Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lorraine Finlay, Lecturer in Law, Murdoch University

In recent days, both sides involved in Clive Palmer’s legal challenge against the Western Australia border closure have sought to highlight the importance of what is at stake.

WA Premier Mark McGowan has warned if the challenge is successful and the border re-opens “then potentially people will die”. Meanwhile, Palmer has emphasised that immediately re-opening the border

is crucial for the survival of the domestic economy and for the whole of Australia.

With Queensland announcing another border closure to Sydney residents today, the WA case could be pivotal.

It will set an important precedent and ultimately determine whether, and to what extent, state governments can close their borders to protect their residents against future outbreaks.

The legal challenge in WA

The WA government closed its border to everybody other than “exempt travellers” from April 5 to limit the spread of COVID-19. Palmer was refused an exemption to enter WA in May and responded by filing a constitutional challenge to the laws authorising the border closure.

The challenge focuses primarily on section 92 of the Constitution, which provides that

trade, commerce and intercourse among the states … shall be absolutely free.

The High Court has previously suggested this allows for restrictions on movement and travel that are reasonably necessary for legitimate state purposes.

The key constitutional question here is whether the current restrictions are proportionate and appropriately tailored to address the identified risk to public health.

Read more: View from The Hill: Morrison government accepts Victorian closure but won’t budge on High Court border challenges

In particular, the Federal Court is being asked this week to identify precisely what risks the COVID-19 pandemic poses to public health in Australia, and the extent to which border closures might mitigate these risks.

The Federal Court will not make a final decision about the constitutional validity of the border closures. Instead, it will determine the relevant facts in the case based on evidence presented by public health experts.

These facts will be critical to deciding the ultimate constitutional question.

What happens next?

The Federal Court hearing is only step one. Once these factual questions have been decided, the case returns to the High Court, which will determine the constitutional questions.

While the parties and courts have all acknowledged the importance of expediting this matter, the earliest this case could be heard by the High Court would be September. This means a final decision on whether the border closures are valid could still be weeks away.

Another important practical consideration is how the WA government may react if it loses the constitutional challenge. McGowan has already said

if the High Court rules that the borders have to come down that is the law of the land.

But any High Court decision will be based on the reasonableness of the current restrictions, and the court tends to limit its decisions to the particular facts before it. The judges are unlikely to speculate about whether alternative border closure restrictions may be constitutionally valid.

As such, one option for WA if it loses may be to remove the existing restrictions, but immediately replace them with amended restrictions that are adapted to the court’s ruling.

A win for Palmer in the High Court may not therefore necessarily result in the WA borders immediately re-opening.

What will the High Court decide?

It is never possible to definitively predict the outcome of a High Court case. This is particularly true in the present case, given the specific constitutional issue at hand has not previously been directly considered by the court.

However, in cases involving questions of reasonableness and the balancing of public policy objectives, courts tend to err on the side of allowing governments a significant degree of discretion.

Read more: States are shutting their borders to stop coronavirus. Is that actually allowed?

For this reason, the WA government has a strong constitutional case, provided the Federal Court finds the expert evidence supports border closures being justified from a public health perspective.

This highlights the significance of the current Federal Court hearing. It would be extremely controversial for the High Court to invalidate border closures imposed by a state government if the expert evidence established a public health justification for the measures.

Why governments need discretion in cases like this

Indeed, this highlights a more fundamental question about who is best placed to make these types of decisions in a democratic society.

There is no objectively right or wrong answer to the question of whether state borders should be shut in these circumstances, or for how long. It is instead a judgement call that has to be made on the best information available at the time, and that requires the decision maker to balance a range of different public policy factors.

An elected government is best placed to make judgement calls of this nature. It can adapt its response as circumstances change and take into account community sentiment (which is important to ensure compliance).

A government will also be subject to a range of different accountability measures, including, ultimately, judgement by the people at an election.

Read more: Border closures, identity and political tensions: how Australia’s past pandemics shape our COVID-19 response

Judicial decision-making is very different. It is necessarily based on the particular facts of a single case before the courts and is not adaptive to circumstances. The courts also do not need to consider the practical challenges of implementing a specific policy or regulation, and are not subject to direct democratic accountability.

These can be virtues when the courts are engaged in legal decision-making. They also demonstrate why the courts should not be involved in making decisions of a more political nature.

While there is a legitimate role for judicial scrutiny, the judgement calls required in a public health emergency are more appropriately left to the executive and parliamentary branches of government.

This democratic mandate granted to elected officials should be respected by the courts when considering the current challenge to the WA border closures, particularly given the importance of what is at stake.

– ref. WA border challenge: why states, not courts, need to make the hard calls during health emergencies – https://theconversation.com/wa-border-challenge-why-states-not-courts-need-to-make-the-hard-calls-during-health-emergencies-143541

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Siobhan McHugh, Associate Professor, Journalism, University of Wollongong

“You kind of fail your way to success,” observed Matt Lieber, head of podcast operations at Spotify, at this year’s Audiocraft festival, an annual weekend of panels about podcasting. Normally held in Sydney, this year, thanks to COVID-19, the festival shifted online.

Lieber was talking about StartUp, his podcast about establishing Gimlet Media in 2014. Lieber and his business partner, Alex Blumberg, wanted to develop a podcast studio that would become “the HBO of audio”.

Last year, Gimlet hit the jackpot. It was acquired by Spotify for US$230 million (A$322 million).

While podcasts have been alive on the internet since 2004 (“But what to call it? Audioblogging? Podcasting? GuerillaMedia?” asked the Guardian), 2014’s Serial is largely credited with starting a new boom for the form.

Serial hit 420 million downloads in late 2018; S-Town, from the same production company, had 40 million downloads in its first month.

Last week, the New York Times (whose own The Daily has surpassed one billion downloads) acquired Serial Productions for US$25 million (A$35 million).

What was once on the fringes of the internet is now a multi-billion dollar industry.

Read more: Why S-Town invites empathy not voyeurism

The growing numbers

For a long time, podcasting was touted as the most democratic and accessible mode of journalism and public engagement.

On podcasts, hobbyists could indulge a passion for Greek legends, friends could riff on their favourite books, celebrities could show their human side, and media organisations could share stories too unwieldy for a newspaper or television format.

The early low-budget, niche podcasts were a far cry from shows like Serial or The Joe Rogan Experience. (Hosted by comedian Joe Rogan, the latter show has a reported 190 million downloads a month and was acquired by Spotify in May for around US$100 million (A$140 million).

While some Spotify shows are still available on other podcasting services, productions like The Joe Rogan Experience and the platform’s latest offering, The Michelle Obama Podcast, are available exclusively on Spotify.

Obama’s podcast, which launches today, features conversations on the “relationships that shape us” – not surprisingly, her first guest is her husband.

Spotify’s known investment in acquiring podcasts over the past 18 months comes to around US$696 million (A$975 million). This figure doesn’t include the unknown price Spotify has paid in deals with the Obamas and Kim Kardashian West to produce original shows, nor the money Spotify is investing in-house.

While Rogan and Obama’s podcasts are (for now) free to listen to, they will tempt people over to the platform and – Spotify hopes – create paying subscribers. Obama’s 2018 memoir, Becoming, has sold over 10 million copies: that is a lot of potential listeners.

Far away from these mega-investment dollars, independent producers are still creating smaller shows for devoted audiences. Many attending Audiocraft were these independent producers, seeking to learn more about the art, craft and business of bringing their podcast ideas to life.

Such aspirations were mocked by a recent ABC skit with celebrities begging people not to turn to podcasting under quarantine.

The skit polarised viewers: older folk laughed, but younger people bristled, seeing it as an entitled elite trying to police what should be a wide open space without gatekeepers.

This divide is a growing tension among podcast producers.

Pushing boundaries

The other big commercial contender in podcasting is the Amazon-owned Audible, which has similarly gone on a “multimillion-dollar shopping spree” for podcasts over the past few years.

With Spotify locking listeners into their platform, and Audible’s podcasts only available to paying subscribers we are a far cry from the open internet ideals the form was built on.

Yet, even in this world of multi-million dollar deals, independent producers are still asserting their right to shape the industry.

Renay Richardson, a black British podcaster whose passionate presentation at Audiocraft wowed the audience, founded Broccoli Content to advance diversity in podcasting. This year, she launched an Audio Pledge demanding equity in pay and representation for minority voices.

It has so far been signed by over 250 organisations, including Spotify and the BBC.

An intimate artform

According to Spotify’s Matt Lieber, podcast listeners want to hear a story, learn something new, and find someone you would want to hang out with. One festival session ticked all three boxes.

Bird’s Eye View was made in Darwin Correctional Centre over two years. Funded by the Northern Territory government and the Australia Council and independently distributed, Birds Eye View gives a remarkable insight into the lives of incarcerated women.

With raw empathy, the podcast shares moving stories of women talking about abuse, addiction and crime on the outside along with darkly humorous stories of life on the inside. It’s a testament to deep relationships formed over a long and immersive production time.

The payoff is the compelling personal storytelling at which podcasting excels.

Some producers fear with the industry so rapidly growing, market forces could choke creativity and innovation.

An old adage holds that if you can fake sincerity, you’ve got it made. If the big podcasting platforms figure that one out we will all be the poorer.

Podcasting’s special ingredients have long been the authenticity of its wide range of voices and the intimate relationship they engender with the audience, speaking directly into our ears. If those defining characteristics get subverted in a push for profit, much of podcasting’s magic will be lost.

– ref. Michelle Obama, podcast host: how podcasting became a multi-billion dollar industry – https://theconversation.com/michelle-obama-podcast-host-how-podcasting-became-a-multi-billion-dollar-industry-142920

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Clive Phillips, Professor of Animal Welfare, Centre for Animal Welfare and Ethics, The University of Queensland

This month marks 60 years since Dame Jane Goodall first ventured into the wilds of Gombe, Tanzania, at the tender age of 26 to study the behaviour of chimpanzees. She has devoted her life to species conservation and campaigned tirelessly for a healthier environment.

Jane is an icon of our era. Among her groundbreaking discoveries are that chimpanzees have personalities, use tools, have wars and can eat meat — all of which made us question our own behaviour as closely related great apes.

She established the Jane Goodall Institute, and her Roots and Shoots program now operates in more than 100 countries to encourage young people to be compassionate, helping people, animals and the environment.

When I first read about Jane’s work, I was amazed anyone could get so close to animals — in her case chimpanzees — to understand their minds, society and lives. For several decades, my research attempted to do the same for intensively farmed animals.

Jane and I ended up in the same philosophical place: committed to exposing the horrors of factory farming, and proudly vegetarian because of the damage eating meat does to animals, the environment and to people eating the end products.

With this in mind I relished the prospect of meeting Jane. She gave us all unique insights into the inner lives of one of our closest relatives, chimpanzees, as well as pioneering a compassionate approach to animals, a cause very close to my heart.

Clive Phillips: Jane, you famously dispelled the myth that humans are the only tool-users. Do humans have any unique characteristics to distinguish them from other animals?

Jane Goodall: Well, I believe the most important thing distinguishing us is the explosive development of the human intellect. We have developed communication using words, which means we can learn from our elders, we can plan for the future and we can teach our children about things that are not pleasant.

Above all, we can bring people together from different backgrounds to discuss a problem and try and find the solutions.

Read more: Studying chimpanzee calls for clues about the origins of human language

Phillips: Do you think this “human uniqueness” implies a responsibility towards animals?

Goodall: I would say it’s a humanistic responsibility. I mean, once you are prepared to admit that we humans are not the only beings on the planet with personalities, minds and, above all, emotions, and once you are prepared to admit that animals are sentient and can not only know emotions like happiness, sadness, fear, but especially they can feel pain — then, as humans with advanced reasoning powers, we have a responsibility to treat them in more humane ways than we so often do.

Phillips: You mentioned the importance of pain in animals and sentience. Does that give us a moral duty towards them? Or, do you think we have a right to manage them?

Goodall: Well, I don’t know about having a right to to manage them. But the problem is that because of the way our societies have developed, the harm we inflict on the environment, and the devastation we’ve caused so many species, we now have an obligation to try and change things so animals can have a better future.

We now know it’s not only the great apes, elephants and whales that are amazingly intelligent. We now know some birds like crows and the octopus can be, in some situations, more intelligent than small human children. Even some insects have been trained to do simple tests. This was unthinkable a while back.

We also know, for example, that trees can communicate to the micro fungi on their roots, under the soil. And this is amazing. It’s very exciting for any young person wanting to go into this field — these really are exciting times.

Phillips: Do you believe climate change will alter the relationship we have with other animals, and our ability to manage and use them in the way we do at the moment?

Goodall: We shouldn’t be managing and using them. We should be giving them the opportunity to live their own lives in their own way. And we should stop interfering.

We should protect habitat so that they can continue to flourish in their natural habitat. Those animals that we have subjugated to domestication should be treated as animals: sentient sapiens with feelings, knowing fear and depression and pain.

Read more: ACT’s new animal sentience law recognises an animal’s psychological pain and pleasure, and may lead to better protections

And we should really start thinking about what we’re doing in our factory farms, in our labs and with hunting. To me, that’s the most important thing.

Phillips: And that will, in itself, address some of the climate change issues, I imagine.

Goodall: Yes. Eating meat involves billions of animals in factory farms that have to be fed. Areas of environment are cleared to grow the grain, fossil fuels are used get the grain to the animals, the animals to the abattoir and the meat to the tables.

Water is wasted changing vegetable to animal protein, and methane the animals produce in their digestion is one of the most intense greenhouse gases. All of this means we have to do something about continuing to eat more and more meat.

Read more: No animal required, but would people eat artificial meat?

Phillips: And yet the world is eating more and more meat.

Goodall: Well, we have to change attitudes. Yes, we’re eating more meat, but at the same time the number of people who are becoming vegetarian and vegan is increasing.

Phillips: It reminds me of one of your early discoveries of chimpanzees eating meat. Do you think that had an implication or any bearing on the human diet?

Goodall: Humans are not carnivorous, we are omnivorous. And there is a big difference. Our gut is not like a carnivore’s guts, which is short to get rid of the meat before it goes bad and inside your gut. We have a vegetarian gut, an omnivore’s diet. This means our gut is much longer to get all the goodness out of leaves and all the other things we eat.

So when you think of chimps — yes, they hunt, and they seem to love hunting. But it’s been estimated that meat occupies only about 2% of their diets. That’s just for some individuals. Others hardly ever eat meat at all.

Read more: Young people won’t accept inaction on climate change, and they’ll be voting in droves

Phillips: How can we best get the message across that a vegetarian diet is the most sustainable for the planet, and good for animal welfare?

Goodall: We’re working with young people from kindergarten through university, now in more than 50 countries, growing all the time. It involves young people of all ages choosing projects to make the world better for people, animals and the environment.

They are changing the way their parents think, and the vegetarian ethic is very strong in many of them. So I say you’ve got to change the mindset and children help to change the behaviour of their parents.

Phillips: That’s a tremendous piece of advocacy, given the huge concerns there are about animals’ contribution to climate change and other dangers they pose to our water supplies and the quality of our land.

Do you think there should be any legal control of the use of animals for intensive animal production?

Goodall: Yes, I do. I think it should be banned. A) for the tremendous suffering caused to the animals; B) for the harm to the environment; and C) for the harm to human health. There should be legislation that limits or bans these intensive farms.

This is an edited version of the original interview.

