronghold for species that are now extinct or in decline elsewhere in northern Australia, such as golden-backed tree-rats, brush-tailed rabbit-rats and northern quolls.

It’s also home to species found nowhere else in Australia, such as the monjon (the world’s smallest rock-wallaby), the hamster-like Kimberley rock rat, and the enigmatic scaly-tailed possum.

But wildfires are a significant threat to these small mammals, as well as many other plants and animals, with many officially listed as endangered or vulnerable.

Fire is a fundamental part of savanna ecology, and up to 50 million hectares burn each year. This means only a small proportion of the landscape remains unburnt for longer than four years.

This fire-proneness is driven by the monsoon climate. Wet season rainfall causes grass to grow rapidly, and a prolonged dry season causes these grasses to dry out, creating fuel. Lightning and other ignition sources from the mid to the end of the dry season from August to December result in frequent and massive high-intensity wildfires. Climate change may be exacerbating this threat.

Fire managers, largely led by Indigenous rangers as well as state government agencies and conservation organistations, use low intensity prescribed burning in the early dry season, when vegetation is moist and conditions are cooler. This produces patchy fire scars that limit the spread of the inevitable wildfires later in the dry season.

There’s ample evidence this approach is highly effective. And yet, mammals continue to decline, and scientists have been criticised for not having the answers.

Read more:
The mystery of the Top End’s vanishing wildlife, and the unexpected culprits

What we found

We’ve been studying small mammals in the Northern Kimberley for the last ten years, amassing the one of the largest datasets for any study in northern Australia.

Our work confirms the critical role of feral cats and livestock (such as buffaloes, horses, cattle and donkeys) in mammal declines. Sites with more cats and livestock had fewer native mammals.

However, the most vital factor was vegetation that remained unburnt for four or more years – whether from wildfires or prescribed burns. Sites with longer unburnt vegetation, including with fruiting shrubs and trees, had far more mammals.

We also tested an age-old debate in fire management: does pyrodiversity create greater wildlife diversity?

Pyrodiversity refers to the number of patches within a landscape, with different times since the last fire, and is something fire managers try to achieve.

However, we found pyrodiversity had a negative influence on mammals. Unburnt vegetation was the only attribute that explained the higher abundance and diversity of small mammal species.

What’s more, the benefits for small mammals increase with the size of the unburnt patch – bigger is better. These longer unburnt patches provide critical resources such as food from fruiting trees and shrubs, and shelter including tree hollows and hollow logs. They also help small mammals to evade feral cats.

A conundrum for fire managers

Our findings present fire managers with a conundrum. While it’s vital to mammals, large unburnt patches are often targeted because they burn more easily and are often viewed as being risky.

We’re not suggesting there should be no prescribed burning or that current fire management has adverse effects on small mammals. In fact, we need around 25% of savannas to be burnt under milder fire-weather conditions each year to maintain longer unburnt vegetation and, therefore, achieve the best results for mammals.

However, our study does suggest fire management needs to be more nuanced than simply reducing wildfires. We mustn’t lose sight of the need to look at longer term fire patterns.

Fire management in northern Australia is already highly sophisticated. Advances in fire scar and landscape mapping mean we have tools at our disposal to take a more strategic approach.

For example, we can identify refuge areas for mammals, as well as areas that are naturally less fire prone. We can decrease the randomness of prescribed burning by focusing on recently burnt areas and landscape features, such as rivers and cliffs, that maximise the stopping power of strategic fire scars.

Indeed, ideas for more strategic fire management, with ecologically meaningful management targets, have been championed for some time, and are being further refined.

But monitoring and reporting on this needs to become more widespread, and coordinated across different fire-managed areas. New fire reporting tools, such as the Savanna Monitoring and Evaluation Reporting Framework, will help make this happen.

We realise achieving this across northern Australia’s vast and remote landscapes is a formidable and expensive undertaking. But it’s essential adequate and targeted monitoring is embedded within fire management programs, so we can better track wildlife responses.

Read more:
The world’s best fire management system is in northern Australia, and it’s led by Indigenous land managers

Ben Corey and Ian Radford are employed by the West Australian Government’s Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions.

Leigh-Ann Woolley previously received funding from NESP TSR Hub. She is currently employed by WWF-Australia.