– ref. My talk with Jane Goodall: vegetarianism, animal welfare and the power of children’s advocacy – https://theconversation.com/my-talk-with-jane-goodall-vegetarianism-animal-welfare-and-the-power-of-childrens-advocacy-140735

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

While it’s true anyone is at risk of catching and becoming ill with COVID-19, it’s becoming increasingly clear this virus discriminates.

From early in the pandemic, we’ve seen how COVID-19 disproportionately affects older people and those with other health conditions, who are more likely to develop severe symptoms and die.

But as well as discriminating on the basis of biology, this virus discriminates on the basis of socioeconomic disadvantage. It ruthlessly picks on the most vulnerable in society.

Read more: Our lives matter – Melbourne public housing residents talk about why COVID-19 hits them hard

The Melbourne tower blocks

The recent COVID-19 cases in social housing, which saw nine public housing towers in Melbourne’s north put into hard lockdown, brought this into sharp focus. These tower blocks accommodate some of the most vulnerable people in our community.

People living in these buildings experience high levels of unemployment and job insecurity, generally exist on low wages, have limited access to education, are often from migrant backgrounds, and in some instances are victims of trauma.

The fact we saw the virus spread through these towers should be no surprise given what we know about how it spreads in crowded conditions and shared spaces. Physical distancing is almost impossible when you have big families living in two-bedroom units.

Importantly, for cultural and language reasons, generic health messaging may miss the mark for these groups.

These factors combine to put social housing residents at increased risk of contracting the virus.

Aged-care facilities

Another group this pandemic disproportionately affects is aged-care residents. In aged-care facilities we have a perfect storm: an environment conducive to virus transmission and residents who are among the most susceptible to serious outcomes from infection.

Add into the equation the well-documented system deficiencies and workforce issues that have plagued Australia’s aged-care sector, and we have another situation in which some of the most vulnerable in our society are disproportionately affected by COVID-19.

We’ve seen this in Australia and around the world. Once you have community transmission of COVID-19 it’s hard to keep it out of aged-care facilities, and once in, outbreaks in this setting can be difficult to stop.

Read more: 4 steps to avert a full-blown coronavirus disaster in Victoria’s aged care homes

African Americans in the United States

The disproportionate effect of the pandemic on the most disadvantaged, vulnerable and marginalised in society is not just evident in Australia, but throughout the world.

There is perhaps no better example than the plight of African Americans in the United States. Figures released in May reported Black Americans were dying at almost three times the rate of white Americans from COVID-19.

One of the main reasons Black Americans face a higher health burden from COVID-19 is their increased rate of accompanying health problems such as heart disease, high blood pressure and diabetes.

This burden is amplified by the fact many are excluded from the basic access to health care we take for granted here in Australia.

Read more: We could have more coronavirus outbreaks in tower blocks. Here’s how lockdown should work

And it’s not only the health effects of the virus which hit the disadvantaged harder. These people are also much more vulnerable to the indirect economic impacts of the pandemic, by virtue of their lower financial resources to begin with.

Looking across the globe

COVID-19’s discrimination against the vulnerable also extends to entire countries. Poorer and less developed nations, such as in Africa and Latin America, will potentially suffer the most in the immediate and longer term.

With weaker health systems, scarcity of medical resources (less equipment such as ventilators, for example) and large, vulnerable populations, these countries are less able to cope with a crisis of this magnitude.

And beyond the demands placed on their health systems, these countries have less capacity to withstand the economic shocks of the pandemic. Its effects could well catapult them into further crises, such as food insecurity.

Read more: Coronavirus discriminates against Black lives through surveillance, policing and the absence of health data

We know infectious diseases, like other health conditions, are highly influenced by the social determinants of health. That is, the conditions in which people live, learn and work play a significant role in influencing their health outcomes.

Broadly speaking, the greater a person’s socioeconomic disadvantage, the poorer their health.

In shining a light on these inequities the pandemic also provides an opportunity for us to begin to address them, which will have both short and longer term health benefits.

– ref. Social housing, aged care and Black Americans: how coronavirus affects already disadvantaged groups – https://theconversation.com/social-housing-aged-care-and-black-americans-how-coronavirus-affects-already-disadvantaged-groups-142046

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alyson Stobo-Wilson, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Charles Darwin University

Only a few decades ago, encountering a bandicoot or quoll around your campsite in the evening was a common and delightful experience across the Top End. Sadly, our campsites are now far less lively.

Northern Australia’s vast uncleared savannas were once considered a crucial safe haven for many species that have suffered severe declines elsewhere. But over the last 30 years, small native mammals (weighing up to five kilograms) have been mysteriously vanishing across the region.

Read more: Scientists and national park managers are failing northern Australia’s vanishing mammals

The reason why the Top End’s mammals have declined so severely has long been unknown, leaving scientists and conservation managers at a loss as to how to stop and reverse this tragic trend.

Our major new study helps unravel this longstanding mystery. We found that the collective influence of feral livestock — such as buffaloes, horses, cattle and donkeys — has been largely underestimated. Even at quite low numbers, feral livestock can have a big impact on our high-value conservation areas and the wildlife they support.

The race for solutions

In 2010, Kakadu National Park conducted a pivotal study on Top End mammals. It found that between 1996 and 2009, the number of native mammal species at survey sites had halved, and the number of individual animals dropped by more than two-thirds. Similar trends have since been observed elsewhere across the Top End.

Given the scale and speed of the mammal declines, the need to find effective solutions is increasingly urgent. It has become a key focus of conservation managers and scientists alike.

The list of potential causes includes inappropriate fire regimes, feral cats, cane toads, feral livestock, and invasive weeds.

With limited resources, it’s essential to know which threats to focus on. This is where our study has delivered a major breakthrough.

We looked for patterns of where species have been lost and where they are hanging on. With the help of helicopters to reach many remote areas, we used more than 1,500 “camera traps” (motion-sensor cameras to record mammals) and almost 7,500 animal traps (such as caged traps) to survey 300 sites across the national parks, private conservation reserves and Indigenous lands of the Top End.

A new spotlight on feral livestock

We found most parts of the Top End have very few native mammals left. The isolated areas where mammals are persisting have retained good-quality habitat, with a greater variety of plant species and dense shrubs and grasses.

This habitat provides more shelter and food for native mammals, and has fewer cats and dingoes, which hunt more efficiently in open areas. In contrast, sites with degraded habitat have much less food and shelter available, and native mammals are more exposed to predators.

Across northern Australia, habitat quality is primarily driven by two factors: bushfires and introduced livestock, either farmed or feral.

Our surveys revealed that areas with more feral livestock have fewer native mammals. This highlights that the role of feral livestock in the Top End’s mammal declines has previously been underestimated.

Even at relatively low densities, feral livestock are detrimental to small mammals. Through overgrazing and trampling, they degrade habitat and reduce the availability of food and shelter for native mammals.

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

Frequent, intense fires also play a big role. Australia’s tropical savannas are among the most fire-prone on Earth, but fires that are too frequent, too hot and too extensive remove critical food and shelter.

Yet, even if land managers can manage fires to protect biodiversity, for example by reducing the occurrence of large, intense fires, the presence of feral livestock will continue to impede native mammal recovery.

A new way to manage cats

Cats have helped drive more than 20 Australian mammals to extinction. So it’s not surprising we found fewer native mammals at our sample sites where there were more cats.

However, our results suggest the best way to manage the impact of cats in this region may not be to simply kill cats, which is notoriously difficult across vast, remote landscapes. Instead, it may be more effective to manage habitat better, tipping the balance in favour of native mammals and away from their predators.

The combination of prescribed burning to protect food and shelter resources, and culling feral livestock, might be all that’s needed to support native mammals and reduce the impact of feral cats.

What about dingoes?

Many scientists have suggested dingoes could also be part of the solution to reducing cat impacts — as cats are believed to avoid dingoes. With this in mind, we explored the relationship between the two predators in this study.

We found no evidence dingoes influenced the distribution of feral cats. In fact, survey sites with more dingoes had fewer native small mammals, suggesting a negative impact by dingoes.

But, unlike cats, culling dingoes is not an option because they provide other important ecological roles, and are culturally significant for Indigenous (and non-Indigenous) Australians.

Controlling herbivores, not predators

Our study suggests an effective way to halt and reverse Top End mammal losses is to protect and restore habitat. For example, by improving fire management and controlling feral livestock through culling.

Read more: EcoCheck: Australia’s vast, majestic northern savannas need more care

It is also very important to conserve the environments that still have high-quality habitat and healthy mammal communities, such as the high-rainfall areas along the northern Australian coast. These areas provide refuge for many of our most vulnerable mammal species.

The tropical savannas of northern Australia are the largest remaining tract of tropical savanna on Earth and new species are still being discovered.

While there’s more research to be done, it’s crucial we start managing habitat better, before we lose more of our precious mammal species.

The authors would like to gratefully acknowledge the support from many Indigenous ranger groups, land managers and Traditional Owners. This includes the Warddeken, Bawinanga, Wardaman and Tiwi rangers, the Traditional Owners and land managers of Kakadu, Garig Gunak Barlu, Judbarra/Gregory, Litchfield and Nitmiluk National Parks, Djelk, Warddeken and Wardaman Indigenous Protected Areas, and Fish River Station and was facilitated by the Northern, Tiwi and Anindilyakwa Land Councils.

– ref. The mystery of the Top End’s vanishing wildlife, and the unexpected culprits – https://theconversation.com/the-mystery-of-the-top-ends-vanishing-wildlife-and-the-unexpected-culprits-143268

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robert McLachlan, Professor in Applied Mathematics, Massey University

Climate Explained is a collaboration between The Conversation, Stuff and the New Zealand Science Media Centre to answer your questions about climate change.

If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, please send it to climate.change@stuff.co.nz

Is humanity doomed? If in 2030 we have not reduced emissions in a way that means we stay under say 2℃ (I’ve frankly given up on 1.5℃), are we doomed then?

Humanity is not doomed, not now or even in a worst-case scenario in 2030. But avoiding doom — either the end or widespread collapse of civilisation — is setting a pretty low bar. We can aim much higher than that without shying away from reality.

It’s right to focus on global warming of 1.5℃ and 2℃ in the first instance. The many manifestations of climate change — including heat waves, droughts, water stress, more intense storms, wildfires, mass extinction and warming oceans — all get progressively worse as the temperature rises.

Climate scientist Michael Mann uses the metaphor of walking into an increasingly dense minefield.

Good reasons not to give up just yet

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change described the effects of a 1.5℃ increase in average temperatures in a special report last year. They are also nicely summarised in an article about why global temperatures matter, produced by NASA.

The global average temperature is currently about 1.2℃ higher than what it was at the time of the Industrial Revolution, some 250 years ago. We are already witnessing localised impacts, including the widespread coral bleaching on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.

Limiting warming to 1.5℃ requires cutting global emissions by 7.6% each year this decade. This does sound difficult, but there are reasons for optimism.

Read more: The climate won’t warm as much as we feared – but it will warm more than we hoped

First, it’s possible technically and economically. For example, the use of wind and solar power has grown exponentially in the past decade, and their prices have plummeted to the point where they are now among the cheapest sources of electricity. Some areas, including energy storage and industrial processes such as steel and cement manufacture, still need further research and a drop in price (or higher carbon prices).

Second, it’s possible politically. Partly in response to the Paris Agreement, a growing number of countries have adopted stronger targets. Twenty countries and regions (including New Zealand and the European Union) are now targeting net zero emissions by 2050 or earlier.

A recent example of striking progress comes from Ireland – a country with a similar emissions profile to New Zealand. The incoming coalition’s “programme for government” includes emission cuts of 7% per year and a reduction by half by 2030.

Read more: Young people won’t accept inaction on climate change, and they’ll be voting in droves

Third, it’s possible socially. Since 2019, we have seen the massive growth of the School Strike 4 Climate movement and an increase in fossil fuel divestment. Several media organisations, including The Conversation, have made a commitment to evidence-based coverage of climate change and calls for a Green New Deal are coming from a range of political parties, especially in the US and Europe.

There is also a growing understanding that to ensure a safe future we need to consume less overall. If these trends continue, then I believe we can still stay below 1.5℃.

The pessimist perspective

Now suppose we don’t manage that. It’s 2030 and emissions have only fallen a little bit. We’re staring at 2℃ in the second half of the century.

At 2℃ of warming, we could expect to lose more than 90% of our coral reefs. Insects and plants would be at higher risk of extinction, and the number of dangerously hot days would increase rapidly.

Read more: Not convinced on the need for urgent climate action? Here’s what happens to our planet between 1.5°C and 2°C of global warming

The challenges would be exacerbated and we would have new issues to consider. First, under the “shifting baseline” phenomenon — essentially a failure to notice slow change and to value what is already lost — people might discount the damage already done. Continuously worsening conditions might become the new normal.

Second, climate impacts such as mass migration could lead to a rise of nationalism and make international cooperation harder. And third, we could begin to pass unpredictable “tipping points” in the Earth system. For example, warming of more than 2°C could set off widespread melting in Antarctica, which in turn would contribute to sea level rise.

Read more: If warming exceeds 2°C, Antarctica’s melting ice sheets could raise seas 20 metres in coming centuries

But true doom-mongers tend to assume a worst-case scenario on virtually every area of uncertainty. It is important to remember that such scenarios are not very likely.

While bad, this 2030 scenario doesn’t add up to doom — and it certainly doesn’t change the need to move away from fossil fuels to low-carbon options.

– ref. Climate explained: are we doomed if we don’t manage to curb emissions by 2030? – https://theconversation.com/climate-explained-are-we-doomed-if-we-dont-manage-to-curb-emissions-by-2030-143526

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Norman Day, Lecturer in Architecture, Practice and Design, Swinburne University of Technology

We are entering an era of profound change in how we work, learn, socialise and live with COVID-19. Many people will adjust to this new world order and work remotely at home if they don’t have to attend an office or other workplace. This, in turn, will create an opportunity to adapt unused buildings, which were needed for the previous economy, for the new ways of living and working. Buildings could be transformed or redeployed through adaptive reuse for much-needed housing.

We already have the technology and the capacity to work and live remotely from an office or institution, if we choose to. For some people, working-from-home models have become the norm during the enforced COVID-19 isolation periods of 2020. Many of them are likely to choose alternative work patterns as an ongoing model in preference to daily commuting to the traditional central office in busy cities.

Read more: If more of us work from home after coronavirus we’ll need to rethink city planning

If we approach figures like those of earlier recessions, employment will fall even more dramatically than it has already. Reduced trade will slow the economy for many years. The burgeoning numbers of unemployed and low-income citizens will find it difficult to find affordable homes.

The people who suffer most during this period, the “new poor”, will struggle to pay for even basic housing, let alone homes that provide space for occupants to work and live at home. Public and subsidised housing will have to fill the gap.

Silver linings to the COVID cloud

Some positives are appearing from this new world order.

Some professions will find themselves comfortably working away from the traditional workplace. They will be able to manage work and family more easily.

Read more: We’re at a fork in the road: do we choose neighbourhoods to live, work and play in?

As well as offices becoming redundant, delivery services like Amazon, Deliveroo and Uber Eats might replace many traditional retail outlets, including shops, cafes, restaurants and bars. Many buildings housing such businesses might not reopen.

Buildings that are no longer fit for purpose, or not required in a new detached working environment, could be repurposed as housing. Empty office blocks, shops and stores and unused teaching facilities could all be recycled for social and community low-cost rental housing.

Of course we will need to retain many resources, such as distribution warehouses, places of worship, hospitals, childcare centre, kindergartens and primary schools, laboratories, workshops, manufacturing factories, prisons, bakeries, farmers markets, personal health and hygiene salons – for hair, massage, wellness and mental health. Other places such as transport hubs, sporting facilities, theatres, tourist accommodation, cafes, bars and restaurants will be maintained too.

But underused office buildings will not be needed as offices. They can become part of the new model for blended home-and-work operations. Families who have experimented with shared responsibilities during COVID-19 lockdowns may continue this routine as a new “normal” and select newly adapted old buildings for accommodation.

Read more: We create 20m tons of construction industry waste each year. Here’s how to stop it going to landfill

Commercial buildings can be easily converted

One advantage of reusing a commercial building is the relative openness of its plan. New living areas can be planned and fitted into the office open space, using simple lightweight partition walls.

Usually large open office spaces surround a service core. The core contains lifts, plumbing, ducts and risers, fire stairs, bathrooms and equipment.

Wet areas such as kitchens, bathrooms and laundries would be located against the core. Here they can be connected easily to the building services and systems.

Commercial buildings are usually solid constructions. They are built to last, so their recycled concrete, steel and glass suits reclamation.

Read more: Unbuilding cities as high-rises reach their use-by date

These buildings are generally spacious, with a floor-to-ceiling height of about three metres (not the miserable norm of cheap apartments, which is less than 2.5 metres).

It is even possible for some old office building floors to have part of their outside walls removed and refitted inside the floor slabs, which creates open-space balconies and gardens.

The environment would benefit too

As a byproduct of repurposing old buildings, we’d benefit the environment. Re-use conserves natural resources and minimises the need for new materials. That’s because these adapted buildings are effectively already half built.

Building construction, maintenance and use produce about a quarter of Australia’s emissions. Maybe the world could largely meet its Paris Agreement emission-reduction targets before 2030 by making better use of existing buildings as well as increasing energy efficiency and renewable energy’s market share.

Read more: Making every building count in meeting Australia’s emission targets

COVID-19 might eventually be eliminated, but the impacts will roll on for many years. A long-term benefit of this disaster could be a focus on no longer needing to duplicate so much space to live and work in. The result would be reducing consumption of building materials as the world tightens its environmental belt.

– ref. Unused buildings will make good housing in the world of COVID-19 – https://theconversation.com/unused-buildings-will-make-good-housing-in-the-world-of-covid-19-142897

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rachel Franks, Conjoint Fellow, School of Humanities and Social Science, University of Newcastle

In January 1788, a small floating society — eleven ships carrying crew, crooks, some military men and a few passengers — sailed into the body of water the colonisers called Port Jackson.

In the long term, there were ambitious plans for this new outpost of the British Empire. In the short term, this colony of thieves was all about crime and crime control; the details of which, from the mid-1800s, were published in what came to be known as the Police Gazette.

This fascinating record is the subject of a new online experience hosted by the State Library of New South Wales.

Sydney-based data visualisation designer and developer Brett Tweedie, has produced an extraordinary new data visualisation of almost 20 million words published in the Police Gazette from 1860 until 1900.

This new project, We Are What We Steal, was undertaken as a Digital Drop-In (a kind of small-scale Fellowship) at the State Library of New South Wales’ innovation unit, the DX Lab.

As this work shows, our desire for the details of crimes is nothing new. We see in the Police Gazette, and we see more clearly through Tweedie’s visualisations, the types of crime details that were important to capture in colonial New South Wales.

Early efforts to police the colony

Australia’s first civilian police force, the Night Watch, was formed by Governor Arthur Phillip in 1789. This unit was made up of the 12 best-behaved convicts, who had been selected to assist in the keeping of law and order in Sydney Town.

It was not ideal to have convicts monitoring other convicts, but the marines stationed in the new colony were few. The military would supervise prisoners for certain purposes or tasks, but the work associated with constables and gaolers would have to be undertaken by others.

In 1796, the constables were reorganised by Governor John Hunter and divided into regions. Another reorganisation, ordered by Governor Lachlan Macquarie in 1810, resulted in a more formal, though still problematic, system of policing. The convict-as-constable model continued to reveal cracks in the system. Another effort to improve law enforcement was the Sydney Police Act 1833 (NSW) which was designed to regulate

the Police in the Town and Port of Sydney and for removing and preventing Nuisances and Obstructions therein.

Crime, of course, extended beyond the boundaries of Sydney. Containing lawbreakers in metropolitan and in regional and remote areas, was an ongoing issue for colonial authorities as the early crimes of insolence and petty thefts were placed into scale by more serious offences such as bushranging and murder.

One response to increases in crime was to establish specific types of police. There were various services across the colony, including the Row Boat Guard, the Border Police, the Mounted Police and the Gold Escort.

The Police Regulation Act 1862 (NSW) radically changed policing by amalgamating all the colonial police forces to establish the New South Wales Police Force.

Read more: Enforcing assimilation, dismantling Aboriginal families: a history of police violence in Australia

The New South Wales Police Gazette

One of the most important tools of policing in colonial-era New South Wales was the Police Gazette. First published in 1854, as Reports of Crime, it was distributed to police stations across the colony.

These reports contained

details of crimes committed, persons to be apprehended, descriptions of stolen property and rewards offered, lists of regimental and ships deserters, and other police notices concerning recovery of property, apprehension of suspects previously sought, and dismissals of police officers for unsatisfactory conduct.

Published from 1862 as the New South Wales Police Gazette and Weekly Record of Crime, this vital tool for crime control became the Police Gazette in 1974 and appeared until 1982 (you can read issues of the Police Gazette, up to 1930, on Trove).

We are what we steal

In We Are What We Steal, Tweedie has concentrated on people, places and things.

In this data visualisation, the men who captured details through the Police Gazette reveal themselves not just as constables on the lookout for criminals, but as storytellers.

Favourite crime fiction authors and popular true crime writers often use stereotypes to serve as shorthand for their readers. Police officers also routinely relied on creating and using stereotypes to tell crime stories to each other.

Yet, stereotypes have severe consequences in the real world. In the case of the Police Gazette, a publication designed to make society safer could also make society more unequal through reinforcing common prejudices.

Crime is timeless and universal, but the contexts for crime are fluid. As Tweedie writes, we can see numerous stories in the Police Gazette, including:

Changing fashions, new technologies, new modes of transport, the establishment of new towns, increasing wealth, all this is recorded in the gazette — along with the racism of the day — as a by-product of reporting the crimes (and other police matters) that occurred.

Tweedie prompts us to interrogate crime by focusing on a single element of criminal acts. From age to gender and through to the drunken state of offenders. In a colony known for thieving, we can also look at what was stolen, from jewellery to clothing and, as times changed, bicycles.

The history of policing reflects the values of a society and what, and who, is being protected.

Similarly, the stories of the men and women known to police in 19th-century New South Wales tell us, not just about crime, but about every aspect of society: who held power, who was vulnerable and how people lived.

Read more: Whores, damned whores and female convicts: Why our history does early Australian colonial women a grave injustice

– ref. We are what we steal: the New South Wales Police Gazette and charting histories of crime – https://theconversation.com/we-are-what-we-steal-the-new-south-wales-police-gazette-and-charting-histories-of-crime-131140

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Carole Comerton-Forde, Professor of Finance, UNSW

Stocks have held up relatively well during the COVID-19 pandemic. Following a steep decline in March, for example, the value of the Australian Stock has rebounded to be just 16% down on its February peak.

It’s a situation that appears to be exciting retail investors – regular people like you and I who buy shares directly. But this enthusiasm may be misplaced given the considerable uncertainty about the outlook for the economy.

Read more: Why stocks are soaring even as coronavirus cases surge, at least 20 million remain unemployed and the US sinks into recession

We’ve analysed the trading in S&P/ASX 300 stocks from January to May 2020 to get a better understanding of what retail investors are doing.

Between March 23 (when the stock market started rising) and May 2, retail investors were net buyers of A$3.57 billion. At the same time the “professional” institutional investors – including super funds – were net sellers of $3.27 billion.

Cumulative net buying (A$ billion)

Notably, our results show retail investors weren’t just buying relatively safe “blue chip” stocks but also high-risk stocks.

Retail investors rush in

We decided to drill into the trading data after reports of booming retail investor activity. For example, an Australian Securities and Investments Commission analysis of trading between February 24 and April 3 found daily trading by retail brokers was double that of the preceding six months (A$3.3 billion compared with A$1.6 billion), and the rate of new trading accounts being opened increased 3.4 times.

Our analysis shows that from the start of the year to March 3 retail investors were net sellers, offloading about A$1.64 billion in stock. Between March 3 and May 8 they became net buyers of stock, accumulating A$6.29 billion in stock.

In contrast, institutional investors were net buyers through to March 3 (buying about A$3.73 billion of stock) but then net sellers, shedding A$7.3 billion worth of equities by May 8.

Daily average trading activity (both buying and selling) by retail investors between March and May was double the average for 2019 (of A$1.12 billion, compared with $A590 million). The daily average trading by institutional investors was 30% higher (A$12.26 billion a day, compared with A$8.67 billion over 2019).

What retail investors are buying

We examined stock buying based on four characteristics:

• market capitalisation – the market valuation of a company based on its stock price and number of shares

• the volatility of a stock price (how much it moves up or down) compared with the market average

• level of debt, known as “leverage”. Companies with higher debt tend to be riskier investments in uncertain economic conditions

• recent price changes – whether stock prices were rising or falling before our focus period.

Our analysis shows retail investors were net buyers not only of large-cap companies such as BHP and Commonwealth Bank but highly volatile stocks such as AMP and Webjet, highly leveraged stocks such as Domino’s Pizza and SEEK, and stocks whose prices were falling prior to the lockdown, such as Myer and Flight Centre.

In contrast, institutional investors were net sellers of all these stocks.

These trends were broadly consistent across industry sectors. The one exception was software and services, where institutions were net buyers through the lockdown and retail investors were net sellers.

Risky motivations

Why has the COVID-19 crisis produced such novel behaviour? We don’t know for sure, but can speculate about a few possibilities.

It may be due to people having fewer spending opportunities and channelling their spare cash into the market in the hope of a speedy rebound and quick returns.

It may be due people looking for entertainment in the absence of usual leisure activities. This has been dubbed the Boredom Markets Hypothesis.

It might also just be another form of gambling – “taking a punt” in the absence of sports betting opportunities.

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

But given the significant economic uncertainty, recent gains may not be sustained. Many listed companies have withdrawn or suspended the earnings guidance they usually provide to the stock exchange – key information for investors.

We caution awareness of the risks in hoping for the best.

– ref. Blue-chip, volatile, high-risk: retail investors are buying while professionals are selling – https://theconversation.com/blue-chip-volatile-high-risk-retail-investors-are-buying-while-professionals-are-selling-142985

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

Scott Morrison wasn’t going to be caught out twice. In Hawaii during the bushfires, the prime minister had hesitated before returning (slightly) early.

On Tuesday he wasn’t on holiday but starting a tour of several days in Queensland, where there’s a state election in a few months.

He aborted the trip on its first morning, announcing during a visit to a seafood business that he’d return to Canberra because of the COVID crisis in aged care in Victoria.

The funding and regulating of aged care is a federal responsibility, while responsibility for health rests with the states. What’s happening in Victoria involves both governments and tension has erupted.

During the pandemic federal, state and territory governments, joined in the national cabinet, have largely sought to avoid public blame games. They’ve bitten their tongues over their differences and frustrations, although there’s been private briefing to the media and some obvious signs of irritation.

But on Tuesday, blame was being assigned, in what might be described as passive aggressive displays.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews stressed the aged care system was the Commonwealth government’s responsibility.“The Commonwealth government have asked for help and that is exactly what my government and our agencies will provide to them,” he said.

Federal health minister Greg Hunt, on the other hand, highlighted the “massive breach of hotel quarantine” – that is, the Andrews government’s big lapse – that had led to widespread community transmission. “The greatest threat to any institution is a major community outbreak,” Hunt said.

He’s right. But the question is, could the federal government have done more to erect a firewall to protect the vulnerable people in these institutions which come under its regulation?

Last Friday acting federal chief medical officer Paul Kelly, appearing with Morrison at a news conference, rejected the suggestion aged care was an area of substantial failure in the pandemic.

“I wouldn’t say that it has been a failure up to now,” Kelly said.

“Certainly a large number of aged care facilities have had either cases in staff or in residents in recent times in Victoria. … We certainly have had very rapid action wherever a case has been found.” But Kelly did admit the situation was “a real concern”.

With growing community alarm, shocking reports in the media about conditions at facilities, and a clamour from frantic families, the federal government at the weekend announced a Victorian aged care response centre to co-ordinate efforts, which was set up by Monday.

A large number of army personnel had already been dispatched to the state to deal with the general COVID outbreak, and they were pulled into the aged care effort.

On Tuesday Hunt said the federal government would bring in an Australian Medical Assistance Team (AUSMAT). Such teams are sent to deal with crisis situations, such as a natural disaster – Hunt called them “the SAS of the medical world”.

Hunt also promised more protective equipment for Victorian facilities.

A call was put out for health staff from interstate, particularly South Australia and NSW, and Morrison had talks on Tuesday evening about this mobilisation.

Meanwhile the Victorian government has paused non-urgent elective surgery, freeing up staff to fill vacancies in nursing homes created by carers having COVID or isolating because they’ve been in contract with cases. Morrison reportedly was annoyed Andrews didn’t do this faster.

According to federal government figures, as of early Tuesday, there were about 70 residential aged care facilities in Victoria associated with active cases, involving 433 residents and 339 staff. There have been 42 deaths of residents in the Victorian second wave.

Andrews noted only five of the cases were in public aged care facilities.

With both governments scrambling to contain the situation, it is hard not to conclude the federal government failed to follow the maxim it embraced so strongly in giving assistance to the economy: go early, go hard.

A low paid workforce with people often taking shifts in multiple institutions always meant a high chance many staff would be infected, and workers would often be reluctant to stay at home if unwell, because they did not want lose money, or could not afford to.

Belatedly, there has been federal, state and Fair Work Commission action to address this lethal problem.

The federal messaging on masks was inexplicably slow, and there have been complaints about inadequate supplies of protective clothing for these institutions.

After the disaster of Sydney’s Newmarch House, with 19 deaths, everyone should have been on the highest alert.

The real issue, however, is that the aged care system is simply not fit for purpose in normal times and so was inevitably destined to fail when under this sort of extreme pressure.

Hunt on Tuesday praised the care his late father received in a home. “I cannot imagine better care that my family and my father could have got.”

But Andrews said “I wouldn’t want my mum in some of these places”, an observation many distraught families will relate to.

The interim report of the royal commission into aged care, released late last year, was scathing, declaring older people and their families were left “isolated and powerless in this hidden-from-view system”.

COVID has provided a tragic real time vindication of the commission’s observation.

– ref. View from The Hill: Aged care crisis reflects poor preparation and a broken system – https://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-aged-care-crisis-reflects-poor-preparation-and-a-broken-system-143556

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Douglas, Senior Lecturer in Law, University of Western Australia

Australia’s defamation laws, so long criticised to so little avail, are finally changing.

New South Wales Attorney-General Mark Speakman trumpeted this week:

Nation agrees to NSW-led defamation revolution.

His announcement followed July’s meeting of the Council of Attorneys-General, where all Australian jurisdictions approved amendments to the Model Defamation Provisions.

Australian defamation law is made up of several components. A large part of it is common law, inherited from England and developed by Australian judges over many decades. Our common law heritage was modified through statutes in each of the states and territories, including the “uniform defamation laws”.

The Model Defamation Provisions are a template of sorts, which underpin each of the statutes comprising the uniform defamation laws.