Ian Radford 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. Photos from the field: leaving habitats unburnt for longer could help save little mammals in northern Australia – https://theconversation.com/photos-from-the-field-leaving-habitats-unburnt-for-longer-could-help-save-little-mammals-in-northern-australia-171500

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alessandro Pelizzon, Senior Lecturer, School of Law and Justice, Southern Cross University

To say Australian universities are in crisis is to state the obvious. A common narrative suggests the most immediate cause of the current crisis is “reduced international student revenue and income from investments, such as dividends” during the pandemic. Some correlation is undeniable. However, many commentators have noted that the problems besetting our universities transcend financial issues alone and predate the pandemic.

The root causes, we suggest, lie in radical changes in how Australian universities are governed. The shift toward a quasi-corporate model of governance included a significant change in the composition of universities’ governing bodies.

In the past, a majority of their members had a background in the tertiary education sector. Today barely a third do, our research for Academics for Public Universities has found.

Some commentators see a more corporate form of university governance as both inevitable and necessary. We believe it is neither. The increasing detachment of university governance from the university community itself has serious consequences.

Read more:
‘Universities are not corporations’: 600 Australian academics call for change to uni governance structures

COVID brought crises to a head

A recent report by The Australia Institute calculated more than 40,000 university jobs were lost in the year to May 2021. That equates to 20% of the total pre-pandemic university workforce, a rate two to three times greater than overall pandemic job losses in Australia. The number also exceeds the jobs that would be lost in total if all thermal coal mining in Australia were to end.

The casualisation of the academic workforce has also reached staggering proportions. The related issues of wage theft and staff bullying have regularly made the news.

Read more:
Wage theft and casual work are built into university business models

Courses are being increasingly cut. At the same time the costs to students of certain degrees are increasing.

Even before COVID, students were increasingly being diverted to “self-directed” online modules. This trend reduces direct contact time with lecturers and tutors. It’s a source of the very clear student dissatisfaction and distress reported by the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency.

There are also concerns about the decline of academic freedom. These led to the French review recommendation of a model code for universities. A relevant concern here relates to dissenting academic members of universities’ governing bodies.

Who has presided over this growing list of problems and predicaments?

Who governs our public universities?

At present, bodies commonly named councils (or senates in fewer cases, with one called a board of trustees) govern Australian public universities. Decision-making power ultimately rests with them.

As a result of a series of changes over the past few decades, these governing bodies are no longer comprised of a majority of academics and students. Instead, they have a majority of external members who are neither enrolled as students nor employed by the university. The governing bodies themselves elect many of these members.

Academics for Public Universities reviewed the composition and expertise (as advertised on university websites) of the governing bodies of all 37 Australian public universities. Of a total of 564 members, only 33% are elected from within the institutions they govern.

Moreover, only 31.5% have any expertise working in the tertiary sector, while 7.5% are student representatives. The other 61% have professional expertise in fields other than tertiary education. And 33% come from the broader corporate/private/finance/industry sector.

As a result, individual members of universities’ governing bodies inject a great level of belief, dedication and financial and commercial skills, but, by definition, limited professional expertise in tertiary education.

Read more:
Governing universities: tertiary experience no longer required

It’s not even proper corporate governance

Ironically, this is a radical departure from corporate governance standards. Our review looked at large registered companies, such as Rio Tinto, Telstra and CSL, whose directors often sit on university councils. Their boards have 73%, 72% and 78% respectively of members with experience in the sectors they operate in.

Australian university governance also represents an anomaly internationally. A majority of academics and student representatives still govern most European universities, according to their charters.

For example, at Oxford, frequently ranked the best university in the world, 77% of governing members have experience in the university sector. And 73% have an explicit academic background.

University managers often act as if they are running commercial corporations. It is time to acknowledge this is both inaccurate and inappropriate, as the South Australian Ombudsman recently found.

University governing bodies are not directly accountable to an equivalent of “shareholders” through an annual general meeting. They are also not truly accountable to the academic communities they lead or to the broader communities they serve.

Read more:
Unis are run like corporations but their leaders are less accountable. Here’s an easy way to fix that

For over two decades now, Australian universities have increasingly been run like businesses by a majority of business-minded experts. The problems laid bare by the COVID-19 crisis seem to point to an abysmal failure of such an approach.

As a recent discussion paper released by Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi argues: “Research and teaching should be governed by public interest and free intellectual inquiry, not the demands and pursuits of corporations” – or a commercial corporate mindset. Unless academic expertise and values return to the centre of a university’s governance structure, we fear not only will such an aspiration not be met, but also the sector-wide crisis unleashed by COVID-19 will be just one of many.

Alessandro Pelizzon is affiliated with Academics for Public Universities and is an elected academic member of Council at Southern Cross University.