These changes to the Model Defamation Provisions are a long time coming. They haven’t been amended since 2005 – back when Facebook was only a year old and Twitter did not even exist. The first iPhone would not be released until 2007. The way we communicate and consume information has fundamentally changed since these laws were drafted.

Read more: Australia’s proposed defamation law overhaul will expand media freedom – but at what cost?

As a result, defamation litigation has changed too. Courts are hearing far more “backyard” defamation disputes – including fights over silly stuff on social media – than they once did.

So it’s trendy to say defamation law is “outdated”. This ignores the work courts have done to ensure your reputation continues to receive some protection as technologies and society change. These days, a hurtful lie can spread like wildfire and destroy a person.

Remember: a big chunk, or even most of defamation law, is made by judges. That won’t change.

I’m not convinced these new provisions will really “modernise” defamation law. They are certainly no “revolution”.

What has changed?

We have known about the bulk of the changes for a while. Most of them were on the table in November 2019.

Highlights include

• a new “serious harm” requirement
• some new defences, including a new “public interest” defence
• amendments to the way damages for certain kinds of nasty reputational damage are capped
• a new approach to limitation periods that takes account of the fact content remains online for years.

Traditional media organisations are the real winners

By “traditional media”, I mean the entities behind Australia’s newspapers, magazines and television stations, and associated online platforms.

Traditional media are typical defendants to defamation litigation. Risqué content engages readers and makes money. It also means defamation risk. Competing within a 24-hour news cycle means some companies jump to press too hastily, damaging reputations in the process. They may end up paying substantial sums of money to defamed persons by way of damages – for example, Geoffrey Rush’s almost A$2.9 million victory against the publisher of The Daily Telegraph.

So traditional media have an incentive to lobby for more “media freedom”, which includes stronger weapons to fend off defamation cases. Their recent lobbying paid off with a new public interest defence.

A previous draft of the proposed changes had a defence based on New Zealand law. The latest iteration of the defence, the proposed “section 29A”, is a bit different. It is based on UK legislation. It reads:

29A Defence of publication of matter concerning issue of public interest

(1) It is a defence to the publication of defamatory matter if the defendant proves that:

(a) the matter concerns an issue of public interest, and

(b) the defendant reasonably believed that the publication of the matter was in the public interest.

(2) In determining whether the defence is established, a court must take into account all of the circumstances of the case.

(3) Without limiting subsection (2), the court may take into account the following factors to the extent the court considers them applicable in the circumstances […]

The difference between “of public interest” and “in the public interest” is significant. Gossip pieces — for example, which celebrity did what with whom — may be “of public interest”, but its reporting is not necessarily “in the public interest”.

Several factors will guide whether a defendant publisher’s conduct satisfies the defence. They include the integrity of sources, and whether the publishers bothered to get the other side of the story. The new law should thus not protect the kind of dodgy journalism that led to Rebel Wilson’s massive defamation win after gossip mags went after her.

The new defence is not too different from the “qualified privilege” defences to defamation that already exist. Traditional media rarely win with a qualified privilege defence because their conduct is often not “reasonable”. The new defence gets to a similar place through different words. One difference is that the new defence may succeed even if the defendant defamed someone with “malice”. So the new defence could embolden more aggressive, “gotcha” journalism designed to hurt people.

What about people who aren’t celebrities?

There is a bit in there for us too.

Most significantly, there is a new requirement that the plaintiff suffer “serious harm” in order to sue. We already had a defence of “triviality” for smaller cases, but this amendment inverses it: rather than it being something for the defendant to argue in response to a plaintiff, the plaintiff needs to overcome the threshold.

Judges are encouraged to stop defamation cases that do not involve “serious harm” as quickly as possible.

This may weed out a few backyard defamation disputes. But it will not go as far as some suggest. “Harm” might arguably extend to offence and distress; it will be interesting to see how courts interpret the new law.

Much more could be done to modernise defamation law for the sake of the public as a whole. Creating a way for smaller defamation disputes to be resolved quickly and cheaply would be great. Just because a case does not turn on big money does not mean the interests at stake are not worth protecting. Say, for example, your ex falsely called you a domestic abuser to your friends and family on Facebook: you shouldn’t need to be cashed up to protect your reputation.

There is a second stage of defamation law reform on the way, which will likely look at the liability of social media companies for defamation.

Read more: A push to make social media companies liable in defamation is great for newspapers and lawyers, but not you

If traditional media and Attorney-General Christian Porter have their way, the reform to come will level the playing field between traditional media and tech companies like Google by making life harder for the tech giants.

Ironically, the key drivers of the so-called “modernisation” of defamation law are those traditional media companies furiously resisting the demise of their business model.

For better or worse, they have the ears of Australian governments.

– ref. Australia’s ‘outdated’ defamation laws are changing – but there’s no ‘revolution’ yet – https://theconversation.com/australias-outdated-defamation-laws-are-changing-but-theres-no-revolution-yet-143532

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katharine Kemp, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Law, UNSW, and Academic Lead, UNSW Grand Challenge on Trust, UNSW

Australia’s consumer watchdog is suing Google for allegedly misleading millions of people after it started tracking them on non-Google apps and websites in 2016.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) says Google’s pop-up notification about this move didn’t let users make an informed choice about the increased tracking of their activities.

Google uses some of this data in its targeted advertising business. It can also collect sensitive information about us from third-party websites and apps which it may use in its non-advertising businesses.

The ACCC isn’t the first to claim Google hasn’t been straight about how it uses our data, nor is this the first time it has sued Google.

But even if Google gave us the whole story, what can we actually do about growing surveillance?

Read more: Every step you take: why Google’s plan to buy Fitbit has the ACCC’s pulse racing

Google tracks your activities beyond Google

While it would take a separate article to list all the ways Google tracks your activities online and offline, the ACCC is concerned about two of the company’s data practices in particular.

First, Google has been collecting data about what you do on websites that may not seem related to Google at all. This is combined with other data collected by Google’s own services including YouTube, Gmail, Google Maps and Chrome.

The reason Google can do this is that third-party websites and apps also use Google’s services, such as ad serving or Google Analytics.

Their agreements with Google allow it to embed its technology into the websites and apps and send your activity information back to Google, without alerting you.

Second, the ACCC is concerned Google has combined its own extensive Google account holder datasets with personal data collected by ad tech company DoubleClick, which Google acquired in 2007. This is despite Google initially claiming it wouldn’t do this without users opting in.

The data Google collects, and how it’s used

Google’s technologies are embedded in millions of third-party websites (and likely many of the ones you use).

So it’s well placed to collect data about your online activities, including research you might do on intimate topics such as depression, miscarriage, abortion, diabetes, weight loss, heart disease, divorce, erectile dysfunction and so on.

Google can then combine this data with the information it already has about you from its own services, such as where you live, what you buy, where you go and who you associate with.

Google says it doesn’t use users’ health data or other “sensitive” data for its targeted advertising business. But it does not promise it won’t collect such sensitive data, keep it, combine it with data about our other activities or use it for non-advertising business purposes.

For example, Google has made moves to enter various health services markets. And there’s speculation it may start supplying health products and life insurance in future.

Further, unless you have changed the “ad personalisation” settings in your Google account, Google can use data from third-party sites which it does not classify as “sensitive” to target you with ads. This data could include whether you’re searching for baby clothes, travel insurance, retirement living, or a house in a specific suburb.

But even if you have opted out of personalised ads, Google’s privacy policy doesn’t say it will stop collecting and retaining the data itself.

What was misleading?

The ACCC claims Google’s 2016 notification about its increased tracking was misleading. The notice led with the benign headline, “Some new features for your Google Account”, followed by:

We’ve introduced some optional features for your account, giving you more control over the data Google collects and how it’s used, while allowing Google to show you more relevant ads.

The statements further down in the notification were arguably unclear about what Google actually planned to change. The ACCC says the notification was misleading because:

Consumers could not have properly understood the changes Google was making nor how their data would be used and so did not – and could not – give informed consent.

It claims Google also misled consumers by stating in its privacy policy that it would not reduce users’ rights under the policy without their explicit consent, but then did exactly that.

Read more: 94% of Australians do not read all privacy policies that apply to them – and that’s rational behaviour

Privacy concerns warrant legal backing

In this case, the ACCC’s issue is that Google didn’t give consumers the real story about its plan to vastly increase personal data collection and use this information for commercial purposes. The ACCC’s action against Google should be a warning to all companies that currently fudge their privacy terms.

But what if Google had been transparent and the pop-up box instead said: “we are going to start collecting your personal data whenever you use third-party websites or apps that use Google technologies”?

Given the millions of websites using Google technologies, is it even possible for consumers to avoid this?

In Germany, the Federal Cartel Office last year found Facebook had abused its dominance by insisting on collecting users’ personal data via embedded technologies on non-Facebook websites and apps.

It argued Facebook’s market power gave it the ability to impose these practices on users, even against their wishes.

Australia does not have an “abuse of dominance law” to address single-firm exploitative conduct, such as raising prices or imposing intrusive privacy terms. Facebook currently collects data about Facebook users – and even non-users – from third-party websites and apps in Australia, without alerting us.

The ACCC may succeed in proving misleading conduct by Google. And it might obtain a substantial fine against Google – potentially up to 10% of Google’s turnover in Australia.

But to stop tech giants from doing whatever they like with our data, we’ll need to consider a broader law against unfair practices.

Read more: Australia’s privacy watchdog is taking Facebook to court. It’s a good start

– ref. The ACCC is suing Google for misleading millions. But calling it out is easier than fixing it – https://theconversation.com/the-accc-is-suing-google-for-misleading-millions-but-calling-it-out-is-easier-than-fixing-it-143447

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Greg Austin, Professor UNSW Canberra Cyber, UNSW

In the past week, both the US and Australia rejected large parts of China’s extensive maritime claims in the South China Sea, as well as territorial claims by any state to undersea reefs.

More worryingly, the US is also pressuring Australia to join its freedom of navigation exercises in the sea — a move likely to further anger China.

As tensions in the South China Sea mount, it’s important to understand how this dispute began and what international law says about freedom of navigation and competing maritime claims in the waters.

Read more: Payne and Reynolds need to tread carefully in Washington as US turns up the heat on China

Creeping militarisation of the sea

In 1982, the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea was adopted and signed, formalising extended maritime resource claims in international law. At this time, no fewer than six governments had laid claim to the disputed Paracel and Spratly islands in the South China Sea.

Since then, there has been a creeping militarisation of the waters by nations seeking to secure extended maritime resource zones.

In 2009, Vietnam began reclaiming land around some of the 48 small islands it had occupied since the 1970s. In response, China began its much larger reclamations on submerged features it first began to occupy in the 1980s.

Bu 2016, these reclamations had resulted in three military-grade, mid-ocean airfields that sent shockwaves around the world, provoked in part by China breaking its own pledge not to militarise the islands.

What is China’s claim based on

The South China Sea is a vast area measuring 3.6 million square kilometres, more than double the size of the Gulf of Mexico. It takes a modern warship just over three days to sail at top speed of 30 knots from its northern edge at Taiwan to the southern edge at the Strait of Malacca.

China’s claim to the sea is based both on the Law of the Sea Convention and its so-called “nine-dash” line. This line extends for 2,000 kilometers from the Chinese mainland, encompassing over half of the sea.

In a historic decision in 2016, an international tribunal in The Hague ruled against part of China’s claims to the sea in a case brought by the Philippines. China rejected the authority of the tribunal and its finding in the case.

In its ruling, the tribunal considered the South China Sea to be a “semi-enclosed sea” as defined by the Law of the Sea Convention — a body of water tightly or largely contained by land features.

This status carries with it the expectation that coastal states should cooperate on everything from conservation issues to commercial exploitation. This concept is important: it means that by definition, the South China Sea is a shared maritime space.

How does international law factor in?

Under the Law of the Sea Convention, all states have a right to 200 nautical mile “exclusive economic zone” to exploit the resources of the sea and seabed, as measured from their land territories. Where these zones overlap, countries are obliged to negotiate with other claimants.

This has yet to happen in the South China Sea, which is the source of many of the current tensions. There are three great challenges to this.

The first is the countries claiming parts of the South China Sea cannot agree who owns the Paracel and Spratly islands.

China asserts its sovereignty based on highly disputable evidence from ancient times, as well as more recent claims from 1902-39. Japan occupied the islands during the second world war and later recognised the claim of the Republic of China (now Taiwan) in a 1952 peace treaty.

Rival claimants to the islands deny the validity of this evidence. Vietnam has equally credible evidence from the period before and during the second world war.

Then there is the broader question of China’s larger claim to the waters within the u-shaped “nine-dash” line. This line, which skirts the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei and Vietnam, was first drawn by the Nationalist government of China in 1947. The claim had no basis in international law — then, or now.

Read more: Exposing US hypocrisy on South China Sea island reclamation

A second challenge is one of the actors in this conflict is Taiwan, which has been in dispute with China over sovereignty issues since 1949.

This dispute has meant Taiwan is not formally recognised as a state by most countries and is therefore not a signatory to the Law of the Sea Convention, nor legally entitled to claim territory. But Taiwan occupies one of the islands.

Third, there is a debate in international law about the type of land territory that can generate rights to an exclusive economic zone. The Law of the Sea Convention mandates the land must be able to sustain human habitation. And in 2016, the international tribunal in The Hague found no islands in the Spratly group met this criterion.

This was a major blow to China’s claims to resource jurisdiction all the way to the southern limits of the South China Sea.

Competing views on freedom of navigation

While the convention settled most international laws governing the sea, it left unresolved some issues related to military activities, especially “innocent passage” by warships in territorial seas.

Under the Law of the Sea Convention, a foreign warship can pass within the 12 nautical miles of another state as long as it takes a direct route and doesn’t conduct military operations.

But states disagree on what constitutes innocent passage. Maritime powers like the US, UK and Australia routinely conduct freedom of navigation operations (or FONOPs) to challenge what Washington calls

attempts by coastal states to unlawfully restrict access to the seas.

The US has angered China by carrying out FONOPs within 12 nautical miles of the islands it claims in the South China Sea. These operations are not designed to challenge China’s claims to islands or resource zones. Rather, the purpose is to assert US rights to freedom of navigation.

China opposes the transits for several reasons, including its assertion that naval ships should not “operate” in other countries’ exclusive economic zones.

Read more: Despite strong words, the US has few options left to reverse China’s gains in the South China Sea

Beijing, however, ignores the contradiction between this position and its own activities in the sea, where its naval ships regularly operate in the claimed EEZs of other states.

For their part, the smaller states of the South China Sea are ambivalent about the dispute. They are certainly opposed to what they see as bullying from China on excessive maritime claims and would like to deny all its island claims.

But they are also not keen on seeing the US go too far in its policy of intensifying military confrontation with China.

Will Australia draw closer to the US position?

Australia’s statement on the South China Sea last week was its strongest rejection yet of China’s claims to the waters.

It did not represent a new position on the legal issues, but marked a fresh determination to confront China over its unreasonable claims and its bullying behaviour in the maritime disputes.

Australia has not been keen on following the high-profile freedom of navigation operations of the US — concerned it might provoke a response from China — but that position may be about to change.

– ref. Explainer: why is the South China Sea such a hotly contested region? – https://theconversation.com/explainer-why-is-the-south-china-sea-such-a-hotly-contested-region-143435

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robyn Lucas, Associate Professor of Epidemiology, Australian National University

How does the Sun help your body make vitamin D? Wesley, aged 7

Thanks for this great question, Wesley.

Vitamin D is created when the chemicals in our skin react to an invisible type of light from the Sun.

In Australia, most of our vitamin D is made in our skin, but we can can also get a little bit of vitamin D from some of the food we eat like fish, eggs and mushrooms.

Read more: Curious Kids: what does the Sun’s core look like?

It’s important we have vitamin D in our body as it helps to strengthen our bones and make our muscles work properly.

It’s especially important in young people when their bones are growing.

Invisible and visible light

Let’s first talk a little bit about sunlight.

Sunlight isn’t just the golden light that wakes you up in the morning or shines on your skin on a summer’s day. Sunlight actually exists in many colours, some we can see and some we can’t see.

A rainbow is an example of visible light, or sunlight you can see. Droplets of water in the sky split the light into all of its different colours.

But not all light is visible like the many colours of the rainbow.

Some types of sunlight are invisible. Infrared sunlight is one of these. If you could see infrared sunlight it would sit just above the red in the rainbow.

Infrared light makes us warm as it produces heat. You might have felt it heat up your skin on a warm sunny day.

Read more: Curious Kids: does the Sun spin as well as the planets?

Another type of invisible light is ultraviolet. If you could see ultraviolet light it would be below the violet colour in the rainbow.

Ultraviolet light is also called UV light, or UV radiation.

You might be interested to know that while we can’t see infrared or ultraviolet light, most animals can. In fact, goldfish can see both infrared and ultraviolet light. Imagine what that might be like!

Which light is important in making vitamin D?

We often use something called the UV index to tell us how much UV light is outside. The UV index is sometimes reported with the weather forecast, and tells us how strong the UV radiation will be that day.

There are two types of UV light that reach us from the Sun, called UV-A and UV-B. But it’s only the UV-B light hitting our skin that causes vitamin D to be made.

UV-B light is full of energy, a bit like a child who can’t sit still. It has more energy than UV-A and that extra energy is needed to make vitamin D.

So how exactly is it made?

When the UV-B light hits your skin, the energy in the light combines with chemicals in the very top layer of your skin.

Sometimes this results in your body making vitamin D. Other times the combination makes bad chemicals that lead to sunburn, and maybe later to skin cancers.

Read more: Curious Kids: why don’t burns bleed?

When the UV-B energy is taken into a chemical, it gives the chemical more energy – scientists describe this as the chemical being “excited”.

When the heat from the infrared light is added, it gives the excited chemical even more energy – so much that the links holding the chemical together break apart and it changes into a totally different chemical.

Imagine joining hands with all your friends and making a big circle, then running madly around. Some people lose their grip and their hands come apart. Suddenly it’s not a circle anymore, but a different shape.

This is what happens in the skin. The chemical that takes in the UV-B changes, because the links between atoms in the circle break, to become vitamin D.

The vitamin D is then picked up by the blood that flows through the skin.

But before it works properly in the body it has to go to the liver and then to the kidneys where it turns into the form that can help our bones and muscles.

Read more: Curious Kids: why is the Sun orange when white stars are the hottest?

But be careful not to get sunburned

So getting some sun on your skin is really important, but you don’t want to get too much or you’ll get sunburned.

In summer in Australia, the sun is so strong that you only need to be outside for a few minutes every day to keep your vitamin D up.

But it’s still good to get plenty of time outside, especially in the morning and afternoon.

Make sure you use sun protection like a hat, clothing, and sunscreen if the UV index is 3 or higher.

In summer it’s best to stay indoors or in the shade in the middle hours of the day because the Sun is very strong. But in winter the Sun’s not as strong, so the middle of the day is a good time to get outside in the sun to get your vitamin D.

Hello, curious kids! Have you got a question you’d like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to curiouskids@theconversation.edu.au

– ref. Curious Kids: how does the Sun help your body make vitamin D? – https://theconversation.com/curious-kids-how-does-the-sun-help-your-body-make-vitamin-d-139670

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nanda Jarosz, PhD Candidate, University of Sydney

When the ashes from Australia’s last bushfire season cooled, we were left with a few mind-boggling numbers: 34 human lives lost, more than a billion animals dead, and 18.6 million hectares of land burned.

But those figures don’t necessarily help us understand what was lost. The human mind struggles to grasp very large scales. And in Australia, our colonial past skews the way we view landscapes today.

This disconnect is important. Many scientific concepts, including climate change, happen at scales outside human perception.

Understanding the scale of destruction wrought by bushfires is vital if governments and societies are to adapt in the future. So how can Australians truly come to terms with the damage wrought by last summer’s bushfires?

Beyond human perception

On average, humans can only see about 4.7 kilometres into the distance. So perceiving the true extent of the destruction bushfires requires using our imaginations.

This is not only true of bushfires. It also applies to human understanding of climate change, nanoseconds, the size of the Universe and the geological time scale (the millions of years over which continents, oceans and mountains formed).

But science has shown humans have trouble understanding, or imagining, large orders of magnitude. In one US study for example, university students struggled to understand the relative relationships between the age of the Earth, the time required for the origin of the first life forms, and the evolution of dinosaurs and humans.

Read more: Click through the tragic stories of 119 species still struggling after Black Summer in this interactive (and how to help)

Even university students studying STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) have been shown to struggle with identifying and comparing magnitudes at large scales.

So what’s actually going on in our brains here? Research suggests humans use both numerical and “categorical” information – concepts drawn from their prior experience – to estimate the size of an object. For example, a person estimating the width of a truck might set it as a proportion of the presumed width of highway lanes.

The use of this prior experience can improve the accuracy of estimations. But it can also introduce bias and lead to inexact estimations.

Understanding vast landscapes

During the fires, satellite images and interactive maps sought to help us understand the scale of the crisis. But they can’t give a full picture of the life destroyed. So how might we otherwise understand the richness lost in a burnt landscape?

Unfortunately, our colonial views of the land are not much help here. British colonisation of Australia, and subsequent land laws, were established on the basis of “terra nullius” – meaning the land belonged to no one. This denied Indigenous people’s prior occupation of the land in order to legitimise its “lawful” settlement by Europeans.

Settlers tended to describe the Australian landscape as empty and unpopulated when, in fact, it was biologically [abundant] and peopled by Indigenous Australians.

Read more: Friday essay: this grandmother tree connects me to Country. I cried when I saw her burned

These colonial views have had lasting effects. It took more than 200 years before the terra nullius myth was formally dispelled by the 1992 Mabo decision.

Seeking to understand Indigenous perspectives of Country might help non-Indigenous Australians to truly comprehend the loss brought by bushfires. As Indigenous academic Bhiamie Williamson wrote on The Conversation in January:

the experience of Aboriginal peoples in the fire crisis engulfing much of Australia is vastly different to non-Indigenous peoples. How do you support people forever attached to a landscape after an inferno tears through their homelands: decimating native food sources, burning through ancient scarred trees and destroying ancestral and totemic plants and animals?

A human-centric view

Beyond the colonial influence, our generally human-centred view of the world also tends to render invisible the plants and wildlife within it. As Australian researcher Brendan Wintle and others noted in a recent paper, firefighting strategies routinely overlook the need to protect natural assets. They wrote:

It may be unrealistic to expect critical habitats of our most precarious species to compete for firefighting resources with houses and farms. We are far too self-interested. However, could we imagine the last remaining habitat for a brush-tailed rock-wallaby (Petrogale penicillata) might feature as an asset for protection in a fire that is burning through a wilderness area? Surely that needs doing.

In other words, gaining a better understanding the scale of a fire’s destruction means taking a more holistic view of what dwells in the landscape, and might need saving.

Future fires

Under climate change, bushfires in Australia will become more severe and frequent. So bearing in mind our limited abilities to perceive the potential scale of loss next time, what can we do to prepare?

As Wintle argues, more work is needed to organise conservation efforts before, during, and immediately after a bushfire. That includes establishing “insurance populations” of species and keeping them out of harm’s way, and better monitoring and surveying before a fire, so we know which places need protecting.

Williamson wrote of how most Indigenous Australians “have been consigned to the margins in managing our homelands”, watching on as they were “mismanaged and neglected”, which increased the bushfire risk.

Read more: Double trouble: this plucky little fish survived Black Summer, but there’s worse to come

The current bushfire royal commission has pledged to consider ways Indigenous land and fire management practices could improve our resilience to natural disasters. There is much room for ancient traditions to be incorporated into mainstream fire management.

It will take some time to grasp the repercussions of the last bushfire season. But it’s clear that we must transcend colonial, non-Indigenous, human-centred perceptions of the land if we’re to truly understand what was lost.

– ref. Humans see just 4.7km into the distance. So how can we truly understand what the bushfires destroyed? – https://theconversation.com/humans-see-just-4-7km-into-the-distance-so-how-can-we-truly-understand-what-the-bushfires-destroyed-128539

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jen Webb, Dean, Graduate Research, University of Canberra

In our series Art for Trying Times, authors nominate a work they turn to for solace or perspective during this pandemic.

If anyone can express the particularities of distress, it is surely the artists; and they are surely needed at times like the present – times when uncertainty, anxiety and, for too many people, bitter loss are the order of the day.

My first such experience was in my mid-teens, when I had to confront uncertainty, loss and grief without script or rehearsal. Initially at least, I longed like Keats “to cease upon the midnight with no pain”. But cometh the hour, cometh the art, and I found my sister’s copy of Songs of Leonard Cohen.

In the months that followed, I played the Canadian singer-songwriter’s 1967 debut album obsessively, stretched out on the floor, listening to that lion-rumble baritone as it soothed and smoothed my wounded heart and head and self.

This may seem counter-intuitive. Cohen told his biographer, Sylvie Simmons:

People were saying I was ‘depressing a generation’ and ‘they should give away razor blades with Leonard Cohen albums because it’s music to slit your wrists by’.

But for me it worked like homeopathy; a small dose of sadness to counter my sadness. Or maybe it worked like kintsugi, the Japanese art of repair that transforms brokenness into beauty.

Read more: As a writer-musician, Leonard Cohen was a one-off

Among the garbage and the flowers

What Cohen’s album persuaded me was that there are always reasons to keep going – that there is beauty even in a broken world.

I think of the dignity in the character of the “half-crazy” Suzanne, she of the first song on the album.

I think of the pointless charm of Jesus waiting until “only drowning men could see him” before offering his truth. Of the heroes who can be seen only “among the garbage and the flowers”; or Suzanne’s own “rags and feathers”.

In this and other songs on the album, the world is revealed in its strange enchantment, despite the melancholy that permeates the music.

Winter Lady, the third track on the album, consoles too in its focus on what is not finished, not whole. The singer’s first love, that “child of snow” who has left him a gift: the image of her weaving her hair “on a loom / of smoke and gold and breathing”. The “trav’ling lady” for whom he is “just a station on the road”, whose transience reflects the consolation of contingency, of not having to “talk of love or chains and things we can’t untie”.

Read more: Marianne & Leonard: a new film tells us little about the woman fixed in the role of musician’s muse

This sort of letting go can be such a solace. In the 2005 biopic Leonard Cohen: I’m Your Man, Cohen says:

I found that things became a lot easier when I no longer expected to win. You abandon your masterpiece and you sink into the real masterpiece.

Yes; but still I’d claim that Songs of Leonard Cohen is “the real masterpiece”. A 2014 Rolling Stone readers’ poll to rank his five-decade strong back catalogue placed So Long, Marianne at #6 of all his songs, and Suzanne at #2. A year later, Guardian critic Ben Hewitt’s list had So Long, Marianne at #2, and Suzanne topping the charts.

Spanning decades

No doubt their enduring appeal is associated with the saturation of these songs across the decades, but for me it’s because of the exquisite crafting of the poems; the spare melodies against which they operate; and the wit that shimmers through the songs.

Like, for instance: “I lit a thin green candle, to make you jealous of me. / But the room just filled up with mosquitos, they heard that my body was free”. Maybe it’s not laugh-out-loud funny, but it is delightfully wry.

An album is more than the songs; covers really matter too. Songs of Leonard Cohen looks like the album that 1960s parents would approve of – the so-not-a-rockstar portrait: the sepia, the solemn face, solemn border.

I spent a lot of time looking at that cover while drifting along with the music, and suspect that’s because it resembles a poetry book. Cohen’s image represented what back then I would have characterised as “mature”; and his sharp intelligence and attentive gaze spoke of “artist”, of “poet”.

He was, of course, always a poet, and though I did, and still do, love the musicality of his albums, it is always the words, the phrasing, their conjuring of mood and image, that work on me.

Which is why I still turn to this album for solace during trying times. Over the decades I have become more accomplished – more practised – at dealing with disaster, but haven’t forgotten that broken girl I was, who in the wash of this album’s music and magic and mood found a way to survive, and to thrive.

If I really am “locked into [my] suffering”, I know now that my “pleasures are the seal”.

And the seal does not keep me from immersing myself in the world and all it contains – all its wit and tenderness and beauty, all the very good reasons to carry on.

– ref. Listening to Songs of Leonard Cohen: singing sadness to sadness in these anxious times – https://theconversation.com/listening-to-songs-of-leonard-cohen-singing-sadness-to-sadness-in-these-anxious-times-142661

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kaz Ross, Lecturer in Humanities (Asian Studies), University of Tasmania

You might have seen articles or comments on social media lately alluding to “sovereign citizens”, or “SovCits” for short, with some reports suggesting COVID-19 government restrictions have driven a surge of interest in this movement.

So, who are these self-styled sovereign citizens, and what do they believe?

Sovereign citizens are concerned with the legal framework of society. They believe all people are born free with rights — but that these natural rights are being constrained by corporations (and they see governments as artificial corporations). They believe citizens are in an oppressive contract with the government.

SovCits reportedly believe that by declaring themselves “living people” or “natural people”, they can break this oppressive contract and avoid restrictions such as certain rates, taxes, and fines — or particular government rules on mandatory mask-wearing.

The SovCit movement arose in America decades ago, with roots in the American patriot movement, some religious communities, and tax protest groups. It has also been known as the “free-man” movement.

Read more: ‘Alt-right white extremism’ or conservative mobilising: what are CPAC’s aims in Australia?

Re-interpreting the law

SovCits see themselves as sovereign and not bound by the laws of the country in which they physically live. Accepting a law or regulations means they have waived their rights as a sovereign and have accepted a contract with the government, according to SovCit belief.

The SovCit movement doesn’t have a single leader, central doctrine or centralised collection of documents. It is based on their reinterpretation of the law and there are many legal document templates on the internet for SovCit use to, for example, avoid paying fines or rates they see as unfair.

SovCits tend not to follow conventional legal argument. Some have engaged in repeated court action and even been declared vexatious litigants by the courts.

The SovCit movement has many local variations but there are some key commonalities across the Australian SovCit movement.

Key beliefs and phrases

A central belief, according to news reports, is that the Australian government, the police, and other government agencies are corporations. Believers feel they must be on guard to avoid entering into a contract with the corporation. They often do this by stating, “I do not consent” and trying to get the police officer or official to recognise them as a “living” or “natural” being and therefore as a sovereign.

SovCits are often careful to avoid showing ID such as driver’s licences or giving their name and address. Saying “I understand” also risks being seen to agree to the contract so SovCits will repeat the phrase “I comprehend” to show they are refusing the contract.

Many reject their country’s constitution as false and reportedly refer to the Magna Carta of 1215 as the only true legal document constraining arbitrary power.

SovCits often come to the attention of authorities due to driving offences. It is a core belief of the movement that “sovereigns” have the right to travel freely without the need for a drivers licence, vehicle registration, or insurance.

Until COVID-19, the main threat seems to have been in committing road offences. More recently, actions protesting measures aimed at limiting the spread of COVID-19 have been linked to the sovereign citizen movement.