Adam Lucas is affiliated with Better University Governance (UOW) and Academics for Public Universities.

I receive grants from the ARC, NHMRCt and the Flinders Foundation. I am the co-Chair of the Global Steering Council of the People’s Health Movement. I an a life member of the Public Health Association of Australia and a Fellow of the AAHMS, ASSA, AHPA.

Justin O’Connor receives funding from the Australia Research Council. He is a member of Academics for Public Universities (APU)

Peter Tregear is affiliated with Academics for Public Universities.

Renaud Joannes-Boyau is affiliated with the group Academics for Public Universities.

Richard Hil is a member of The Greens; coordinator of Critical Conversations (NFP discussion forum); volunteer with Mullumbimby Neighbourhood Centre; co-leader of research circle, Resilient Byron; member of Academies for the Public University.

Siobhan Irving is affiliated with Academics for Public Universities and the National Tertiary Education Union.

Stephen Lake is a member of Academics for Public Universities and of the National Tertiary Education Union.

David Noble, James Guthrie, and Oliver Vodeb do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. 2 out of 3 members of university governing bodies have no professional expertise in the sector. There’s the making of a crisis – https://theconversation.com/2-out-of-3-members-of-university-governing-bodies-have-no-professional-expertise-in-the-sector-theres-the-making-of-a-crisis-171952

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

Australians’ concern about the pandemic ebbs and flows dramatically as waves come and go, according to research that also shows that COVID has not shaken the nation’s social cohesion.

The Scanlon Foundation Research Institute’s 2021 Mapping Social Cohesion Report found that in July last year, 63% of respondents believed the pandemic the “most important problem facing Australia today”, while only 15% nominated the economy.

Monash University’s Andrew Markus, who wrote the report, said the spike reflected “an unprecedented level of concern obtained in response to an open-ended question that typically obtains a broad range of responses”.

But by November 2020 only 32% rated the pandemic as the most important problem, with 24% saying the economy.

Then in the July 2021 survey, with adverse publicity about the vaccine rollout and the third wave starting, the rating had jumped to 59%, and the economy was down to 9%.

This rollercoaster of public concern is especially relevant given the emergence of the new Omicron strain, about which information remains sparse. It shows how quickly developments in the pandemic can change people’s priorities.

With an election looming in the first half of next year, the Scanlon numbers highlight that what will be to the forefront of the public’s mind is unpredictable months out – partly dependent on the course of the pandemic abroad, and hence in Australia.

The Scanlon survey, which has been running since 2007, covered 3572 people in 2021 and asked more than 110 questions. It also included qualitative research.

As has been reflected in other research, the survey found that trust in government, which had been low, jumped after the pandemic hit but has started to fall. Trust in the federal government to do the right thing for Australians all or most of the time was 44% in 2021. This was 10 points down on July 2020, but remained well above the long term average.

Approval of the federal government’s response was 52% this year, down from 85% last year.

Despite the Morrison government’s periodic condemnations of prolonged harsh interstate border closures, the public were supportive.

“The state governments that were able to halt virus transmission and avoid lengthy lockdowns continued to be rated very highly with approval of the Western Australian and South Australian government close to 90%, while New South Wales, which also had enjoyed a very high level of approval in 2020, saw approval fall to 59%,” the report says.

“While there were protests against government lockdowns which gained much media attention, the survey finds that approval of lockdowns won close to 90% endorsement.”

In July this year 87% across the nation viewed lockdown restrictions as definitely or probably required. In the states most affected, the numbers were 91% in NSW and 85% in Victoria.

Despite the difficult times, Australians were remarkably optimistic about the future: 71% were optimistic in 2021, actually up from the pre-COVID 2019 figure of 63%.

Reflecting the impact of the high level of government financial help during the crisis, “the surprising finding is that in 2020 and 2021 more positive responses were obtained for a number of financial questions when compared with the previous two years”.

For example, 71% were satisfied with their present financial situation in July this year.

One dramatic change in the survey was a major increase in people’s perception of how big a problem racism is.

Since November last year there has been a 20 point rise in the proportion saying racism was a very big or big problem, to 60%.

The report says such a rise in response to a general question was almost unprecedented in the Scanlon surveys, and its timing was difficult to explain. There was no indication of an increase in the proportion of respondents with xenophobic and racist views, it says.

But in the latest survey, as in past Scanlon surveys over the years, the highest level of discrimination was reported by Australians of non-English speaking backgrounds.