– ref. ‘Living people’: who are the sovereign citizens, or SovCits, and why do they believe they have immunity from the law? – https://theconversation.com/living-people-who-are-the-sovereign-citizens-or-sovcits-and-why-do-they-believe-they-have-immunity-from-the-law-143438

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Crystal Abidin, Senior Research Fellow & ARC DECRA, Internet Studies, Curtin University, Curtin University

Memes might seem like they emerge “naturally”, circulated by like-minded social media users and independently generating momentum. But successful memes often don’t happen by accident.

I’ve spent the past two years studying the history and culture of “meme factories”, especially in Singapore and Malaysia.

Read more: Explainer: what are memes?

Meme factories are a coordinated network of creators or accounts who produce and host memes.

They can take the form of a single creator managing a network of accounts and platforms, or creators who collaborate informally in hobby groups, or groups working as a commercial business.

These factories will use strategic calculations to “go viral”, and at times seek to maximise commercial potential for sponsors.

Through this, they can have a huge influence in shaping social media. And – using the language of internet visual pop culture – meme factories can shift public opinion.

When meme factories were born

The first mention of meme factories seems to have been a slide in a 2010 TED talk by Christopher Poole, the founder of the controversial uncensored internet forum 4chan.

4chan, said Poole, was “completely raw, completely unfiltered”. He introduced his audience to the new internet phenomenon of “memes” coming out of the forum, including LOLcats and Rickrolling – the largest memes to have emerged in the 2000s.

Today, corporate meme factories systematically churn out posts to hundreds of millions of followers.

They commissioned artists to “live-GIF” the 2012 US Presidential Election debates in an assembly line of soft political content. They congregated on a closed Facebook group to decide who could “take credit” for a school shooting. They created sponsored political posts for Michael Bloomberg’s Presidential campaign.

On reddit’s gaming communities, activating a meme factory (sincerely or in jest) requires willing members to react with coordinated (and at times, inauthentic) action by flooding social media threads.

Amid K-pop fandoms on Twitter, meanwhile, K-pop idols who are prone to making awkward or funny expressions are also affectionately called meme factories, with their faces used as reaction images.

Three types of factories

In my research, I studied how memes can be weaponised to disseminate political and public service messages.

I have identified three types of factories:

Commercial meme factories are digital and news media companies whose core business is to incorporate advertising into original content.

For instance SGAG, owned by Singaporean parent company HEPMIL Media Group, has commissioned memes for various business partners, including promotions of radio stations, groceries and COVID-19 recovery initiatives.

Hobbyish niche meme factories, in contrast, are social media accounts curating content produced by a single person or small group of admins, based on specific vernaculars and aesthetics to interest their target group.

One example is the illustration collective highnunchicken, which creates original comics that are a critical — and at times cynical — commentary about social life in Singapore.

STcomments, meanwhile, collates screengrabs of “ridiculous” comments from the Facebook page of The Straits Times, calling out inane humour, racism, xenophobia and classism, and providing space for Singaporeans to push back against these sentiments.

The third type of meme factory is meme generator and aggregator chat groups – networks of volunteer members who collate, brainstorm and seed meme contents across platforms.

One of these is Memes n Dreams, where members use a Telegram chat group to share interesting memes, post their original memes, and brainstorm over “meme challenges” that call upon the group to create content to promote a specific message.

Factories during coronavirus

Meme factories work quickly to respond to the world around them, so it is no surprise in 2020 they have pivoted to providing relief or promoting public health messages around COVID-19.

Some factories launched new initiatives to harness their large follower base to promote and sustain small local businesses; others took to intentionally politicising their memes to challenge censorship laws in Singapore and Malaysia.

Factories turned memes into public service announcements to educate viewers on topics including hand hygiene and navigating misinformation.

They also focused on providing viewers with entertainment to lighten the mood during self-isolation.

Memes are highly contextual, and often require insider knowledge to decode.

Many memes that have gone viral during COVID-19 started out as satire and were shared by Millenials on Instagram or Facebook. As they spread, they evolved into misinformed folklore and misinformation, shared on WhatsApp by older generations who didn’t understand their satirical roots.

An early Facebook meme about how rubbing chilli fruits over your hands prevent COVID-19 (because the sting from the spice would burn and you would stop touching your face) very quickly evolved into a WhatsApp hoax saying the heat from chilli powder would kill COVID-19 viruses.

Memes can be orchestrated by savvy meme factories who operate behind the scenes; or by ordinary people engaging in democratic citizen feedback. Beyond the joy, laughs (and misinformation), memes are a crucial medium of public communication and persuasion.

– ref. Pivot to coronavirus: how meme factories are crafting public health messaging – https://theconversation.com/pivot-to-coronavirus-how-meme-factories-are-crafting-public-health-messaging-135557

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Virginia Barbour, Director, Australasian Open Access Strategy Group, Queensland University of Technology

Scientific publishing is not known for moving rapidly. In normal times, publishing new research can take months, if not years. Researchers prepare a first version of a paper on new findings and submit it to a journal, where it is often rejected, before being resubmitted to another journal, peer-reviewed, revised and, eventually, hopefully published.

All scientists are familiar with the process, but few love it or the time it takes. And even after all this effort – for which neither the authors, the peer reviewers, nor most journal editors, are paid – most research papers end up locked away behind expensive journal paywalls. They can only be read by those with access to funds or to institutions that can afford subscriptions.

What we can learn from SARS

The business-as-usual publishing process is poorly equipped to handle a fast-moving emergency. In the 2003 SARS outbreaks in Hong Kong and Toronto, for example, only 22% of the epidemiological studies on SARS were even submitted to journals during the outbreak. Worse, only 8% were accepted by journals and 7% published before the crisis was over.

Fortunately, SARS was contained in a few months, but perhaps it could have been contained even quicker with better sharing of research.

Fast-forward to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the situation could not be more different. A highly infectious virus spreading across the globe has made rapid sharing of research vital. In many ways, the publishing rulebook has been thrown out the window.

Read more: The hunt for a coronavirus cure is showing how science can change for the better

Preprints and journals

In this medical emergency, the first versions of papers (preprints) are being submitted onto preprint servers such as medRxiv and bioRxiv and made openly available within a day or two of submission. These preprints (now almost 7,000 papers on just these two sites) are being downloaded millions of times throughout the world.

However, exposing scientific content to the public before it has been peer-reviewed by experts increases the risk it will be misunderstood. Researchers need to engage with the public to improve understanding of how scientific knowledge evolves and to provide ways to question scientific information constructively.

Read more: Researchers use ‘pre-prints’ to share coronavirus results quickly. But that can backfire

Traditional journals have also changed their practices. Many have made research relating to the pandemic immediately available, although some have specified the content will be locked back up once the pandemic is over. For example, a website of freely available COVID-19 research set up by major publisher Elsevier states:

These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the Elsevier COVID-19 resource centre remains active.

Publication at journals has also sped up, though it cannot compare with the phenomenal speed of preprint servers. Interestingly, it seems posting a preprint speeds up the peer-review process when the paper is ultimately submitted to a journal.

Open data

What else has changed in the pandemic? What has become clear is the power of aggregation of research. A notable initiative is the COVID-19 Open Research Dataset (CORD-19), a huge, freely available public dataset of research (now more than 130,000 articles) whose development was led by the US White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

Researchers can not only read this research but also reuse it, which is essential to make the most of the research. The reuse is made possible by two specific technologies: permanent unique identifiers to keep track of research papers, and machine-readable conditions (licences) on the research papers, which specify how that research can be used and reused.

These are Creative Commons licences like those that cover projects such as Wikipedia and The Conversation, and they are vital for maximising reuse. Often the reading and reuse is done now at least in a first scan by machines, and research that is not marked as being available for use and reuse may not even be seen, let alone used.

What has also become important is the need to provide access to data behind the research papers. In a fast-moving field of research not every paper receives detailed scrutiny (especially of underlying data) before publication – but making the data available ensures claims can be validated.

If the data can’t be validated, the research should be treated with extreme caution – as happened to a swiftly retracted paper about the effects of hydroxychloroquine published by The Lancet in May.

Read more: Not just available, but also useful: we must keep pushing to improve open access to research

Overnight changes, decades in the making

While opening up research literature during the pandemic may seem to have happened virtually overnight, these changes have been decades in the making. There were systems and processes in place developed over many years that could be activated when the need arose.

The international licences were developed by the Creative Commons project, which began in 2001. Advocates have been challenging the dominance of commercial journal subscription models since the early 2000s, and open access journals and other publishing routes have been growing globally since then.

Even preprints are not new. Although more recently platforms for preprints have been growing across many disciplines, their origin is in physics back in 1991.

Lessons from the pandemic

So where does publishing go after the pandemic? As in many areas of our lives, there are some positives to take forward from what became a necessity in the pandemic.

The problem with publishing during the 2003 SARS emergency wasn’t the fault of the journals – the system was not in place then for mass, rapid open publishing. As an editor at The Lancet at the time, I vividly remember we simply could not publish or even meaningfully process every paper we received.

But now, almost 20 years later, the tools are in place and this pandemic has made a compelling case for open publishing. Though there are initiatives ongoing across the globe, there is still a lack of coordinated, long term, high-level commitment and investment, especially by governments, to support key open policies and infrastructure.

We are not out of this pandemic yet, and we know that there are even bigger challenges in the form of climate change around the corner. Making it the default that research is open so it can be built on is a crucial step to ensure we can address these problems collaboratively.

– ref. Science publishing has opened up during the coronavirus pandemic. It won’t be easy to keep it that way – https://theconversation.com/science-publishing-has-opened-up-during-the-coronavirus-pandemic-it-wont-be-easy-to-keep-it-that-way-142984

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Thalia Anthony, Professor of Law, University of Technology Sydney

The intensification of the Black Lives Matter movement in the US in recent months has led to radical reform and action.

The police officers responsible for the killing of George Floyd were all charged with serious offences, including one with second-degree murder. The city of Minneapolis voted to replace its police force with a “new system of public safety”, while other cities have slashed their police budgets.

Demands for judicial and police reform in Australia

The BLM and Stop First Nations Deaths in Custody protests across Australia since early June have similarly called for charges against police officers and prison guards responsible for deaths in custody, as well as an end to racialised police violence.

Another major protest is scheduled for today in Sydney amid warnings from Prime Minister Scott Morrison that demonstrators would be breaking the law by attending after organisers lost their appeal to overturn the Supreme Court ruling blocking it.

Organisers offered to call it off if Premier Gladys Berejiklian committed to an investigation into the 2015 death of Aboriginal prisoner David Dungay Jr.

The co-chair of the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services, Nerita Waight, said last month,

we cannot be silent while police violence is unchecked and continues to kill our people.

There has also been a push to implement the 339 recommendations of the almost 30-year-old Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, which call for the use of arrest and imprisonment as a last resort, safer police and prison practices, independent investigations into deaths in custody and Aboriginal self-determination.

In recent decades, however, governments have defunded many First Nations organisations and programs that would enable successful implementation of these recommendations.

Read more: Can you socially distance at a Black Lives Matter rally in Australia and New Zealand? How to protest in a coronavirus pandemic

Small victories in recent months

While there has been no movement on these larger structural issues just yet, the BLM protests have resulted in smaller victories.

This month, the South Australian government committed to funding a custody notification service to ensure all Aboriginal people who enter police custody have access to a call to the Aboriginal Legal Services.

This service was recommended by the royal commission and has saved First Nations lives in other states and territories.

Another victory has been the initiation of a NSW parliamentary inquiry into how First Nations deaths in custody are investigated.

Ken Wyatt, the federal Indigenous affairs minister, has also met with Aboriginal peak organisations to discuss incorporating justice targets in the new Closing the Gap measures.

Yet, these targets have not yet reined in police powers and the discriminatory over-policing of First Nations adults and children.

Yet, violence against First Nations peoples continues

Overwhelmingly, the Commonwealth and state governments have responded to the BLM protests in Australia with condemnation.

Police commissioners and political leaders in several states have sought to block protests to prevent the spread of coronavirus, threatening arrests and issuing fines.

NSW Police Minister David Elliott said of the move to push ahead with today’s rally,

it’s actually arrogance and it’s probably the most dangerous act that anybody could do during a pandemic is organise a mass gathering.

Government leaders say they understand the “cause” and support the BLM movement, but not the means.

Yet, they still have not responded to the movement’s demands for mitigating police violence against First Nations people.

In fact, when police attacks on Aboriginal people have been captured on phone cameras and televised in recent months, they have been defended by the police, commissioners and ministers.

There have been at least five First Nations deaths in custody this year, with two in the last month alone.

There are also increasing concerns for the lives of First Nations people in prisons as COVID-19 has begun to spread in institutions and youth detention centres in Victoria.

Read more: ‘I can’t breathe!’ Australia must look in the mirror to see our own deaths in custody

What it will take to bring systemic change

Urgent and systemic change is required to claw back decades of extended police powers in NSW under the Law Enforcement Powers and Responsibilities Act and redress the lack of accountability for the 438 First Nations deaths in custody since 1991 and the 99 deaths investigated by the royal commission.

However, there are internal and external factors preventing this type of structural change.

On the one hand, the police have considerable power in Australia to influence decision-making at the parliamentary level and the way the tabloid media report on policing. The police unions also run active campaigns to defend officers charged in deaths in custody cases.

On the other hand, there has been a national silence about racialised police violence and deaths in custody of First Nations people. Gomeroi scholar Alison Whittaker describes this silence as embedded in “colonisation and white supremacy”.

The BLM movement has stimulated critical discussions in Australia on racial injustice and how First Nations people have challenged and resisted racialised policing and custodial practices.

It has also opened up conversations on the historic role of the police in the assimilation, enslavement and massacre of First Nations peoples. These practices have disrupted First Nations cultures, laws, families, connections to Country, languages, health and well-being.

This is precisely why a holistic, nationwide truth-telling process is so critical to hold the police to account for enforcing policies to eliminate First Nations people – in the past and today. We must decolonise our legal system to remove assumptions about the central role of the police in managing First Nations communities.

Read more: Despite 432 Indigenous deaths in custody since 1991, no one has ever been convicted. Racist silence and complicity are to blame

Truth-telling is not a one-off event, but a process of ongoing exchange. This requires reforming the education system: for instance, by emphasising diversity and cultural competency in the law and justice programs that produce the next generation of police and legal professionals. It also requires a commitment to independent investigations for deaths in custody and police violence.

Truth-telling can be a mechanism for structural change and reparations, as well. This requires resetting police strategies to reduce their disproportionate surveillance of First Nations people and ensuring police accountability.

Enacting policies, such as the NSW Police Aboriginal Strategic Direction 2018-2023 to improve relationships between officers and Aboriginal communities, is meaningless if Aboriginal people are still being disproportionately stopped and searched as part of police detection targets.

In the absence of truth-telling processes, police accountability and government commitments to de-centre the police from the lives of First Nations people, the BLM street protests will continue. It’s the only way for First Nations people and their allies to be heard, to educate and to elevate calls for justice.

– ref. Instead of demonising Black Lives Matter protesters, leaders must act on their calls for racial justice – https://theconversation.com/instead-of-demonising-black-lives-matter-protesters-leaders-must-act-on-their-calls-for-racial-justice-143269

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David King, Senior Lecturer in General Practice, The University of Queensland

We’re told to stay home if we feel unwell during the COVID-19 pandemic. But what if your sniffles, sore throat or cough aren’t infectious? What if they’re caused by hayfever or another allergic reaction? You may be doing a lot more isolating than you need to.

Although it can sometimes be challenging, there are ways to tell apart respiratory symptoms caused by a virus and those caused by an allergy. This approach may help prevent Australia’s COVID-19 testing capacity from being overwhelmed.

Read more: Health Check: what’s the right way to blow your nose?

What causes hayfever?

Around one in five (21%) of Australians suffer seasonal allergic rhinitis – more commonly known as hayfever. If each of these experiences a few episodes of hayfever annually, that would require between 10 million and 20 million COVID-19 tests to exclude infectious causes from allergies alone.

Hayfever has many of the same symptoms as viral respiratory infections, such as colds and mild flu-like illnesses, as well as COVID-19. This is because rhinitis refers to inflammation of the nose, which has many causes.

Hayfever is caused by your nose and/or eyes coming into contact with microscopic allergens in the environment, such as pollens (from grasses, weeds or trees), dust mites, moulds and animal hair.

Your immune system identifies these airborne substances as harmful and produces antibodies against them. The next time you come into contact with them, these antibodies signal your immune system to release chemicals such as histamine into your bloodstream, causing the inflammation that leads to hayfever symptoms.

Hayfever traditionally has a seasonal spike in late winter and spring, when pollen counts are highest from flowering trees and grass seeds.

But in many areas of Australia, there may be more hayfever in autumn, due to two common sources of allergies: moulds, and an autumn spike in indoor dust mites.

A warming climate has also been linked with increased levels of pollens and environmental allergens, and a rise in asthma and hayfever severity.

What are the symptoms?

Whether you have seasonal hayfever, longer-term perennial or vasomotor rhinitis), or a viral infection, you’re likely to have similar cold and flu-like symptoms.

You’ll have either a runny or stuffy nose. Other symptoms include sore throat; sneezing; cough; post-nasal drip – nasal mucus going down the back of your throat; and fatigue.

But there are two classic hayfever symptoms that can help you tell allergies and viruses apart. Hayfever can cause you to have an itchy nose or throat; and when it’s more severe it can cause swollen, blue-coloured skin under the eyes (called allergic shiners).

Can we tell them apart?

Fever, sore muscles or muscle weakness

Hayfever, despite its name, does not cause increased body temperature. Flu-like illnesses do cause fever, and sore muscles (myalgia), malaise and fatigue.

Allergies such as hayfever may cause a slight malaise without the other symptoms, probably due to a stuffy nose and poor sleep.

Snoring, dark circles under the eyes and sleep

The nasal congestion from hayfever and other types of rhinitis often increases the potential to snore during sleep. And if you have those dark circles under the eyes, that’s likely down to chronic poor-quality sleep, as nasal congestion and snoring worsen.

Itchy nose and eyes, plus sneezing

An itchy nose and eyes are classic hayfever symptoms, as is intense, prolonged sneezing.

You can sneeze with a cold or flu, but usually only in the first few days of the infection.

Longer-lasting symptoms

Allergic reactions tend to come and go from day to day, or even from hour to hour, particularly if some environments are the source of the offending allergens. Perennial rhinitis can be present for weeks or months, far longer than any viral cold or flu.

It is rare for a cold to last more than a week, as the body has fought off the virus by that time. Exceptions to this are the cough and sinus symptoms that were triggered by the virus but persist for other reasons.

Antihistamines

If your nasal symptoms improve with antihistamine medication, then you likely have an allergy or hayfever. Antihistamines do not alleviate symptoms of the common cold.

However, if your allergic reaction is more severe, antihistamines alone, even in larger doses than stated on the packet, may be insufficient to fully control symptoms, and a variety of nasal sprays may have to be added to the treatment.

Read more: Coronavirus or just a common cold? What to do when your child gets sick this winter

Why do we need to differentiate viral from allergic causes?

In “normal” times we usually treat the symptoms of viral infections. However, amid the COVID-19 outbreak we need a clearer picture of what might be causing our symptoms so we get tested when it matters, and not for undiagnosed hayfever.

But it’s not easy to tell viral and allergic rhinitis apart. People with hayfever also get viral colds and flus, further complicating the picture.

If you think your symptoms may be due to allergy, it is safe to try a double dose of non-sedating antihistamine. Sedating antihistamines should be avoided in young children, and taken with caution in adults. If your symptoms improve significantly within an hour, your symptoms are likely hayfever or another allergic reaction.

However, if your symptoms are different to previous hayfever episodes, or your symptoms don’t improve after taking an antihistamine, that’s another matter. Stay at home until you can get tested for COVID-19.

Anyone with only partially treated and controlled hayfever will need to realise that your sniffles and sneezes are going to be distressing to your fellow commuter, diner or shopper. So you may need some medical assistance to more fully manage your allergic condition.

– ref. Sniffles, sneezing and cough? How to tell if it’s a simple allergy rather than The Virus – https://theconversation.com/sniffles-sneezing-and-cough-how-to-tell-if-its-a-simple-allergy-rather-than-the-virus-139657

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John French, Atmospheric physicist, University of Tasmania

While greenhouse gases are warming Earth’s surface, they’re also causing rapid cooling far above us, at the edge of space. In fact, the upper atmosphere about 90km above Antarctica is cooling at a rate ten times faster than the average warming at the planet’s surface.

Our new research has precisely measured this cooling rate, and revealed an important discovery: a new four-year temperature cycle in the polar atmosphere. The results, based on 24 years of continuous measurements by Australian scientists in Antarctica, were published in two papers this month.

The findings show Earth’s upper atmosphere, in a region called the “mesosphere”, is extremely sensitive to rising greenhouse gas concentrations. This provides a new opportunity to monitor how well government interventions to reduce emissions are working.

Our project also monitors the spectacular natural phenomenon known as “noctilucent” or “night shining” clouds. While beautiful, the more frequent occurrence of these clouds is considered a bad sign for climate change.

Studying the ‘airglow’

Since the 1990s, scientists at Australia’s Davis research station have taken 600,000 measurements of the temperatures in the upper atmosphere above Antarctica. We’ve done this using sensitive optical instruments called spectrometers.

These instruments analyse the infrared glow radiating from so-called hydroxyl molecules, which exist in a thin layer about 87km above Earth’s surface. This “airglow” allows us to measure the temperature in this part of the atmosphere.

Our results show that in the high atmosphere above Antarctica, carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases do not have the warming effect they do in the lower atmosphere (by colliding with other molecules). Instead the excess energy is radiated to space, causing a cooling effect.

Our new research more accurately determines this cooling rate. Over 24 years, the upper atmosphere temperature has cooled by about 3℃, or 1.2℃ per decade. That is about ten times greater than the average warming in the lower atmosphere – about 1.3℃ over the past century.

Untangling natural signals

Rising greenhouse gas emissions are contributing to the temperature changes we recorded, but a number of other influences are also at play. These include the seasonal cycle (warmer in winter, colder in summer) and the Sun’s 11-year activity cycle (which involves quieter and more intense solar periods) in the mesosphere.

One challenge of the research was untangling all these merged “signals” to work out the extent to which each was driving the changes we observed.

Surprisingly in this process, we discovered a new natural cycle not previously identified in the polar upper atmosphere. This four-year cycle which we called the Quasi-Quadrennial Oscillation (QQO), saw temperatures vary by 3-4℃ in the upper atmosphere.

Discovering this cycle was like stumbling across a gold nugget in a well-worked claim. More work is needed to determine its origin and full importance.

But the finding has big implications for climate modelling. The physics that drive this cycle are unlikely to be included in global models currently used to predict climate change. But a variation of 3-4℃ every four years is a large signal to ignore.

We don’t yet know what’s driving the oscillation. But whatever the answer, it also seems to affect the winds, sea surface temperatures, atmospheric pressure and sea ice concentrations around Antarctica.

‘Night shining’ clouds

Our research also monitors how cooling temperatures are affecting the occurrence of noctilucent or “night shining” clouds.

Noctilucent clouds are very rare – from Australian Antarctic stations we’ve recorded about ten observations since 1998. They occur at an altitude of about 80km in the polar regions during summer. You can only see them from the ground when the sun is below the horizon during twilight, but still shining on the high atmosphere.

Read more: Humans are encroaching on Antarctica’s last wild places, threatening its fragile biodiversity

The clouds appear as thin, pale blue, wavy filaments. They are comprised of ice crystals and require temperatures around minus 130℃ to form. While impressive, noctilucent clouds are considered a “canary in the coalmine” of climate change. Further cooling of the upper atmosphere as a result of greenhouse gas emissions will likely lead to more frequent noctilucent clouds.

There is already some evidence the clouds are becoming brighter and more widespread in the Northern Hemisphere.

Measuring change

Human-induced climate change threatens to alter radically the conditions for life on our planet. Over the next several decades – less than one lifetime – the average global air temperature is expected to increase, bringing with it sea level rise, weather extremes and changes to ecosystems across the world.

Long term monitoring is important to measure change and test and calibrate ever more complex climate models. Our results contribute to a global network of observations coordinated by the Network for Detection of Mesospheric Change for this purpose.

The accuracy of these models is critical to determining whether government and other interventions to curb climate change are indeed effective.

Read more: Anatomy of a heatwave: how Antarctica recorded a 20.75°C day last month

– ref. Carbon emissions are chilling the atmosphere 90km above Antarctica, at the edge of space – https://theconversation.com/carbon-emissions-are-chilling-the-atmosphere-90km-above-antarctica-at-the-edge-of-space-143271

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Marilyn Campbell, Professor Faculty of Education, School of Cultural and Professional Learning, Queensland University of Technology

How would you answer the following question?

At what age can a child be fined or imprisoned for their actions in Australia?

• Any age, if she/he can differentiate right from wrong

• ten years old

• 14 years old

• 16 years old

• I don’t know

Our survey found only 7.2% of teachers and 5.8% of students knew the right answer — that criminal sanctions could be imposed on a ten year old.

Australian state and federal attorney-generals will meet this week to discuss lifting the age of criminal responsibility from 10 years old.

There were reportedly almost 600 children aged 10 to 13 in detention in Australia last financial year. More than 60% were Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander children.

As part of a larger study, we surveyed 250 Year 10 teachers and 533 Year 10 students (aged 15-16 years) in 2015 from three states in Australia (South Australia, Western Australia and Queensland). The students and teachers were from urban and regional areas in government and independent schools.

One issue we were interested in was student and teacher understanding about the age of criminal responsibility in their state.

Read more: Don Dale royal commission demands sweeping change – is there political will to make it happen?

A significant proportion of teachers (36.8%) believed 16 was the minimum age of criminal responsibility. And 32.8% said they did not know the answer.

Nearly 30% of Year 10 students (29.8%) said criminal responsibility was possible at any age when the child could differentiate right from wrong. And 22.7% answered it was at 16 years old. The survey relevant to this article has not yet been published.

The age of a criminal

Across all Australian states and territories, a child must be at least ten years old age before they can be held criminally responsible for their actions.

It is important to acknowledge that youth justice principles (enshrined in legislation) in different states and territories hold that detention in custody is a sanction of last resort.

If a child is aged between ten and 14, there is a presumption (that can be rebutted) that they will not be criminally responsible, unless the prosecution can prove the child had capacity to know they should not do the act.

Read more: Ten-year-olds do not belong in detention. Why Australia must raise the age of criminal responsibility

The rationale behind a minimum age of criminal responsibility is that children of a certain age have not developed a full appreciation of right and wrong behaviour, and the consequences that flow from it.

Introducing them to the criminal justice system and subjecting them to criminal sanction would be unfair in these circumstances.

Most teachers and students don’t know

Our survey showed both Year 10 teachers and students were largely ignorant about the age of criminal responsibility in their state.

These misunderstandings are happening at a time of strong calls to increase the minimum age of criminal responsibility. The Australian Lawyers Alliance, Law Council of Australia, Australian Medical Association and the Royal Australian College of Physicians have all called for an increase to the minimum age of criminal responsibility in Australia.

Raising the minimum age of responsibility (as an irrebuttable presumption) from ten to 14 would be consistent with recommendations made by the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child.

While the United Kingdom also has a minimum age of ten, most European nations have a minimum age of 14 years or higher.

Why does it matter?

Criminal law is designed to educate people about, and deter them from, committing crimes. Ignorance of the law is not a defence to a criminal charge, so school students over the age of ten have a vested interested in understanding how the criminal law (and possible sanctions) might apply to them.

School staff (in their pastoral role) also have a responsibility to teach students about criminal responsibility. The teacher-student relationship in formative years has the capacity to mould behaviour in social ways.

A teacher cannot impart knowledge about the criminal law that they themselves do not have.

Read more: A new bill keeping 10 year olds out of jail is a good start, but it needs to go further

Schools can be a site for criminal behaviour. Section 60e of The Crimes Act 1900 (NSW), for instance, specifically prohibits the assault, stalking, harassment or intimidation of any school staff or student.

Students engaged in cyberbullying could be charged under the Commonwealth Criminal Code Act 1995 with using a telecommunication service to menace, threaten or cause offence.

Staff and students need to be aware of these laws, and their potential criminal liability pursuant to these laws.

While many organisations are calling for a change to the minimum age of criminal responsibility in Australia, the fact there is even a need for change will come as a surprise to many schoolteachers and students.

Pre-service teachers need to learn these basic facts about the legal system as it applies to their students during their university course. And professional development needs to be provided for practising teachers.

– ref. More than 90% of Year 10 teachers don’t know the age of criminal responsibility in Australia – https://theconversation.com/more-than-90-of-year-10-teachers-dont-know-the-age-of-criminal-responsibility-in-australia-132855

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Warren Hogan, Industry Professor, University of Technology Sydney

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a dramatic surge in “mum and dad” retail investors playing stock exchanges across the world.

In Australia, retail investors were net buyers of A$9 billion of Australian stocks between late February and mid-May, according to corporate advisory firm Vesparum Capital. In contrast, the professional institutional investors – superannuation funds and the like – were net sellers of A$11 billion of stock.

The amateurs are therefore likely responsible for most of the market’s rebound since its March 23 low.

An Australian Securities and Investments Commission analysis of retail investor trading shows from February 24 (the day after the market peaked) to April 3, retail investors’ daily buying and selling of stocks was double that of the months before (A$3.3 billion to A$1.6 billion). More than 20% of that activity was from new or reactivated accounts.

The securities regulator has expressed concern this rush of amateurs into the stock market is a train wreck waiting to happen. Its report notes retail investors are, on average, “not proficient” at predicting short-term market movements.

While markets generally recover over the long run and tend to grow with economic fundamentals, short-term trading and poor market timing can be a major risk for investors in volatile markets. Therefore, retail investors should be wary of trying to “play the market” for short-term price movements by day trading.

COVID and risky behaviour

There are several possible explanations for why people are taking a risk on the stock market.

Some might see this as an opportunity to get into the market at a low point, with a view to long-term gains. Others might be out of work and looking to “day trade” – buying and selling shares on short time frames – as a source of income. Yet others may be taking the opportunity of working from home to watch the market through the day.

But another explanation is also worth considering. This is an alternative to gambling. So while it’s risky, it’s arguably no riskier than sports betting, casinos or poker machines.

Read more: Why stocks are soaring even as coronavirus cases surge, at least 20 million remain unemployed and the US sinks into recession

Risk tolerance

This theory (that this is gambling by another means) explains why the appetite for risk among retail investors has ballooned when the natural response to severe economic uncertainty would be to reduce trading.

The financial risk individuals are happy to tolerate – known as financial risk tolerance – is mostly determined by personality. A person’s risk appetite is unlikely to change substantially over their life, even with changing economic conditions.