Asked whether they had experienced discrimination in the last year because of their colour, ethnic origin or religion, 11% of the Australian born said they had, as did 12% of those born overseas in an English speaking country.

This compared to 34% of those born overseas in a non-English speaking country, including 38% of those born in China, Hong Kong or Taiwan, and 40% of all respondents born in Asia.

The qualitative research, undertaken by Trish Prentice, senior researcher at the Scanlon Foundation Research Institute, involved 66 interviews across all mainland states, with a focus on areas with relatively high cultural and religious diversity.

“The interviews indicate social cohesion has not been broken by the pandemic. There was no evidence of widespread tensions in communities, of conflict or the ongoing targeting of members of certain cultural communities,” the report says.

But the interviews brought out differences in the experiences and ability to cope between different cohorts in the community.

Women felt particular impacts (for example in general they had greater responsibility for home schooling) and children were affected by reduced social contact, which had implications for their development.

Parents with poor English had barriers helping their children, and those with poor literacy felt helpless in dealing with home schooling. Refugees and asylum seekers experienced a greater psychological impact.

The report constructs a “cohesion index” which combines subjective and objective indicators to build a monitor of cohesion. The indicators used were income, employment, health, education and community participation. Indicators were tracked over the decade 2008-18. Using 2007-8 as a benchmark of 100, there had been a small decline of six points in the decade.

Despite the strong social cohesion, the report points to potential threats to it, including the substantial number of young people who do not make a successful transition from school to further education, training or employment.

The research for the report was funded by the Scanlon Foundation, supplemented by the federal government. The Scanlon Foundation was established in 2001, aiming to enhance and foster social cohesion in Australia.

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. Scanlon survey shows community fears about COVID can spike quickly, as governments face Omicron – https://theconversation.com/scanlon-survey-shows-community-fears-about-covid-can-spike-quickly-as-governments-face-omicron-172769

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

The Morrison government has delayed its plan to open the international border on Wednesday to skilled workers and students, as it awaits more information about the Omicron variant of COVID.

Cabinet’s national security committee on Monday night paused the reopening – that also included humanitarian, worker holiday makers, and provisional family visa holders – until December 15.

The reopening to travellers from Japan and South Korea will also be deferred.

On Tuesday the national cabinet will meet to discuss the latest development in the pandemic.

The government said that in deferring the border opening it was acting on the advice provided by the Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly. The pause would ensure time to gather the information needed “to better understand the Omicron variant”, including how effective the vaccines are against it.

Currently the border is closed to all but vaccinated Australian citizens and permanent residents and their families and vaccinated “green lane” travellers from Singapore and New Zealand.

The deferral is a blow for businesses facing serious shortages of workers. In a comment in anticipation of the deferral Innes Willox, chief executive of the Australian Industry Group said, “We need to avoid jumping at shadows as every new COVID variant appears.

“COVID is in the community whether it is Delta or Omicron or whatever the next variant will be. Rather than more stimulus, the best support for business will come from sticking to the living- with-COVID plan and keeping our state and international borders open.”

Read more:
View from The Hill: Scott Morrison warns disorderly troops against putting ‘a smile on Labor’s face’

On Wednesday the September quarter national account figures will be released that will show the economy going backwards in that quarter due to lockdowns. But on all the evidence it has been recovering strongly since.

With a handul of cases of the Omicron variant now in Australia the government is cautiously optimistic that it may be a mild illness but is taking no chances.

Health Minister Greg Hunt said: “This may be a mild version of the disease. It’s still COVID, it’s still dangerous, but there may be some quiet positive hope in what’s emerging, but it’s too early to make a definitive call”.

He has asked the Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation to review the current period between second vaccine doses and the booster shot, which is six months. The government has plenty of boosters available and would bring them forward if that were the advice.

Budget on March 29

Meanwhile the government issued the parliamentary sitting calendar for next year, that puts the budget on March 29, which would mean a May election.

The government has been signalling recently it wants another budget before the election, although some believe it would be wiser to go to the polls in March, thus avoiding having parliament sit again after this week.

When an interviewer on Monday referred to a March election, Morrison said, “the election is due by the third week in May”.

Opposition leader Anthony Albanese told the ABC the calendar showed “it’s likely, even if there’s a budget, that we will sit a grand total of 10 days the House of Reps and five days the Senate in the first six months of next year”.

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. Border opening for skilled workers, students delayed a fortnight – https://theconversation.com/border-opening-for-skilled-workers-students-delayed-a-fortnight-172802