Most people, however, are adept at making different risk decisions with money allocated to different “accounts”. In behavioural finance this is known as “mental accounting”.

How they think about and use their different accounts isn’t necessarily “rational”. For example, someone might be very prudent with money from their regular budget account while spending frivolously from a discretionary account.

So extreme risk-taking can occur when opportunities arise despite a person generally being risk-averse.

Gambling trends

In the first three months of the year, pollster Roy Morgan estimates about half of all Australians gambled in some form.

Its figures indicated 8.4 million adults spent about A$625 million on lottery tickets, 2.4 million spent about A$2.2 billion on poker machines, and 2.1 million spent about A$1 billion on betting – horses, sports etc.

Read more: With pokies shut down, coronavirus stress could drive more people to reckless online gambling

In Australia, the closure of pubs, clubs and casinos during periods of lockdown has severely curbed these forms of gambling. Between late March and late April, for example, the Alliance for Gambling Reform estimates gamblers saved more than $1 billion on poker machines. The cessation of many sporting events has also reduced betting opportunities.

Pros and cons for society

Does this imply people see the financial markets as just another form of gambling? If so, is this necessarily a bad thing?

If a significant number of people are seriously looking to “day trading” as a way to make money in the short term, the securities regulator’s concerns are valid. There is a good chance most will lose money.

But if these new investors are driven by their interest in gambling, substituting financial markets for poker machines and sports betting, then surely most must be prepared for losses. Very few gamblers are consistent winners from betting on games of chance or sports.

Read more: There’s another health crisis looming – what happens when the pokies switch back on?

In this context there may not be so much to worry about – albeit acknowledging a small percentage will be “problem investors”, losing more than they can afford.

Compared to the almost certain likelihood of losses on gambling, those rushing into the stock market might just find it more rewarding than casinos, sports betting or pokies.

– ref. Gambling on the stock market: are retail investors even playing to win? – https://theconversation.com/gambling-on-the-stock-market-are-retail-investors-even-playing-to-win-143248

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jacqueline Peel, Professor of Environmental and Climate Law, University of Melbourne

As the world warms, the value of “safe” investments might be at risk from inadequate climate change policies. This prospect is raised by a world-first climate change case, filed in the federal court last week.

Katta O’Donnell – a 23-year-old law student from Melbourne – is suing the Australian government for failing to disclose climate change risks to investors in Australia’s sovereign bonds.

Read more: These young Queenslanders are taking on Clive Palmer’s coal company and making history for human rights

Sovereign bonds involve loans of money from investors to governments for a set period at a fixed interest rate. They’re usually thought to be the safest form of investment. For example, many Australians are invested in sovereign bonds through their superannuation funds.

But as climate change presents major risks to our economy as well as the environment, O’Donnell’s claim is a wake-up call to the government that it can no longer bury its head in the sand when it comes to this vulnerability.

O’Donnell’s arguments

O’Donnell argues Australia’s poor climate policies – ranked among the lowest in the industrialised world – put the economy at risk from climate change. She says climate-related risks should be properly disclosed in information documents to sovereign bond investors.

O’Donnell’s claim alleges that by failing to disclose this information, the federal government breaches its legal duty. It alleges the government has engaged in misleading and deceptive conduct, and government officials breached their duty of care and diligence.

This is a standard similar to that owed by Australian company directors. Analysis from leading barristers indicates that directors who fail to consider climate risks could be found liable for breaching their duty of care and diligence.

O’Donnell argues government officials providing information to investors in sovereign bonds should meet the same benchmark.

Climate change as a financial risk

Under climate change, the world is already experiencing physical impacts, such as intense droughts and unprecedented bushfires. But we’re also experiencing “transition impacts” from steps countries take to prevent further warming, such as transitioning away from coal.

Combined, these impacts of climate change create financial risks. For example, by damaging property, assets and operations, or by reducing demand for fossil fuels with the risk coal mines and reserves become stranded assets.

This thinking is becoming mainstream among Australian economists. As the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority’s Geoff Summerhayes put it:

When a central bank, a prudential regulator and a conduct regulator, with barely a hipster beard or hemp shirt between them, start warning that climate change is a financial risk, it’s clear that position is now orthodox economic thinking.

Why safe investments are under threat

Sovereign bonds are a long-term investment. Katta O’Donnell’s bonds, for example, will mature in 2050. These time-frames dovetail with scientific projections about when the world will see severe impacts and costs from climate change.

And climate change is likely to hit Australia particularly hard. We’ve seen the beginning of this in the summer’s ferocious bushfires, which cost the economy more than A$100 billion.

Read more: With costs approaching $100 billion, the fires are Australia’s costliest natural disaster

Over time, climate risks may impact sovereign bonds and affect Australia’s financial position in a number of ways. For example, by impacting GDP when the productive capacity of the economy is reduced by severe fires or floods.

Frequent climate-related disasters could also hit foreign exchange rates, causing fluctuations of the Australian dollar, as well as putting Australia’s AAA credit rating at risk. These risks would reduce if the government took climate change more seriously.

Already, some investors are voting with their feet. Last November, Sweden’s central bank announced it had sold Western Australian and Queensland bonds, stating Australia is “not known for good climate work”.

Unprecedented, but not novel

O’Donnell’s case against the federal government is an unprecedented climate case, even if its arguments are not novel.

Australia has been a “hotspot” for climate litigation in recent years, but the O’Donnell case is the first to sue the Australian government in an Australian court.

Previous cases suing governments have often raised human rights, such as the high-profile Urgenda case in 2015 against the Dutch government – the first case in the world establishing governments owe their citizens a legal duty to prevent climate change.

The O’Donnell case is also unique in its focus on sovereign bonds. But cases alleging misleading climate-related disclosures are themselves not new.

In Australia, shareholders sued the Commonwealth Bank of Australia in 2017 for failing to disclose climate change-related risks in its 2016 annual report. The case was settled after the bank agreed to improve disclosures in subsequent reports.

Read more: Climate change is a financial risk, according to a lawsuit against the CBA

In another headline-making case, 23-year-old council worker Mark McVeigh is taking his superannuation fund, Retail Employees Superannuation Trust, to court seeking similar disclosures.

The O’Donnell case builds on this line of precedent, extending it to disclosures in bond information documents. As such, courts will likely take it seriously.

What precedent might it set?

If the O’Donnell case is successful it could establish the need for disclosure of climate-related financial risks for a range of investments.

At a minimum, a ruling in O’Donnell’s favour may compel the Australian government to disclose climate-related risks in its information documents for investors. This might make people think twice about how they choose to invest their money, especially as investors seek to “green” their portfolios.

It could also give rise to litigation using the same legal theory in sovereign bond disclosure claims against other governments, much in the way that the Urgenda case has spawned copycat proceedings from Belgium to Canada.

Whether the case provides the impetus for further government action to improve the effectiveness of Australia’s climate policies remains to be seen.

Still, it’s clear climate-related financial risks have entered the corporate boardroom. With this case, they’ve now come knocking at the government’s door.

– ref. ‘A wake-up call’: why this student is suing the government over the financial risks of climate change – https://theconversation.com/a-wake-up-call-why-this-student-is-suing-the-government-over-the-financial-risks-of-climate-change-143359

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Judith Armstrong, Honorary Fellow of the School of Languages and Linguistics, University of Melbourne

In our Art for Trying Times series, authors nominate a work they turn to for solace or perspective during this pandemic.

That we are all spending more time at home these days goes without saying; for those of us in Melbourne, our four walls feel restraining when most ways of leaving them are proscribed. So let me persuade you of a marvellously legitimate alternative to breaking the law, sorting your messy passwords, or rearranging your higgledy-piggledy books into some kind of order. It’s called vicarious escape.

Oddly enough, if my bookshelves had been in proper order I might have missed out on this experience. During the first lockdown I was looking for inspiration among the over-familiar titles when I discovered a book I had bought but not read, and then forgotten I owned. In triumph I carried it as far as the couch, stretched out (the sun was streaming through the windows), and turned to page one.

This was not a cop-out, you understand, for the book was Literary Criticism. It would be instructive, even demanding; it could almost count as work. It was a book born of impressive knowledge but written in a lively, deceptively simple style; it offered new and clever perceptions about a writer of whom you might think everything had long been said. It plunged me back into the beloved novels of Jane Austen, and I read it with delight.

Read more: Friday essay: the revolutionary vision of Jane Austen

By the time I had reluctantly reached the last page, the next lockdown was imminent, and I rejoiced that one effect of my excellent discovery was to know exactly what I must do next. I would reread one, two, or all of Jane Austen’s major works, beginning with Sense and Sensibility, the first of the six to enthral an unsuspecting 19th century English audience.

Published anonymously in 1811, its first run had sold out. What I did not anticipate was the light this book could throw on life under COVID-19.

The novel concerns two sisters, Elinor and Marianne. The contrasting natures of the two girls provides Austen’s title, but there is also a younger daughter, Margaret, and an older stepbrother by the mother’s first marriage whose new wife forces the mother and daughters out of the large family house into a cottage in a small village in another county.

It is this move that puts the sisters in a situation that has parallels with ours. The tiny village of Barton could offer no social life. A little like people obliged to work from home, the girls found themselves with no external stimuli, other than Nature, with which to fuel their inner thoughts and mutual exchanges.

Read more: Turning to the Code 46 soundtrack: bearing solitude in a time of sickness

Thrown back on their own resources then, the two older sisters work on their existing accomplishments. Elinor sketches and paints, Marianne practises her piano-playing; they walk daily, sew and read. Their every activity seems to the modern reader almost weirdly extended: a short stroll will occupy two hours; Marianne, at least in intention, will read for six.

Now that lack of time is no longer an excuse, we might even think of emulating them, but there is one great difference (at least for me). Each sister has in the other, on tap, a daily companion who provides companionship and stimulation. There is no mention of boredom or restlessness; depression results only from romantic mishaps. How? Their neighbour Sir John turns up, some social life takes off, and Marianne falls in love. Well, this is a novel.

Literary isolates

I briefly put aside the Dashwood sisters to consider darker examples of literary isolates. Dostoevsky’s Underground Man leapt to mind. He lives utterly alone in a basement; his first words announce that he is “a sick man… a spiteful man … an unattractive man” whose liver is diseased. As a solitary he qualifies, but he’s hardly an example to follow.

Back to Jane. But could even she help someone without a sister? Someone whose props, given the age we live in, are texts and emails, both of which seem determined to shorten our exchanges. “U?” is all we need say to seek an opinion by SMS.

The phone seems currently the only resource by which we Melburnians could copy the sisters’ ability to introduce, develop, and thoroughly draw out a conversation. But even that we can’t count on. Usually our life-saving story isn’t nearly finished before the friend we’ve rung rudely interrupts with what she wants to say.

No. The only escape must be vicarious, and preferably delivered by the divine Jane, with her potential Mr Rights completely taken in by her unscrupulous Miss Wrongs; where Incomes (salaries are for the middle classes, wages for the servants) can suddenly become desperately insufficient or dangerously excessive; where heart-stopping vicissitudes abound. All related in elegant prose that flashes with pointy wit and lashes with quiet disdain.

The lockdown does permit you to lose yourself in a beguiling other world – if you have a Jane Austen on hand.

– ref. Sense and Sensibility in a time of coronavirus: vicarious escape with Jane Austen – https://theconversation.com/sense-and-sensibility-in-a-time-of-coronavirus-vicarious-escape-with-jane-austen-142817

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Holly Seale, Senior Lecturer, UNSW

Victoria’s chief health officer Brett Sutton said recently there were good reasons why some people can’t wear a mask:

A number […] are legitimately not able to wear masks so please don’t vilify individuals or don’t make the assumption they are simply stubborn. There will be people with medical, behavioural, psychological reasons […] certainly don’t make an assumption that they should be the subject of your ire.

He commented on the first day wearing a mask in public in Greater Melbourne and Mitchell Shire became mandatory, except for those without a valid reason.

Read more: Which mask works best? We filmed people coughing and sneezing to find out

It’s easy to jump to conclusions

As wearing a mask in public becomes more common in Australia, either because it’s mandatory where you live or because you choose to wear one, it might be tempting to assume people who don’t wear masks are irresponsible, misguided or selfish.

You might also question why you need to wear a mask when others don’t.

But some people find wearing a mask difficult or distressing. So, to reduce the risk of inflammatory or inappropriate comments being made, we need to understand some of the reasons why:

• autism — some people with autism spectrum disorders find covering the nose and mouth with fabric can cause sensory overload, feelings of panic, and extreme anxiety

• disability — some people with a disability can find wearing a mask difficult if they cannot remove one from their face without help. For example, someone with cerebral palsy may not be able to tie the strings or put the elastic loops of a face mask over the ears, due to limited mobility

• post-traumatic stress disorder, severe anxiety or claustrophobia — people with these conditions can find wearing a mask terrifying and may not be able to stay calm or function while wearing one

• hearing impairment — people who are deaf or hard of hearing, or those who care for or interact with someone who is hearing-impaired, rely on lipreading to communicate. So wearing a face mask can be a challenge

• facial deformities or physical trauma — may be incompatible with wearing a mask.

There are legitimate safety concerns

This is not a list of exemptions. Nor should we assume all people who fall into these categories can’t wear masks.

In some situations, wearing a face covering may worsen a physical or mental health condition, lead to a medical emergency, or be a significant safety concern.

In the United States and United Kingdom there have been reports of people with disabilities being challenged, threatened with arrest, or excluded from retail and food outlets for not wearing a mask.

Conversely, there have been incidents in which anti-mask activists have feigned disability to avoid having to wear a mask in public. This could magnify scepticism and mistrust of people with legitimate, but potentially not obvious, reasons for not having to wear a mask.

While there are people who genuinely cannot wear masks, for others, it may just take extra time, resources, adaptions, alternatives and support to feel comfortable wearing one.

Read more: 13 insider tips on how to wear a mask without your glasses fogging up, getting short of breath or your ears hurting

That might involve a bit of trial and error before finding a mask that fits well or is made from a comfortable fabric. Others may be able to wear a mask, but for only a short time.

There are online resources with useful tips and strategies to reduce the stress and challenges associated with using a mask or face shield. However, governments also need to ensure these resources are accessible to the people who need them, their family and carers.

How about breathing problems?

The Victorian government includes people with breathing problems on its list of valid medical exemptions for not wearing a mask in public.

But this is a grey area. We don’t have evidence-based guidelines for judging these various medical exemptions. Each country is currently taking a slightly different approach in this area.

In any case, given the types of masks the public are wearing (cloth masks or surgical/face mask), some experts say it’s unlikely these masks will cause problems.

For instance, the chief medical officer of the American Lung Association said recently:

People with underlying chronic lung disease, such as [chronic obstructive pulmonary disease] or asthma, should be able to wear a non-N95 facial covering without it affecting their oxygen or carbon dioxide levels.

The World Health Organisation also says face masks of breathable material, worn properly, will not lead to oxygen deficiency or carbon dioxide intoxication.

For most of us, wearing a mask is new

While we all adjust to wearing masks in public, it is important we try to assume as little as possible about others based on whether they’re wearing one.

Remember, the goal of the public wearing a mask when leaving the house is to reduce the risk of community transmission. If we can do that without vilifying people who genuinely can’t wear masks, or need a bit of extra support to do so, we all benefit.

Read more: Victorians, and anyone else at risk, should now be wearing face masks. Here’s how to make one

– ref. It’s easy to judge. But some people really can’t wear a mask – https://theconversation.com/its-easy-to-judge-but-some-people-really-cant-wear-a-mask-143258